Terrae Galleries



Terrae Galleries

About The Artist

Dave Pansen • Cumming, GA
Wood • CUSTOM COMMISSIONS

Dave began woodworking in the mid 1990s in Charlotte, NC, designing and making hardwood furniture and architectural woodwork. He now lives and works in Asheville, North Carolina. Wood Crystal® Sculptures have a base element, primary structure, and suspended "wood crystals" in the shape of natural mineral crystals found in nature. The crystals are made from sustainable hardwood stocks from around the world and suspended on silk cords accented with a bead. No dyes, stains or veneers are used.



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Q&A with the Artist

Tell us how your work is made.

Each Wood Crystal® Sculpture contains a base element, a primary structure, and suspended "wood crystals" in the shape of natural mineral crystals found in nature. The crystals are made from sustainable hardwood stocks from around the world, finished selectively with either or both tung oil and five coats of lacquer; they are suspended on dyed, braided silk cords accented with a bead. The base and structures of the sculptures are finished in tung oil. No dyes, stains or veneers are used.


What makes you passionate about the medium you work with?

Wood records time with annual growth rings, writing an indelible history of how rain, air, sunshine, and fertile soils cradled its life. By sawing wood into lumber, the growth rings are transformed into the exquisite beauty of the wood’s grain and color. The tree has painted inside itself the story of its life as the earth spun and revolved around the sun. Wood is of the earth in this special way, and that’s why it inspires me as a medium. “Terrae” is the Latin word meaning “of the earth.”

What is something unique about you or your practice?

Wood sculpture is special to me because so much of woodwork is of a practical nature as a construction material for furniture or even mundane uses in carpentry, whereas sculpture embraces wood for wood's sake. In sculpture, freed from the practical constraints of wood as a building material, the beauty of the material in and of itself comes to the fore. Woods diversity, beauty, and fantastic plasticity can be truly spectacular.