Us and Them

Gnarled and grumpy trees with their curves and gashes suggest connections, wounds, resilience and healing. Grace arrives with these winding rhythms, in the uprooted, newly found, awkwardly held. A baleful chick peers back at the viewer, while the intrusion of the microscope into an insect's life can be both humorous and startling. The process and materials are as symbolic as they are functional in illuminating what is often overlooked.

I like to consider myself a patient observer and a maker, carefully turning what I see into quiet narratives through pyrography and mixed media constructions.

Burning Images
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I have been using pyrography and other forms of burning an image onto wood, paper or bone for over 10 years. Initially I experimented with burning images on the jewelry I made, but I quickly moved to furniture and then to large wooden panels. To date, I have used the technique to illustrate a book (in progress) and recently to work on a series of images of things that we don't usually see: parasites, disease forms, invasive species and trees in various states of imperfection. 

The Animated World
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Forgive my tendency to anthropomorphize... everything, The world is full of tiny tales (not just epic drama) if we just take the time to look and listen.
And so, the coral, the shell fragments, the scraps of vine left behind; these abandoned shards get new life as they wind their way into my imagination and make their way into my work. They may be drawn or they may become little jointed sculptures married to wood, bone, plastic and felt.

Stories
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How I love stories.

​To read them, write them. Driving gets me in a theta frame of mind, expounding and expanding in my head as the miles and traffic fly by. The smallest spark- an image of a magnified cat's tongue for example- can fuel me for days at a time.

Stories and pictures, what could be better than that?
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Brett S. Poza
threadeater@gmail.com
@theboneartist