After retiring as an English teacher, I started sculpting full time.  By then, I had learned to sculpt by  recognizing the innate spirit of the wood. As  each project revealed itself, It became clear that sculpting is an on-going discovery of balancng form and space to bring the wood to life, thereby enhancing the beauty of the wood.

After a time,  things changed.  On a trip to Myanmar also known as Burma, I spoke with a wood carver who lived on the fringes of a clear-cut forest.  He offered me a block of exotic hard wood, and thanking him for it, I told him that I preferred working with root wood.  He smiled,  and sweeping his hand over the replanted fields of pineapples and jute said, "The next time you come, I'll give you all the root wood you want!"

Afterward, I thought why not harvest stumps and fashion them into functional art and sculpture. Selling these would provide livlihoods for wood carvers which could also include young boys in monasteries, the country's orphanages, who would learn skills and help sustain the monasteries. 

Of the three stumps, two have been fashioned into on-piece glass topped tables. The third table was fashioned from pieces cut out of one stump to form three supporting legs that support a glass top. The legs can be disconnected and displayed as individual sculptural pieces.

I am now looking for a means of marketing these functional art pieces, and when that is secured, I will head back to Burma and talk to my wood carving friend and others.