Colonel Waller, Jr.

C. Jack Waller C. Jack Waller Colonel Waller, Jr. PO Box 112 Virginia City, Montana 59755 Phone: 406-843-5287 Contact: Send Email I live and work in Virginia City with my wife Kristin, daughter Ruby, and good dog Boji. I’ve worked with architectural design, construction, and furniture making since the late 1960s, when I also made my first rustic furniture of California’s north coast driftwood. In 1989, I moved to Montana to seek a “right livelihood” as a furniture maker, and to pursue other practices of creative writing and music making. Tree art begins in the surrounding forests where I roam as a hunter-gatherer of extraordinary, usually standing dead, trees. I’m especially fascinated with lodgepole pine (pinus contorta v. latifolia), a tree that grows into beautifully deformed shapes as it overcomes injury caused by tree-crowded and shaded slopes, the weight of its fallen peers, and snowy winds and drifts of our long winters. I don’t know of another tree species whose trunk grows in such a variety of curvilinear twists, curls, forks, and crooks as this pine, whose common name, “lodgepole,” suggests only the straight, narrow, supple poles of the Indian tipi. I say that I am a tree worker, not a woodworker, because I use the original tree rather than the tree after it is processed into wood (lumber). I work with hand-held tools, a very different process than delivering lumber to stationary machines that do most of the work. So tree working is slow, quiet, thoughtful, and experimental. The making of each piece proceeds, almost ceremonially, with primitive tools and techniques. The challenge of making tree art—furniture, sculpture, and architectural detail—is to select and assemble natural tree shapes into a unique artifact of my own design and making. This is not “Art as opposed to Nature,” as art is often defined, but a careful collaboration of artist and nature. In each piece, I attempt to honor and to enhance the character and life story of each tree. The Creighton Block Gallery, located downtown Virginia City, currently exhibits a collection of my work. The gallery web site includes photos and more information about pieces that are for sale. Earlier this year I documented the making of a plank trestle table in a blog that has 34 postings and 125 photographs. The blog URL is cjackwallerjr.wordpress.com.

Listed Artwork:   (Click on one to view more information about that artwork) The Wizards Chair Egyptian Chest Chaise for the Princess of Vikingsholm Tetonic Dining Room Set A Bamboo Rod Makers Bed Hobbit Chair Burled Settee & Floor Lamp Crone and Child Bee Tree Coffee Table Bed and Armoire Gallery display--rocker, lamp, table Pagan Dancer Burled table lamp Tree artists toteboxes WBs sunburst slab dining table Musicians Ensemble Dining Room Chairs Coffee & End Tables