About four years ago, I formed an alliance with a Burlington woodworker, Tim Peters, to make the most beautiful table I could imagine. He would do the carpentry; I would do the carving. I hoped we would sell it and bring some much-needed income to the Endangered Alphabets Project, while also raising awareness of the […]
Delighted to know we have a buyer for one of our unique African symbol clocks, created in partnership with Building Character of Charlotte, Vermont. This one is an Adinkra symbol that embodies the proverb Nea onnim no sua a, ohu, or “He who does not know, can know from learning.” It is a symbol of […]
What a pleasure and a privilege to deliver the latest of my Abenaki carvings to Shirly Hook, one of the Council of Chiefs of the Koasek Traditional Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation. This is the fifth carving I’ve done and donated to the Abenaki people, whose language is one of the most endangered in […]
This afternoon it was my pleasure and privilege to present a carving of “We are still here” in Abenaki to Tom Beck on behalf of the Nulhegan Band at their cultural center in beautiful Barnet, Vermont. Tom was also kind enough to show us the remarkable garden of endangered and heirloom vegetables being grown from […]
If you’re on Facebook, you’ve been seeing hints and clues about my next series of carvings, and here are the first prototypes: Scrabble tiles in endangered alphabets. Here’s my thinking: After my very serious and poignant Mother Tongue series, I wanted to do something more playful, but still full of intent. After all, it’s the […]
A few months ago I was contacted by Ivan Brenes, an English-language instructor at Osaka University, Japan, who told me about a minority culture I’d never heard of: the Ainu. According to the Ainu Museum website, the word “Ainu” means “human.” Ainu culture flourished in the northern islands of Japan, especially Hokkaido, from about 1400-1700. As the […]
I learn all kinds of things by carving the Alphabets—about various cultures, about writing itself, about spirituality, about physics, about the history of technology. Nothing prepared me, though, for cumaru. A couple of weeks ago I got a commission to carve the chant “Om Mani Padme Hum” in Tibetan, as articulated by the calligrapher Tashi […]
The first of the four panels that will make up the Endangered Poem Project is now complete! I dragged it out into the winter sunlight (yes, you can tell I’m in Vermont) and shot photos of all five of the alphabets it includes. From top to bottom, they are : …and the newest and perhaps […]
