Wood Harvest Festival

“All right! Time to get up! We need to get started!” My dad’s voice comes out firm and clear from the kitchen. As I begin to get up I look out the window at a nice clear fall sunrise, the colorful fall leaves are lazily blowing about the yard. I notice my older brother on his way down the driveway for a quick morning bike ride. When I sit down to my bowl of cereal I look over at my dad. He’s already dressed in a thick flannel jacket with a good pair of jeans. “You’ll want your boots today.” He says as he laces up his own. I nod knowingly, it’s the morning of our families annual Wood Harvest Festival. When we get down to the barn my brother is already back, he’s sitting on a log exchanging his usual hipster shoes with his solid work boots. His bike is propped up against the fence. It’s a rather nice bike, with a custom frame that my brother built himself. As my brother get’s up dad comes out of the barn with his chainsaw and an axe. it’s time to get to work.

This diorama is a representation of my family’s annual Wood Harvest Festival, an excessively glorified name for a massive day of cutting down old trees on our farm, sawing them into logs and then splitting and stacking them. Not really much of a festival. I tried to capture the aftermath, as it were, of that day, after the work was done, with the sun going down, the logs stacked and boots taken off.

Every thing was handmade by myself. The axe is made of brass and wood. The boots out of leather with thread laces. The fence is made of wood and tiny nails. The logs are split natural wood. The bike is made of brass wire and metal solder.

Total time probably around 30 hours.