Upcoming exhibition features wood as a form of art

Local artist Norman Pirollo’s Go Figure! exhibition explores wood as a vibrant, colourful form of art. The series is composed of unusual, atypical woods with intense figure and chatoyance (or shimmer). The artist portrays a unique image or vision in each art piece. “It’s quite unusual and at the same time colorful!,” Pirollo says.

Go Figure! is a play on words and also highlights the focus of the exhibition, which is wood figure as a form of art. “I enhance this figure by infusing colors into the wood to create an image and I then finish and polish the surface of the wood to create depth,” Pirollo tells Ottawa Life. “Through this exhibition, I hope to create more awareness of the natural beauty we have in the trees which surround us.”

In wood, figure refers to the appearance of wood. The figure of a particular piece of wood is, in part, due to its grain and, in part, due to the cut, or to innate properties of the wood. Types of figure include bird’s eye, blister, burl, curl, dimple, fiddleback, flame, quilted and spalted.The solo art exhibition Go Figure! runs from March 22 to April 22 in the City of Ottawa Atrium Gallery at Ben Franklin Place, 101 Centrepointe Drive. The vernissage will take place on March 26 from 6pm to 8pm.

For more information, visit www.normanpirollo.com

Top Photo:  “Sundown”