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Drifting into beauty
Women turn river's wood detritus into artwork
On its way to the Delta, the Mississippi flows by St. Louis, leaving tokens from its travels elsewhere. Some strollers see those gifts as garbage, felled from forests, bemudded from other rivers. Nanny sees the limbs and branches as part of the beauty of the riverscape.
"When I find the wood, it's all grey, caked in Mississippi mud. It's filthy," she said. "But sometimes, one draws me to pull it out of the sand and water.
"Maybe it's a rounded edge. Maybe its very 'stickness' sticks out," she added, unable to articulate exactly why one hunk of wood wins over another to go home with her. She's sure about one thing, though: "Finding the wood is the fun part." That, and the first time she sands it, revealing what lies beneath.
Nanny, who describes herself as an Episcopal priest in artist's clothes, works with an old friend, Marsha Sanguinette, to uncover the spirit of the wood that, somehow, has survived an arduous journey, starting God knows where, continuing through churning, muddy waters, past barges and speed boats. The sojourn ends at a sandbar, just south of the Chain of Rocks Bridge, north of St. Louis. The wood, which has been scrubbed and weathered by water, wind and sun, is rarely distinguishable as walnut or maple or pine.
From ugly to beauty It was on her first walks by the river that Nanny idly noticed the wood. Then she began purposefully to scan the shores and the waters, hoping for one vocal, vital piece.
Often, the only wood she found was too waterlogged for transcendence, but other pieces, the ones with whispers of the divine, begged to be touched, to be transformed.
Nanny took her finds to Sanguinette. "Marsha had been sanding mostly small sticks and walnut shells -- what some call 'found' objects -- for several years," said Nanny. Sanguinette has devoted more time to collecting these bits of wood since she retired as a sports writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2005.
After the found wood is retrieved from the river, the artists scrape and sand, file and polish. They scrape away only the soft dead parts, the rotten bark and layers of decay. More layers exfoliate when Nanny abrades the wood with an orbital sander and a high-speed rotary tool. Sanguinette uses sand paper, small files and cloth to reach the small holes and crevices.
The women are careful to preserve the original integrity and character of the wood. They make it live again. Instead of stain, wax or other products to enhance the wood, they favor just a glaze of tung oil.
Shape is important "Marsha really loves the wood," said Nanny, who has lived in St. Louis for 18 years and who until recently was assistant dean at Christ Church Cathedral.
"Sometimes, I have to conduct interventions when she starts to drive with her wood project in the car," she said with a laugh.
Every piece of wood she finds – some as large as 14 feet tall – must stand vertical, although not necessarily without support. "Trees are supposed to stand," she said simply. She picks not just cross shapes but, specifically, crucifixes.
That image is not always shared by others. "I might think it looks like a crucifix, but when I showed one to Marsha's little boy, he thought it looked like a rhinoceros," she recalled.
Her "studio" is her driveway, where she always burns incense as she works. "Maybe I'm a 'high' woodworker – like a 'high' Anglican," she joshed. She rubs and rubs each piece with sage oil, sensually marrying smell with touch and sight.
"I've learned that wood calms me," Nanny said. "Every chunk of wood I find now has to give me a sense of peace."
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