Two of the nation’s premiere wood artists bring to Patina their latest work. Stylistically the two have little in common. Fundamentally, their connection is profound: to separate these men from nature, or nature from their work would be impossible. The energy of the trees, the water, and the land courses beneath its surface. Having worked more than thirty years with wood, each has formed collaborative relationships with it. Ebner and Mitchell strive to expand the possibilities of its beauty and its stories. They are masters.

They will arrive in Santa Fe from opposite coasts. Ebner comes from New York. He brings furniture and decorative objects crafted from exotic hardwoods. Some are cast in bronze. Mitchell will arrive from California with turned vessels and a group of sculptures never before exhibited.

With work in the collections of the nation’s most prominent museums, the Smithsonian and the American Craft Museum, among them, David Ebner is counted among America’s finest studio craft furniture makers. Already familiar to serious collectors, his work attracted a larger audience when groups of his pieces were sold at Sotheby’s in separate auctions over the past two years.

Mitchell’s work is found in permanent collections of the prestigious High Museum in Atlanta, as well as the Smithsonian. He is known as a teacher and an early innovator in the turned wood movement.

David Ebner’s superb craftsmanship and design yield pieces he designates “the antiques of tomorrow.” He cites influences as disparate as the Bauhaus and Art Nouveau movements. One sees in his furniture that marriage, the clean Bauhaus lines, soften and sweep gracefully, as in the Art Nouveau. His desire to create designs that endure achieves its greatest expression in the cast bronze pieces. One, known as the “Renwick Bench,” is cast from Ebner’s piece in the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery.

Bruce Mitchell introduces a group of sculptures entitled, “Tall Grass.” “The inspiration for these pieces comes from watching the sun’s rays rippling through water in tide pools where I skin dive on the coast. The curly grain in the redwood perfectly mimics the patterns that the light makes on the long streamers of kelp.” Made from wood taken from 800 year old redwood trees and mounted on aluminum stems, these sculptures also capture the movement of the kelp and take Mitchell’s work into entirely new directions.