ÜGLY
Close-up of the reclining figure's face: an old man's profile hollowed from the wood burl, metal eye, the abstract body stretching left over an old beam, white background

Untitled

A reclining figure, carved from a dark brown burl and set on an assembly of recovered framing beams. Only the head is freed: a hollowed profile, a heavy brow, a half-open mouth, a metal eye driven into the wood. The body stays an elongated mass that the tormented grain is enough to animate; a gnarled knot makes a cheekbone, a cavity makes an eye socket. The figure rests on the beams as on a bed too hard for sleep: an old man worn through, weathered, pierced and yet enduring, settled to the ground like someone who will not rise again.

Full view of the reclining burl-wood figure on its assembly of old beams, head raised at right, white background
Three-quarter view of the reclining figure, dark burl mass set on the recovered beams, head at right, white background
Horizontal heavily ridged wood burl, right end rising into a head-like form, white studio background, work by Robert Bibeau
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Reading notes

Medieval effigies laid the dead out on stone; their raw variant, the transi, shows the body as time leaves it. The gesture here is gentler: recycled framing beams for a base, an old man returned to the wood that houses are made of.