Artist carves out third woodworking victory
Robbie Graham wins Art of Wood supreme award
Waitahanui-based artist Robbie Graham has taken the supreme award in The Art of Wood, making for his third consecutive win in the national competition.
Wildwood Gallery, which Robbie runs with his wife Sue, is home to many certificates showing the myriad awards the pair have won over the years.
His feat in The Art of Wood is a particularly special one, however.
The competition has been running for three years, and Graham has won the top prize for every year.
The supreme award is chosen from the winning entries in each category, meaning Graham’s piece was picked as the best of the many prizewinners.
Categories range from furniture to sculptures, so choosing an overall winner is no easy task.
Remarkably, Phi, which was also the winner in the hollow forms/vases category, was the only work that Graham entered this year.
The Art of Wood’s winners are chosen by a panel of nine judges, seven of whom are international.
It’s a completely online exhibition, so woodworkers photograph their entries rather than physically send them in.
This suits Graham perfectly, because he’s also a photographer.
However, he’s keen to ensure this doesn’t give him an unfair advantage, so he has given workshops to other entrants in the competition to show them how to photograph the best angles and proportions of their work.
“You need to take good pictures; it’s about showing a piece in its best light.”
It’s something that Graham does well; the competition judges commented on the “stunning piece of work”, calling it “a masterful work of hollow wood turned art that exudes intellectual beauty, innovation, and creativity”.
Phi is carved and turned from a single piece of black maire wood — “a timber that grows predominantly on the Central Plateau”.
The work is based on the golden ratio, a mathematical concept seen often in nature, from the curl of a koru to the petals of a rose.
The golden ratio is also known as phi, the Greek symbol for the golden ratio, which is represented in Graham’s artwork.
He didn’t keep a tally but admitted the piece took “a lot of hours” to create over the course of two months, from design to completion.
“The design changed a bit as I went through.”
This included a departure from his signature style of vivid blue and green tones over leaf-like designs, opting instead for a pattern of dark, irregular shapes.
These markings are created using pyrography, where a “red hot tip” is used to burn designs into the wood’s surface — in this case, series of dots to make patterns.
Graham said his mastery of the technique, as well as his overall success, was down to years of hard work and practice. However, he said he still couldn’t help but become restless before the results of a competition are announced. “I don’t sleep before — I’m so competitive. “I dream about winning.”