Bog Oak Sculptures

Peat bogs are acidic and almost airless. Wood buried in them is preserved rather than consumed, and tannins in the wood react with iron and minerals in the ground. In the case of oak this can often make the grain turn from brown to near black.

Recovered bog wood arrives wet, caked in earth with much of it being unstable. It is dried patiently over months before it can be worked at all. Much of it splits, cleaves off and is lost. What survives is scraped, almost like dentistry, cleaning cavities before it holds a finish. This happens in phases of cleaning and drying.

Bog oak and bog wood in general occupies an odd position between decay and preservation. It is the residue of a collapse — a forest that fell and was swallowed — kept intact by the same conditions that should have destroyed it.

RUIN treats that condition as the subject rather than the raw material. Splits, voids and mineral staining are celebrated.

Each Discovery is one of one. The wood dictates the form: a piece is found and brought to the workshop where it is examined for form. Much time is spent cleaning, stripping away the earth and rotten wood, soft pieces to find what remains, what is stable and to review form. It is finished working around the voids and grain, no two discoveries behave the same way.

Where dating is recorded it is stated exactly as it is known — confirmed, estimated, or undetermined — and never rounded upward for effect.