Product Info

About Earth Gems Products

The wildwood vases that Karina & Thomas have developed and sculpt on a bandsaw are the most popular of their smaller works.

Wildwood bowls are a beautiful addition within the past five years and are hewn out with a high speed grinder with a chainsaw blade and then wirebrushed and sanded to a silky smooth finish.

Among Karina's newest items are Karina's Nature hand-made Lino prints described below.

Forest Folk , an addition in the past few years, are funny looking creatures actually belonging to the fairy family. These "folks" live to protect and maintain the forests they reside in. they are a blessing for any home and are sure to enlighten and delight all those they come into contact with. I gather these special creatures by walking through my forest and asking for volunteers - I say volunteers because they must be willing to come into the world of humans to remind and educate each of the people that they come to live with. It must be their desire to revive the idea of nature's harmony on earth and call us back to our own place in that harmony. Their great patience and wisdom must help to direct the open hearted to listen to "mother" and reconnect to her greater idea of wholeness. It is a great and heroic deed for such little "folk" and yet I have found that they leap for the opportunity!

We've just introduced our new line of WildWood Kitchen Utensils. Created from the same fine woods we use for the rest of our wonderful works, they are each freeformed on the bandsaw, refined with rasping and sanding and oiled with mineral oil twice (food safe)

Karina's most valued and beautiful pieces are the sculpture ( fine sculpture and Earth Gems sculptures)that she creates from the fallen and naturally seasoned woods in her area. She enjoys these pieces most because she feels that they are just as much an expression of the voice of the forest she lives in as it is of her own personal nature. She has come to understand that the gifts of nature speak a message that is just waiting to be heard if we're quiet enough to listen.

Materials:

Earth Gems are collected from the woods of the Arkansas valley. We are blessed in this valley with Aspen, Rocky Mountain Juniper, Bristle cone pine, Russian olive, and many other beautiful woods. The trees used are standing dead,  ranch  fenceposts, wood collected from fire mitigated areas and an occasional collection from a nearby arborist.  They cure naturally before we use them. This natural curing is why the colors and textures of the wood are so varied. Nature does the designing, we only hope to enhance this beauty with our process.

The tools used are: the bandsaw, a pneumatic drum sander and a motor driven shaft tool. We work with the wood's natural flow and sculpt the form of the piece. Following the roughout on the bandsaw they get the first of five sandings on the pneumatic drum sander. After the final sanding they are oiled with a sealer and polished with steel wool to achieve the glassy finish we are proud to call our product.

Maintain your Earth Gem product occasionally, with furniture oil or polish, to add to the life and luster of the piece. Fine steel wool (000) will soften a raised grain if water damaged.

About Karina's Nature Lino Prints

Karina is an artist by trade now for 15 years: 13 of which she has been a professional wood sculptor. She has always enjoyed textures, shapes and colors of every sort and is now expanding her enjoyment to include two-dimensional work. Her enjoyment of nature extends to her newest works in the forms of trees, mountains, animals, plants and even insects.

Karina is presently experimenting with the different techniques of linoprinting. One of these techniques is called "accumulative" printing. Another is "reductive" printing. Accumulative printing uses several carved blocks to create a piece. The blocks can be printed innumerable times for unlimited pieces. Karina has also discovered that she enjoys mixing and matching sets of blocks to create original, almost painting-like landscapes.

Reduction type printing uses only one block that is carved in a simple design that is printed and then carved again to achieve more detail and printed again. The block is carved several times until the block is "reduced" to practically nothing. The result is a limited series of original prints. The colors that she utilizes are vibrant and always mixed herself.

Karina chooses a subject, sketches the design and stylizes it. She then decides the size and shape she would like. Linoleum comes in sheets and must be mounted to a firm backing. She does this herself using an adhesive and particleboard. It is then cut to size. The design is then transformed to the linoleum block. The engraving process utilizes a variety of cutting tools that create different effects and details. Some are hand tools and some, to her pleasant surprise, are her woodcarving tools (this part of her work is a nice transition from her woodworking abilities). She then begins the printing process accordingly.