People-Nature-Art with Sculptor Spencer Tinkham

Description

Spencer Tinkham is a self-taught, award-winning American wood sculptor and multidisciplinary artist known for creating intricate macro- and micro-sculptures of birds and wildlife from reclaimed and salvaged material. His paintings, sculptures, and installations explore perception, ecological change, and natural history. The Gilley is thrilled to bring him to Maine in September as the museum’s People-Nature-Art presenter. While here, he will be working with children in local schools. Working with carved wood, painting, and installation, Tinkham creates forms that move between realism and abstraction. Through scale, repetition, and material tension, his work transforms patterns found in nature into physical encounters that connect biological form with human emotion. Rather than depicting the natural world directly, the work shifts familiar forms into psychologically charged states, inviting viewers to reconsider how they perceive and relate to the living world. The ecological fates of birds and humans are intertwined,” he says. “I share specific stories of birds as a witness to natural and manmade change. Their fragile beauty and unsung voices become magnified so as not to be missed by the careless eye.”