Wooden Capers

July 13th through August 10th, 2024
Opening reception from 3:00 to 6:00pm on Saturday, July 13th

Best Western is pleased to announce Wooden Capers, a solo exhibition of sculptural work by Marshall Girard.

Born in 1947 outside Detroit, Michigan Marshall Cutler Girard moved with his family to New Mexico when he was 6. Raised on the east side Santa Fe, his upbringing was deeply informed by his father, the architect and designer Alexander Girard. Marshall began working with his hands at a very young age. Having his father’s design and architecture studio attached to the family home created many opportunities for him to both observe his father and others at work and participate in hands-on tasks himself. While he never formally went to work in the office, he attributes many of his handy skills to the experience of growing up in an environment of unbridled creativity and of course the exposure to handcrafted Folk Art from all over the world that his parents were dedicated to collecting. He would go on to establish a successful construction business building custom adobe homes in Santa Fe and the surrounding areas for 35 years. Creating fireplaces, carved beams and mantel pieces, collaged wood doors, and other handmade elements in these homes was a way Girard continued to express his aesthetic sentiment and keep learning about technique and materials throughout his career.

Post construction, Girard began exploring his sculptural instincts more intentionally and experimenting with other materials with a heavy focus on various types of stone and wood. Influenced by his father’s ethos of repurposing components to make something new, Girard was especially interested in the idea of using recycled and found materials. The act of daily walking was another thing Girard had inherited from his father and keenly observing the nature around you was a deep part of this practice. It was in this spirit that he came back to a material known as tufa rock (also known as tuff), which is made of volcanic ash and can be found in the mountains surrounding northern New Mexico. This material is incredibly porous and relatively light weight, thus lending itself to carving. He had become familiar with it at an early age especially while hiking around an area known as The White Place or Plaza Blanca near Abiquiu. While he spent about a decade extensively exploring the extent to which he could shape this material, he would eventually turn back to wood after sustaining a shoulder injury that made it challenging to work with pneumatic tools and large pieces of stone.

Wooden Capers is a collection of carvings from the body of work Girard has created over the last thirty years. Present are both abstract and figurative forms which emerge from the material in a way that seems both organic and unexpected. Referencing folk art traditions from the Pacific Northwest to Easter Island and of course the hyper local practices of the tribes indigenous to Northern New Mexico, Girard looks to the material to dictate what forms will ultimately emerge.  Exploring both intricate and minimal interventions in the wood, each piece holds a spirit that is revealed in the choices made by Girard. Following the ‘language’ of the wood itself, a knot becomes the focus, a grain guides the lines, or the density allows how deeply a piece can be manipulated.

Within this collection are several pieces made from what Girard calls beaver wood. This material, pieces of cottonwood that have been cured and shaped in river water by beavers has a particular quality that lends itself to carving. Having already been stripped of its bark and smoothed down by the waters, sun and teeth of the animals, these pieces are a collaboration of sorts between Girard and nature. Supple but substantial, the wood lends itself to manipulation through tools that range from a small single blade knife to chisels, sandpaper and rasps. Following the existing bends of the wood, Girard removes mass according to a balance, sometimes pushing to the very extent of the materials ability to maintain its structural integrity. In the artists hands, each piece is transformed and given new life. With no attempt to seal or preserve the wood, Girard allows for his work to be just one of many stages of this organic materials life. If left out in the elements from which they came, each piece would eventually breakdown back into the earth and yet, life is extended and even renewed through Girard’s visionary hands.

Wooden Capers is on view July 13th, 2024 through August 10th, 2024. Opening reception from 3:00 to 6:00pm on Saturday, July 13th. Additional hours Sunday, July 14th from 1:00 to 4:00pm to coincide with International Folk Art Market.

Best Western would like to thank Marshall Girard, A. Kori Girard and Aleishall Girard Maxon for their trust and collaboration in the making of Wooden Capers. This project is supported by the Fulcrum Fund, a grant program of 516 ARTS made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Meow Wolf Fouuundation.

Best Western hours are Saturdays from 1pm to 4pm and otherwise open by appointment for the run of the exhibition. Please contact Shane Tolbert & James Sterling Pitt by email at office@westernbest.org with questions or to schedule an appointment.