Seeing the trees for the forest

His sculptures are different from the bowls and boxes at craft fairs. These are full-fledged expressions of almost human grace. They’re beautiful but not about “pretty.” You’re meant to see beyond the surface to the “struggle” within. 

“It’s just an abstract of shapes. Shapes relating to one another,” Perry said.

From simpler erotically carved pillars to pieces that appear as women’s legs walking, towers of dark and light woods interwoven, and even literal knots, these sculptures challenge your perception, exactly as Perry wants.

“It’s both the allusion and the illusion. You’re expecting a four-sided piece of lumber, but what you get looks impossibly flexible,” he notes, and to my eye almost as though made of rubber.

“People ask for the secret. There isn’t one. It’s just carving,” Perry said. 

He’s underplaying it, from what I see.

Michelangelo insisted he didn’t carve form from rock; rather he liberated the statue from inside the stone. It’s similar to how Perry feels about freeing the spirits from inside the branches.

Raised in the family canoe shop in Hawaii, where trees were treated as living beings, it’s in his blood.

“Being in the shop with my grandfather, father and uncles was ‘family time’ for me,” he said. 

His family knew people who had woods to be cleared, traveled to some remote island, hewed the trunks and hauled them over to the shop together. 

His journey to wood sculpture had its own twists and turns. With an MFA, Perry’s modality was ceramics for 20 years, until he tired of the limitations of the “physics of clay.” He was assisting Viola Frey with her sculptures, when he came across large wood pieces and became enthused, swapping mediums. 

Fortuitously, this brought him into the orbit of John Rosecrans, creator of the Runnymede Sculpture Farm in Woodside.

For two decades since, as Runnymede director of installation and conservation Perry has nurtured trees from seedlings. He forages the farm’s woods for interestingly shaped branches, only fallen ones. 

He has a form in mind, which changes as the wood dictates. Perry doesn’t start from a name; he names his pieces from what they become and states that there is no message other than appreciating what you see.

“Wood is a seductive medium,” Perry said. 

It’s organic, and the grain and the varied colors imbue it with an essence that the object was once alive too. “There’s life in it you can see in its scars and imperfections.”

“It’s about the only material that you can measure your life by,” Perry said. “It’s got rings; it tells you how old it is.”

Perry captures that all. He sees the trees in the forest and the life in the wood. Catch that feeling for yourself. Artist reception 1 -4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 5. The M Stark Gallery, 727 Main St., Half Moon Bay, Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., mstarkgallery.com, (415) 407-8743.

Murals on Main Street: If you’re in Half Moon Bay for the pumpkins, as you wander down Main Street look for the town’s murals. Scout the mural of Filoli Gardens inside the La Piazza shops at No. 604, a huge ceramic mosaic coastal scene at No. 542, three paintings on the side of No. 501 and one on the side of No. 421, the undersea mural at Mac Dutra Park, then both sides of Cunha’s Country Store No. 448, one of the Pumpkin Festival, the other almost life size painting of a surfer in the Maverick’s Wave, and finally the bucolic paintings on the Feed & Fuel building No. 331.   

Bart Charlow has been sketching all his life and painting for over 45 years, had a professional photography business, and leads plein air painting groups. Come along as he shares his insights about the local art scene, and bring your sketchbook. His art and story is at: bartsart.weebly.com.