Winter surf delivers driftwood bounty to Monterey Bay artist
CARMEL -- For Pacific Grove driftwood artist Duncan Murray, the wild winter storms have brought a unique silver lining to his craft.
It is on the beaches of Monterey County, scattered, piled, just waiting to be discovered.
"This one is close but no cigar," Murray said, holding up a piece of driftwood.
He's not just looking for any old bump on a log. He seeks out the most colorful, twisted and gnarliest fragments of former trees to carve into one-of-a-kind works of art.
"This is a beast but we're going to give it a shot," he said.
After just minutes on Carmel River State Beach he finds something. "This could have been from the Big Sur fire," Murray wondered aloud.
A redwood log is one of tens of thousands of driftwood pieces on the sand but, to Murray's trained eye, it has possibilities.
"You can see the sinewy lines and it's solid," Murray said.
Lugging the the log off the beach proved to be challenging.
Murray says he has verbal OKs from local rangers to do this and state law allows removing driftwood pieces of 50 pounds or less, which is about what the log weighs, give or take.
After hauling it out and loading it into his car he takes it to his home studio where the real artistic work begins.
Honing driftwood into a gallery-ready piece is a months-long process.
Some of the pieces already exhibit traces of their final forms; Others are revealed under the saw and sander.
Murray also has another style -- sawing driftwood into flat squares for wall displays. No two tiles are exactly the same.
This spring, his art is on display at the Coast Gallery in Big Sur. He regularly sells to art collectors, decorators and homeowners looking to fill a certain niche.
And he's always on the hunt for his next piece.
At a time when many are still mopping up and digging out from the floods, Murray is reaping some of the wet winter's benefits.
"I feel a little guilty, with people still going through the trouble and expense of the floods and the fires. I get to find these things on the beach and make them into what I want," he said.
Murray, the artist and a creator, is making use of something most people consider to be all washed up.
