/Jonathan Chidekel
Jonathan Chidekel
Green Thumb
Inspired by: Unknown Artist, Vase Phyllis Galembo, Atam Masquerader
dyed wood and plastic plant
11 1/2″ x 4 1/2″
2025
The green of the Fitchburg Art Museum’s Vase is tempered with black, creating depth. The piece uses wood grain to mimic this, with long flowing lines from the Douglas fir, short abrupt lines from the red oak, and and a very fine, shaded texture from the poplar. The fake plant provides a counterpoint to the natural materials and adds further interest. This piece is made from three kinds of wood glued together and hand turned on a lathe. Cracks in the piece have been filled with copper resin, a subtle homage to the copper bands on the Vase.
Jonathan Chidekel
Denali Sunset
Birch wood, paper, and LEDs
9″ x 5 1/2″ x 7″
2024
Made from birch and paper and lit by individually programmed LEDs, this piece shows sunset at Mt. Denali on June 13, 2024, at 11:16 pm. Alaska is known as the land of the midnight sun. During the summer months, the days are long and the sun may never fully set, creating a unique golden light that leaves the world glowing. Nothing highlights the beauty of this phenomenon as seeing it turn Mt. Denali- the tallest mountain in North America and the highest mountain from base to peak in world- into a natural light show.
Jonathan Chidekel
Modern Ammonite (Hecticoceras lunuloceras var. Anthropocene)
cherry, maple, walnut, and mahogany with blue dyed epoxy resin
9 1/2″ x 4″ x 8″
2023
Handcrafted from collected scrap wood, reclaimed firewood, and epoxy-resin mixed with blue dye, my goal was to give new life to discarded scraps. When a fossil forms, hard material such as bones, teeth, or shells is mineralized while all other material decays and is lost. As such, fossils record the physical bounds of extinct life. Ammonites–consisting of the Ammonoidea subclass–lived from the Devonion until the Crataceous-Paleogene extinction event, a span of approximately 300 million years. By comparison, our evolutionary ancestors go back only an approximate 6 million years. What fossils will we create?