Sculptures

This page is dedicated to my love for working with my hands. Not only do I enjoy working with technology, but I also enjoy using my hands to build in more sculptural fields. Below are some of the ways I like to pass my time...

Cairns: A Strange and Unusual Hobby/Sculpting with Nature

I spent my childhood summers in Highlands, North Carolina, an area surrounded by National Forest land. The largest river in the area was the Cullasaja River, a beautiful, rocky river that cut through the heart of the mountains and forests surrounding it. Through sheer luck, we found a beautiful location on the river perfect for enjoying the area. This became known as "the spot", and was a place we frequented. While there, I developed a talent for creating cairns out of rocks from the river bed, partly inspired by the artist Andy Goldsworthy. I have built hundreds of these sculptures. Their size ranging from knee height to almost six feet. my family would go up every weekend or so, and of course the ones I had constructed previously would have fallen over, due to either the weather or human interference -- but I would simply keep building for the love of it. Now wherever I go, I'm constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to build more, whether the rocks are perfectly smooth or decidedly lumpy. To me, these structures serve as a statement on man's relationship with nature, the careful balance that we must maintain between ourselves and the world around us, and a demonstration on how life is purely momentary. Below is an album of some of my creations, built in locations ranging from the frigid waters of the Maine coast to the comparably warm waters of the Cullasaja River.

Highlands, North Carolina:

Acadia National Park, Maine:

Camden, Maine:

Deer Isle, Maine:

One of the more difficult:

Magic Wand: My Attempt at Whittling and a Gift for my Girlfriend's Birthday

When I was younger, I learned to whittle walking sticks from branches I found lying around hiking through the woods of North Carolina. My girlfriend quite the Harry Potter fan, and so for her birthday I decided to hand-make a personal wand for her.  I have illustrated in various pictures and steps below the method that I used to make it. Since completion, I have broken up with the girl I made it for; I hope she doesn't use it to turn me into a frog!

The first thing I did was locate a suitable branch in my backyard. I believe this was a segment from an oak tree.

Next, I stripped the bark off of the limb to expose the inner wood, leaving a stick about one inch in diameter.

Then I created the general shape of the wand without going into any real detail.

After that, I began to really refine the form of the wand, sanding down the length of the tip and adding grooves in the handle, as well as defining the orb set into the handle. Afterwards, even more sanding!

Here's the product of all of the sanding, before I stained the wand. The next picture is after a standard wood stain.

This is the final product, with a nice dark stain and a gloss coat, much like you would find on furniture around your house.