When a fallen tree is brought to Alison Crowther’s attention, she reads the timber closely, intimately. Using the barely visible tracery of annual rings and medullary rays as a natural template, she coaxes new forms from the wood – spheres, giant eggs, benches and desktops.
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Her carving process reveals a unique map of fine lines or a deeper grid that follows the patterns within the timber. “The carving of the wood feels like it’s singing with the tree, that we are in it together. I’m not this artist enforcing their will onto the material to make it do something it really doesn’t want to do,” she says. “I’m giving the tree its second life. Each branch has its own annual rings and that’s where the interesting bits, the complex bits lie for me, where there are artistic decisions to be made.”
The carving of the wood feels like it’s singing with the tree, that we are in it together.
Born in Yorkshire, Alison found a path to art and design through drawing and making as a child. She credits her stickler of an aunt, who taught her how to follow dress patterns, with ingraining in her the importance of accuracy and attention to detail. Looking at her sketchbooks, you can almost see a pattern-maker’s eye in the meticulous plans for each sculpture with each part of the process carefully mapped out.
This is precision crafting. Her affinity with wood has evolved from a first degree in furniture design. “I was always interested in contemporary sculpture, but felt I needed a skill hat was learned, rather than just being an artist. But my furniture was always very sculptural. I was quite into pushing the boundaries.”
Inspired by Andy Goldsworthy and David Nash, Alison started exploring the possibilities of wood during her MA at the Royal College of Art. “I wanted to get off the paper, drawing, and the conventional machines, and manipulate the material myself.”
After the great storm of 1987, she collected a van full of fallen trees from Scotney Castle in Kent and began teaching herself to carve.
I’m not this artist enforcing their will onto the material to make it do something it really doesn’t want to do. I’m giving the tree its second life.
Her fascination with crafting pieces from fallen timber continued through the 1990s when she settled in Hampshire to take up a teaching post at Bedales school. In this Arts and Crafts designed setting, surrounded by accomplished creatives, she found time and space to develop her work, building a reputation through placing pieces at the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden, the New Art Centre at Roche Court in Salisbury and Sculpture at Goodwood.
Since 2000, when she made the leap into sculpture full time, Alison’s work has grown in stature, from apple-sized to solid benches, gigantic eggs and spheres that can take up to a year to complete. She is known for working with oak, but sometimes clients come to her with a fallen tree or one that has to come down and want her to find a new life for it. With each project she continues to push those boundaries, experimenting with new shapes and developing her grid technique.
Because the process that I use is, by the nature of using hand tools, very slow, it’s comforting, steadying and reassuring.
Alison views her work as furniture as much as sculpture and her pieces can be found in public and private spaces, inside and outside, for clients around the world.
She’s worked with many garden designers on private commissions and show gardens, from the late John Brookes, who gave her much encouragement in her early days, to Dan Pearson, Arne Maynard, Tom Stuart-Smith, Marian Boswall and Jamie Butterworth, who featured her beautiful curved oak benches on his 2022 RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden.
Whether they are made to sit on or as a focal point in the landscape, each piece becomes an intrinsic part of its environment, continuing to mature, change colour and sometimes crack and shift shape as the timber relaxes, dries and settles. “I like to let the material do what it wants to do,” she says.
Other materials – stone or metal – are not for Alison. “Because the process that I use is, by the nature of using hand tools, very slow, it’s comforting, steadying and reassuring.” Besides, she says, “I’ve still
got a lot to do with wood – it would probably take me ten years to make all the ideas that I’ve got already.”
numbered 1-14, to denote the sweep or curvature of the stainless steel blades.© Andrew Montgomery
Useful information:
You can see works by Alison at Glyndebourne, Winchester Cathedral, The Shangri-La Hotel at The Shard, Ferry Street in Canary Wharf and the New Art Centre in Salisbury. Look out for news of an Open Studio show of smaller pieces to celebrate Alison’s 60th birthday next year.
Find out more about Alison Crowther’s work at alisoncrowther.com