Sculptures of nature or... the wood of eternity

I met the architect Irina Crudu through a mutual friend. I had already learned that she had an impressive collection of wooden pieces of various shapes and sizes, collected from nature. I found her passion beautiful and wanted to find out how she discovered it. After meeting her, I immediately fell in love with her. She told me about her collection and I was very impressed. I asked her to write down the story of these nature sculptures, with the idea that I would write an article. When I read what she sent me I realized that I could not and should not write the story myself. It is so beautifully told by Irina that it would have been impious of me to interject. As a result, I am pleased to invite you to meet Irina and her gallery of natural art.

"The story begins with my mother. She is the one who, through her profession as a geological engineer, took me along the winding roads of picturesque Romania. From an early age, I have been travelling the valleys and mountains with her, in campaigns of time never measurable. She taught me to discover, to look for the line in the circles, to see the sunrise in the sunset, the one who carved the stone looking for treasure in the piles of stones.

I have a lot of memories from my pilgrimages in the Făgărași, Călimani, Apuseni, Bucegi mountains, so beautiful and rich. That's how I came to walk through the forests, along the flowing waters, to discover all sorts of shapes in the roots, in the branches that appeared on the way. It is surprising to see the turmoil of the water, which, in its passage, washes, grinds, rolls, scoops up the bank, the stones or the wood.

To see how the debris from the roots, from the twisted branches, come to rest between the rocks, how they embrace the stones in the path or how they try to overcome obstacles and come to rest in the banks.

The wood, contorted by the long road they have to travel, seems to find peace only when it merges with the mud on the water's edge. Only then, if you look closely, do they seem to be saved.

It's divine to discover what comes out of this tight struggle that eventually turns into a slow dance of embrace. The struggle is long forgotten!

Wonderful moments! To walk along the river valley, to see such clean waters, to hear the falling of the water, in a tumult of years and years, and so, without wanting to, you are taken back to the daily tumult of our everyday life... Does it make any sense?

I often think of being a piece of wood and ending up like roots floating on water, in the arms of a sculptor who will mould me into a unique form in another existence, probably just as ephemeral.

And so my mother carved samples from the rocks in which she imagined she was discovering deposits, and I exercised my imagination by picking twigs, roots, discovering different shapes in them, still searching, without knowing it, for eternity.

There was so much wood, in so many poses and colours. I would have taken them all. Some hugged the rocks, others simply dried on the water's edge, seeming to call out to me, calling "take me, take me, no, take me".

They were in the form of the bodies of muscular men, women in various poses, animals of all kinds, all trying to get my attention, to offer themselves. Unfortunately not everything I saw I could take, but they remained in my memory and will die with me.

Bodies sculpted by the craftsmanship of water droplets, capable of expressing human truth beyond the academic clichés we so desperately want to fit into!

Nature confirms its creative genius for the umpteenth time!

Let's just be......."