The Cabinet Oak Project :: 2022
This was a very unique opportunity to not only participate in a juried show, but to explore using a new type of wood and artistic process.
In April 2022 I submitted my work to the Cabinet Oak Project. What’s that you ask? Good question. So, a large branch of an oak tree next to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Texas White House” fell off due to illness. Instead of cutting and dumping the thing, the organization decided to give the wood to artists, let them create with it and auction the work off to support the park the house sits in.
I got my acceptance email on July 21st. Katie Robinson Edwards, Ph.D., Executive Director and Curator of the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden + Museum in Austin, served as the juror. 60 artists out of 120 were selected to participate.
All artists’ work was sold at an auction May 6, 2023. Proceeds benefit the restoration of the house itself. The sale of these two pieces raised just under $1,500 for the cause, which I donated minus shipping costs. These two pieces will be featured in an online gallery beginning in March 2023.
Hard Bop No. 11
Hard Bop No. 10
Process
The log arrived in the mail the first week in August 2022 just the way it looks in the photos above, although wrapped in shipping paper. It was a 40-pound piece of a branch about 14” in diameter. There was no way I could cut the thing using my Delta tabletop bandsaw so I began a search for someone that could. Finally I found a carpenter with a huge mobile log-cutting rig: a Woodmizer LT70 Hydraulic Portable Sawmill. As massive as this machine was, Roy’s expertise shined and he was able to cut me 4 pieces at .25 - .30” thick. I marked them off the way you see below and cut off the rough edges.
I saved some of the very rough, knob-textured edges. I decided to work those into the compositions somehow. I felt having that additional natural reference in the work would give the pieces a stronger relationship to the tree it came from originally.
I tested a few different stains but nothing was really letting the grain and patterns of the wood stand out the way I wanted them to. Finally I tried some Osmo Wood Wax Finish in their 3164 Oak color. Two coats gave me the rich, deep wood tones and pattern details I was looking for.
After that the rest of my process was as it always is although I did mix a custom burnt orange and muted teal to get the vintage hues I wanted to use for these. Those were a blend of my Liquitex acrylics and some Fusion Mineral Paints I started using with the Hard Bop series.
As a final nostalgic touch, I use two vintage table legs as center pieces. These are from a table that was in my home in Kentucky while I was growing up. They’re probably from the 1950s. The top of the table was ruined from decades of use, but the legs, with their gold inlay, were in great shape. I like having that connection to my roots incorporated into the work.
