Artist Glenn Richardson, showing in WMRA's "DinoHenge Whacktasticness" art exhibit, says:
I was born in Montana and grew up in Virginia, but have never felt like I belong in any
one place. My formal education is in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University
with grad studies at Rutgers. One year in school in New Jersey cost me more than four in
Virginia so I became a starving artist in the South Bronx. It wasn’t the sit-in at the Bronx
Borough President’s office, or the city’s attempt to cut off our water, or the incident
with the Voo-Doo Chicken or the city-appointed administrator pulling a pistol on one of
my neighbors, but most likely the stand- off between the Guardian Angels and the City
Marshalls that gave me the idea to move back to Virginia and start a landscape
design/build company. At that point I gave up making art and devoted my efforts to
landscape architecture.
Along the way I have become a certified arborist, been employed as a Landscape
Architect, horticulturalist, Auto-Cad draftsman and landscape salesman. In part I got
involved in designing outdoor spaces because I value land and nature. In the end I feel
designing landscapes for suburbanites makes me more of the problem, assisting turning
farmland into tract housing and expanding automobile culture in this country.
All of the works here were carved with chainsaws. My studio/workshop is in the
Shenandoah Valley. Most of the wood I work with is from trees I felled myself. I use
mostly eastern red cedar, white pine, and linden, with the occasional box elder and
silver maple. The paint is exterior rated house paint, sometimes with extra pigment
added to get the right effect or color.
Chainsaw carving is a folk tradition that dates to just after the Second World War. I am
expanding chainsaw art from one solely relegated to rural environs into urban habitats. I
hope you enjoy what you see and have a great experience with this work.
Thanks,
Glenn Richardson