Wood and Stone

Wood

I like the simplicity of wood, to mirror life in a radial form, no left/right, growing in all directions.

Any cut across a tree shows the rings, left like tidelines of life, making a timeline to the centre, a time tunnel.

A bowl is an emptiness between two hearts, unknown as this girlchildwoman I am in free fall passing.

In that hollow, some archaic love of trees slows me down to seasonal pace and the ways of the forest written in wood. An easy language from heart to tree heart, to crown and roots. Though we are left/right, front/back creatures and their form is radial, still, as beings we too are centre and periphery. A tree is shown in every slice of wood, so that bark to centre is a timeline, to seed as source, and follows down the middle of every branch to the trunk’s hollow core. At heart, it is empty.

We also need roots while reaching for the stars. A tree is so much Here it has a presence, an abiding, it offers shelter. In 100,000 years of companionship sharing both food and soul food, as able ambassadors of life as are we.

A forest temple to light, are trees asleep at night dreaming of the sun? Listening to sap rise at dawn, surely a tree is a seed pulled up by light. It is not much made of earth. There is not a ten ton hole under a tree, it is made by light of mostly water and air. Or you can say a seed has entrained water and air into the trust of light.

Sprout, sapling, to seed spreading maturity, then a long slow decline. No more this body, graceful let go, and green is spreading.

Stone

Stone is on a vaster time scale, molten core to solid surface or layer by layer laid on some ocean floor, compressed, reheated, exposed as cliffs, now broken by modern seas, small enough to carry. Stone grain, written in a language of heat and pressure, elements to minerals, our slowed down sun core, heavy underfoot.

Make a stone book, what does it say? Stone arrested on its way back to sand, ground to minerals small enough to be absorbed by tree roots. Another bite of the apple for your beloved? In the beginning was… Stones expounding the Dharma… Once upon a time…. Da Capo. Choose your metaphor of history: no beginning, no end anyone?

Stone time so slow, though in last winter storms, stand and watch sea eat this cliff to sand. A ten ton rock fell point first where I used to sit, a week later all trace of it gone. Soon ground to dust on the breeze, tree roots pull up to make this apple for her father’s eye, she gives to her friend to munch. Apples and pears, an Adam’n Eve it lunch, in the ascent of man, all learning to fly. Pushing up from this hardened skin over a molten core, or jumping off a tree, all wax and wings to escape this lumpen gravity. And in our last few seconds more, to realise all this is a huge Now, that everywhere is always calling. Forest is calling, birds are not waiting, summer is done, all along the blooming heather.

Wood and stone say so much already if we can read this material language. How we read it says what we have made of the journey so far. Our ideas shape our view of the world, WYSIWYG – What you see is what you get.

In this journey of form to formlessness, on this no path with Osho, perhaps wood and stone are weights to keep me grounded. Emptiness by itself makes a thin lunch, and when insight carries me away, sometimes I need a thread of meaning, some story to return. Choose your story carefully. The artist is a fool dancing on the edge, just one more dance anyone?

I will talk about the third element, metal and show you my 4D sculptures in a few months, so stay tuned.

Text by Samvado

Samvado grew up in England until aged 19, he went to live in Scotland, where he studied psychology. He took sannyas at Medina commune where he took part in the therapist training year. This was cut short and he went to Berlin commune and then Miasto, working mostly as carpenter or in the kitchen. In Pune 2 he had his own wood studio and lathe in No. 3, making two exhibitions there. Samvado lived in Scotland for 35 years then moved to Cornwall in 2003 where he is still living. www.samvadosculpturecornwall.co.uk