The individual disks or shapes creating the form of Doug Gimbel's pine or spruce columns relate stories of our shared human experience; the cycles of death and rebirth, of time and space. He’s been constructing the columns since 2001 with a chainsaw, Japanese pull saws, and an angle grinder.

The sheer size of one of these sculptures - ranging in height from eight to 14 feet - renders you motionless while the movement within the column has you mesmerized. 

“It wants you to ask questions and to interact with it,” Gimbel said. “Is the column standing or is it falling? When will it fall? Is it weak or strong? Where are the weak areas? To determine this, one must circumambulate the work to gather information and gain one (or many) perspectives.”

The interpreted information gathered will differ according to the eyes and mind of the beholder, however, the actual act of obtaining the info will be similar. Why? Because you can't help but walk around it, can't help touching it and feeling its energy. And the movement! There is natural movement within the grain of the white pine that joins with the rectilinear movement Gimbel created with a chainsaw, and from a third source — the faceted edges of each disk — each edge its own point of motion.

“As you approach the column, you're already encompassed in its space. There are lines on the edges of the column and if you follow those lines outward, you will see intersecting points,” said Gimbel. “Some of those lines extend inches, feet … miles before intersecting.”

As you visit with the sculpture a story will unfold. For some it will be symbolic of a journey; difficult times might have occurred in the areas where the disks twist and turn; disks following these hard times may appear slightly smaller for a stretch, then return to fuller size until the next challenge presents itself; the areas where the column leans to one side or the other might represent growth or changes.

The spine-like column stretches taller, yielding when it must, but there is never-ending movement. 

Some columns are coated with a white opaque stain and others are left in their original state to weather to gray. Juxtaposed between land and the sea, one of Gimbel's white columns, out Spruce Point way, constructed from a fallen log of white pine stands reborn - a totem of sorts. As the years grow into decades, the column will begin to decay as it would have had it not been given a new life. It will rot and finally break down, food for new life.

“The columns have a lifespan, which refers to the human condition. As westerners we fear the natural cycle of life and death,” said Gimbel. “It's important to break things down, to understand, and to celebrate the finite side of life.”

Celebrating and exploring the temporal is something he’s been doing for decades with a variety of media, but the chainsaw is like no other. “I like the immediacy of working with the chainsaw, I very much like having to make constant, quick decisions during the making of a piece; something happens in that moment ... the moment I'm in is the only thing that really exists.”

Gimbel says making art outdoors in Maine is a privilege — and one he doesn't take for granted. He's made about 100 columns off and on since 2001. The white column at Spruce Point is the last one of the season. Gimbel relocated to New Orleans in late October to make art; specifically, a series of paintings on large panels in acrylics. He's been to New Orleans many times on tour with the Heavy Metal Horns and HDRnB, and is excited to begin creating art in a city he's known as a musician.

The mystical aura that envelops New Orleans - its French, Spanish, Caribbean and Native American culture, music and the voodoo will no doubt find its way into Gimbel’s ongoing line of inquiry into death and rebirth, time and space. What better place?

“I think it’s the artist, author, poet, musician’s responsibility to ask questions,” shared Gimbel. “And there are a lot of things going on in this world that need to be questioned.”

See one of Doug Gimbel's columns at Alison Evans' AeHome at 93 Townsend Avenue in Boothbay Harbor.