trees, wood and the root of an idea

maybe it's because gallery one is full of paintings of trees, or maybe it's because the leaves have dropped from a great many trees around kyneton town. whatever it is, today has got a certain wooden flavour to it and so this week's photo diary is dedicated to that universally versatile material - the dead body of trees.

 every time the earth spins around the sun, a tree grows another layer wider

painted wood is sanded back to reveal the layering of furniture's history

cross-grained plywood can be beautiful, and super strong.

this piece by Page 33 sits on top of a table made of reclaimed wood, by Made by Stockroom

not all the wood needs to be refined, shaved, sliced, glued and painted. 

in its pure form it retains its organic quality and still functions perfectly (as it does here forming part of the clothing racks)

this door could easily be 100 years old or more. check out the different colours it's been over that time

trees are a familiar motif in art and here Stefan Gevers filters the images of trees digitally before converting to painting

aaahhh joinery. delicious.

and here's the roof of the gallery

so there you have it - wood. it reminds me also of this great little video i saw recently that was an animation of a talk given at one of those TED talks (see link over on the right of the page). the basic premise was that over the course of history we've used the tree as a symbol of organising our ideas about life, the universe and everything. but in recent times, we've started to think more in networks. so instead of an individual tree with a powerful trunk and sub-branches, more like an ecosystem of many trees and plants. the motif that is sometimes put forward is, rather interestingly, another plant form - the rhizome.