It does what it wants…

I have a friend who turns wood—some of the most beautiful bowls you’ll ever see. Mark Gardner. Look him up.

His bowl are balanced and carry the character of the wood in interesting ways internally and then he often finishes the outsides with milk paint. They’re both expertly carved and manipulated while still celebrating the trees they came from. I love functional art.

Every now and again, though, Mark makes a run of shrink pots or carves bowls out of green wood and then finishes them after they have fully dried. And I have to admit that those are my favorites of his huge body of work. Because those pieces are less “perfect”. They twist a little or shrink unevenly as they dry and in those bowls, I think of Mark working in concert with nature and trusting the wood to be what it wants to be.

Learning to make a perfect bowl out of well dried wood is exacting work that takes years to master—physically demanding, repetitive labor with each kind of wood to understand its nuances as a material. We’ve had a few chats about how to take care of your hands and arms long term while doing such work. It takes its toll, and I don’t ever want to sound dismissive of that masterful work.

But carving green and accepting what nature does to the final project, I imagine is harder emotional work. To give up some of the control of his work to an unpredictable second party? That feels brave and generous and daring to me. And I like that the trees of origin are getting to have a say in the final project.

Admittedly, I might also be attracted to those green-carved bowls because it feels so akin to the work I do with willow. I often start weaving a basket with an idea in mind of the how the final shape will turn out. Easily half the time, I end up with a perfectly functional and lovely basket that does not visually match the original imagined plan.

If we leave basket legend, Jenny Crisp, out of the data set, I am not alone in this experience in the world of basket making. I am a member of a group of international basketmakers—all students of Hanna Van Aelst—who meet once a month to talk on Zoom about our successes and trials in basket making. Often we’re talking about the difference between the baskets we planned to weave and the completed baskets sitting in front of us on a table when we’re done.

This is both the frustration and the beauty of working in a craft or art discipline that relies on natural materials as the medium. There is a tension and vague unpredictability in both wood and willow rods (which are obviously wood, but feel more akin to super strong fiber than a beautiful log of walnut or oak) that, for me, feels more often like a partnership than as work to tame something to my vision.

If someone asked me to make a run of baskets for something—I don’t know… like identical bread baskets for a restaurant that could perfectly stack—I would have to give them Jenny Crisp’s number. (I don’t have her number, mind you. She lives in a basket stratosphere I’m unlikely to find entre to starting as late as I have in trying to master this craft). Everyone of my willow baskets is an original and, honestly, a bit of a surprise.

I am sure willow can be bent to a weaver’s will perfectly, but I am not that weaver. Willow is going to do what it wants it my hands with some basic direction.

Writing this down, though, for the first time and having these thoughts, I realize that seems to be the kind of experience I am attracted to.

I have a treeing walker coonhound, Grady, who we adopted as an adult. He was abandoned probably because he’s a lousy hunting dog—afraid of the noise of guns. And I definitely don’t have the sort of mom/kid relationship I’ve ever had with a dog before. He’s more like a roommate. He doesn’t come when I call him. He follows his nose and nothing else. But he’s the best dog I’ve ever had.

And though I run a horse boarding barn as a profession, I opted to get a mule instead of a horse. Juniper. She’s the sweetest animal—generous, kind, amazing with kids. But mules don’t love being told what to do and they have strong feelings about it that can’t be broken out of them like they can be with horses. Push too hard with a mule and you’ll end up with the most stubborn animal you’ve ever met.

I mean, Steve Edwards out west probably (just like Jenny Crisp and willow) can train a mule to give him no guff at all. But I don’t have that kind of energy. So, when Juniper and I go for a ride on the trails, I pick the direction we’re going to head in and then she decides everything else. She knows best where to put her feet to keep us safe and I have no interest in micromanaging her. If we get close to the edge of steep drop off, I just close my eyes and trust her to see us safely through.

I like nature to nature, willow to willow, my hound to hound and my mule to mule. There’s joy in all of it, but maybe most importantly the surprise of them all.