Since covid I started working with wood, carving tree trunks for fun, using old trees I had kept since ever, also the one in my garden that was dead and needed to be removed. One in my backgarden and one in my frontgarden. I was quite nervous to start the one in my frontgarden because of all the comments I would get. In the beginning I used headphones to avoid hearing the people's comments, but people would just ignore that and asked me a million questions anyways, so in the end I just pretended to know what I was doing and faced them, ignoring the idea that they thought I was weird. I had one goal, to finish it before the autumn rains because the tree was quite damaged and rotten and I had to impregnate it to avoid further rotting. It worked, I finished it just one weekend before the long rainy period. Now that it is winter and the totem is finished I look back and miss that period where I had a lot of contact with my neighbourhood and random passers by. It was so much fun to get to know people and to talk about life and hear their stories, because in the end that is what people love to do, to tell their story. The totem is a chapter, a chain in my new work that will have fairy tale aspects and woodwork. I am very excited to work on the story. will keep u posted.x
