Gallery Within interplays 6 unusually paired materials

‘Wood metal’ gives space for less traditional art mediums at the Reversing Falls Sanctuary

Sept. 28, 2026

By Marilyn Eckberg

BROOKSVILLE — The Reversing Falls Sanctuary’s Gallery Within is hosting a “wood metal” exhibit throughout October. “Wood metal” is an interplay of wood, copper, steel, bronze, fiber and paint, and this exhibit presents over 10 artists’ works.

Gallery hours are from 4 to 7 p.m. on Fridays, and 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. Additionally, the gallery is hosting a cider social with fall-themed food on Friday, Oct. 9 from 4 to 7 p.m., where people can peruse the art with a tasty treat.

Below are some of the artists showcased in the “wood metal” exhibit. All photos courtesy of the Reversing Falls Sanctuary’s Gallery Within.

Justin Franklin's work comes from the tradition of crafting East Coast duck decoys. He shapes soft, fine-grained basswood into realistic avian sculptures. Fitted with copper legs, he paints and poses birds on wood, making them look just like goldfinches, white-breasted nuthatches, kingfishers, and bluejays.

By the look of his finished pieces — wabi sabi style pots and bowls, sculpted forms and spalted wall hangings fitted with butterfly joints — Randy Barker must have a quintessential wood shop. Burls and stumps and slabs of ash, maple, cherry and walnut are hewn and turned and smoothed into bark edged shapes that reveal the inner beauty of Maine's trees.

Jan Warren's wire and found object “key shrine” hangs over her assortment of small metal works. She displays cast bronze, little metal baskets, and shiny silver, brass, copper, and epoxy ornamentals, some decorated with a Japanese patterning technique. In the center stand five miniature metallic statuary figurines she calls the "Intruders."

Susan Barrett Merrill's arresting figures and masks may be the most labor-intensive objects in the show.  Wool gathered from Maine Island sheep, spun and twisted into strong skeins, colored by vegetable dyes, woven and felted by Merrill, became dream-inspired women seated comfortably on driftwood. The masks she wove and felted evoke dancers animating their driftwood arms and

legs.

Richard Merrill captures the lilt and lift of flight. He cuts and hammers and chisels and bends copper sheets into closely observed hawks and owls. Merrill explains that his birds complete eloquent pieces of driftwood as they push off into the air.

“Ocean Spirit,” “Cross,” “Boxed Cross,” “To Rise,” and “Ocean Totem” are names Daksha Baumann gave to her aptly titled assemblages. She elevates found and humble collected materials: broken furniture, sticks and stones, shells, fish hooks, and wire cloth, raffia and cheesecloth, turning detritus into devotional pieces alluding to a spiritual dimension.

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Dan Schimmel presents impractical oversized spoon carvings. He also makes constructions from hunks of distressed wood, cleverly attached to and by bits of metal, painted with a riot of colors and embellished with found pieces of trash. Technical skill is evident in the juxtaposition of the components. These assembled structures may have originated in nature but they seem to say something about post-consumerism.