The Witness

A standing figure, head inclined, saying nothing.

Two feet tall and narrow as a person seen edge-on. The wood falls in long vertical folds from the shoulder down, the way cloth falls, and breaks at the crown into a bowed head. There are no barnacles on this one and it does not need them — this is the quietest piece we have, and the austerity is the whole point of it.

It came out of the inlets along the North Carolina coast, found on shrimping and fishing runs. Nothing was carved, shaped, or added. The wood was sealed in polyurethane to hold it as the water finished it, then raised on a slender wood post above a footed pine base so it stands clear of the surface rather than sitting on it.

For an altar, or a room that holds one

Some altars need something that speaks. This one keeps watch instead. It works at the edge of a space rather than the center of it — a corner, a hallway table, the end of a shelf — anywhere you want the feeling of being accompanied rather than addressed.

Details

• Dimensions: 8¼" W × 8¼" D × 24" H, including base
• Weight: 2 lb 5 oz
• Materials: Natural driftwood, polyurethane sealed finish, wood post mount, hand-built footed pine base, stained
• 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, working down with the vertical grain. Keep out of direct sunlight and away from moisture. For indoor display.