This past summer, I had the privilege of working with Paula Meijerink and Parker Sutton on their ongoing collaboration making charred wood. The wood material, sourced from a pile of felled trees on Ohio State University’s campus, is selected by the divine intervention of OSU’s Facilities Operations and Development (FOD) team or by Parker/Paula’s keen eye for their idiosyncratic forms. I regret to tell you that the origins of each log are unknown, but we took great care and many, many, many hours of labor in the cooler air of the summer mornings to give them a new life at Prairie with Nine Rooms.
The logs were first de-barked using a mallet and chisel, or by a pair of gloved hands if the weather, softening the tough protective layer, allowed it. Now stripped, their previous life starts to reveal itself: networks of galleries carved out by borer larvae, cracks probably formed by heavy machinery or possibly a thunderstorm’s gusts, scattered pockets hewn out by the beaks of woodpeckers, and rotting out sections of the trunk’s xylem. After shaping each log with electric chainsaws, grinders, and sanders to reach its desired form, some of these marks are smoothed away, but not before we get to know them intimately, having stared, squatted next to, lain under, walked around, contorting our bodies to get the correct angle for the job, often from an inch’s distance for many a hour. Our goal in shaping was to preserve or enhance its features as we found them: carving deeper into an already creased pocket, creating space for rain to find its way, or hollowing out decay to reveal a concavity perfect for sitting. The logs are immortalized using the Japanese technique, Yakisugi, rendering the object water-, fungi-, and mold-resistant as well as unappetizing to the likes of beetles and termites. This process leaves the logs an obsidian black, preserved with natural seed oil.
Skilled laborers from FOD return once more, articulating a forklift with a telescoping boom and transporting the logs to the Prairie, where they rest in gravel bosques carved out of asphalt on a site that was a parking lot just a couple of years ago. It is here that they exist as sculpture, bench, table, climbing gym, etc.