Bone Carving: Te Ara

#3 in the series Te Ara (the pathway).

Often when you first learn to carve you only want to work with pure white bone. With time, you learn to embrace the uniqueness of weathered aged bone. The colours which run through the bone provide you with new creative opportunities, and the bones texture creates new technical challenges. Like the other pieces in this series, I have tried to bring out the beauty of aged bone to enhance the overall carving.

I have included my sketching process and the piece before sanding. A distinctive element of my craving process is the use of sanding to define the final flow of the carving. This means I often spend many hours sanding (5 hours in this case) for the piece to take it’s final shape.

This is the third piece in a series of carvings titled Te Ara. This series is inspired by the journey of life and the challenges and opportunities that are presented before us. Each piece moves in a single direction with the koru reminding us to take time to step out of the day to day to appreciate the bigger picture. The form of this design has been influenced by many hours of gazing into the wild waters of Te Tai Poutini as I have waited patiently for the inaka (whitebait) to arrive. The swirling currents of the fast moving waters are a reminder that things are often beyond our control, yet at the same time we have the ability to walk our own path.
This piece is made of weathered bone and braided using traditional lashing techniques.
Size: 25mm wide 130mm long