Little Red-flowering Currant

This is my first time carving this common native species. It was cut from a very vigorous plant next to a lawn we replaced on a landscaping job I was part of while down in Portland. Such jobs are great for finding spoon wood! This fine grained wood has a light speckling but is fairly plain otherwise. A humble shrub with beautiful flowers. Red-flowering currant.

apple eye

This spoon is made for my good man friend Andre Enterman of Lopez Island. It is made from apple wood pruned from a tree in the orchard where he lives, Sunnyfield Farm. Much of the meticulous carving of the ball in the handle was done in the car during a couple week period in September when I was starting this new chapter of my life that led to Portland, OR. I see it either as the eye ball held in the socket or a smooth beach rock held between the tail of a fish. I am very grateful for the gift of a straight knife from my teacher Walter Henderson's workshop on Orcas Island! I could not have carved this handle detail without it!

another yew

This tiny yew spoon was given to Makena Henricksen of Lopez Island some years back. She just finally got me some pictures of it. It was part of this series of small yew spoons from the same beautiful piece of wood I got from my friend Renee. She had used it for pounding things and it was starting to splinter, making perfect little pieces for small spoons! Love those dark and light rings.

crab apple

I finished this crab apple spoon for my friend Elizabeth of Sunnyfield Farm late this July of 2016. Once again the detail on the handle came as a surprise due to a knot in the wood I decided to cut out. It was kind of risky, and at first i thought I'd ruined the spoon, but i went with it and look what happened! My favorite part of the spoon is the tip of the handle, which has a slight rounding on the underside to meet up with the slope that comes down from the tip of the diamond. Subtle details... yum.

redwood

while visiting at his place in the Lost Coast area of Northern California Jpseph let me use his band saw one day. he gave me a piece of rough milled redwood. he told me it was from the branch. the rings are close together, which makes for better carving and a stronger spoon. i worked around the knots and cracks in the wood and got a few good blanks out of it.

this one is the first i have finished of these blanks and it seems appropriate that it go as a gift to the one who gave me the wood. it has a subtle influence from Northwest Native formline art. it also has some characteristics of Joseph himself; being short and wide, having a large bowl that suggests generosity, with it's age and type of wood speaking of wisdom and strength, and gracefully curving lines having a humble beauty. the triangle at the end of the handle connects with Joseph's love for carpentry.

pepper serpent

i got the wood for this one in the wood shed of my friends Joseph and Jani. it was Joseph's suggestion that i might find something of interest in the cord wood there. after feeling around in there for a bit i pulled off this shard of pepper wood that had a dark surface on one side that may have come from a part of the tree that was damaged and coated with pitch. or it was just dead there and beginning to rot. i decided to work that into the spoon by leaving a circle of it on the bottom of the bowl.

i had hardly gotten started with this spoon when, soon after returning to Lopez Island i met a fellow traveler at one of my favorite weekly potlucks. Kat is the friend of Nikyta, aho i gave one of my tiny rose spoons years ago. after i had connected with Kat in conversation and the evening was coming to an end Nikyta told me, "i was going to tell her about your spoons because she loves wooden spoons!" the spirit was moving me to make a spoon for her, and somehow this piece of pepper wood seemed like it was meant for her. the next day i worked on this spoon and was amazed at how it became a serpent! there was just enough thickness and width to make the curves and the spiral tail. i just worked with the shape of the shard to guide the design. nice how the marks of the blade imply scales.

the magic of surprise meetings and soul connection is a lot of what these souper spoons are about for me. i want to encourage people who i sense are also alive in this way, and hope that we all can pass it on and grow through it together. let these spoons be a reminder.

morgen and cora's spoons

when the children see me carving they always say they want me to make them a spoon. 'is that one for ME?' i don't always know who it is going to be for... but i promised i would make spoons for my brother's three children. here are the ones i made for morgen and cora. robin's has gone missing.