Wood

You start with a piece of wood - cherry, maple, cedar, box elder, walnut or poplar.  I usually like to work with native woods from local lumberyards and from recently cut or dead trees. It can be a single piece from the trunk or the branch of a tree or it can be glued togther from several boards.

The “blank” as it is called, is then securely attached onto a wood lathe. The wood lathe is very different from almost all other woodworking machinery as the wood rotates as opposed to a metal blade spinning. Safety is of great concern when operating a lathe and you have to carefully place sharpened steel gouges and scrapers to the wood and for me, you let the wood decides what it wants to be. I have handmade most of my cutting tools to give me greater flexibility on creating my wood art pieces.

Wood allows me to be expressive - creating art for the purpose of visual enjoyment and not neccessarily for functional uses. Copper, metal leaf, acrylic, epoxy, wood dyes and numerous other art materials and artistic embellishments are added to enhance my finished pieces.

All artwork copryright 2022 - Ron Zdroik