Building a tree

I belong to an art group that meets every Friday morning at one of the members’ homes. We paint, sketch, talk, drink coffee, eat treats–it’s my favourite morning of the week. Last week we chose to put down our pencils and paint brushes, and pick up drills instead. We had each been collection driftwood on the beaches around the island, and this was the day we were using it to make driftwood trees.

Although we had our individual ideas on how we wanted our trees to look, and we worked independently in that regard, we also worked together–figuring out the best way to drill (and we learned that having the drill set to ‘reverse’ does NOT work!), how to balance the wood, how to balance the look. Caroline’s yard was a hubbub of activity and noise. And at the end of the morning, we all had lovely trees to take home with us. Here are some photos of the process:

First we laid out our wood along the length of the post we were using to plan out the tree:

Then we drilled. A hole in the base to insert the post, then holes at the balance point for each piece of driftwood:

Threading the driftwood on the post in gradually decreasing lengths to give the shape of a tree:

Here’s the group of us behind our forest of trees in various stages of completion: 

And here is my beautiful finished tree, decorated with bits from (and about) the sea. I love it, and plan to keep it up year round: 

(Thanks to Isobel White for most of the photographs.)