Jan Bom is a man on a mission. That is how poet Leo Mesman introduces the art volume Dendroism, Stories of the Wood. “A delight to the eye,” Mesman writes in his review on his website.
The poet Leo Mesman, photographed in 2010 beside a tree that displays all the characteristics of Dendroism: does he not seem to be leaning here against the head of a cow or a bull?
I was allowed to republish the full review from Mesman’s website on Wowwood:
Follow his quest
“Jan Bom is a man on a mission. After many years working as a journalist on sustainability, he increasingly presents himself as an artist, passionately expressing his fascination with trees and wooden creations. His website Wowwood, is driven by the idea that the grain of the wood forms the basis of the artwork. He calls this vision ‘Dendroism’.
Some fifteen years ago, in 2010, Jan and I published a collection together titled Declarations of Love, consisting mainly of my tree poems accompanied by his photographs of trees inspired by them. Since then, Jan has immersed himself ever more deeply in trees, wood, and the artists inspired by them. To such an extent that he has also trained himself in creating wooden sculptures. On his website, we can follow his search for artists who draw inspiration from wood in their visual art, from antiquity to the present day.
The wood tells its own story
Recently, he took the effort to bring together a selection of his stories about wood artists, along with images of their work (including his own), in a beautifully produced book. Its telling title: Stories of the Wood. Not stories about wood, but from the wood. After all, wood tells its own story. People are inclined to project their imagination onto the shapes and grain of trees. This is known as anthropomorphism.
In his book, Jan Bom argues that we should open ourselves to what trees and wood have to tell us, as carriers of meaning. On his website, Jan explains that he began this out of a sense of indignation. A widely used standard work on wood carving, it turned out, stopped in the mid-fifteenth century—as if nothing of significance had been created in this field thereafter.
A correction to the prevailing canon
Jan’s ambition is to correct and expand the prevailing canon up to the present day, through what he calls mini-biographies of major artists, illustrated with images of their work. In Stories of the Wood, fourteen engaging chapters paint a picture of the diverse world of wood carving and its makers, as well as the author’s own development in this field.
The photographs—many taken by Jan himself—are, like the book’s overall design, a delight to the eye. His reflections are filled with charming anecdotes, instructive details, and original observations. And who would not want to learn more about his walking whale, a princess’s head nestled in a pollard willow carved from sugar maple, or a burning ballerina?”
