A pair of Port Townsend woodworkers are getting a unique opportunity this fall to show off more than utilitarian but remarkable craftsmanship.

Seth Rolland and Kevin Reiswig, both of whom produce furniture in Port Townsend, are teaming up to display more abstract sculptures in September, on Bainbridge Island.

Rolland and Reiswig’s “TREEisms” exhibition runs from Friday, Sept. 6, through Sunday, Sept. 29, at the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts gallery.

While the show’s opening runs from 6-8 p.m. Sept. 6, Reiswig will additionally be delivering an artist talk from 1-2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 7.

Even when both woodworkers were turning their talents toward more practical and marketable ends, they agreed that their furniture pieces have long taken on more sculptural forms, with influences drawn from their shared love of nature.

Rolland started woodworking professionally in 1990, while Reiswig began about 15 years ago. Each man realized the craft could be their vocation during different phases of their development.

A high school woodshop class planted the seeds for Reiswig’s embrace of professional woodworking in college, well before he came to Port Townsend in 2017, while Rolland had already earned a college degree in environmental studies before he began working in boat-building and furniture-making.

Just as Rolland had been fascinated with trees even before working with trail crews when he was in high school, so too did Reiswig trace his childhood curiosity about trees to his ultimate fascination with wood as a “living, breathing” material to work with. That is to the point that he “never encountered another artistic medium that sparked my imagination as much,” said Reiswig.

In his artist’s statement for “TREEisms,” Rolland identified himself as “a lifelong tree-hugger” who understands “the irony of loving trees while consuming them in my work,” which led him to use branches either already pruned, or scavenged after being shed by still-living trees.

According to Rolland, this has radically changed his process, because “the branch I find is never the one I was seeking. Selecting the branch I want to converse with is one of the most significant moments in my process.”

Not only has Reiswig also employed a mixture of found, fallen and pruned branches, but he’s also constructed pieces from salvaged, scrapped and otherwise discarded wood that had been headed for the landfill or burn pile.

“These pieces make metaphorical connections between living trees, and the commodification and historical use of tree bodies” as wood, said Reiswig, who likened his piece-by-piece artistic creations to “a greater flow-state of natural processes.”

Reiswig credited trees with providing “a meaningful refuge” for his young imagination, which grew as he planted, pruned and grafted trees, beyond his taking up woodworking.

“Trees are masters of connections,” Reiswig wrote in his artist’s statement for “TREEisms.” “Their bodies connect to themselves and to one another; to the soil, water, air, sunlight; and to a multitude of other living things all at once. They seem to make these connections as easily as breathing.”

Similarly, Rolland pointed out how many of his pieces focus on “the strong, beautiful branching joints that trees effortlessly produce in endless variety.”

Although Reiswig has worked in sculpture before, he’s never previously shown it in Washington state. Since 2020, the same impulse to “create strong and lasting connections” that led him to produce furniture has also motivated his attempts to learn from and emulate “the effortless craftsmanship of nature.”

Reiswig’s sculptural work has resonated with Rolland, who sees no reason why “function can’t also be beautiful,” but has also wanted to create pieces that are “not always functional.” So for his sculptures, he’s drawn from his skills in grafting and training fruit trees, by joining multiple tree parts into “curious” new wholes, “both treeish and not.”

In other sculptures, Rolland accentuates the uniqueness of individual branches by selectively removing wood, to emphasize what remains, including madrona cankers, which are dark, crusty fungal wounds that he deemed “strangely beautiful.”

Not only do Rolland and Reiswig approach woodworking in similarly sculptural and organically oriented ways, but outside their studios, they share concern for the environment. Rolland made it a goal to “consume no trees” for “TREEisms,” just as Reiswig already took part in planting 30 Garry oak trees in Fort Worden State Park.

“And Seth and I intend to plant another tree for each piece we sell at Bainbridge,” Reiswig said.