Windward

Fifteen inches of wood standing on edge, curved like something caught mid-lift.

The layers are the whole story here. Water worked this piece from the outside in, peeling it back blade by blade until what was left reads like feathers, or flame, or a sail bellied out in wind — depending on where you stand when you look at it. Nothing was carved. Not one cut.

It came out of the inlets along the North Carolina coast, pulled from the water on shrimping runs.

The wood was sealed in polyurethane that brings the depth up in the grain, then set upright on a hand-built pine base, stained with a raised block that lets the curve stand free.

Details

• Dimensions: 9" W × 9" D × 15" H, including base
• Materials: Natural driftwood, polyurethane sealed finish, hand-built pine base, dark stained
• Origin: The inlets and coastal waters 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 with the layers rather than against them. Keep out of direct sunlight and away from moisture. For indoor display.