Any kid lucky enough to attend the middle school in Port Townsend, Wash., will discover its well-tended orchard of 70 fruit trees, which is there thanks to Seth Rolland, a furniture maker and sculptor in town. Rolland, who describes himself as “a lifelong forest wanderer,” has lived in New York, New Mexico, and, since 2001, in Port Townsend, and he has planted, pruned, and grafted trees all along the way. Most of his woodwork involves planks of dried timber purchased at a lumberyard and assembled in a fashion intended to delight the user (while also dazzling the eye). But for a recent exhibition, he created a range of sculptures—treeisms, he calls them—made with trimmings and fallen branches from local trees.

A passionate observer as well as a tender of trees, Rolland notes that “in woodworking there’s a lot of focus on joinery, but trees do joinery with more strength and beauty than we ever could.” In linking branches for these pieces, carefully matching diameters and cutting mostly scarf joints, he made his own joinery as subtle as possible so the focus would fall on the tree’s dramatic joints. “My idea was to make something that looked like it might have grown naturally—in an alternate universe.”
—Jonathan Binzen

Photos: Myron Gauger