By Jimmie Hays
Guest Writer
Alex Buderer is a wood sculptor—at least that is what he would like to be called. However, when you meet and get to know Alex, his artwork and his life are ingrained together as much as the strata in a piece of beautiful hardwood, making it equally hard to define Alex or even to separate one from the other.
Walking about the compound where Alex creates his work is equally daunting because Alex has been making varieties of wood sculpture for years. Getting the tour can blow you away.
Alex is a strong burly type of man, much like someone you would expect to see rummaging through woodpiles to gather pieces of wood to craft his art. But sitting and talking with Alex, you get to see someone very different. As one listens to him speak about his work it becomes a fascinating mix of spiritual musings and technical descriptions. Blend all of this together and you begin to understand how his passion for life mixes with his love for wood to create such beauty and art.
I went to visit Alex recently and sat down in the workshop where Alex is working on his most recent passion: making crosses, small wooden crosses made out of nearly 30 different species of wood that he has collected from a plethora of sites. I told Alex that I would like to interview him about how he got started making crosses. Before we begin, Alex reaches over and picks up a small wooden cross and hands it to me; on it he has written “Let go and let God.”: I suspect that the message is as much for him as it is for me.
In his own words
Jimmie: Alex, how did you get started making crosses?
Alex: Well, the first cross that I ever made was in 1962 for my grandmother. I made an 8-foot cross for her grave. Later in 1981, my dog got hit by a car, and I made a cross to put on his grave. It is still there in my friend’s backyard in New York. Later that same year, my mother passed away and I made a cross and put it on her grave and it is still there. It has her name engraved in it. The one for my grandmother, well, it is gone.
Jimmie: So what else were you doing at that time?
Alex: I have been working with wood in some capacity all my adult life.
Jimmie: It seems you continue to gravitate back to the crosses. What made you decide to primarily focus your effort in that way now?
Alex: You are right, I am focusing almost all my energy in making crosses. I can’t say exactly where this is coming from, but I am making a lot of crosses these days, and I truthfully enjoy every minute that I work on them. I come here at night and work for hours, just making crosses. I seem to be getting some sort of inner message that this is the right thing to be doing.
Jimmie: What got you started this time, after all these years, and you have obviously done lots of, might I say, more impressive pieces.
Alex: You’re right, I have definitely done what I like to call “ego pieces.” I can’t say exactly, but I will try to explain how I think this got started. It began in 2005. A very good friend of mine suddenly died after he and I had just spent some time together the evening before. You know, it was one of those sudden deaths that catches everyone by surprise. Well, I made a “mourning cross” for his widow, who is also a good friend. The process of making a “mourning cross” for someone, to symbolize the experience of death, got to be quite a challenge. Actually, I ended up collaborating with another artist from Eureka Springs, looking for the right color, textures, and just making sure that the cross would be appropriate. After I finally got one made that I felt comfortable with, I gave several other members of his family one as well. That got me started thinking about my own mortality and that is what I believe got me focused on making crosses.
Big and Small, David and Goliath
I kept going back to the big pieces, the ones that capture your eye when you walk into a room. Alex has created many pieces that certainly do that. In 2003 Alex was accepted to show his work in the prestigious Western Design Conference in Cody, Wyoming. Talk about “big”! This is where the top builders in the country show their work.
“I never dreamed I would be accepted,” he said. Yet Alex was accepted and, not only that, was named one of the top fie builders in the country.
Alex also explains that he gets great pleasure in taking things that are discarded and finding the beauty inside. He has a fascination with recycling, whether it is wood or some old piece of metal that he can use in sculpture. He tells me that some people look at his property and wonder why he doesn’t clean it up; he looks around and sees “treasure.” It is during this conversation that Alex quotes a poem: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us,” Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“The only poem I know in my life,” Alex tells me.Alex describes taking the rotted wood or junk wood—“some pieces not even worth the wood burning pile”—and b ringing it back to his studio and, before long, have it looking like a “fine piece of art.”
Pulling out a cross from one of his many piles, he says, “I got this maple from a farm. It was a rotted out tree lying on the ground. That was 6 weeks ago. Look at it now—it is the most beautiful piece of wood I ever came across... I love taking the damaged pieces and finding the beauty within the piece.”
The inspiration
Alex has hand made about 15,000 of his latest focus, the crosses. And he likes to customize them to their owners and even to the owners’ religions.
“I call them a family cross, or family star of David. I take pictures of the piece of wood, and see how the pattern is laid out along the spalt line, which is the black line running through the tree. I cut the crosses out; then if I get two crosses out of it, it would be called a book match. I would flip it over and they would have the mother and father and all of the children made from the same piece of wood, or if the father and mother were Jewish and one of the children turned out to be Jewish and one turned out to be Christian, I would cut the pieces appropriately.”
One of the contemporary artists that has influenced the artist’s philosophy is George Nakashima, author of The Soul of a Tree. Like Nakashima, Alex has a deep respect for trees that is apparent in the work he does. Another contemporary artist that has influenced Alex is Louise Nevelson. I asked him what it was about her art that impacted him, and he said it wasn’t so much her art as it was her strong sense of determination.
“She never gave up.”
For more information about Alex and photos of some of his work, visit www.alexthewoodwhisperer.spaces.live.com. |
