Sixty year old tractor, seventy year old driver

For the last 27 years, this old machine and I have been excavating, grading, pouring concrete and moving mountains of wood and brush. It seems hard to believe that we are both still running. It must be in the genes. Without this beast, there would certainly not be any large sculptures to show.

So, the Lychee tree is cut down so as not to break off and fall on the studio. That is the easy part. Then we feast on all the Lychee nuts that are all over the ground. When everyone we can think of has all the fruit they can eat, I separate the small branches and drive them to the large brush pile to decompose in their own sweet time. Next, the middle size logs are cut into short lengths to be used for firewood and are stacked near the fire pit. Finally, the big logs are cut into manageable sizes and built into a wall of Lychee wood that can be accessed by the tractor and delivered to the wood carving shed.

It takes about two years to sort out all the wood and get it to where it belongs. In the meantime, the wood is slowly losing moisture, rotting around the edges and getting drilled by the powder post beetles. All this decay and insect activity is confined to the outer 3-4 inches of the log. Cozy inside is the heart wood which can be fashioned into art. It may take another 2-3 years of deliberating and working before realizing a piece in its final form. These are long term projects. A watercolor can be painted in less than an hour. How does one medium inform the other?