Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
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39 ORNAMENT 36.2.2012 "As a woodworker you're told literally the world is flat, you gotta cut it, drill it and force it. Now I realize that it's not flat and you can get wood to do things you never thought it could," Reyes enthuses. Nothing eloquently expresses this more than his finished work. Reyes has spent years revealing the capabilities of wood, and a beautiful progression of pieces speaks to the all-encompassing inquisitiveness he evinces for the material. Cornucopic winding bracelets are created from a single piece, spiraling around itself to suggest plasticity, motility and animation that turns the normal conception of wood on its head. Like coiling springs, Reyes's work seems to store potentiality. A time-lapse video of a growing tree would show that living wood is not inanimate, it moves and expands. It is this spirit of stored energy that Reyes conjures with each of his pieces. "What's interesting with the circular forms," he says, gesturing at a wooden brooch composed of overlapping circles, "is that it's one solid piece that creates that structure. So in a humid environment, this will grow, and in a dry environment, it's going to get smaller. So this exciting thing happens with the natural material that is part of the living process, which is really cool." Reyes creates many of these brooches and bracelets by using a compression machine, which alters the cellstructure of the wood, making it pliable for months if the moisture content remains. With this process, Reyes can make wood of varying thicknesses easily bend into graceful curves. While his wood is currently being processed by a compression machine in the state of Washington, he is putting together a Kickstarter campaign to purchase one for his studio. His organic method of problem-solving represents a core part of Reyes's character, a grand pool of creative imagination, derived from a true love for process: solutions are arrived at not all at once, but part by part, binding at last into the answer to a larger problem. Learning something from the execution of a series of rings, ring by ring, leads to an interpretation that can be applied to a bracelet or brooch. As he explores methods for his jewelrymaking, he also ruminates on how best to run a small business. He has two enterprises: Gustav Reyes and Simply Wood Rings. Reyes does almost all the work for the Gustav Reyes line, with one or two people occasionally assisting in heavy milling and sanding. Simply Wood Rings receives a large number of orders, and since every ring must be hand milled, up to three assistants are involved at the busiest times of the year. The shop assistants for Gustav Reyes do not work on the jewelry, but rather are involved in the photographic and clerical aspects of the company. Although Reyes has had some training with Adobe Photoshop