Small architectures
2004-2006
While sharpening pencils with a penknife, trimming the lead and whittling it down to the longest, smoothest and finest possible point without actually breaking it, I realised that I enjoy shaping wood, and carving its surface with the blade, just as much as I love drawing with a pencil on a sheet of paper. So I moved from the lightness and quietness of the pencil to the roughness and din of the power saw, but without sacrificing my effort to treat the wood tenderly, as if it were paper, with effects that may be random but never mechanical. These are solid little houses, found inside dead treetrunks knocked down by the wind. They were delicately worked with the power saw, and then trimmed by successive stages, modelling the surface with “brush-strokes” applied by the blade.
Michele De Lucchi, April 2005