Wooden sculpture from Colby Bird.

One of the large sculptures from New York-based Colby Bird is disarmingly fragile. The gentle, serpentine-like piece made from wood holds a real green apple and a lemon within its curves, and several hand-crafted fruits. It appears to be propped up by a single, slim metal rod. It’s also made from pieces from Thonet café chairs, those famous designs of small stools with several lines of bended wood serving as backs.

Bird has reworked that bended wood to form these sculptures, for works that he has been making at the Fountainhead residency program in a house off of Biscayne Boulevard, as one of the latest batch of residents. Some of his other sculptures look like wood fences, dotted with light bulbs and tiny green plants, also again looking on the verge of falling over if tapped just a little too hard. Beautiful.

Oil landscape painting from Martin Jacobson

Currently also in the residency in an adjoining room is Swedish artist Martin Jacobson. His non-abstract landscape paintings can at first glance seem like a distinct departure in genre and style than the sculptures, but interestingly there is a similarity in the delicateness of the work. In particular, the light that infuses these oil images of northern European woods is soft while also literally enlightening. Quiet creeks run through, some of the branches are bare, shadows cast a twilight feel to these unpopulated landscapes. The fragility of our natural surroundings can seems so heartbreaking in these lovely, intense paintings.

The quality of these works being created at the Fountainhead should come as no surprise — it has become a very welcome habit that the artists invited from all over the planet create some amazing stuff during these short residencies. (Two other artists make up the foursome in this grouping: Michael Scoggins and Alex Gingrow. They will be having a dual show at Diana Lowenstein in April, so we’ll visit their work then).

To see examples of these artworks, visit Bird’s website at fitzroygallery.com/artist/Colby; and Jacobson’s website at andrehn-schiptjenko.com/wp/martin-jaconbson; to schedule a studio visit, email [email protected].