Urban Tree Forge Torso

I have recently been working with the people at the Urban Tree Forge in Pittsburgh to use reclaimed city wood as the material for various sculptures.

This is my first attempt at carving - having never picked up a pneumatic tool or chisel I was fortunate to find a piece of wood whose form lent itself rather well to interpretation:

Even the untouched piece structures nicely in the form of a torso
Some preliminary sketches have helped define where things could go:




Although the initial design seemed to be driven toward realism (in large part because of my bias), removing the bark and getting into the form itself revealed a pretty interesting series of shapes that were slightly more abstract:


This has me thinking about some really interesting possibilities - some 3D renderings soon