“Merewife”

These marquetry/intarzia art pieces are created by Manuela Cuccu from Marche region near Sardegna, Italy.

Manuela Cuccu does not have an art education, she is a self-taught woodworker.
Both Manuela’s parents are artists, mother is a painter and father is a well-known restorer of antique furniture in Italy.
Watching father’s work she learned the technique of inlay and used it to create beautiful fantasy pictures.

Fantasy artist Paolo Barbieri  has greatly influenced Manuela’s art.

In her pictures Manuela uses both natural and chemically stained wood.

Her picture “Lilium” is so far the largest and measurement are 115x80cm.

About picture “Light and shadows” she said:
“Inspired by the eternal struggle between good and evil, the representation of how the good wins over evil is like a flower against a sword or like sometimes a wave of light can destroy something strong from the shadows.”
And about “Leave Out All the Rest”:
“I sometimes feel that the world is upside down for me, I’m different …”

Manuela Cuccu’s motto is “Lilium Inter spinae” (The lily among thorns).

In about five years that she has been engaged in this art-form ( and become quite proficient in this ) she has created approximately 30 paintings and had two successful exhibitions.

More art by Manuela Cuccu can be seen in  www.facebook.com/pages/quadri-intarsi-in-legno

1. Your 3-year-old has a favorite wood, its Padauk.

2. Your 3-year-old can pick out a piece of Padauk from the cut-off bin at rockler, and convinces me to buy it because we used up all of ours.

3. Your brother-in-law (a woodworker) makes your 3-year-old a really cool hardwood loader for his birthday, he criticizes it for not having any padauk in it.

4. You ask you Grandson if he wants to help make a project for him and he says “No Grandpa I don’t want to get all bloody like you”.

5. the grandkids don’t get their toys out of the garage/shop at least once a week they can’t recognize them under the sawdust.

6.  Your purchase of a new home is regulated by the amount of available shop space.

7. before a storm you spend days insuring the shop stays dry but forget to close the windows in your house.

8. You start a fire in the fireplace using coals because you could possibly someday consider thinking about maybe begin to plan on making something out of the tender and logs.

9. the pastor says we will now sing the Old Rugged Cross and you ask what kind of wood is it.

In 1985 he founded Straight Line Designs Inc., creating one-of-a-kind furniture pieces that almost always lean towards the whimsical and unusual .
The majority of Straight Lines work is commercial and includes store fixtures, trade show booths, commercial and movie props, and play areas for childrens hospitals.
But the company also builds custom pieces for private residences. Judson Beaumont: “I found a lot of adults who don’t want to grow up either. They like to have fun stuff, too.”

More outstanding creations of Judson Beaumont can be seen on his website:  www.straightlinedesigns.com

“Bluebell Wood” by Alan Townsend

These wonderful pictures in style of marquetry are done by Alan Townsend from Chelmsford, United Kingdom.

After leaving school Alan Townsend started work at a piano making factory and after about a year and a half he was given the opportunity to help out in the veneer shop as a trainee veneer preparer.

Alan says about himself in that time:
 “ It was there that I saw my first piece of marquetry being made by the old guy who eventually showed me the basics of veneer preparing.
Having seen his attempts at a very simple picture I decided if I could not do better then maybe I should change my trade!!!
After several attempts my very simple pictures, completed during lunch and tea breaks, became quite popular among fel­low workers.
I started making about one a week and selling at ten shillings each (That shows my age).
Chessboards, cribbage boards soon followed and even a fire screen with a kingfisher on it laid with Scotch glue and pressure applied with a toolbox! ”

Alan Townsend founded the “Chelmsford Marquetry Group”. From an initial group of six people in Alan’s front room a Committee was formed and the Group was started in 1984.

Source:
www.marquetry.org
chelmsford-marquetry-group.org.uk

Woodcarving by Janet Denton Cordell

These sculptures are carved by Janet Denton-Cordell from Fayetteville, Arkansas, United States.

Janet grew up deep in the Boston Mountain Range of the Ozarks, as the second daughter of the well-known Denton family with more than 175 years of combined woodcarving experience.
The art of the Dentons has been featured many times over the years, from articles in magazines such as National Geographic and woodcarving journals, to newspapers and television documentaries.
Janet Denton Cordell has won hundreds of awards for her carvings and is recognized as a master woodcarver by the state of Arkansas.

Janet has been teaching woodcarving since 1986, and in 1994 opened her own school of wood sculpture.
The Ozark Mountain School of Sculpture is currently housed in a log cabin on the family property, where the quiet, undisturbed atmosphere and close proximity to nature foster creativity.

Janet Denton-Cordell is a gifted woodworker, known for two rather different styles of carving.
Her elegant sculptures of women exhibit a fluidity of grace that is also echoed in her carvings of animals.
But her other remarkable contribution to the world of woodcarving is her revival of the production of the jointed wooden doll.
Popular from Victorian times, these dolls are especially evocative of a simpler time, when the fact that a wooden doll’s arms could bend at the elbows and knees provided endless fascination.

You may see more examples of Janet’s work on her web site:  www.janetcordell.com.

Carved Dragon by Stanley Rill

These carvings are done by Stanley Rill from Port Townsend, Washington, United States.

Stanley Rill is a self-taught professional woodcarver.
He draws his inspiration from a love of nature , and it shows in each piece he creates.

For Stanley Rill an essential and rewarding part of creating commission work is the interaction that occurs during the process , he said :

 “ My experience as a custom woodcarver has taught me to work within the specific requirements of a particular project.
The ability to listen to and communicate with clients is an essential part of the process of designing and creating commission work.”

More carvings by Stanley Rill can be seen on his website: www.stanleyrill.com

Wood sculpture by Mieczyslaw Wojtkowski

You know you’re a woodworker if/when:

1. You look for estate sales because they might have good old tools for sale.

2. You have to sharpen you favorite chisel even when you have not used it………you just like it shiny.

3. You ask your neighbors and community to keep their scraps of wood waste for you instead of recycling them to the dump or worse…burning them.

4. every time you walk in to someone else’s garage or basement you lay out a shop in your head (the table saw could go here, jointer there, ect).

5. You dream about woodworking and what you could make of what you have.

6. You are sleeping and can’t stop thinking (dreaming) how to close tight that mitter cut you did earlier.

7. You find out a friend of yours has spent the previous day cutting and splitting firewood and you find out that one of the trees was holly – and you COMPLETELY FREAK OUT!
(I managed to find 3 or 4 pieces that had not completely checked. Still have most of them and that was 15+ years ago…)

8. You never completely finish a beverage because you know there’s sawdust in the bottom of your cup.

9. instead of playing poker online in your spare time you peruse this site.
Finally a worthwhile use of computer time.

"Maddening Disposition" aka: "Takes more'n one wumin to drive a good man nuts"

These sculptures are carved by Fred Cogelow from Willmar, Minnesota, U.S.

Fred Cogelow was born in 1949.
In 1971 B.A. Political Science, University of Chicago.
Full-time carver since 1978.

Fred Cogelow is completely self-taught reductive carver or as he puts it: “Self-taught in the discipline of esthetically dis-associating wood-fibbers.”

Fred Cogelow’s first contact with the sculpting, in his own words:
“My first endeavor in reductive sculpture was an assignment to carve a Scotty dog out of Ivory soap in third grade.
Attempting to develop excessive detail with a dull table knife, one of the legs was broken.
The teacher, responding to a polite inquiry as to the possibility of mending, confiscated both dog and implement, exclaiming, “It’s obvious you’ll never be a carver!”

Fred Cogelow has a great sense of humor, which is well seen in his works and in his explanations.
For example he sed about his sculpture “Taste the Soup of Madness” : “A delightfully lyrical ode to the phantasmorphic rutabaga.”

The BIO by Fred Cogelow (Not edited):
“Most folks are a good deal less interesting than the stories told about them, and it leads to considerable hesitancy to dispel the notions in circulation.”

Fred Cogelow aka Fredgelow Somebody (Everybody loves Somebody…sometime) one day hopes to be remembered as “the artist formerly known as ‘somebody’.

If you are interested seeing over 70 of his best pieces and reading about Fred’s development from a beginner woodworker to an accomplished artist of international fame,
you can purchase his book “Sculptor in Wood: The Collected Woodcarvings of Fred Cogelow”.

“Flirtation” by Anna Darbinyan

These sculptures are carved by Darbinyan Anna Nikolaevna (Дарбиньян Анна Николаевна) from Moscow, Russia.

Anna Darbinyan is a member of Moscow Union of Designers of Creative.

Since 2004 she has experience working with construction firms to design the interior and exterior of country houses.

Anna started to practice carving through a lucky chance and now she works in the techniques of three-dimensional wood carving (all styles), marquetry, graphics.
She works with ease in a variety of styles, while retaining their own artistic style.

She studied carving in the center of “Crafts of Russia” and in author Michael Il’yaev school.

Anna Darbinyan teaches wood carving and marquetry at the Centre for arts and crafts in Moscow.

Anna Darbinyan’s work was published in the first catalog of carvers in Russia.
She is a winner of international, national and Moscow contests.

Anna Darbinyan said about her sculpture “Man of Word”:
“It is allegory of the person who can get word to serve himself, distort or misrepresent it (lawyer, journalist, writer?).
And about sculpture “Diva” :
“Symbol of alien to as, gradually penetrating into our consciousness.”

More of her art can be seen here:  rezbaderevo.ru

Sculpture “Stranger” by Yuriy Firsanov

These wooden sculptures are carved by Yuriy Firsanov (Юрий Фирсанов) from Sochi, Krasnodar, Russia.

Watches interested Yuriy from childhood. Is it not wonderful when a small iron box contains something alive, sort of a tiny organism with a hammering heart.
It’s a mystery and mystery is always calling.
The first unsuccessful, and therefore memorable experience of trying to understand watches was when he dismantled his father’s watch.
Later (much later) it turned out that the secret is not inside but outside, and watch is just a tool, certainly a necessary, sometimes clever and unique, but all the same just a instrument.
But the main mystery is time and man.

Yuriy Firsanov’s watches are philosophical discussion on the topic: “What is Time?”.

Quotes by Yuriy Firsanov:
“For me the time is not the movement of arrow, but the movement of the Soul”

” When I look at the works of painters and sculptors, I feel warmth and love that they have absorbed in their creations.
The surrounding world is dissolved and the soul opens to this love. “

More of Yuriy Firsanov’s creations can be seen on his website:   www.firsanov.ru