All Kiva Artists
Little Bird at Loretto
El Centro de Santa Fe
102 East Water Street
Santa Fe, NM 87501505-820-7413
505-820-7414 (fax)
info@kivaindianart.com
Anthony Ortiz
“The wood seems liquid as I work it on the lathe,” says artist Anthony Ortiz. “It flows through my hands and the jagged edges smooth to a glass finish.”
Ortiz, a White Rock resident, crafts beautiful and exotic woods into bowls, lamps and platters. His entries have claimed top awards at juried art shows locally and on a state level.
Ortiz’s work is unique because he creates inlaid turquoise design on the inside as well as the outside of his pieces. To fashion a bowl with an inlaid design on the inner bottom, he cuts wood into flat square pieces of varying thicknesses. Ortiz laminates one of these pieces over another and on top of the second one carves out a pattern, filling the channels with a mixture of clear epoxy and crushed turquoise. As additional layers of wood are laminated, a solid block if formed, ready for shaping on the lathe. Ortiz must hollow out the inside down to the design and flawlessly reveal the inlaid pattern.
Ortiz enjoys the grain and freshly cut smell of cedar. He compares a block of pine to putting a cube of butter on the lathe, while cocobolo wood is so hard it burns when cut with a band saw. “On the lathe, though, cocobolo seems wet and shapes well,” Ortiz says. “I sometimes hesitate to cut it because I just want to look at its beauty.”
Although purple-heart has bent Ortiz’s tools during cutting, it can also have difficult soft spots, so it must be worked fast. However, zebrawood, dark brown with winding black stripes, is his favorite because of the intriguing designs that appear when the wood is turned.
Ortiz feels a God-give instinct guides him toward the right shape for each creation. “I may think I’m turning a vase,” he explains, “but then find the wood isn’t going that way. I never fight it. I help the wood discover the shape that’s inside. I love imagining what beautiful wood can be, then turning and freeing it.”
~ Jennifer McKerley