Bill Wolff: ORCHARD
Orchard Exhibition on view:
January 29 – March 28, 2026
Reception & Artist Talk:
Friday, March 20 from 5:00 - 7:00pm
GALLERY HOURS:
Tuesday-Saturday 11:00AM-4:00PM
Salisbury University DOWNTOWN
212 W. Main Street
I’ve been making strange shapes for almost 30 years: knots, hands, figures, biomorphic abstraction, creatures. This work meets the wood halfway. Trees I’ve grown or lived with and pruned for years or gathered on travel meets my shapes, forms and experience. Cut, shaped, carved, hollowed and assembled; material carries meaning.
—Bill Wolff
Orchard is a post-sabbatical exhibition by Salisbury-based artist Bill Wolff that brings together collaborative sculptural work created during his 2024 sabbatical in Japan (Reflections) and a new body of wood objects made immediately after. According to Wolff, he approached his sabbatical “as an inflection point and a decisive branching of my practice...I also had time to explore. This division of practice is liberating.” United by mark-making and lived experience, the works move from predetermined imagery and toward material-led, responsive making. Minimal forms and subtle anthropomorphic gestures emerge through carving and assembly, long-term relationships to place, and the new energy of collaboration.
ARTIST STATEMENT
The wooden objects in this room are driven by the trees. The vast majority are peach trees I planted when I bought my home in 2015 and pruned and shaped each year, developing a long-term relationship with the forms. There is no stain applied, and the formal vocabulary is intentionally minimal. Anthropomorphic elements are added to gestures gleaned over years. One piece is oak, from a tree that nearly fell on my house, and did in fact destroy another piece of sculpture when it landed; the progenitor. There is some walnut, Leland cypress and cherry, all of which fell benignly in my little forest. Four pieces are butternut, gathered in Vermont, where I teach each summer. Butternut is wonderful to carve, but the species is threatened by butternut canker, which is rendering it commercially extinct. Large pieces are typically filled with rot to work around. Each of these four pieces is made from many assembled components with the yosegi zukuri (multiple hollow block construction) process and continues a line of research involving partial and incomplete forms, and material economy. All of it is what it is. Material carries meaning.”
Reflections features drawings created in collaboration with 97 second-grade students in Tokyo and Wolff’s responses to each of the city’s 23 wards, laser-engraved onto aluminum panels. Together, the drawings and sculptures in Orchard reflect Wolff’s community engagement and nearly three decades of sculptural exploration.
Wolff holds a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree in sculpture from Binghamton University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from Louisiana State University. From 2005 to 2009 he lived in Japan as a Monbukagakusho scholar at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, now known as Tokyo University of the Arts, where he received an MA in wood sculpture. From 2009-2014 he lived and worked in Rochester, N.Y. where he taught 3D design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In 2024, Wolff returned to Japan and built a temporary, outdoor public artwork, Reflections, which includes drawings made by 93 2nd grade students from a neighborhood elementary school in Tokyo.
Wolff is currently an Associate Professor and head of the sculpture program at Salisbury University on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, as well as current Art Department Chair. His work in wood, metal, and installation has been exhibited locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. In recent years, Wolff has begun building and installing community-based public sculpture including All Together, a 10’ tall bronze sculpture containing 206 hands, life-cast from community members in Salisbury, Maryland. I had two public projects: the drawings in this exhibition and a bronze memorial now installed in NY.
Image Caption: Bill Wolff, One Never Knows, 2025, Pin oak on steel and red oak base
Salisbury University Art Galleries (SUAG) and Collection enrich the cultural environment of Salisbury University, the city of Salisbury, and Maryland's Eastern Shore by encouraging the appreciation and understanding of contemporary art and its role in society.
