Artists display nature-inspired works at event

An army tent set up for sculptors, sidewalks colored with chalk and ink renderings of animals and landscapes were part of the Nature and the Arts program Saturday.

The program brought about a dozen artists to the Conservation Campus Nature Center to demonstrate their crafts.

Sculptor and art educator Dr. Edwin L. Smith and other artists carved wood and stone under and outside the tent. Their work was on display inside the auditorium, where musicians playing guitars, violins and dulcimers performed. Accompanying each piece was a business card-sized label of the indigenous Missouri woods used for the carvings. Artist's names were absent. "It's not about names," Smith said.

Nathan Pierce of Cape Girardeau used a jigsaw and grinders to create the negative spaces of his wood sculpture inspired by river rock.

"My work is pretty much all centered around the river theme," said Pierce, a construction worker who would like to earn a living creating art. "We spend a lot of our family vacations there. It's an environment we use to build family relationships."

Pierce said the sculpting process is fulfilling because he sees progress immediately.

Trish and Glenn Senter encouraged anyone who showed an interest in the pen and ink wildlife drawings they were rendering to try it themselves.

CHUCK WU ~ cwu@semissourian.com Robert Friedrich is making a sculpture out of Lime Stone.

"We thought we could never do it," said Trish Senter, who learned to create the drawings using the grid system. "I guess we could even learn to do it freehand."

Glenn Senter said they volunteer at the St. Louis Conservation office as well. "We're both nature lovers," he said. "This is a relaxing thing you can sit and do and get the creative bug out. I grew up with nature ... hunting and fishing, my dad always liked to be outdoors."

Outside the tent, Robert Friedrich of Jackson worked on an 80-pound piece of limestone that was originally part of the Old Jackson Courthouse. Pencil marks on the stone and a small model made of red clay were the only guides for his new creation. To complete the piece, Friedrich planned on incorporating native wood secured by bolts.

"I like the mixture of stone and wood," said Friedrich, who teaches art at Cape Girardeau Central High School. Cold stone, he said, offers an appealing contrast with the warm tones of wood and its grains.

"I like the relationship between the grain and the shape of the human form," he said. "People say, 'I love the way you get the line to follow the contour of the body.' The human form is beautiful. The wood grain is beautiful."

Another sculptor in touch with wood grain and human form, Matt Miller of Cape Girardeau, worked inside the tent. Like Friedrich, he is an art teacher; his students are in Scott City.

More than 200 pieces of white oak, red oak, walnut, hickory, eastern red cedar, pine and spruce were glued together to create a female form with varying wood grains and hues.

He said it makes him feel good to do art. "I like for others to own and enjoy it. I want my home to be empty, so I feel the need to keep creating," he said.

cpagano@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 133

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