Two leaders grew together, leaving one life written in two voices.

Symphysis takes her name from the joining of two separate parts into one. At some point in this black walnut's life, two leaders grew alongside one another and eventually became a single trunk.

Their histories remained visible in the wood. Two centres. Two sets of rings. One tree.

When the slab is inked and pulled onto paper, both growth stories appear together — sometimes distinct, sometimes overlapping — preserving the unusual architecture the tree carried through its life.

Sometimes a tree reminds us of home.

Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, there was a large oval mirror with a bold gold-and-black frame hanging in our home. It was one of those pieces you walk past thousands of times without realizing it has become part of you.

Decades later, when I pulled the first print from this Black Walnut slab, there it was again.

The long oval shape, the dark outer edge, the rings radiating from its centre — something about it immediately brought me back to that mirror. Once I saw the resemblance, I couldn’t unsee it.

But there is another kind of mirror at work here, too. A print pulled directly from a slab reverses the image of the wood. The slab is the original. The print, quite literally, is its Mirror Image.

And perhaps that is what I love most about this print. A tree I never knew somehow preserved a shape that could return me to something I had known almost all my life, but hadn’t thought about in years.

Some trees remind us where they grew. Others remind us where we came from.

The hardest years often leave the strongest stories.

Nevertheless... is one of the quirkiest slabs in the studio — slightly lopsided, impossible to ignore, and full of personality. While most tree rings grow in neat circles, this pine seems to have decided that rules were optional.

Its rings record just over a century of growth. For roughly the first fifty-five years, everything appears calm and steady. Then, over the course of about twelve years, the rings tighten dramatically, recording a difficult chapter in the tree's life. Those twelve seasons are compressed so closely together that they appear as a single thick blank band in the finished print.

Then something remarkable happens.

The tree recovers.

The rings begin to widen again, carrying those difficult years forward rather than erasing them. It didn't grow because life became easy. It simply kept growing.

The slab is the original manuscript. The print is the interpretation.

Maybe that's why I've always been drawn to this one. Beneath the quirky shape and unmistakable personality is a quiet reminder that difficult seasons don't define a life. They simply become one chapter in a much longer story.

Some trees reveal their stories immediately. Others keep them hidden beneath the surface.

I chose this maple for one reason: I knew it had been home to ambrosia beetles. Woodworkers prize “ambrosia maple” for the beautiful markings those tiny insects leave behind, and I couldn’t help wondering whether their hidden work would appear in a Wooden Ink print.

It did.

Radiating outward from the centre are delicate star-like bursts where the beetles travelled through the wood. They’re subtle at first, but once you notice them, you begin seeing them everywhere — tiny signatures left by creatures that spent their lives quietly shaping the tree from within.

The slab itself is equally compelling, with its dramatic central split, sweeping grain, extra branch inclusion at the top and irregular outline.

Sometimes the most beautiful stories aren’t written by a single author. Sometimes they’re collaborations between a tree and the tiny lives it quietly supported.

Sometimes a tree hides its story in plain sight.

When I first picked up this reclaimed Black Walnut slab, I saw an interesting cross-section of wood — but nothing more. It wasn’t until I rotated it ninety degrees that everything changed.

The weathered bark became a mountain ridge. A natural split became a bolt of lightning stretching across the sky.

For nearly a century, this tree quietly recorded each growing season within its rings. Long after its life had ended, those same rings revealed an entirely different story — one of mountains, storms, and nature’s remarkable ability to create landscapes without ever intending to.

Months after naming the print, the slab revealed another surprise: two distinct growth centres hidden within its rings. Rather than growing from a single leader, this walnut likely began with two stems growing together, each leaving its own fingerprint within the same piece of wood.

Even after months in the studio, a tree can still surprise you.

I wasn’t looking for Morley. I was buying dinner.

Leaning against Stephen’s Butcher Shop in Port Carling was an enormous cross-section of ash — nearly 28 inches across, several inches thick, and unlike anything else in my collection. I knew immediately that I wanted to print it.

The story came afterward.

In the 1960s, Morley Stephen deliberately built his family’s home around three beautiful ash trees he refused to cut down. His grandchildren later swung from their branches, and the trees remained part of the family for decades.

Then came the emerald ash borer. Eventually, all three trees were lost.

Morley’s daughter held onto this slab because she wanted to “do something with it.” Years later, through a wonderfully serendipitous chain of events, it ended up in my studio.

The first print went back to the Stephen family.

The slab they had saved became the something they had been waiting for.

We’re born with our fingerprints. Trees spend a lifetime growing theirs.

Some people see a fingerprint when they look at this tree. I used to see the flame of a birthday candle. Enough people saw a thumbprint that eventually I began to see it too.

I like that neither answer is wrong.

This quiet Black Walnut doesn’t have the dramatic shape or unusual grain of some of the others in the Wooden Ink collection. What drew me to it was something simpler: the way its rings gather around an off-centre beginning and sweep upward, creating a pattern that feels strangely familiar.

A fingerprint. A flame. Something entirely different, depending on who is looking.

No two people carry the same fingerprint, just as no two trees spend a lifetime growing the same pattern of rings. Both are shaped slowly, over time. Both become a record that belongs to one life and no other.

The slab is the original manuscript. The print is the interpretation.

And this one seems to leave a little room for the viewer to write their own.

Some trees need time before you understand what they are trying to say. Heartthrob didn’t.

A tornado brought this cherry tree down at my best friend’s cottage near Havelock, Ontario. The tree had already been dying before it fell, and by the time we cut into it, decay had begun working its way through the centre.

But the moment I saw the cross-section, none of that was what I noticed first.

I saw a heart.

There it was — slightly crooked, imperfect and unmistakable. Even the small detached branch near the top seemed to belong exactly where it had landed.

The decay at the centre has made this one of the more difficult slabs to print. The oldest wood — the heart of the tree — has softened and disappeared in places, so it simply won’t take ink. Every impression carries that absence as white space at its centre.

I’ve come to love that part most.

The centre of a tree holds its earliest years just like our hearts do. And perhaps memory works a little like wood: the years remain part of us even when some of their details soften with time.

Heartthrob spent roughly forty years adding ring after ring around a centre it would eventually begin to lose. Then a tornado brought its life standing in the forest to an end.

And somehow, what remains looks like a heart.

Some things don’t have to remain whole to remain with us.

From one end, the rings are tight and crowded. Follow them across the slab, and gradually everything begins to open.

The Long View is an ash slab that asks you to change your perspective. Its grain shifts as your eye travels across the wood, carrying decades of growth with it.

That became the reason for its name.

Trees grow one season at a time. Changes that seem almost invisible from one year to the next become unmistakable when viewed across a lifetime.

The Long View carries that idea beautifully. What looks crowded from one place becomes spacious from another. What seems like a moment becomes part of something much larger.

Sometimes the only way to see how far something has travelled is to look back from further down the path.

Some trees seem to grow outward from a single beginning. Russian Doll appears to have had several.

At least five distinct growth centres remain visible in this ash slab. They sit within and alongside one another — circles inside circles, beginnings held inside later beginnings.

The two largest sections tell the story most clearly. Between them, wood from two major leaders grew together, creating the dense, irregular meeting place that makes Russian Doll both fascinating and particularly difficult to print.

Whatever happened above ground, this tree repeatedly changed its architecture and kept growing. New leaders formed. New directions emerged. Each became incorporated into the tree that followed.

Eventually, all that adaptation met something impossibly small: the emerald ash borer. Russian Doll became one of millions of North American ash trees lost to the beetle.

But the record of all those beginnings remained in the wood.

One tree. Many beginnings. Each one still held inside the next.

Sometimes the simplest stories are the ones we recognize first.

Record Player doesn't hide behind an unusual shape. At first glance, it looks exactly as we expect a tree to look: ring after ring radiating outward from a remarkably centred beginning.

Each one records another growing season. Small changes in spacing carry the rhythm of different years, building a lifetime outward one ring at a time.

Then one detail interrupts the pattern.

A pale inclusion sweeps across the rings like the tonearm of a record player. It likely marks the place where a branch once emerged from the trunk, redirecting the surrounding grain as the tree continued growing.

Long after that branch disappeared, its presence remained written into the wood.

Perhaps that's why the name feels so fitting. A record preserves something that happened long ago. So does a tree.

You just have to stop long enough to read it.

Some pieces announce themselves immediately.

Wally wasn't one of them.

When I first met this reclaimed Black Walnut slab, there was nothing especially dramatic about him. No spectacular voids. No unusual branching. No shape that immediately suggested what the finished print might become.

But the longer I worked with him, the more I began to notice.

Wally refuses to be rushed. Too much pressure and much of his character disappears beneath the ink. But with a lighter hand, careful burnishing and just enough ink, the details begin to emerge: crisp annual rings, subtle shifts in the grain, and those wonderful cracks that interrupt an otherwise orderly record of growth.

Somewhere along the way, the slab I might once have overlooked became one of the most dependable in the studio — and one I find myself returning to again and again.

I think there's something lovely about that.

Not everything remarkable announces itself when you first encounter it. Some things reveal themselves slowly, after you've spent enough time paying attention.

Wally taught me that sometimes the second look is the one that matters.