Going with the Grain

Clint Reidlooks out his back door to find canvases for his work.

See a slideshow below.

In I need a kind of grace I don’t even know how to give,Reid places a heart on a slice of tree stump from his backyard. The simple, playful elegance of the illustration echoes the lines and patterns of the stump itself; the grain of the wood becomes the muscle fibers of the heart. The pattern of a man’s face in Persist is reminiscent of the knots in a piece of birch (picked up at a lumberyard), its grain adding texture to his hair. The technique makes Reid’s work feels like part of the wood, rather than an imposition on it.

Based in Oklahoma, Reid says his desire to use unconventional materials goes way back to those childhood activities of making “dishtowel capes” and “construction paper super hero masks.” Since then, he’s become a graphic artist working on paper, t-shirts, and buttons. He began working on wood in recent years, and he’s only begun to explore the possibilities.