Squid: sycamore root and stone. April 2016 .

I found this piece of sycamore root and the stone trapped in its grasp along the banks of the Tioughnioga river near Whitney Point, NY.  The shape of the wood as it wrapped around the stone inspired this six-tentacled creature..

For decades, a tree grew around this rock to form the mixture of materials that I now carve.  It's a completely unique material, formed by erosion and time.  Riverside trees grow in stony riverbanks that have had much of their soil eroded away. As the tree roots grow, they incorporate the rocks into the roots' structure.  Decades later, the same erosion that forced root and stone together will knock the tree down, exposing its roots.  At that point, the tree will begin to rot, and if I happen to find the roots at just that moment in time, they make a fine carving material.  Otherwise, the tree continues to decay, releasing the rocks once more.

Pieces of root like this often have smaller stones trapped within the wood that reveal themselves as it is carved.  In this case, three such stones came to the surface, and I made every attempt to work them into the overall plan for this piece of wood.  When working with the unknown, it's best to be flexible, and in this case, I was able to incorporate one small stone into a suction cup on one of the tentacles.