WOODCORE, May 9–July 11

Featured Artists: 

Megita Denton is an artist and farmer working across the Southwest and Pacific Northwest. She integrates the material of wood into a broader sculptural practice inclusive of film, glass, sound, fiber, and public art. Megita is also the founder of Able Farms on Wapato Island, Oregon, which provides Black Walnut and Oregon White Oak trees to Goby Walnut– a supplier of salvaged Northwest hardwoods well-revered by Oregon woodworkers and builders. Megita considers her line of work as an active form of reciprocity with her natural environment.  

Within her practice, she offers visions of healing, reclamation, and ecological futures. Her work emphasizes new life from death, and the importance of caring for ancient Pacific Northwest forests, encouraging its continual flourishing and biodiversity. Her two multi-media freestanding works exhibited in WOODCORE dance along the lines of precarity and stability, each composed primarily of full-scale planed tree slabs sourced from felled trees the artist sourced herself. In her piece, How Thin Can We Make It?, delicate slabs are bound together with colorful embroidery thread, representing the forest’s fragile ecosystems that are currently hanging on by a thread.  The tree slabs tell the twisted story of themselves through the whirls and burls and grain therein. The processes of woodcarving, planing, or formal woodworking are subtractive…yet both Megita Denton as well as Monica Setziol-Phillips, explore juxtaposing that with the additions of glass or woven textiles.

Bobby Mercier, master carver and cultural educator with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, carries forward the vital ancestral knowledge, lifeways, and ceremonial traditions from his lineages. His engagement in woodcarving is a practice of Indigenous storytelling. On display here are three wall-reliefs of power figures. Working often with old-growth wood—some pieces over 400 to 500 years old—Bobby draws from a deeply rooted Chinookan carving tradition unique to the Pacific Northwest. These Chinookan carving styles only reach from about Westport, Washington down the coast to about Tillamook, Oregon and from the mouth of the Columbia River up to the Dalles and up to the Willamette Falls near Lake Oswego, Oregon. Beyond this, these motifs and carving styles do not exist anywhere else. Some of the signature styles include the feature of one tooth, one tongue, concentric circles around the portal of the belly button, ribcage and eyelid forms that ripple like flowing river water. These elements speak specifically to the role of rivers in shaping the cultural and spiritual lifeways of the region's Indigenous peoples. Bobby shared that Lake Oswego was an original village for the Grand Ronde peoples, known as Kashikshicks. To this day, his tribe canoes from Grand Ronde, down the river to Willamette Falls to ceremonially and routinely gather eels and salmon. Salmon and eels helped sustain the Grand Ronde people through the early reservation period and today. Bobby’s carvings carry both history and presence into the future. They are acts of cultural continuity and reverence.

Adam Zeek, based in rural North Plains, Oregon, is a longtime carpenter turned sculptor, who happily creates hand-carved panels and freestanding forms, revealing compositions that are ripe with spontaneity, rhythm, and repetitive geometries. As a child, Adam remembers climbing all over the Leroy Setziol pieces at the Salem Library, and since, has studied with Monica Setziol-Phillips. Naturally, his work is influenced by the work of the Setziol family including the technique of cross-cutting wall-relief panels. His compositions, like the Setziol’s, are determined through instinctive rule-making, infused with his own inner exploration. Adam presents here 4 new wall-reliefs, all of which are sourced from an Oregon Black Walnut tree that died of natural causes in his neighborhood. 

Traditional woodworking merges into abstracted, corporeal provocations in Julian Watts’ work. Julian is an artist, woodworker, and educator living in rural Alpine, Oregon. He draws on the lush, forested environment of his surroundings for both art material and inspiration. His work sublimely conveys the human body and spaces we inhabit, and takes form as sculpture. Presented here is a weighty massive block of black walnut sourced locally, that eschews the typical minimalist rectilinear cube for a more curious, open form.  Peering over its edge, one may be surprised to find a highly polished bowl punctuated by a sort of biomorphic pointer. The impossibly smooth surface contrasts with the organic living crack of the microwave-sized chunk of material. 

Ben Young, an artist and builder in Portland, Oregon, works within the spaces of sculpture and architecture, transforming his inner world of feelings into sketches that then become dimensional sculptures. Artistically, Ben continually works to push himself into new places he hasn’t been before, in part because of the heavy constraints he operates in as a builder. His wildly spirited, intuitive drawings are transposed into cut-out forms, yet each individual sculpture appears succinct. His practice explores the interplay between interior and exterior worlds, and his sculptures are flirtations between surface and form. His work is knowingly irreverent, abiding only by his felt-sense and aesthetic goals. His materials are often sourced from the construction sites where he works, and these components over time become worked and re-worked with cartoonish joinery and colorful, yet weathered, painted and drawn surfaces. 

Monica Setziol-Phillips, sculptor, weaver, educator, and daughter of renowned sculptor Leroy Setziol, continues a family legacy through her individual voice—creating fusions of fiber and wood where the subtractive and additive processes sing together. She carves at the bench where her father carved, and weaves in her parents’ house in Sheridan, Oregon. She has been weaving for over 40 years and carving for over 30 years. Monica’s artwork and teaching style represents the importance of poetic play over product driven results, and she continues to be well-revered as an active community builder and mentor to many. Monica currently teaches woodcarving and frame-loom weaving for 15 years and counting, at Sitka Center for Art & Ecology.  She is also an active member of a carving collective that is composed of former Sitka students. Her two small works, “Together But Separate”, make use of Alaskan Yellow Cedar sourced from a friend's barrel making business. Her wall-relief integrates a vertical panel of a highly saturated hand-loomed weaving, evolving the legacy of her father’s structured wall-reliefs into something exploratory and new.  Reflecting on her artistic practice, Monica emphatically shared, “Everyone has a creative spirit that deserves to be nourished”. 

Leroy Setziol (1915–2005), the “father of woodworking in Oregon,” established a visual language of highly stylized carved relief panels structured by grids. He rather preferred to identify not as a woodworker, but as an artist who happened to work with wood. And his choice to utilize wood was merely because it was more readily available to him than other artistic mediums such as glass, clay, and stone. His work is marked by instinct, inner disarray contained within grids, that amount to dynamic quilt-like displays of graphic geometric pattern and organic, gentle grooves. His work, embedded within landscapes, private residences, and public buildings across the region and more largely, the world, continues to inspire many, including some of the artists featured in this exhibition. “One of my precepts,” Setziol explains, “is to invent a system and then violate it.” A few nearby sites prominently featuring his work include OHSU’s Children’s Recovery Unit, the Salishan Coastal Lodge, and Providence St. Vincent’s Hospital, among many others. 

The City of Lake Oswego is the proud owner of a large, multi-panel bas-relief in Oak, hand-carved by Leroy Setziol entitled, Oswego. This piece is on display upstairs from the gallery, on the third floor of Lake Oswego City Hall. Originally commissioned in 1986, Setziol said, "I am wedded to Oregon and am deeply appreciative of the opportunity Oregon people have given me to work creatively and get paid for it. I admire Lake Oswego authorities for commissioning my works with no strings attached."

Set outside of major art metropolises, WOODCORE presents modern and contemporary artworks that intrinsically honor the fertile, tangled, even wonky, forests that are emblematic of the Pacific Northwest.

Megita Denton

Multi-racial Intermedia artist hailing from the South and Southwest U.S. and embedded into the Pacific Northwest region and cultures. Megita exists part time in Oregon, Arizona, and Texas as each place holds artistic endeavors and family. Megita was born on her grandmother's couch in Galveston, Texas in 1979 and has been living and creating unconventionally ever since. Megita Denton’s Intermedia practice is grounded in the land, motivated by connection, and sculpted for positive social impact. Her recent site-specific public works are the next evolution of a practice that includes film, sound, metal and mixed media sculpture, painting, woodworking, fiber arts, photography, printmaking, large scale public murals, performance, composition, resilient landscape design, and artistic research.

Working to re-create and restore human connection to the natural world, Denton draws on her Indigenous perspective, her farmer’s knowledge of the land, and her diverse community collaborations. Making work that speaks of the traditions of the past and responds to the challenges of the present, Denton anchors our evolution and survival in our care of the land, offering alternative perspectives on the future.

Bobby Mercier has been employed with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde since 1997. He provides outreach services in various styles of tradition and culture that represents the more than 27 tribes and bands that make up the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.

Among his many talents, Bobby conducts classes in carving, language, traditional etiquette, and history. He is one of the founding members of the Canoe Family, dedicated to the reappearance of that proud and honorable tradition. His maternal descendancy is that of Holmes, Smith, Shangrett, Nippising, Quenelle family, all from the mouth of the River Chinook, Mary's River, Kalapuya, Shasta, Tillamook, Iroquois, cree and Chippewa. His paternal descendancy comes from the Chinook, Takelma and Umpqua. 

Leroy Setziol

Widely recognized as the most accomplished and respected wood sculptor in the Northwest, Leroy Setziol was born in Philadelphia and grew up in cosmopolitan Buffalo. Born in Philadelphia in 1915, Setziol attended Elmhurst College, graduating with a degree in art before working as a minister in Bennington, New York. During World War II, Setziol was stationed in the South Pacific where he served as an army chaplain. After the war, Setziol began his career as an artist, first in Portland, and then in Sheridan, Oregon. Inspired by his time in the South Pacific and the lush forests of the Northwest, Setziol created lyrical relief carvings using a grid pattern as the basis for his compositions. His expertly carved works garnered attention from other artists and architects alike and Setziol was invited to collaborate on numerous private and large scale commissions. His work can be found in museum collections across the Northwest including the Salem Art Association and the Portland Art Museum. Specifically, he developed relationships with architects and developers, like John Gray, and his public works were commissioned for projects including Salishan Lodge, the Menucha Conference Center in the Columbia Gorge, and the University of Portland Chapel designed by Pietro Belluschi. In Salem, Setziol created large interior works of carved teak for the Salem Public Library and Salem Hospital. 

Monica Setziol-Phillips lives in Sheridan, Oregon, with her husband, actor JP Phillips. Monica is the daughter of Leroy Setziol, who was known as the father of Northwest Woodcarving. She carves at the bench where he carved, and weaves in her parents’ house. She has been weaving for over 35 years and carving for over 20 years. Her work is in many private collections in many states. She also has work in public spaces, most recently three of her pieces were chosen for The Allison, the new resort in Newberg. In October of 2009, Monica finished a major work for the new Civic Hall in McMinnville, Oregon. For a number of years she has participated in the Sitka Art Invitational.

“My senior year at Portland State University I studied weaving under Solange Kowert. I knew I wouldn’t have enough credits to graduate and wanted to take a class in either ceramics or weaving. Weaving fit into my schedule, ceramics did not. Before long I was hooked. After many years, with a great debt of gratitude to my father, sculptor Roy Setziol, I began a path that involved combining weaving with wood carving. I now think of my work as a kind of collaboration with myself, the two media together forming a kind of act of completion.

Weaving involves building a work through the addition of warp to weft. Wood carving, on the other hand, involves building a work through the subtraction of material. Putting the two together is always precarious, for it is only in that moment that it becomes clear that the two belong together. Recently I have rediscovered the weaving technique “soumak”. It is basically an ancient rug making technique. The process of creating different and heavy textures has opened new possibilities.

For a number of years, I have had the privilege of working with photographer, Kirk Jonasson and metal artist, Dixie Pannu. For me these kinds of collaborations offer ways to see things differently, from different angles, ones that frequently bring about new insights. Collaboration is challenging and fascinating. It enables me to undertake approaches not otherwise conceivable or achievable.

I am on the board of The Art Conspiracy, a West Valley non-profit organization that focuses primarily on providing arts opportunities for young people. The organization’s main focus is a Summer Arts Program for nine to sixteen year olds. The organization was founded in large part on the belief that the Arts should play a fundamental role in the development of young people. I am also on the board of the Yamhill County Cultural Coalition.

Julian Watts is an artist and woodworker who combines traditional woodcarving techniques with a contemporary sculptural approach, creating work that explores the intersections between art, functionality, nature, and the human body. Born in San Francisco, Watts earned a BFA in sculpture from the University of Oregon and apprenticed under several San Francisco based furniture makers before establishing his own practice. He currently lives and works in rural Oregon, drawing on the lush, forested environment of the region for both material and inspiration. His work has been shown internationally including recent solo exhibitions at Sarah Myerscough Gallery in London and Curators Cube in Tokyo, as well as in numerous art fairs including Design Miami, Fog Fair, PAD London, and TEFAF Maastricht. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Architectural Digest, The New Yorker, and American Craft Magazine, among other publications. He has taught woodcarving at numerous institutions around the country including Anderson Ranch, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and California College of the Arts as the Wornick Distinguished Visiting Professor of Wood Arts.

Watts combines traditional wood carving techniques with an experimental sculptural approach in order to explore the formal and conceptual intersections between the human body, the landscape, and the functional objects that we interact with every day. This approach has continued to evolve, expanding to incorporate an entire ecosystem of abstract, biomorphic wood carvings, ranging from bowls, to furniture, to large scale, purely sculptural works.  

 This interest in creating a sense of an evolving ecosystem of sculptural objects reflects Julian’s dedication to the natural landscape of the West Coast where he has spent his entire life. Based in the lush forests of rural Oregon, Julian sources wood from fallen or salvaged trees in his area, and collects branches, rocks, leaves, and moss from the property where his studio and home are located. These natural materials find their way directly or indirectly into his work, either as the raw carving materials, or a visual guide for shape, texture, or structure. 

Ben Young (b. 1985) is a Portland, Oregon-based artist working across sculpture, painting, and architectural forms. His practice explores the interplay between interior and exterior worlds, considering where surface ends and form begins. The materials and tools he uses—dimensional lumber, wood finishes, and joinery hardware—are often sourced from the construction sites where he works.

Adam Zeek

I have been a full time carpenter for the past 20 years, happily working with wood.  Four years ago I sought out a Master Wood Carver to apprentice under and ever since then I have been making wood carved wall panels and other free standing sculptures.

My process starts with a block of solid wood and I carve by hand into the wood using gauges, chisels and a mallet. I carve familiar shapes, repeating patterns, and organic forms.  This carving is how I make compositions and sculptures.I love making and sharing art! It feels like a good way for me to relate to the world around me.