The Warmth of Wood

Couple expresses their love of life in abstract sculpture

In the time-honored tradition of every rom com ever filmed, Melissa Engler and Graeme Priddle met cute. 

In 2014, Engler was a burgeoning wood sculptor in Asheville, a graduate of the Haywood Community College Professional Crafts Program in furniture, and holder of a Bachelor of Arts in sculpture from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. She was also employed by Grovewood Gallery, which sent her to the annual National Symposium for the American Association of Woodturners held that year in Phoenix, Arizona, to find pieces for an upcoming show.

Priddle, a highly regarded and well-known woodturner and sculptor from New Zealand, was on her list to seek out. A mutual acquaintance in Asheville told Engler that when she found Priddle, she should buy him a beer.  “This woman comes up to my table with a beer for me,” Priddle recalls. “Neither of them knew that’s a marriage proposal in New Zealand.”

He was joking, of course, but he did accept the beer and in a subsequent conversation, learned Engler was also an artist. “I was very taken with her work,” Priddle says. “I recognized we were similar in why we make and [in] the messages behind our work.”

What Priddle refers to as their similar artistic ethos springs from their immersion in nature from an early age — Engler in the Canadian Rockies and Priddle in New Zealand. Both are deeply interested in the natural world, endangered species, and devoted to conservation; both describe their work as narrative, a way of preserving what is precious and endangered in the modern world. 

Engler — whose family moved from Canada to Hendersonville, NC, when she was a teenager — didn’t necessarily intend to pursue art as a career, but her proximity to Asheville and its vibrant maker community opened her eyes to what was possible. She came into woodworking through the furniture-making program at Haywood, but as she was finishing her sculpture degree at UNCA, she shared drawings of cabinets and colorful hardware she planned for her graduate show with instructor and sculptural furniture maker Brent Skidmore. 

“He looked at the handles and pulls and asked if I would rather make cabinets or cool little sculptural objects,” Engler explains. “That shifted my understanding of wood to a sculptural form, not necessarily tied to function, and I became captured with assemblage.”  

Priddle spent a dozen years as a radio technician in New Zealand until technology and privatization made his job obsolete. With his severance, he purchased 100 acres of rainforest near the coast and dove deeper into his hobby of building with wood. “Building a bunk for my son, I was intrigued with the process of taking a raw piece of wood, sanding it, polishing it, bringing out its beautiful grain and warmth,” he explains. 

A neighbor suggested he check out a group of woodturners in a close-by town. He initially scoffed at the notion of making salad bowls and chair legs but found the production pieces could support his family and quiet life.  “Wood does not change with technology, it stays the same, but there is so much to learn.”

At a conference he attended in New Zealand, one of the presenters urged him to explore a more creative side to woodturning and pursue teaching, advice Priddle took to heart. As his reputation as an artist grew, so did demand for his woodturning workshops, and using the annual American symposium as a starting point, he spent weeks touring the country teaching and showing his work.

Engler and Priddle’s professional connection evolved into a personal one; in 2015, he moved to Asheville, and they have shared their lives — and a workshop at Grovewood Studios in North Asheville — ever since. That proximity has meant both makers influence and learn from the other’s individual practices, yielding, for example, a complex approach to surface design. “We use rotary carving, hand carving, and wood burners to shape and texture forms,” says Engler. Color is achieved with a combination of milk paint, acrylic paint, and colored waxes.

The couple’s most ambitious current project is probably the ongoing construction of The Kitagawa School on their property in Mars Hill, which will eventually house a teaching center and workshop spaces.

But back on the micro level, their artistic collaborations, taken together with their individual output, have produced a significant body of work. The pair’s fondness for organic-abstract pod shapes produced “Robert is Here,” one of their favorite joint achievements. 

Commissioned by a friend in Florida, the 11 pods are mounted on a wall in a private residence where the owner, Priddle reveals with delight, removed a Picasso to make room for them.

Melissa Engler and Graeme Priddle, the Artist Studios at Historic Grovewood Village, 111 Grovewood Road, North Asheville, grovewood.com, melissaengler.com, and graemepriddle.com.