Martha Collins

My passion is to create personal, meaningful 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 3 inch bowl 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 Linear Mosaic design is a woven fabric of wood & the Bold Mosaic is visually dramatic with its larger mosaic pieces. Mantra bowls, tableware.