My latest piece
john lucas
This piece took about 18 years to make. It's called I carried you. I came up with the idea after my friend found his wife comatose and picked her up while calling the ambulance. Fortunately she survived after having an emergency heart transplant. Anyway I couldn't imagine how that would feel carrying a loved one that was dying. This sat in my brain for years. Then about 12 years ago I made a mock up from cups and pipe cleaners. I tried to build it but simply could not bend the wood to those extremes without breaking. It got put on the back burner. Then comp wood, or cold bend wood came out. I started experimenting and thought I could build it. Life got in the way, I retired, got married moved and finally 3 years after that I started playing with comp wood again. This time I had the tools and skills to finish the project. The wood is extremely hard to turn. It's very flexible especially this thin. The other problem was the goblet feet and cup were turned out of spalted woods because I wanted it to look like older people. The Ash comp wood however wasn't. So I spalted it myself with dyes, paint, and india ink using a quill pen. I'm pretty happy with it except for the photograph. Next to impossible to actually show all the bends and not get the arms all confused.
It's about 7" tall.
