The Stump and Nails was the second completed artwork I made using nails as the primary medium. The image popped into my head, similar to the lawn mower cutting nails, of nails growing around a stump. And then that very day, I was driving around Guelph and there was a stump beside the road! So I called up a friend with a truck. I knocked on the person’s door, but no answer. So we loaded the stump into my friend’s truck. It was really heavy as it was still quite fresh and wet. And my friend had an injured back so he could barely help. So we dropped it off on my parents’ side lawn, and I hammered nails into the top. I started and completed it summer of 1994.

The impression is of nails growing out of the stump like mushrooms portraying an organic-inorganic image. Over the years of being outside, the stump did sprout mushrooms. Sadly though, time took its toll and this work of art succumbed to the elements. I did reuse the nails in another piece.

The funny story about this artwork is that where it sat on my parents’ lawn, a sizeable number of University of Guelph students would walk by it (students kind of cut through my parents’ property as a short cut).  Years later, I was talking with a work colleague and he mentioned he went of U of G, and I mentioned I was from Guelph. He asked where I lived, and I told him and I told him about the stump with nails. And he remembered it!

The picture above was taken by a professional photographer whose name I can’t remember. The piece was shown at the Enriched Bread Artist (EBA) Studio tour in 1997.

You can see the build up of  pine needles in the image above as the stump by this time had been outside for a number of years.

The image above was taken soon after it was finished in 1994. As you can see, no pine needles. I turned this image into a postcard, had about 100 printed, and handed them out for free at the EBA tour. I wonder if some people still have this postcard, or if they actually used them as a postcard and put it in the Mail.