A fine art, film, history and literature site oriented to, but not exclusively for, the gay community. Please be aware that there is mature content on this blog. Information on images and links to sources will be provided if known. Enjoy your visit and please subscribe.
Skeletal Sculptures by Yoshitoshi Kanemaki
Based out of Chiba Prefecture, Japanese sculptor Yoshitoshi Kanemaki carves life-size sculptures from camphor wood, but with a twist of mortality and transience. The disturbing pieces hinge often hinge on grotesque as the combination of the bulging weight and density of wood heightens the certainty of death that looms over all his creations.
Willow Sculptures by Laura Bacon
British Sculptor, Laura Ellen Bacon (born 1976) works raw materials into large-scale or ‘human-scale’ artworks, in both interior and landscape settings. Working with predominately natural materials and her bare hands, her works embrace, surround or engulf architectural and natural structures.
Her work has been described as ‘startling but beckoning’; ‘monumental yet intimate’; ‘frenzied yet calm’. Laura’s particular use of materials emerges from a compulsive desire to work them into a formed space of some kind, using a language of materials that seems strangely familiar to the natural world.
“I began making my early works upon dry stone walls and evolved to work within trees, riverbanks and hedges, allowing the chosen structure (be it organic or man-made) to become host. I am still powerfully driven to create spaces of some kind and over a decade into my work, my passions continue to merge creatively with architecture.
The forms that I make have a closeness with their host structure or the fabric of a building; their oozing energy spills from gutters, their ‘muscular’ forms nuzzle up to the glass and their gripping weave locks onto the strength of the walls. Whilst the scale and impact varies from striking to subtle (sometimes only visible upon a quizzical double take), I relish the opportunity to let a building ‘feed’ the form, as if some part of the building is exhaling into the work.”
Halloween: Second Chapter: The Creepy Wooden People
“He is the intermediary between us, his audience, the living, and they, the dolls, the undead, who cannot live at all and yet who mimic the living in every detail.”
― Angela Carter, Wayward Girls and Wicked Women
Kenneth Erik Moffatt, “God and Goddess of Teviot with Their Kelpies”
Kenneth Erik Moffatt is a sculptor and free style carver of wood living and working in Teviothead, England. He works directly into the wood, without any preparatory drawings, adding to the carvings as his inspiration dictates.
Top Three Photos: Roof Corbel, Oak. The head of the River God Teivi, crowned with the moon and oak leaves. Interwoven in his flowing hair, are two leaping salmon, based upon “Border Reiver” graffiti, from the walls of the prison cells in Carlisle castle.
Fourth and Fifth Photos: Roof Corbel, Oak. The head of the River Goddess, embodiment of the Celtic Goddess Sulis, crowned with the Moon, hazel leaves and nuts, and adorned at the throat with hazel catkins. Also present are her two attendant spirits, a bird, and the mischievous squirrel “ratatosk,” one of the inhabitants of the “Tree of Life.” The nine sacred hazel trees, are representative of the spring where the waters rise in Scottish folk legend.
Bottom Two Photos: Roof Corbels, Oak. Kelpies. Water Horses.
Kinetic Sculptures by David C Roy
Since graduating in 1974 from Boston University with a degree in physics, artist David C. Roy has been fascinated by the motion and mechanics of kinetic sculptures. Roy is a self-taught woodworker who designs limited edition wall-mounted sculptures powered by various mechanical wind-up mechanisms without the aid of electricity. Each piece can run for about 5-18 hours unassisted on a single wind, with his latest piece Dimensions capable of whirling around for a whopping 40+ hours.
From his Connecticut studio Roy has produced over 150 one-of-a-kind designs over the last thirty years, many of which he currently sells as editions through his website. Visit his site to see the archive of past works and the current works for sale: http://woodthatworks.squarespace.com
Angelico and Isais Jimenez, Mythical Mexican Beasts, Carved Wood
Angelico and Isais Jimenez are the sons of Manuel Jimenez, the founder of the Oaxaca School of Mexican carved and painted animals. Though relatively unknown outside of Mexico, their work is excellent and available for sale.
Further information on their work can be found at: https://www.fofa.us/woodcarving/2
Sculptures and Wood Carvings by Maskull Lasserre
Maskull Lasserre was born in Canada in 1978, and spent his early childhood in South Africa. He has a BFA from Mount Allison University (Visual Art and Philosophy), and an MFA from Concordia University in sculpture.
Lasserre’s drawings and sculptures explore the unexpected potential of the everyday through allegories of value, expectation, and utility. Elements of nostalgia, accident, humor, and the macabre are incorporated into works that induce strangeness in the familiar, and provoke uncertainty in the expected.
Lasserre is represented in the collections of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, and Government of Canada amongst others. He has exhibited across Canada, in the United States and in Europe, including at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and the GRASSI Museum in Germany. He is also a recent participant in the Canadian Forces War Artist Program in Afghanistan.
Egyptian Ritual Figure, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Period: Late Period or Early Ptolemaic Period
Dynasty: Dynasty 30 or later
Date: 380–246 B.C.
Medium: Wood, formerly clad with lead sheet
Dimensions: h. 21 cm (8 ¼ in); w. 14.3 cm (5 5/8 in); d. 11 cm (4 5/16 in)
Wood Sculptures by Leo Ferdinando Demetz
Leo Ferdinando Demetz was born in Bolzano, Italy. The sculptor lives and works in Salva di Val Gardena, Italy.
Carved Snakes: Wood and Ivory
Artists Unknown, Carved Walking Stick Handles
Works in Wood and Steel by Robby Cuthbert
“I ended up attending Williams College where I majored in Studio Art and Psychology. Within the art department, I was naturally drawn to the three-dimensional media of architecture and sculpture. What ensued was a sort of cross-pollination between the two media that led me to my current style and process.
Process is central to my work. Each project begins with a period of sketching followed by careful phases of planning, calculation and construction. While this process reflects my architectural interests, the forms I generate need not adhere to the rules of architecture. In this way, I employ a controlled method as a means of generating and exploring a variety of three-dimensional forms.
In my most recent work I generate architectural and organic forms, often with a hint of the fantastical or whimsical, that examine the role of tension in the storing and release of energy. With wood and wire as my primary materials, I have played with the suggestion of pent up energy held in check by opposing forces. Each piece maintains a state of potential energy that, if released, would result in a transformation of the work.” – Robby Cuthbert
Male Figurative Sculptures from Papau, New Guinea
Rush Pleansuk, “Genii Loci ”
Derived from a Roman word, “Genii Loci” refers to the protective spirit of a place and the name of an exhibition by Rush Pleansuk. He is an artist who translates and transforms the Asian tradition and Thai belief that spirits are believed to be protectors of the living into contemporary creation.
The construction and identification of a certain object as a place where the ‘spirit’ resides is deeply rooted within Eastern culture. Pleansuk’s intricately interwoven art of furniture design, where the abstract is made tangible, passes that tradition onto the present generation.
Figurative Wood Sculptures by Willy Verginer
Currently living and working in the idyllic town of Urtijëi, Italy, sculptor Willy Verginer shares a closeness with his environment in both technique and concept. His surreal wooden sculptures are carved from a single linden tree trunk with incredible precision and detail. Although their features are classical, Verginer paints bold stripes of color across his figures and poses them in awkward positions, making them completely contemporary. He’s often paired his figures of women, men, and young children with other animals and objects that don’t fit together.
His most pieces at his June 2015 show, which were on view at Galerie Van Campen & Rochtus in Belgium, paired them with oil barrels. The gray or metallic color of the barrels transfer to the person or animal they are touching, forming a connection between natural and unnatural. Verginer calls this an act of “aggression,” representing mankind’s pollution of the world around him. As in his sculpture of a fawn, “Between idyllic and reality” (Tra idillico e realta), Verginer also introduces elements like a scaled down landscape or trees. By making something as grand as a forest small in size, the artist points to its fragility and pleas to his viewers to protect it.