TexasWoodcarving.com

The Art Institute of Chicago has scanned and put over 50,000 high resolution images of the art in their collection online. To make it even better, they have released these images under a license that puts them in the public domain. There is a search page for the collection that also include filters for such things as artist, date range, medium, etc. It is great that they provided images with this level of detail. Here are just a few examples: The Death of the Virgin Flight from Pompeii Server You can see the cross hatch patterns in  Abraham Francen, Apothecary by Rembrandt van Rijn You can even see the individual dot of paint in Georges Seurat’s  A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884 .

Here is the problem - a lot of trees are cut down in cities to make way for residential and commercial construction. I'm not going into the pros and cons of the new and remodel development market. However, the fact is that a number of well established trees are cut down to make way for it. This is where someone like Kyle Alty comes in. Kyle describes himself as an "Urban Lumberjack." Unlike a traditional lumberjack that may cultivate trees to cut down, Kyle finds those trees that are either already down or coming down to make way for construction. He is saving some beautiful wood for the creation of fine furniture and works of art. If you are looking for some beautiful wood with local heritage, I hope you will connect with an urban lumberjack like Kyle. You can visit his website at www.chasinthegrain.com .  If you know other urban lumberjacks, please let us know. Below are some sample of the wood Kyle has recovered. They are labeled with a hash tag that starts wit