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WOODCORE, on view at the Arts Council of Lake Oswego’s Artspace, showcases the craft of seven artists and woodworkers with roots in Oregon. Sculptures by Megita Denton, Bobby Mercier, Leroy Setziol, Monica Setziol-Phillips, Julian Watts, Ben Young, and Adam Zeek offer a variety of ways to consider humans’ relationship to wood—its physics, dynamism, and capacity to harbor and carry memory across time—highlighting the cultural significance of this material in the Pacific Northwest.

I entered Lake Oswego’s light-filled gallery on a sunny morning, ushered in by a breeze of fresh air from the forest that buffers this suburb. Upon entering, I took some time at a hands-on offering near the door, a low-lying table meant for younger attendees to reach, which held various fascinating bits of wood. Some had been carved and sanded into illusive shapes, others remained in their organic forms, gnarled and knobby. I marveled at these pieces, each offering an indication of the many ways wood can be coaxed by human hand or the surrounding environment.

The first artworks I spent time with were made by the hand of Portland-based sculptor Ben Young, an artist known to source some of his materials from his work on construction sites. His pieces drew on the tradition of joinery, caving out shapes and fitting bits of wood carvings in these negative spaces in order to create structure, and they are the only painted pieces in the gallery. Ixnay, Egads!—composed of oak, mahogany, plywood and paint—appears as a strange green and brown entity with a spiked silhouette, balanced with the help of a rough piece of joinery atop a green wooden base. Befitting its title, the work read as exclamation or punctuation, typifying the expressive quality of wood.

As a counterpoint to the puzzle nature of joinery, Julian Watts’ Block Bowl sat on a nearby pedestal—an empty vessel with nothing but light to fill it. Watts carved the interior of a rectangular block of Oregon walnut into a smooth bowl, save for a protrusion at its center. The protrusion looked like a stamen, a stalagmite, or an inverted nipple. Waves of woodgrain seemed to fly up the sides of the bowl and wash into its center. I traced the crevices in the sides of the bowl with my eyes, noticing the ways that cracks spread out and leaked light through its dense facade, yet they did not splinter the whole.

Moving further into the exhibition, I encounter the physics magic of Megita Denton, an artist who presently moves between Oregon, Arizona, and Texas. I gravitated toward her sculpture How Thin Can We Make It, made of thin slabs of walnut sutured together with sparse neon strings of embroidery thread. A small maple bowl dangled from the center beam of this structure, filled with more thread, as if the entire structure were created to hold in place. This image brought to mind the precarious nature of all the structures and systems that thread and lean together to support life. 

A fascinating lineage of sculptural influence across three generations emerges within WOODCORE, beginning with the work of Leroy Setziol. A Philadelphia-born World War II veteran, Setziol bio stated that he is “widely recognized as the most accomplished and respected wood sculptor in the Northwest.” He moved to the PNW after his term of service and became an accomplished artist. Setziol crafted the work on view, Untitled Bas-Relief, in 1970 using teak to create a grid almost 5 feet wide and seven feet tall— a relief of various patterns that differ through sections of the grid. Some of these patterns abstract the gnarled and knobby exterior of bark, and all were carved in such a way that shows the strokes of Setziol’s chisels.

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Monica Setziol-Phillips is Setziol Sr.’s daughter and still carves work at her father’s bench. Her work Looking for a Story, made of bright Alaska yellow cedar, hung nearby. This piece contained chisel strokes reminiscent of her father’s—in this case, used to delicately render the nuanced geometric ridges that read almost as a topography. Her work differs more overtly from her father’s in its incorporation of another, very different medium, a band of wool tapestry depicting colorful shapes. In fact, Setziol-Phillips practiced weaving for 15 years more than she has been carving and enjoys interdisciplinary collaboration.

Setziol-Phillips’ student, Adam Zeek—a carpenter of twenty years himself—also presents work in this WOODCORE. His sculptures on view clearly situated him within the lineage of Setziol-Phillips and Setziol Sr. with their distinctive chisel marks and abstract reliefs, though they are rendered on smaller, long rectangular blocks of Oregon black walnut. In these works, Zeek’s chisel marks looked rougher and more pronounced than his predecessors, favoring a minimalist approach to geometric carvings. Zeek’s strategic subtraction to create plays of light and shadow across the surface of each work makes their peaks and valleys larger and more defined against the gallery lighting. 

Bobby Mercier’s A Chief or a Headman of a Village called out from the far room of the gallery. Mercier contributed two figurative reliefs carved into western red cedar to WOODCORE, but this particular one caught my attention for its dark band of grain that runs through the titular Headman’s face, cutting the corner of his eye to create the aura of a keen gaze. Mercier is a culture-bearer with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. As a master carver, he works with a Chinookian tradition of carving, which is specific to the region of the Pacific Northwest. His works depict this influence through their open-mouthed faces with single front teeth, among other attributes. The carvings’ mandorla-shaped eyes, zig-zagging patterns, and concentric design elements reflect ripples on the rivers, which are so integral to the life of Indigenous communities of the area. 

Wood emerges through generations of growth, just as these artists who shape it each exist within their lineages of practice and environment.  In the era of the anthropocene, where human impact begets such a monumental and damaging environmental influence, WOODCORE demonstrates the collaborative potentials of wood with attributes to be drawn out and honored with respectful consideration through building, carving, painting, sanding, joining, as well as mindful preservation. This exhibition offers the opportunity to consider the dynamism of wood, the archive of life it carries forward, and what becomes possible when it is stewarded as a collaborator by human hands.

WOODCORE is on view through July 11 at Artspace at Arts Council of Lake Oswego, 380 A Avenue, Suite A, Lake Oswego, OR 97034, Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. The exhibition features a popup gallery shop by lowell.