Carved Organic Patterns Highlight the Natural Wood Grain of Carbonized Mahogany

“Artifact II” (2020), carbonized mahogany and metal, 52.25 x 11.875 x 2 inches. Image courtesy of TERN Gallery.

In Splinters and Shards, artist John Beadle enriches the beauty of wood’s natural grain with a series of gouged dots, line carvings, and smooth, supple curves. His small, circular sculptures and vertical towers accentuate the texture and subtle gradients of carbonized mahogany through etched patterns that reveal the pristine reddish hue peeking through the charred surface. Always highlighting the potential of the raw material, Beadle, whose background is in painting and printmaking, evokes these mediums through layering dimension and motif in a single work and drawing on the subtraction inherent in carving into a blank woodblock.

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