“Darth Maul”, 2020, wooden intarsia. All natural wood colors, zero paint or stain. Maul was cut on a scrollsaw, and the frame was mostly handcarved with chisels. Made from 11 species of wood: padauk, wenge, walnut, chakte viga, mahogany, purpleheart, redheart, yellowheart, basswood, holly, and ebony. See below for more information. The process was documented in Instagram stories highlighted on my profile.
Darth Maul was a character I didn’t find particularly interesting until Dave Filoni and his team expanded on his story, character, and motivations in Clone Wars. I thought it was pretty sweet how for the final season they brought in both the original Maul @iamraypark and his voice @switwer1. There was 1 particular scene that when I saw it, I immediately knew I needed to make an artwork based on it. Luke @cyclocrosscutter had the same idea, and actually brought it up to me first. One day I sent him a vid of me working on the design and he replied with an identical vid happening at the same time. From there it snowballed into a competition between me, Luke, and Justin @scrollsawscribbler to see who would make the better Wooden Maul piece. They’re both incredibly talented artists/woodworkers, despite this obviously thorough trouncing (there’s your set up, Luke). As I’m sure you will see, Luke will soon claim victory with some heavy-handed gimmickry. We’ll see if he can actually pull it off. If he does, I will bow down in defeat. Justin’s version is pretty dang sweet, though he had significantly less time to devote given he’s neck deep in actual $ commissions. No one can touch Justin in his unique style.
“I Can’t Carry It For You…” 3D Wooden light-up “Lord of the Rings” intarsia art, roughly based on the scene when Sam carries Frodo into Mt. Doom (“but I CAN carry you!”).
I’m finally ready to call this piece done! It ended up taking me 2 months to complete, despite initially planning it to be simpler and quicker than my Han/Chewie/Millenium Falcon piece. Ha! I always thought Samwise Gamgee was the real hero of the story and I decided a scene of him carrying Frodo into Mt. Doom might be a cool artwork with LEDs. My first design had much fewer layers, with the characters much larger. But I decided to add Barad-Dur, Shelob, and the black gate, which changed the scale dramatically (and made it almost 6” thick, and 24” tall). Obviously I’ve taken some liberties as they were much closer to the entrance when he carried Frodo (and Shelob was dead by then). Plus their scale isn’t exactly accurate. But they needed to be large enough to see. Everything was cut by hand on scroll saw and hand carved for the characters. I built this from crab apple, walnut, and cherry I milled up myself from reclaimed urban trees, as well as katalox (thanks @rapfohl), spalted hackberry (thanks @chipdwoodworks), reclaimed mahogany, red oak, poplar, canarywood, and ebony, with a maple frame. My wife @tamarynart did her pyrography magic to burn the “One ring to rule them all…” inscription into the frame. There are 4 LEDs running off three AA batteries, colored orange with acetate film. Shelob serves as the power button. The eye is a walnut pupil embedded in multiple layers of watercolored resin. I’m pretty stoked to have this thing shining over our “lair” across from the Millenium Falcon! Note: the build process was documented in many stories now highlighted on my Instagram profile.
