Wood Carving Artists

Ai Weiwei built a tree, assembled from trunks, roots and branches from his native China. He deliberately shows how pieces of camphor, cedar and ginkgo wood have been roughly joined together. Art critics each interpret the artwork in their own way. I see it as […]

Wild flutes, made by Anna Hakvoort, like those of Native Americans. Hakvoort carves them from beautiful branches she finds in the forest. The flutes sound beautiful and comforting. Wild flutes, made by Anna Hakvoort, presented in a rack. Anna Hakvoort (1960) likes to wander through

Le Corbusier assembled a woman like a building. The world-famous French architect constructed the sculpture from geometric wooden forms, just as he designed buildings from clear volumes and proportions. Le Corbusier assembled a woman like a building, using 1.83 metres as the ‘human measure’. Le

When Irena Posner matches wood with marble, something remarkable happens. Wood is warm, organic and relatively light. Stone, by contrast, is cold, hard and heavy. And yet the marriage is a loving one. When Irena Posner matches wood with marble, a remarkable tension emerges. The

Totem poles are alive and kicking, with the latest example carved in 2026. How can that be? Aren’t totem poles supposed to belong to a distant past, somewhere along the Pacific West Coast of Canada and the United States? Nothing could be further from the

Boris Paval Conen and the lessons of the master carvers of Val Gardena. The Dutch woodcarver was given the unique opportunity to attend the Summer Academy in this Valhalla of woodcarving in South Tyrol, Italy. No more than 20 people are admitted each year, following

Which famous artists discovered their artistic language in wood? There are surprisingly many. This is clear from dozens of artist biographies written over the past few years for the website Wowwood.nl. It is a discovery that runs counter to the way wood carving has been

Gregor Prugger opens his treasure chest, high in the Dolomites of South Tyrol, Italy. In an ancient farm barn, he keeps a lifetime of ideas: radical and boundary-pushing woodcarving. Increasingly, he has allowed the trees themselves to determine the forms of his art. Prugger is,

The Summer Academy in Val Gardena asks almost the impossible of twenty young artists and their mentors. Carving a wooden sculpture in two weeks means working incredibly hard. Stressing. It applies both to the participants and to the organizers and mentors: the cousins Aron and