...."FishWood"

Brought to you by: RusticWoodArt

I am the telling story of all my projects, ....yes, well there you have it, straight from the northern shores of Moosehead Lake, Maine.

Some years ago my wife and I were camping at Seboonook Wilderness Campground out of Rockwood, Maine and taking a short vacation in the middle of September. Seboomook Wilderness Campground has an interesting history, since from 1944 to 1946 there was a German prisoner of war camp there (some of Rommel’s elite Africa corps) who worked the timber and logging industry of the region.

It has become a habit of mine that whenever I am camping on a lake, I will always take some time to canoe into remote areas and explore the shore line for driftwood , rocks and stones. Usually on my return trip home I am carying rock formations and packing all types and sizes of wood. Anything from washed up timber beams to sizeable wood is all fair game as I am always on the watch for that one piece of salient wood art.

Well now you know, I truly am a magpie of sorts and that’s how I found this piece of wood. An intriguing and unputdownable chunk-of-hunk-of-wood and when I first saw it, I heard it singing, “take me as a I am art, wonderfully made and most beautifully pleasing in the eyes of my beholder”, and so I took as ‘just is’ knowing that in the what shall yet be, we were linked as one. One other side note is there happens to be a 20d common nail implanted in the wood and bent flush on the backside of the wood, which if you look close, becomes the eyeball of the fish.

On pieces like this I do not manipulate the wood beyond taking some Scotch Brite pads and smoothing the edges of all the wood surface. Then I will take a brass wire brush and clean the front and backside, while next blowing the surface with compressed air. Now its time for the piece of wood to sit awhile, as we exchange glances with each other, until the wood feels comfortable enough to reveal itself to me and tell me its name. This piece sat for four years, aging to a nice color of weathered grey in my barn until we connected and I saw what was there.

This past September, while feeling the need to take a break from the intense daily onslaught of hand sanding I was doing with a piece of wood, in preparation for a show coming up in October, we connected. Picking the piece of wood up and feeling the wood I saw what was to be, no more ‘just a piece of wood’, I now found myself holding and seeing “FishWood”. An exotic freshwater flounder of the ice age, washed up on the shores of Moosehead Lake and now restored as was, to be, by one rustic woodsman.

When the image is seen, it is time to get in ‘the process’, so I first applied two liberal coats of tung oil and let sit for a week. Once the tung oil was dry I then used acrylic paint to highlight some areas of the wood. If you look closely at the eyeball of “FishWood” you will see three distinct colors there, which were the bases I used for the highlighting colors. Next, I tinted some colors into shellac, applied two coats and let sit overnight. The good thing about shellac is that when cut to a 1 to 1-1/2 pound cut, drying and multiple coats are made possible all in the same day. After this I then proceeded to apply six more coats of amber shellac and let sit to dry and cure.

This piece of wood art, “FishWood” is what I call a short term project and allows me to relax some as I take a breathing spell from working on much larger and longer projects, some that spread over years. ‘Long term’ and ‘short term’ becomes a balancing act of labored love in the midst of ‘the process’, as sanity is maintained on the fringes of insanity.

Yes, this piece is for sale and would even make a nice gift for that fisherman you know who is still lacking that one trophy catch. This is a wall hanging and is ready to mount, ....”FishWood”, an exotic freshwater flounder of the ice age.

Thank you.
Frank
RusticWoodArt

rusticwoodman@gmail.com
www.frank.wordpress.com

-- --frank, NH, http://frank.wordpress.com/