Words Paul Tierney Photographs Gentle & Hyers

Originally published in No 11

It’s a sanguine morning in the Hudson Valley and Joshua Vogel — carpenter, artisan, and, for want of a better term, ‘wood guru’ — is taking a moment to himself. A low-key figure, he’s sitting alone in the back yard of his studio and workshop in Kingston, NY, a tucked-away, artful little city. The surrounding streets are lockdown silent, save for an orchestra of birds tuning-up overhead and the crow of a persistent rooster. A freight train rumbles by like a slice of old-time Americana. All is good in a world where ‘good’ has become something of a relative term.

“I’ve got to careful with my words because it really can upset people, but I’ve actually enjoyed this period immensely,” he muses. “It’s given me time to think.”

Vogel is a man who likes to think. As a craftsman and artist — and yes, he ventures, you can be both — a life turning wood into both domestic utensils and sculptural forms affords him plenty of breathing space. Most people know him as the author of The Artful Wooden Spoon, but if carving sticks into spoons seems like a niche pursuit, it’s garnered him a swathe of fans who covet his one-of-a-kind kitchen implements. He is, of course, much more than this. With a background in furniture making, plus an extended repertoire of immaculately realized homeware, the mantle of artist and large-scale sculptor can also be attributed to this altogether engaging fellow.

He tells me the pleasing narrative of his ‘transition into trees.’ Working in a wood store to pay his way through college, the boy from New Mexico watched a man, using a lathe, turn a hunk of oak into a perfect bowl. It was a decisive, life changing moment. “The lathe itself is a really wonderful working tool — you can completely finish something on it. You can make a bowl from start to finish; it’s really satisfying. Turning a bowl also turns out to be this very fundamental metaphor. It describes our relationship with food and eating and elevates us from foraging to actually making something to eat from. It’s very human." 

“I’ve always had a need in my life to make things,” he expands in his soft, Southern burr. “I think I crossed the path at that moment, where wood just kind of opened up as a very accessible material. I think the other nice aspect about it, and it’s an important point to me in this culture that we’ve made for ourselves, is if I need a piece of wood, of course I can go to a hardware store and buy it, but that’s so limiting, especially when you look out of your window into the verdant green and realize it’s everywhere.”

He says he is less interested in art than he is anthropology. The ongoing relationship human beings have with natural materials remains a constant fascination. Which makes the recent foray into more artistic forms, and specifically abstract wood sculpture, all the more compelling. The pieces — layered plinths of blocks and spheres — are almost surreal in nature, a far cry from the prosaic spoons. “There is some kind of continuum there,” he stresses. “People say, Oh great, but what shall I do with it? Which made me think, Oh man, what am I doing? It’s so much easier to create functional artwork, in that it’s more sort of accepted than abstract work. From an early age, I thought it was much easier to make a table because I know what I’m supposed to use it for.”

Vogel is clear about what he is not. “I’ve never had any aspiration to make large buildings. I’ve never been interested in residential architecture. It’s all about what I can hold and touch. A lot of the sculptures to me are about trying to make something on a human scale — something you would recognize, like a personality, something that has its own existence and is somehow familiar to you even if you can’t put your finger on it.”

Dialogue flows in a random trajectory. We talk movies: the off-grid Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic; the existential Kim Novak, contemplating her fate aside a dissected sequoia tree in Vertigo. We carve through the decades and touch base on the mysteries of the natural world, while talk turns to his latest investigation. After decades of working in wood, he has recently diversified to stone, a far more difficult form to manipulate, sculpting imposing, monolithic forms from a material that has a long and distant ancestry.

“I needed to investigate different qualities in different materials,” he says. “Stone is an accessible material but it’s not so easy to work with, although there is a quality to it that certainly outlasts the temporal aspect of wood. There’s something in the permanence. Working with a tree that’s one thousand years old is one thing, but something that’s come out of my back yard through a glacial Ice Age, millions of years ago, is something else.”

He admits to getting off on the impenetrable nature of the material. “Yes, it’s almost, ‘How am I going to approach this? What do I do to it? What can I do to it?’ I was reading about (Isamu) Noguchi the other day, who said something about stone being an old man’s occupation. Maybe I’m getting ready for that? I don’t consider myself old, but I’m able to hack away and not feel frustrated that it’s not happening fast enough. Wood is accessible — you get a knife and carve away. Stone is different. I’m really interested in the patience it requires, and the end result being much more static.”

If anyone, it’s the 19th-century naturalist John Burroughs who looms large in his outlook. Something of a local hero, this is a man who felt an affinity with recording his own unique perceptions of the natural world, a practice Vogel, with historical osmosis, has duly emulated. “Burroughs has a book called The Art of Seeing Things. It’s nothing to do with art at all, it’s all about flipping yourself down in the woods and just not moving for a little while, seeing what happens and being aware of natural processes and lifespans. There’s a famous quote of his: ‘The kingdom of heaven is not a place but a state of mind.’ I guess that’s what I’m aiming for.”

Vogel’s work is featured in ART+NATURE+HOME : Online 5/1 - 7/1,’21 and at Foreland, 111 Water street, Catskill, NY 5/29 - 6/13,’21

Paul Tierney is an arts, culture and travel journalist, writing for The Guardian, The Independent, El Pais and The i. @paultierneysees

Gentl & Hyers are represented by sarahlaird.com @gentlandhyers_photo