This is my first willow/ebony carving, using willow that I discovered on our land on a few acres about a kilometer below our home on the banks of the Peace River.
I acquired one-off pieces of black, Gabon ebony at a local lumber store simply because it is legendary, and so black. My theme is one of shadowy emergence. Here, I illustrated the symbolism of shadow in the form of a resident humming bird. Then, I married diamonds I extracted from diamond willow with a poplar-burl base. Persistence took a block of black shaped it into a piece that still reflects light from black.

To be more exact: I observed a humming bird entering a flower bouquet of almond-shaped flowers in my window box. In long evening light, the bird was in shadow, a
silhouette. And I thought, what if this bird was hovering in an almond diamond of one of our willows? What visual story would emerge? To see, I developed “The Nectar of Diamonds”, which merged the shadow of the bird onto a bouquet of carved diamonds lifted from the willow. From hunting for a dry willow, to transporting it on my back, to peeling bark, to drying for a year to extracting the diamonds to putting the ebony bird in place; what a dream. of carved diamonds lifted from the willow.

My satisfaction in creating this singularity is that there is only ever this one; there are no others of diamonds with ebony shadow that I can find.