Gene Hensley

Imagine being able to walk around a tree and to know how the wood will look inside. Gene Hensley’s skills with working wood began by observing his great uncle creating hickory bottom bark chairs, one of which is in the Smithsonian. Whether he and his mentor were wielding a chainsaw for firewood or removing broken trees after a storm, they were observing how growing conditions effect what happens inside the tree. Hensley discovered that the annual growth rings reveal how droughts and geography and the minerals in the soil create each tree’s unique interior. But it’s the wind that causes torsion and chatoyancy in each individual tree. Torsion refers to the twisting that a tree experiences in wind. Chatoyance being the optical illusions of a shimmering, undulating and three dimensional effect on a flat surface. This is created when the wood grain fibers reflect light at different angles. Hensley’s wood art offers an insight into his experiential knowledge of all the native trees of the Ozarks. And sometimes the special visual surfaces and shapes of the wood belong on a wall.