Neil Kathol Visual Art

I got thinking about plywood in general and the source of the wood we use for cabinets and drawers here in North America and that usually we use Baltic Birch. And that as the name implies, it comes from the Baltic region of Russia. I devised a plan to re-erect the plywood sheets as a trunk of a tree. The thought of plywood in general being from trees. They are cut, peeled into veneer sheets which are stacked, the sheets are soaked in glue and are pressed, then cut into 4 x 8 sheets and stacks of those are shipped by ship to Canada. So, take that material back to something resembling it’s origin. I came up with a system of stripping sheets constituting rectangles with one side triangular , dimensionally. 8 of these strips formed a block cross (a “swastika” shape the the word “swastika” comes from the Sanskrit svastika, which means “good fortune” or “well-being.” The motif (a hooked cross) appears to have first been used in Eurasia, as early as 7,000 years ago, perhaps representing the movement of the sun through the sky” – Google AI). Of course the blocks were designed to interfit but I wasn’t sure what overall shape would derive. I was intrigued the blocks formed an elongate diamond. The whole is (possibly, at least to me) not very “what is it?”- answerable.