Self-taught artist Thaddeus Mosley was born in 1926 in New Castle, Pennsylvania. He went on to major in English and journalism at the University of Pittsburgh and graduated in 1950. Awarded the Isamu Noguchi Prize in 2022. Whose monumental sculptures are crafted with the felled trees of Pittsburgh’s urban canopy, via the city’s Forestry Division. Using only a mallet and chisel, Mosley reworks salvaged timber into biomorphic forms.

For six decades, Thaddeus Mosley has taken felled trees near his home in Pittsburgh and transformed them into inventive abstract forms to create large sculptures, five of which are presented in Forest. Exclusively using a mallet and chisel, he reworks these salvaged pieces of timber into his signature biomorphic forms through a largely intuitive and improvisational process.

Made from walnut and created from 2015 onward, these works reward close looking. The range and expertise of Mosley’s woodworking techniques—carving, chiseling, and joining—are revealed as light shimmers along each work’s surface. Mosley’s inventive works not only push the boundaries of the medium, but also engage with the history of sculpture. As the artist has described,“One of the most important aspects of my own work is how different segments interact.”