David Nash

Description

By simply turning a tree-trunk with trimmed branches still attached upside down, David Nash has created the stable, tripod base of Seven Turning Steps. Both ladders and steps took form in Nash's sculpture during the mid-1980s. Ladders were made from split wood, but here the middle portion of the tree is used. The steps turn like a spiral stairway leading, like so many of the other stepped sculptures, towards the heavens. Seven corresponds to the seven days of the week, the seven planets, seven rungs of perfection, seven spheres or in this case, seven celestial stairs, with perhaps a further allusion to the seven branches of the shaman's cosmic and sacrificial tree.

Nash says of his ladders: "A linear, self-supporting structure needs at least three legs in order to stand. The tripods of the mid-seventies explored the possibilities of this physical fact by following the material's inherent qualities; loosened hazel fibres led to planting, flexible ash to weaving, split chestnut to wedging and pegging. The image focus became the pelvic meeting between the legs and the upper body. The process revealed the image."

Like all Nash's work, Seven Turning Steps is in complete harmony with the form of the tree from which it was carved. The form is robust and sensitive as far as the chain saw will allow. Nash chose to char the wood, thereby transforming the surface from an organic substance to a mineral one. The right degree of charring is achieved by lighting loose combustible materials placed between the carved sculpture and surrounding boards.

When the boards fall away the sculpture is revealed in its new state. The altered nature of the sculpture caused by fire is more rapid than further changes that occur through the elements of air and water.