Palm Desert resident Marcy Gregory is an artist who gives scrap wood a new life, reducing disparate shapes to an abstract uniformity in a lyrical way.

Ms. Gregory’s initial training was in life drawing at the Art Student’s League in New York City during the late 60’s. Her introduction to the medium of wood began in 1995 at the Palm Springs Desert Museum in the adult artists’ workshop taught by the talented artist Florence Treatman. The mission was to create Louise Nevelson style boxes. Gregory became so enamored of the process that she never stopped. Although her assemblage sculptures are especially evocative of Nevelson, over the years she has been inspired by other assemblage artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Noah Purifoy, Arnoldo Pomodoro and Picasso. Since the mid-90s, Ms. Gregory has amassed a seeming forest of wood in her Palm Desert studio of refuse wood, furniture and metal items where she can be inspired by a particular wood shape or container and then, like using a planchette on a Ouija board, she moves various wood pieces around until a pleasing composition emerges.

Artist’s Statement

“Making an assemblage sculpture from found pieces of wood begins with a scrap in my studio catching my eye. It’s size doesn’t necessarily determine the resulting piece. If it’s small it can be a little accent on a larger sculpture or an integral part of a small sculpture.

People ask me where I find my collection of scraps, and I tell them that it’s from walking with my head down and my eyes peeled, from being the lucky recipient of wood from cabinet makers, barns, and being on the lookout for garage sale wood items and bulky wood items on garbage collection days, which I then take apart.

Not all pieces of wood go together. Choosing wood pieces from my studio is akin to creating an extended family, even when the the finished sculpture is abstract. Before committing to gluing and screwing in the pieces, I observe the unfinished piece from all different angles, sometimes changing a little, and sometimes changing all of it! Then I paint and may refine it even further.

I know when a sculpture is finished when no other piece can be added or removed. As any artist will attest, you just know.

Each and every time I begin a new sculpture I wonder if I can create a new piece that I’ll love as much as its predecessors, and if I’ll have the same degree of inspiration. To address this phenomenon of doubt, I begin the process of reorganizing my wood, picking up each piece to appreciate and re-familiarize myself with it, and then I’m inspired all over again.

It took me a long time to part with my sculptures because they are all unique and so much a part of me, but the joy I derive from having others appreciate their primitive beauty in their own homes ultimately enables me to let them go.”