Martha Collins

My passion is to create personal, wearable  works of art with the natural color & grains of exotic hardwoods & artist hand dyed maple veneer.   I "weave" wood into fabric like patterns, reminiscent of bead work or needlepoint.  Sustainable woods from around the world are used. Chatke Viga is a vibrant orange, Kingwood a striped purple; Lacewood & White Oak add texture with their dramatic grain patterns.  A single bracelet can have 1200 individual pieces of wood in it. A block is laminated using 12 different specie of wood and artist dyed veneer. The block is  re-sawed at .030 thick. 25 slices of laminated material are stacked, shifted and re-laminated to create the different patterns. The new shifted block is turned on the lathe to reveal its beauty & movement. The Helical Mosaic design has a precise pattern of movement throughout the bracelet, the Linear Mosaic design is a woven fabric of wood and the Bold Mosaic is visually dramatic with its larger mosaic pieces.