Michael Peterson sculptures answer the call of the wild

In a small house on Lopez Island, Michael Peterson lives close to the wild.

There, he observes the natural world in the manner of the great writers/naturalists Henry David Thoreau and Gary Snyder, expressing his reverence for it through his creativity.

Peterson produces elegant, abstract sculptures made from local woods. A current exhibition at Bellevue Arts Museum traces his artistic development over the past 20 years.

He came to his art serendipitously. Finishing a stint as a Navy medic, he happened on a craft shop and became enamored of the wood pieces, marveling at their grains and textures. After moving to the Pacific Northwest, he enrolled in the art program at Edmonds Community College, where he began working with wood.

He soon realized that burls (uneven growths on tree trunks) offered him the greatest artistic opportunities. He began by working on a lathe.

Capitalizing on the inherent irregularities of burls, he created sophisticated vessels that evoked, in miniature, the eroded landscapes of the natural world.

Throughout his career, Peterson has worked to emphasize depth and texture.

He uses traditional native tools to carve. He sandblasts. His methods imitate the action of wind, water, sand and sun: Often he washes the surface with bleach to approximate the effect of sun on driftwood. He sometimes applies a layer of India ink. Meticulously working and reworking a piece, he intensifies contours and exposes layers of color.

He has recently been using mostly fresh madrona burls. Cutting them outdoors with a chain saw in early winter, he creates large blocks of the "green" wood. He then slices out the center with the chain saw to form open-ended cubes with 1- to 4-inch walls.

They dry quickly in his warm house and, because madrona is the most reactive of woods during the drying process, they sometimes surprise Peterson with their final shapes — twisting and bending as water is released from their cells. He selects the most artistically pleasing pieces to sandblast, bleach and ink. The finished objects are grouped to create compositions that pay reverence to the land forms and natural phenomena that typify his island.

Peterson is both abstract artist and naturalist. In his work we are reminded of sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Yet hovering over it all are the ghosts of John Muir, Aldo Leopold and fellow writers/environmentalists who appreciate and revere our natural heritage.