Gnarly Wood Sculptures

11/10/2025

07/01/2025

Infinity Tangle is one of my recent gnarly sculptures. It's created from 2 similar juniper roots and mounted on a polished sage-and-black rock from a peaceful mountain stream bed.

03/11/2025

My projects are now for sale at the Absolutely Art Gallery & Gifts, 16701 N Oracle Rd, Tucson. I am so pleased to share my love of nature in this creative way.

12/01/2024

I've sold my first $150 sculpture! It's a garmet hanger made with an interlocking pair of oak and juniper roots, and hand-paintrd k***s. It's securely mounted on a 70-80-yr-old 3/4-inch reclaimed pine board.

If you'd like a similar garmet hanger before Christmas, let me know ASAP.

10/23/2024

Stringed musical instrument holder, ($200 plus rax/shipping) beautifully gnarly oak with an inosculation graft. The root has 4 hidden slots for guitar picks and 3 hangers for instruments. 34" x 10", 6 lbs.
Order: [email protected]

10/23/2024

Rock-mounted root sculptures

10/23/2024

Above fireplace mantle or bed headboard hangings.

10/23/2024

Garmet hangers

10/23/2024

This brief video explains the process I useto create my gnarly wood sculptures.

12/30/2023

This was a Christmas gift to a resilient mother and teen son who I really like. They lost a husband and father to cancer nearly a year ago. It's hard to see it, but this heirloom board had a bad crack that I fused with red epoxy and reinforced the whole board with a Masonite backing. It's a clothes- and key-hanger with a broken heart. The granite stones are from a beach in Rocky Point, Mexico where the three of them helped build houses with the community-development nonprofit 1Mission.

12/30/2023

My latest. This is a tangle of manzanita, oak and Juniper roots. I have realized that a couple yearsago i became an ancient-board rescuer. For months I thought this one was just too far gone. But with some epoxy reinforcement and using stains, paints, paint glaze, and a little carving, the old board complements the gnarly tree roots.

11/22/2023

This beautiful 5-foot sculpture is a weaving of American sycamore, Emory oak and alligator juniper roots. The roots, harvested in the Coronado National Forest in southeast Arizona with my fuelwood permit, are gorgeous. I create sculptures with such gnarly tree roots rather than burn them. Each root achieved its rugged personality from growth in rocky soils. The trees themselves died many years ago and only the trunks, larger limbs, and roots remain.

I mounted these roots on an heirloom 2x8 pine board. I recovered this seemingly lost cause wood under years of decomposing grass, wild amaranth, and other weeds. The long-ago-discarded board was originally used to make a livestock pen on Forest Service land. (Metal posts and barbed wire have mostly replaced board fencing in southern Arizona.) Parts of the splintered board fell away when I yanked out eight rusty nails. A trigonal chunk of vintage wood was left. I chiseled off rotten sections, and power-planed and sanded what was left. What remained was surprisingly sturdy and ruggedly beautiful. I glued and screwed the board to a reclaimed pine board (circa 1958) to prevent further spliting, and finished both boards with several coats of a Danish oil, polyurethane, turpentine mixture.

The sculpture is hung from the wall with two hefty wood screws that fit into keyhole router slots in the backer board.