A Monument To My People
$9,000.00
CHRISTIAN BURCHARD
Material and Technique
Madrone Root, Blackwood
28” H x 25” W x 10” D
About The Work
This piece is from the Monuments and Towers Series. I work just about exclusively with Pacific Madrone from the Arbutus family. My favorite parts are the burls that grow within the roots of these trees. They are harvested for the veneer market and I use the rejects from this harvest. These burls often weigh many thousand pounds. To make them usable, the dirt and rocks have to be removed, then they can be cut into blocks. By working with wet wood with a high water content and by cutting or turning my forms very thin, I take advantage of and encourage the changes that occur as the wood dries. As the water evaporates and leaves the cells, the wood shrinks, warps, splits. Depending on how those cells were aligned in its structure, some very dynamic changes occur.
