Geode Series - Western Maple Burl Wood Bowl by Robyn Horn, c. 1988

9" diameter x 9" high

Robyn Hutcheson Horn is a full-time, self-employed sculptor and native-born Arkansan whose work has drawn regional and national recognition and is shown in galleries throughout the United States. Her art is regularly illustrated in craft and woodworking magazines. Horn is the founder and first president of the Collectors of Wood Art, an organization set up in 1997 for the purpose of fostering interest in wood art. She has befriended and supported many craft artists whose work she has acquired while also amassing an impressive collection of wood art, furniture, metal, glass, and ceramics. Horn’s career as a wood artist began in 1983 when her brother-in-law, Sam Horn, returned from a lathe-turning workshop at the Arrowmont School for Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. With his tutoring, she began turning vessels, and three years later, her forms evolved from utilitarian bowl forms into thick-walled semi-spherical forms she called her “GEODE SERIES.” Finding the geode form sculptural but static, Horn began to explore ways to create dynamic tension in the balance of the piece to disrupt its symmetry and rigid geometry, first by canting the work on its side, then by contrasting the smooth polished wood of the piece with the natural bark of the tree. This led to piercing the face of the geode with sliding dovetails of contrasting wood and color. Her work is included in the collections of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN, and the Mobile Museum of Art. Signed and numbered 225.