Artful Grandeur

Although often lumped in with the indescribable, it seems that a true artist has but one primary purpose: More than to decorate the walls of the chicest curated hotspots, more than to sell big-ticket items at top galleries, more even than to be noted as an artist of note in history’s tomes, the artist’s primary purpose is to create something that is unmistakably themselves. This, and this task alone, is what Luis Gonzalez, Colombian woodcarver and Miami transplant, succeeds so admirably in every time he sets lathe to native hardwood. Interested in woodcraft from a startlingly young age, it was only with the pressuring of friends and family (beneficiaries of some of the artist’s earliest pieces) that he began to venture into the art world, a journey that has ended with showings in some of our nation’s top art contests. Our only question: Why fruit? “I’ve always been fascinated by wood and tools, and the form of the pear,” he says. “So I decided to mix both, and from there I started venturing into more shapes.”; MamaluWood.com.