What is a Burl, Volume II

What is a Burl, Volume II.

When people see the hypnotic and swirling grains of wood we call a burl, their eyes widen into a vast field of wonder and their breath seems to stretch slowly like green leaves into the morning sky. Undoubtedly, and usually unknowingly, people feel a connection to the burl of a tree. Like an ancient and foreign script that holds the secret to existence, each magnificent burl holds the sacred ingredient that adheres each tiny human to the bigger picture of the world. As the hypnosis slowly fades and the burl begins to slowly release its meditative hold on the human heart, people slowly look up from the burl and ask: “what is a burl?”

Imagine flying silently over a large forest like a bird. You fly high enough to visualize the picture below you as a whole, yet slow and low enough to see the subtle details hidden in the picture. Flying this way, you observe the natural world as a magnificent and perfectly complete mosaic. You take note of the individual pieces of the mosaic as you scan each carefully constructed tile. You watch the crimson willows hug the shores of the shiny crystal creek. You see patches of green and yellow meadow fade into a quilt work of quaking aspens, their lime green leaves glowing in the light. You see tiles made of spruce and fir coloring the landscape with the blackest shade of green. You see velvet fields, chalky satin cliffs, and the scaly gray scabs of scree fields. As you fly, you feel the breath of earth in the rising and falling contours of the land. The mosaic that is the succession of life across the forest is perfection. It is a flawlessly executed mosaic of love. It is the mural of God. 

As you fly above the forested mosaic, you can make sense of the tiles- trees, rocks, rivers, meadows, tundra, wetlands- but you ask, what is the grout? What lies between the spruce and the aspen? What is the glue that adheres the meadow to the forest? The windswept ridge to the water-soaked drainage? What stops the tiles from scraping and falling down the mountain? From falling into a shattered pile of broken ceramic and glass? 

Now imagine flying silently over a large city like, say, a drone. You fly high enough to visualize the picture below you as a whole, yet slow and low enough to notice the details. Flying this way, you observe the human world as a magnificent and perfectly complete mosaic. As you fly, you watch cars travel neatly on freeways like blood moving through veins. You feel the pulse of humankind through the intellectual arrangement of metal, glass, and stone. Red light inhale, green light exhale. The mosaic that is the succession of people across the land is disturbingly comfortable in its engineered perfection. You marvel at the conformity and unity of the mathematical mosaic. Even the tiles made of water and green grass are defined by straight lines and right angles. It is a flawlessly executed concert of human design and control. You see the mural of man.

You take note of the individual pieces of the picture below. You see cubes, grids, and linear lines. The tiles of the mosaic are easily identifiable- buildings, roads, parking lots, tiny suburban swimming pool tiles, baseball field tiles, black tiles, white tiles, rich tiles, poor tiles. You fly lower, zooming in with the lens of your drone and trying to read between the lines. Once again, you think of the grout, the glue. What ties the suburbs to the slums? Chinatown to Little Italy? What stops the tiles of mankind’s mosaic from shattering into an apocalyptic demise?

In the human world, the grout that adheres the mosaic of our existence is being made all around us, every moment of every day. The concoction of glue that is the bedrock of humanity’s mosaic is formulated in basements, in tiny urban kitchens, on subway cars, street corners, studios, diner napkins, sidewalks, and alleyways across the vast city. 

The grout is air pumped from human lungs through the brass bellows of a tenor sax. Jazz music spread through city streets like pollen in spring winds, shouting stanzas of love from one tile to another, saying “hear my struggle, feel the captivating story of my resilience.” The grout is the first decadent bite of empanada. A dance of garlic, cumin, oregano, and chile choreographed through generations of prosperity gained from penury. Each bite paints beauty across the pallet. Each bite hardens the grout of the mosaic, solidifying each fragile tile against its neighbor like the clinging roots of an Aspen grove. The grout is magnificent block letters sprayed upon a cold metal train car like giant cumulus cartoon clouds. Graffiti traveling through the urban grid like a hummingbird, parading its beautiful plumage of hurt and resilience and laying a track of sturdy grout in its wake.

Art is the glue that seals together the mosaic of the human world. Art connects us to our neighbors. Art connects the past, present, and future of human existence. Art is the timeless and infinite connection between human hardship and triumph. Music. Painting. Food. Poetry. Dance. Writing. Sculpture. Art is the human illustration of resilience that connects us all. Art is love. Without art, the mosaic of the human world is nothing but a pile of shattered, broken tiles. 

Art is in the swirling and hypnotic grains of the burl. A burl is a tree’s magnificent illustration of the resilience gained from living in constant and intimate connection with the forest. A burl is the beautiful mural of hurt and pain painted by the connection of the forested mosaic. The jazz music of the oaks, the empanada of the orchard, the graffiti tagged high upon the spruce covered mountain; the burl is the love that pierces through the competition for survival and weaves together the threads of the landscape. A burl is the glue that adheres each living tile of the forested mosaic to the next. A burl is the grout that connects the moving pieces of the land. A burl is art. A burl is pure love. 

Artist Statement

Picasso said “all children are born artists; the trouble is holding onto the artist through adulthood.” My artist statement is not a story of creating life as an artist. Instead, I share a story of carving away at a life as a non-artist, slowly revealing the artist born with me. I share a story of carving away at the box life of a middle-aged American man, at the puppet, the consumer, the pudding-faced desk squatter, the ordinary man sculpted by the bureaucracy to be an obedient and contributing member of society. When the carving is finished and the complacent shell of a man is chiseled away (and that carving in NOT finished for me), what remains will be the child. What remains will be the artist. 

I was born to a painter and a wood carver. They were born to singers, dancers, inventors, poets, photographers; I come from a long lineage of artists. As a child, the artist was alive and well and played naked and proud in the world, unclothed by the suffocating blanket of adulthood. My artist lived in nature. My artist lived in Garden of the Gods, on Pikes Peak, and in the crumbly granite canyons of Manitou Springs, Colorado, my hometown. My artist lived in my wide and glowing eyes, fixated on a world of seemingly endless natural beauty. My artist was full of life and madly in love.

Early public school applied the primer, the first layer of bureaucracy to the blank canvas that was my artist. My light grew more dim with each day spent in the classroom. My mind crammed with arithmetic, science, and history, leaving little time to dream and play and fall in love with my world. As a young boy on the soccer field, balls would fly by my head as I stared deeply into the yellow of a dandelion, trying desperately to hold onto my artist. But a whistle would quickly blow and a stranger would shout “get back in formation!”

I became obsessed with illusions like grades, SAT scores, and things painted and projected on me by a world intent on using me for profit. My artistic self was completely invisible at times, buried by plastic self- worth and smothered by the sadistic social climate of adolescence. I was another brick in the wall, my artist so deeply buried by layers of grey conformity that I didn’t know myself. I was miserable.

Beginning in high school and persisting through my early thirties, the thickest and most destructive application of adulthood was casted over my artist: drug and alcohol addiction. I was sold on a life hack, a shortcut, a portal that was promised to transport me from the cold mannequin of adulthood to my bright and undercover artist. It was a trick, a two way mirror, a trap door constructed by society that promised freedom and delivered only more entrapment and complacency, more layers of life molded upon my artist like thick concrete. The artist was buried deep down, its light blackened, almost.

My story almost ended here, many times. In an alley or behind the wheel of a car. Instead, a miracle happened. And then another. And soon I began the quest to uncover my artist and to unearth my dying child from the grave of the box world. 

The first miracle was the surprising arrival of a dog, who showed me how to play, how to love, and how to be wild. I could see my artist through the bright eyes of Kona, a daily reminder to keep chiseling away and let my artist breathe. We moved from our urban slum in Denver to Durango, the second miracle. At first, I simply wanted to live in an outdoorsy place, a place where Kona and my artist could learn to be free again. We made friends and found community, companionship, and home in the southwest, the third miracle. Soon, I could see the light of my artist reflected in the eyes of people that loved me. For the first time in my adult life, other people could see my artist, my child, my true self. And they liked it. My gift of metaphor and poetry was well received. I discovered my niche and could see the full form of my artist squirming around like a child under thin sheets in the morning light.

The work began. The grinding and the hammering, the chiseling and the sanding. I moved to Mancos in 2017, bought a house, built a workshop, and began creating art and poetry with each second I could steal from a life intent on monetizing my existence. I took classes, learned new techniques, got up early and stayed up late. I quit drinking and doing drugs, a monumental controlled burn that sparked the rapid succession of my growing inner artist. I married the woman I love and together we gave life to our son, Banyan. Although it’s not a finished piece yet, I’m proud to say I found my artist. And each day I wake to keep my artist alive and well, to protect it from the hostility and corruption of adulthood’s plastic tomb.

Today, my artist dances in the high peaks and deserts of southwest Colorado. My artist is full of light in my tiny workshop in Mancos. My artist is alive on my lathe, chiseling and carving away at local trees and revealing the burl beneath the bark. Each bowl I create is not created at all. Instead, my chisel reveals the child within each piece of wood, my blade releases the artist within each tree. In the process, the trees hold the chisel that carves away at me. I release the artist in the tree. The tree releases the artist in me. 

The Box Life

Most people wake up in a box. The box we wake up in, which we call “bed,” is inside of a bigger box we call “room.” From these boxes, we may enter different boxes inside our mega box we call “home.” We enter and exit our boxes within boxes through rectangular boxes, called “doors.” Eventually, we may pour some food out of a box, get into our box with wheels, and drive to the box that we use to make money, called “work.” The boxes we live in are mostly made of other boxes; the boards and beams that are the bones of our box world are milled from the organic and dynamic shapes of the beings of our natural world. 

As far as I am aware, of all the beings on our glorious planet, we humans are the only species that choose to live in the box world. Birds live in nests, bears live in caves, and trees live in a forest whose non-linear contours mirror that of the tree itself. As humans, we are non-linear like birds, bears, and trees. However, instead of living in an environment and having a niche which is circular and filled with irregularities, we demand order in a world where our laws of science tell us disorder is inevitable. The construction of a box world provides us humans with an illusion of order in a naturally- and perfectly- disordered world. 

 I’ll be the first to attest that the box word is a comfy world. I enjoy sitting in a warm box and staring into a bright and glowing box as I am right now. My box world feels safe and my existence in the box world allows the natural world to feel adventurous and filled with mystery. Being the only species that I am aware of to exist in the box world, however, it is lonely. I imagine that there is a sense of community, of being a part of something greater, for the birds, bears, and trees, and countless other beings that live in the natural world, unboxed from the civility of linear life we humans enjoy. That feeling, the notion of being a part of something grand and larger than the individual, is what we humans have labeled as “spirituality.” Words and their definitions are one of the oldest forms of boxes. 

 As an artist, my role is simple: to humbly express my feelings and inspirations in order to inch closer and closer to chaos, to the organic world, and to the realm of perfect disorder. Most of the tools I use come in boxes, or maybe the tools themselves are shaped like a box (my forge is literally a box filled with fire). Furthermore, the medium itself is often a box, such as a square piece of metal or a cut section of lumber. Ironically, the action of my art is a process of chiseling the medium back to its organic and chaotic state. I will pound the edges of machined steel to mimic the organic surface of a plant’s stalk or bend the edges of a steel feather in hopes of capturing the feeling of being airborne in the sky. Whatever action I am taking, I am going backwards in human terms and tiptoeing out of the box world into the natural world. When we leave the box world, even for a moment, we connect with the countless other beings on this earth and become something greater than ourselves. Art is spirituality. 

Carving a Life as an Artist

Somewhere high in the mountains, far above the trees, and deep beneath layers of hard rock is the most beautiful stone sculpture that nobody has ever seen. Someday, this mysterious sculpture will live its destiny, which is to become soaked and saturated in human admiration. People will stare at the sculptures courageous curves and dramatic edges with awe. People’s sense of wonder and amazement will flourish and they will experience the sculpture as a catalyst for their own creative and artistic potential to ignite. The sculpture will change human lives forever and, like sculptures before it, alter the course of human history. This sculpture, despite its isolation deep inside a mountain, is real. It exists right now. Today. 

 The challenge, of course, like the challenge many of us face as stone sculptors, is removing the masterpiece from deep within the earth and high on the mountain so people may love and cherish it. As a stone sculptor myself, I can attest to the difficulty of such a project. First, the stone must be removed from the mountain, which requires a vastly technical collaboration of engineers, miners, and heavy equipment operators. Then, once the life-changing sculpture is isolated to a refrigerator size block, the carving begins. Angle grinders, pneumatic chisels, hammers, core bits, di-grinders, air compressors, dust masks, 110, 220, it’s on! Dust fills the air, eyes, and lungs as the action required to finally expose the sculpture to the human world commences. Then, one day, finally, after days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes, or generations of lifetimes the piece is complete and ready to fill its niche: to soak up human admiration and inspire beauty and love across the world.

 Deep inside a mountain where nobody has looked before is the worlds’ most beautiful sculpture- waiting to be carved. 

 How many of us have been to an art gallery and looked at something on the wall and said to ourselves, “I could make that.” The art we interact with provokes our own creative spirit and offers a sort of confrontation to not only our creative potential, but to our potential to simply find the time to make something with our own hands and offer it to the world. We have all seen that bucket of spilled paint in an edgy art gallery with a $1500 price tag and laughed as we muttered “what the fuck, really?!” As an artist, I’ve heard people on numerous occasions mutter the words “I could make this thing,” while interacting with one of my stone sculptures in the gallery where I work. When I observe this, I have the same low brow and somewhat twisted internal response: indeed, you could make that thing, you would make that thing, and most of all you should make that thing. However, your life is probably too busy and so you can’t make that, you didn’t make that, and, spoken with hopes of being proven otherwise, you will not make that!

 I believe, in the core of my heart, that 99% of humankind is more than capable of unearthing a beautiful reflection of the brightest part of their soul in the form of a sculpture, if only they had the tools, mentorship, and space to do so. The most challenging part of sculpting is not chiseling through the hard stone. The most challenging part of sculpting is chiseling away at the plastic shell of our modern existences to find the sacred time and place where we can simply take hammer to stone. We’ve heard this all before: the most difficult part of running is putting on your running shoes and the hardest part of doing yoga is getting to your mat. 

 To be an artist, we must assertively and diligently carve out time and space from our busy lives. In today’s world, the process is a monumental challenge and an even more monumental reward. I am a new artist (conventionally speaking- I know we’re all artists and everything) and a nearly full-time blacksmith, metalsmith, woodturner, and stone carver. Over the past year, I have been making a slow transition out of a full-time corporate job and into full-time independent artistry. The process has been both incredibly freeing and incredibly challenging. In order to carve out my artistic self, I’ve had to chisel away at many comforts. I’ve carved through financial security and at times the approval of my family. In my transformation to an outward artist I’ve struggled maintaining friendships. I’ve discovered there is a huge difference in people’s acceptance of the dedication of my time to a conventional job (which has a clearly defined and agreed upon financial and social outcome) and the dedication of my time to daydreaming in my workshop for endless hours (otherwise known as ‘being an artist’). To carve out a life as an artist takes work- hard work. Sometimes we need to bust out the 9 inch grinder and remove huge barricades to our artistic selves like quitting our jobs, ending toxic relationships, and overcoming negative patterns. Other times we need to carve delicately and lightly, careful not to penetrate into the flesh of the beauty we are hoping to expose.

 Somewhere out there, in the mountains, the desert, or in the city is the most beautiful stone sculptor that nobody has ever seen. Someday, this mysterious sculptor will live their destiny, which is to inspire a sense of wonder and amazement and ignite a fire of creative and artistic potential in those around them. The sculptor will change human lives forever and, like sculptors before it, alter the course of human history. This sculptor, despite its isolation somewhere out there, is real. They exist right now. Today. 

Am I an Artist?

At times, I find myself tickled over the proper response to society’s popular small talk kindling, the question: “what do you do?” My mind spins at high revolutions. I eat, I take shits, I admire the regality of my dog Kona, I harmonize my inner beauty with the the outer beauty of the earth through sculpture, I do dishes, I make an income through a corporate organization, I watch movies, I wander the woods collecting things, I play with cats and lasers, etc. But which one of my doings should I pick in order to satisfy the inquiry of the person asking me? My mind tells me that I’m supposed to talk about my job- that making an income is what I do. First, if the person knows about my job they can compartmentalize me into a social category and have a better understanding of how to interact with me. If I start by saying that what I do is move a laser pointer around my living room while my cat tries to catch it, the person I’m faced with will likely be conversationally paralyzed. Second, most people spend the majority of their waking life doing the thing that provides an income for them. I am incredibly blessed (and strategic) to have a great deal of balance and diversity among the things I do with my time, which puts me in a unique position each time I decide to speak on what I do. Most importantly, however, I know I want to introduce myself as an artist and I want to make sure that label is authentic. So I ask myself, am I an artist?

Of course, the Waldorf philosophy tells us that we are all artists and that we are all unique and special individuals- just like everyone else! Professionals of art (oxymoronic?) say that an art degree, a recognition or award from a gallery, or, of course, income directly correlated with art sales are the deciding factors of when a person is deserving of the title. Pablo Picasso said “All children are artists, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” If Picasso was alive I would ask him “have I remained pure enough to my childish roots and avoided the bureaucracy of adulthood enough to cling on to my identity as an artist?” In order to be deserving of the title of artist, all I have to do is stay synchronized to my inner child? Check. And regarding the satisfaction of the professionals of art, although I don’t give a fuck, there is money from art in the bank. Check.

It seems, through this cycle of rambling, that I am granted to freely call myself an artist. No more paralyzing partygoers with my endless introductions of cats and lasers or smothering my fire for life by talking about work, I can now embody my true nature and confidently open a conversation by saying that I am an artist. But why isn’t it easy? Why do I still stutter over the question? Why am I sitting down at noon on a beautiful June day to consider the issue? It is, of course, because to be an artist is to be vulnerable. In our society it is safe to tell people we barely know what organization we work for or what predictable recreational hobbies we choose to perform. Jobs, skiing, walking dogs, going to that new restaurant, and watching that show are generally easy- and safe- things to share. Telling people that I am an artist, and that what I do is to remove the flesh from decomposing animal heads, extract the teeth, boil the skull in a beach solution, forge features like sharp teeth and eyeballs, and then sell the sculpture to the public is definitely a larger and more dynamic social risk.

My name is Alex Bond and I am an artist. What I do is wander and wonder. I use my body and mind to create sculptures that encompass my heart and soul, and which connect to the heart and soul of the earth. Next time you have the opportunity to introduce yourself, what will you say?

What the fuck is a burl?

A burl is a big ass lump on a tree. Science is the chainsaw to the infinite forest of wonder and mystery. Indeed, science is necessary in small doses for things like curing diseases and building bridges. For me, considering the subject of burls, science should exist in the shadow of unbranded curiosity and our freedom of imagination. With that said, a short internet search on burl formation should sufficiently satisfy your need for creative self-destruction by providing claims that insect eggs and biological parasites are responsible for the early evolution of a burl. In this rambling, however, I am suggesting that a burl is a far more magical and fascinating metaphor into the beauty behind chaos, and an example of the perfect complexity that exists behind a burl, a piece of wood we have labeled as something awful like ‘parasitic.’ Today, we want wood that grows fast and straight, that is cut into square lumber to build square houses with square rooms for square people. If there is a knot or curl in the grain of our lumber or our people, we aggressively plane and sand the knot from our wood, or drown the knot in prescriptions and alcohol from our people. In my day job in wilderness therapy, I work with adolescents and young adults who’s human grain has a shape and a flow outside of what society deems buildable, straight, and appropriate. in the wilderness, we are working tirelessly to convince these people that their unique nature is a blessing and not a curse. Sometimes, people leave the wilderness and re-enter our square society proudly exhibiting their spiraling, twisted, dancing, and magnificent grain. Other times, their label as a ‘parasite’ weighs too heavy and they end up in society’s scrap yards or dead. For me, carving a simple bowl out of the magnificent, powerful, and pyschedelic grain of a burl represents a finished product far beyond a vessel to eat out of or store trinkets in; a burl bowl is a homage to the outlaws, aristocrats, poets, artists, and everyone on the world who has dared to live life against the grain! Like the humble burl, stay weird people.