Sway

The whole piece leans.

An arm thrown up and back, and a body following it around.

The trunk comes off the base with a bend in it, like weight shifted onto one hip. From there a long limb sweeps up and out in a single curve, thinning as it goes until the last few inches break open into lace where the water bored all the way through. A second short branch juts the other way at the shoulder, the way a free hand does.

Nothing was carved. It came out of the coastal inlets of North Carolina, found on shrimping and fishing runs, worn to pale honey and grey with the grain running visible the whole length. The wood is sealed in polyurethane and set upright on a wide hand-built pine base finished in a dark stain, which lets the arm reach out over open space without the piece feeling like it might go over.

Details

• Dimensions: 11½" W × 11½" D × 20" H, including base
• Weight: 4 lb 3 oz
• Materials: Natural driftwood sealed in polyurethane, hand-built stained pine base
• Origin: The coastal inlets of North Carolina
• Permanently mounted — the sculpture does not lift off the base
• One of a kind — this piece will not be repeated

The name is only one side

Turn this piece and it becomes something else.

That is true of everything we make, and it is the reason none of these sculptures has a front. We name each one for what we saw first — the angle that stopped us. Rotate it a quarter turn and the figure you were looking at is gone, and a different one is standing there. Ridges become a face. A wing becomes a wave. A crowd becomes one body.

So the name is our reading, not an instruction. Set it whichever way it speaks to you, and turn it again when it stops. People who live with these pieces tend to move them a few times a year without quite deciding to.

Carved by water

Not one line in this wood was cut by a blade. Every groove, hollow, and ridge was worked slowly — by salt, by tide, by years in the water — along a coast that has fed and carried people for generations. We think of these as pieces already carved by hands older than ours and left on the shore to be found.

What we do is small by comparison. We find them, we preserve them as they are, and we give them a base to stand on so they can be seen. Sometimes two pieces are set together because they belong together — but the wood itself is never cut, shaped, stained, or painted. Nothing is corrected. The wood says what it already had to say.

Care

Dust with a dry, soft cloth, and go gently at the tip of the reaching arm — the open, lace-like end is the most delicate part of the piece. Keep out of direct sunlight and away from moisture. For indoor display.