Sculpture in wood, Caril Chasens, fine art woodcarving, original sculpture and ideas, artist's portfolio,writings, woodcarving how-to for woodcarvers and artists, links for artists and woodcarvers, links to new movements and new directions in the visual arts...

Caril Chasens

Sculpture in Wood

Wood carving as a 21st century art, original sculpture and ideas, digital collage, artist's portfolio, writings, woodcarving tutorials for woodcarvers and artists, visual arts and woodcarving links, links to new movements and new directions in the visual arts...

... Ghost in the Library

Paddleball Head - the animation..

wood sculpture carving

Hominidium birch burl

It was interesting combining chimp and human features.... More

....

I use wood as a medium for original one-of-a-kind sculpture. Wood, containing and reflecting the complexity of nature, is, I feel, a medium deeply suited to this time in history.

Many of my carvings show animals within environment, the environment abstracted (a different abstraction) in the unique nature of wood. And, I have been experimenting with digital collage...

wood sculpture digital art collage

Molten Wood-digital collage with wood sculpture

Digididdles - More digital collage

wood sculpture carving

Horsey Face pine burl, 26"

....

All works are original and one-of-a-kind.

....

wood sculpture carving

Artifact, birch, 21"

The bird is a yellowbellied sapsucker, larger than life.

Floating Horses birch, 36"

This piece inspired Horsey Face, above. Horses are rather alien to me; I did not grow up drawing horses. ...see the sculpture..

Sound in Water (Orcas) birch, 36"

...see the sculpture..

Treehugger birch, 17"

It is possible for a modern person to feel a deep connection to nature. Below that, one is likely to feel a gulf, a sense that the connection is just pretend. And of course, below that the connection is absolute, we are part of it. I don't know how sad a story this is. It is too soon to be sure. ...see the sculpture..

Entseed, 2004, birch burl, 7"

Not an illustration, but I do thank the fantasy writer Tolkein for coining the word ent (a walking sentient tree). ...see the sculpture..

Mother Nature, 2003, birch burl, 24"

Contains surprises.... ...see the sculpture..

Consider Mouse, 2004, steamed pear, gold leaf, 14" ...see the sculpture..

Runners 1996, birch, 40"

The coyote does catch the hare, and also the hare does escape. I unified the piece by hand joinery from curved rough birch planks that were milled to make sleigh runners. One impulse in the composition is a sense of the immediate space of the running creatures. (By "immediate space", I mean the root feeling of what we humans interpret culturally as personal space.) ...see the sculpture..

The Minotaur (Portrait of Pablo Picasso) 2000, birch, red cedar, 31"

This started from a picture of Picasso's face. The environment might not be part of a wave-cross-section of the 20th century. In Picasso's painting Guernica, the bull looks as agonized as everything else, at the horror of war. But, in some sketches for the painting, the bull, or sometimes the minotaur, was so indifferent, so calm.... ...see the sculpture..

Pterodactyl 1999, alder, 39"

Counting only the Earth's speed of revolution in the galaxy, leaving out all the rest, the time when I first learned about pterodactyls happened on the order of 150 thousand million miles from here. And when the past is very near.... ...see the sculpture..

Stellars Jays 1996,pacific yew, 18"

The seed might have germinated two centuries ago, judging roughly because the tight rings are hard to count. The wood is unified from slabs of a block of yew wood. So, what do these jay-birds eat when there is no dogfood available? ...see the sculpture..

Couple of Wolves 1996, butternut, 20"

I imagine a stuck couple of wolves, no longer nearly as taken with what they are doing as they were a bit earlier, unable to leave without discussing the matter, intensely alert to every sound. ...see the sculpture..

Passage 1996, birch, cottonwood? knot, 24"

Reflections on our direct descent from a wormish critter, that swam or crawled on the order of 1 000 000 000 years ago. We are still the same basic structure. A tube: stuff goes in one end and comes out the other. Evolution is many falls of chance - or decision- each building on the ones before. Building a work of art is a similar process. I made the handprint by pressing my palm in the still-molten wood. ...see the sculpture..

System With Frogs, 1999, myrtle, 24"

I cut away the (?water) to reveal the froggy in float mode. I was seriously messing with surface, depth and up. ...see the sculpture..

Food Chain 1997, birch, willow, 28"

The fox's space is birch, the mouse's, willow. The mirror brings in another space; look to see what the fox is after. ...see the sculpture..

Moose at the Garden Fence 1995, butternut, 4ft. x 4ft.

The animals are a moose with her two calves, at the boundary between wild and cultivated land, at a garden fence. I chose to make the fence not- quite-a-fence, barely recognizable, unnaturally rectangular in its lack of perspective or realistic detail. This because, what is a fence to a Moose? An odd thing, different from naturally occurring forms. She can step over it easily, but her calves can't. A small amount of detail in the landscape is influenced by the carved acanthus leaf, the stylized vegetation that is typical of traditional European carving. Although I understand that the acanthus styles are based on an actual plant, the traditional acanthus impresses me as being a loving abstraction of vegetation, of the form and growth of plants. In this context, the detail inspired by acanthus is pretty, but feels out of place. I am playing with the idea of garden on the border of wild land. ...see the sculpture..

....

Molten Wood-digital collage with wood sculpture

Digididdles - More digital collage

Links to writings

The book .. Molten Wood and Feral Ideas - Art and Words from Outside the Outside

Professional portfolio

Artists Statement - Casting molten wood

Curriculum vitae

Green New Art

Woodcarving and Sculpture Tutorials

Cutting and Sanding

How to do Original Woodcarving