Gene Chernyak is a self-taught artist and designer with a long artistic lineage. Gene’s primary media is wood, he especially enjoys its vast variety. His interests lie in large scale sculptures and small intricate designs.
Gene looks for diverse pieces of wood and believes that by challenging himself he is able to discover the inner soul of even the most plain wooden piece. He maintains the individuality of the wood he works on and even likes to incorporate grain, bark, inclusions, and decay in his design.
When Gene discovers a piece of wood that he is going to work on his creative process begins. The fist stage is the initial shaping. As he begins to work his ideas change and evolve as the slab of wood begins to take shape and for Gene this is the most pleasurable part of his creative process. Gene is able to convey his inner vision and create specific shapes out of wood. He describes his creations as a mixture of biomorphic art and his soul. As stated by Tate Gallery>1 “biomorphic forms or images are ones that while abstract nevertheless refer to, or evoke, living forms such as plants and the human body”. In his work Gene is driven by many facets of spirituality. A resounding verse from the bible was the key to his creation of a thirty-two pieces set of sculptural work. “ I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax: it has melted within me.” (Psalm 22:14) Music plays a major part in Gene’s life and the shapes that he creates are driven by it in particular musical form, melody, and rhythm.
In his work he utilizes various techniques: wood turning, power carving, wood burning, and coloring. Gene’s final work takes on different appearances with the changes in lighting and position. He strives to appeal to each and every individual’s artistic soul through his work.
1 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/biomorphic
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Below you can see different work that is divided by different series. I tried to supplement each sculpture with a video presentation. I hope that it will help you to better understand the concepts I was trying to convey.
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Please click on the top to see the whole series or on the image to see individual sculptures.