Discover how one Lake Erie artists is collaborating with nature to turn pieces of washed ashore wood into whimsical mythical creatures.
These are the faces of mythical mermaids, sirens, fairies, wood nymphs, damsels lost at sea. Their long, wild, windblown hair sticks out like seaweed, frozen in wooden waves.
Almost all of the driftwood sculptures by Lakewood, Ohio, artist Linda Dempsey depict female figures. Recently, she received a commission for a sculpture of an owl. However, she’d rather not make art meant to resemble a specific person. The wood has its own personality, she insists.
“Driftwood is something that has been broken away from its source and has been through some twisting, turning and injury on its travels,” she says. “All of its inner resources have been thinned out, but it becomes another thing of beauty with another purpose.”
Dempsey collects driftwood and other found objects (pine cones, bark, roots, rocks, old bricks for bases) along several Lake Erie beaches. She almost always begins with larger pieces of wood she carves into a body or torso, later adding pieces for limbs and heads. Her go-to tools include a versatile Dremel (often called a crafter’s favorite tool), a hot glue gun and wooden dowels. Her kitchen doubles as an artist’s studio.
Dempsey prefers “an organic look” to her art, rejecting most bright colors or glittery accessories and letting nature be unfiltered.
“I put a lot of emotion into my work,” Dempsey explains, acknowledging the subtle sadness of some pieces, lurking just below the surface. “I close the eyes on my sculptures because it’s really the driftwood that speaks to me.”
Dempsey started as a photographer but found her artistic passions turning to driftwood in 2016. It wasn’t until two years later that she felt satisfied enough with her work to enter her first art show. Selling her early pieces, which she described as her “children,” wasn’t easy.
“Driftwood also became an obsession with me,” admits Dempsey, who offers her art under the name ADrift. “I would go out almost every day to the lake in every season to collect, collect, collect. I felt like I needed a pile of driftwood to be able to always choose the right one. It became almost problematic to me.”
The sculptor still combs beaches, even when she travels, including the rocky and sandy shores of California and the Northwest part of the United States. But Dempsey prefers the diversity and availability of driftwood found on Lake Erie’s shores over West Coast locations. She keeps her cache manageable by limiting herself to driftwood she can store at her home.
Her sculptures, most between 18 and 20 inches tall (although she has done “minis and a huge one”), can be found year-round at Negative Space Gallery in Cleveland, where they are priced from around $100 to upwards of $1,000.
Although Dempsey is pleased about the recognition given her talent, she also wants to credit a bigger force.
“I feel I am in collaboration with nature,” she says. “I don’t think I have the talent alone to do what I do.”
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Story:
Jill Sell
2024 Best of Lake Erie
