(Cheyenne Wind, maple burl by Michael Bryant)
Michael Bryant is an extraordinary and accomplished sculptor of wood and stone, and shows locally at The Wooden Jewel on Wall St. in Bend, a gallery that he and his wife Denise co-own. The couple started the gallery in Sunriver in 2013 after many years of touring the country and exhibiting at various events. In an effort to expand in terms of physical space and to reach a wider audience, Michael and Denise moved the gallery to Bend in December of 2018, and display not only custom designer and handmade jewelry but also fine art paintings and sculptures from local, regional and international artists. The combination of the gallery’s extensive jewelry collection and Michael’s wood carvings gave the Wooden Jewel its name.
Raised in the Willamette Valley, art was commonplace in Michael’s life as a child. His mother was a professional artist in pastels and oils who helped start the Tumalo Art Co. and establish First Friday Art Walks in Bend during the 1990’s. Enamored by the beauty of his natural surroundings, Michael spent most of his childhood hunting and fishing. Family trips to the coast centered around beach activities, but Michael couldn’t help but notice the attractive pieces of wood, largely burl, for sale in many yards that dotted the highway. His early, pre-sculptor, career involved sub-surface hazardous waste investigations as a drill operator. One particular winter when laid off and with his younger brother soon to be married, Michael, without much disposable income, thought, “I’m going to make him something, and I carved him and his bride-to-be a swan.” Thus Michael’s sculpting career began, a career that has expanded over twenty years.
Bryant’s primary subject matter is wildlife, and occasionally people and places, which he carves from single, solid pieces of music-grade quality, western hardwoods like fiddleback maple and burl and from soft stones like soapstone and alabaster, among other materials. Although Michael used to make many artworks of entire figures and even multi-figure scenes as in some of his equine sculptures, he now focuses almost exclusively on what he refers to as “busts,” representations of the upper portion of a person, typically featuring the head and shoulders, a term Michael extends to include the animals he depicts. Horses, bison, gorillas and panthers have all made appearances in the artist’s oeuvre and are currently on view at the gallery.
A piece of wood or stone in his hands or situated on his workbench, Michael studies it and looks to the material itself to suggest the form it wants to become. “I start with an idea, a feeling, if you will. I go with my intuition and the wood talks to me,” Bryant reveals. Then, without models or preliminary drawings, he begins carving away, sometimes with a chainsaw “to knock off excess wood,” as he describes it, and most always with smaller power tools and hand tools like chisels and dremels, constantly responding to his medium and setting its suggested image free. Unexpected twists, knots or holes in his materials reveal themselves during the process and force rethinking and redirection but rarely abandonment. ”Every block of stone has a statue inside it,” Michaelangelo has been quoted as saying, “and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it,” a perspective and sensibility with which Bryant identifies.
Fire Hole Bison, a gorgeous example of a manzanita burl wood bust, is impressionistic in style, reports Michael, due to its loosely sculpted, suggestive nature. “I’m something of a minimalist now; ten years ago I would have carved feathers,” he says of another sculpture, Rooster on the Move. With respect to works like Panther, an incredibly smooth, glistening soapstone bust with a burl base, the artist relishes the final touch of applying oil to stone, making it “pop,” as he describes. “Stone is really rewarding once it’s done; you feel like you’ve got something substantial,” Bryant states. Exemplary in Panther yet common to every sculpture Michael creates is the attention he affords the eyes since, as he remarks, “People get energy and action from the eyes.”
Michael’s Bryant’s incredible sculptures have been honored with many distinguished accolades over the course of his professional career. Perhaps most popular, his horse carvings have received high acclaim wherever they’ve been presented, like the Pendleton Round Up. In what he considers the “biggest show,” the Calgary Stampede and Exhibition, he was selected as Best New Artist in Auction, 2006 and Best Artisan, 2007. In Tulsa, Oklahoma’s 2012 NatureWorks Art Show & Sale, Bryant, one of six-hundred acclaimed artists present, was awarded the grand prize, “Best of Show,” for his monumental and audacious, multi-figure equine sculpture, Mustang Run! Two of Michael’s carvings reside in the permanent collection of Klamath Falls’ Favell Museum of Native American Artifacts and Contemporary Western Art while another two are currently for sale there. Many of Bryant’s exquisite sculptures are housed in esteemed private collections across the United States and Europe.
Current pursuits have taken Bryant into the world of gemstones, some of which are so small that he works with a microscope and a ¼ mm bit on them.
In addition to his fine art, Michael designs high quality, hand-crafted wooden sunglasses for men and women made entirely out of figured instrument-grade wood (myfigs.com). To view Michael’s art, stop by The Wooden Jewel in Bend and experience its beauty firsthand, or visit the gallery’s website.