“Timber to Ash”

"Timber to Ash" features works that loosely fit into the genres of drawing and wood. Evoking movement, and the very essence of life, Toolbox is thrilled to exhibit two artists whose practices intentionally balance each other's mediums and motives. This exhibition celebrates the act of creation using tools we are constantly surrounded by—wood, light, shadow, paper, charcoal, and graphite. These materials form the components of a single tree, which now break off to create a multitude of whole artworks. 

Each material exhibits distinctive properties: charcoal can be intensely rich and velvety, or delicately gray and murky, while graphite is slippery, shiny, and easy to erase. Wood is versatile and lasting, serving as a beginning for several walks of daily life. The innovative uses of these media—smudging, scraping, joining or breaking—make them transformative tools for adding intensity, depth, precision, and expression to an artist’s vision.

Michael Rank's assertive geometric forms, found in his towering sculptures, speak of empathetic design and organic fluidity inherent to wood works. These objects surprise and flow in a manner that challenges our preconceived notions of how wood, as a rigid material, should act—hence, defying and stretching the limits of categorization. Rank's six coopered wood sculptures play with gravity, and in doing so invite light and shadow into their dance as well.Their movement inspires our own, and allows us to experience the same work from a number of positions and perspectives. 

Jason Tipps, acutely attuned to the minutest of details, rejects the notions that drawings are merely two-dimensional. Rather, his animals and humans are alive with emotion, as they unfold ingeniously from a flat plane and seem to leap into our world. These seven works aren’t just scenes—they are moments. Tipps’ self-taught vibrant charcoal and graphite sketches are both learned and translated, forming an animated connection between our bodies and those of beloved figures frozen in time.

Using a hybridized language of creativity and structure, wood objects frame the space, while drawings breathe life into once-still environments. Works scale walls and murmur from across the room in this exhibition, aiming to change our understanding of hard edges and soft curves.