A Thousand Parts (Three of Five)
12 March 2008
Have you ever seen an elaborate mosaic? One of those pieces of art on a wall somewhere, perhaps in a church, made of hundreds of bits of tile, clipped into tiny squares and painstakingly arranged into a pattern that, at a distance, can be seen to be a picture of something or other. It is surely a lot of work to produce something like this, but at some level I do think most of us do believe that we could, had we but the patience to do so, make something like that mosaic. It is bits of tile arranged just so. A little fussy to produce, I suppose, but with a little determination, hey, I’m a muralist!
Doing something like that in wood raises the bar a bit, and especially so when one determines to make every depiction of items look as much like the item as possible. Square bits of monochrome-colored tile can suggest a rose. But assume, instead, the actual petals of a rose depicted with all their many nuances and shading. Done in wood and inlaid into more wood. And suddenly, I’ve got a bus to catch!
But this is the goal that marquetry artists set for themselves and achieve to an extent that is absolutely astonishing, and even more so when you consider what is involved in doing work at that level.
The French Boulle method Craig Thibodeau employs in the furtherance of his art is both the best method and the most difficult. In order to do it he must assemble many different species of wood, the most of which are used in their natural state. Other times wood is carefully dyed or ebonized. Still other pieces of wood, in order to better depict the shading of something like a delicate rose petal, are carefully burnt just so in hot sand to produce artistic shadows.
And once he has all those thousands of parts, he assembles them into the final product, carefully gluing them into place to make a picture as astonishing as it is real. But if these parts are to fit into a seamless whole, they must be cut seamlessly. And therein lies the rub.
Joseph
NEXT: "Seamless Cuts" PREVIOUS: Defining Our Terms
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