Innervation
En passant synapse formation
I really love the way an axon innervates a spine head. The two opposing membranes flow together in an intimate-sorta way. I wanted to capture that kind of intimacy in this piece. I did alter the orientation of the axon in relation to the dendrite in order to keep the reconstruction within the ‘frame’ of the log, so this specific innervation pattern is slightly artificial. But I like how the two elements seem to dance together. It captures how I feel about these structures.
About the build
I used a reciprocating saw to cut a 6 foot log of red wood into ~3/4 inch thick cookies and ended up with a stack of 80. Then I mapped out the synaptic shapes onto each cookie, cut them out, and reassembled them. I really tried to keep track of the position of each piece as I cut it out from the cookie, as to reconstruct the grain of the log as closely as possible. I think the finished product, where some notion of grain is achieved despite considerable misalignment, nicely illustrates that all reconstructions are necessarily imperfect. And that imperfections are beautiful.