Christian Burchard

Unusually, Burchard studied Fine Art and then followed a career as a furniture maker which developed into turning wood for the creative freedom it offered. Christian uses Pacific Madrone Burl, which grows along the Northwest Coast of the United States. He exploits the wood's specific properties including its wide range of beautiful colour and texture. The artist says that turning wood while it is green, 'is a real pleasure to cut and handle'. Once cut, he steps back and relinquishes control, letting the wood find its own shape as it dries. In doing so, the wood dries unevenly, giving each piece an almost anthropomorphic quality as it takes on its own personal character. By grouping pieces together the artist develops this quality by creating a connection between them, forming close relationships that tell a particular story, acting as a metaphor for the people he knows. As an established International Wood Turner, he has work in numerous permanent collections, including Museum of Fine Art, Boston; Detroit Art Museum, Detroit; University Of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; Royal Cultural Center, Jedda, Saudi Arabia; Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY; American Decorative Arts at Yale University, New Haven, CT; Museum for Contemporary Art, Honolulu, HI; Stanford University Art Gallery, Palo Alto, CA; and De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.