Audacious

This beautifully illustrated volume presents 108 stunning, technically unimaginable works of art in wood from the Montalto Bohlen Collection. The seventy-five internationally recognized artists featured in the book range from pioneering founders of the wood art movement in the United States, such as Bob Stockdale, Melvin Lindquist, David Ellsworth, and Dale Nish, to recent artists who explore wood as an expressive medium, including Hunt Clark, whose new woodworking techniques express his deeply personal vision and relationship with sculptural form. While many of the artists continue to use lathe turning to produce traditional forms, others are experimenting with color, texture, and alternative materials and techniques to push the creative boundaries of the art form. During the past twenty years, wood art has emerged from the centuries-old practice of producing utilitarian tablewares to become part of today's mainstream of artistic expression. The Peabody Essex Museum's exhibition catalogue demonstrates wood art's limitless range of visually and intellectually stimulating possibilities. The works from the Montalto Bohlen Collection speak to the extraordinary technical proficiency behind them. They share each artist's eloquent vision that encompasses man's unique relationship with trees and the natural world.

About the Author :
Dean Lahikainen is The Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. His publications include In Plain Sight: Discovering the Furniture of Nathaniel Gould (2014), Samuel McIntire: Carving an American Style (2007), and In the American Spirit: Folk Art from the Collections (of the Peabody Essex Museum) (1994). Verlyn Klinkenborg is the recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship and was a member of the New York Times editorial board from 1997 to 2013. He teaches at Yale University and lives in rural New York State. He is the author of Making Hay (1986), The Last Fine Time (1991), The Rural Life (2003), and Timothy: Or, Notes of an Abject Reptile (2006), Several Short Sentences about Writing (2012), and More Scenes from the Rural Life (2013).

Review :
"The narrators offer a refreshingly candid account of the personal and entrepreneurial forces shaping a world-class collection--and the curator's dilemma in classifying it. They also vividly articulate both the essence and nuances of wood that make it compelling and, in the artist's hands, unpredictable."-- "American Woodturner" American Woodturner" The narrators offer a refreshingly candid account of the personal and entrepreneurial forces shaping a world-class collection and the curator s dilemma in classifying it. They also vividly articulate both the essence and nuances of wood that make it compelling and, in the artist s hands, unpredictable. American Woodturner"