"This year the box that I have made does not necessarily have a story that goes along with it but I can try to explain my inspiration for it.

I did have an idea that I had in mind before I started actually working on the box, maybe even before I received it. But before putting my pencil to work and start designing, I started to look at it from all angles. The box began to speak to me.

I removed the lid from the box and looked inside, looked at each side and even the bottom. I tested the fit of the lid and as I put my hand over the lid and removed it, it reminded me of the cleverness of an octopus. It reminded me of video clips that I have seen where an octopus would twist lids off of jars for food or sneak from tank to tank while in captivity. So the wheels began to turn in my head.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to make something a little more elaborate this year and that I wanted to make the box an integral part, but not the focus of my design. I have always been taught that every piece of wood already has its own story to tell and that each artist is only a helper to bring out what’s already inside. This teaching has shown itself to me repeatedly throughout my career in many ways. I feel that this piece was making its own presence known.
I put the box down and grabbed a small piece of Red Cedar that I had close by and started to draw and cut down that piece to fit over the box as a depiction of my own thoughts about an octopus’s cleverness. This process went really fast and everything started to take shape.
The idea was to have it look like an octopus draped over the box in an attempt to retrieve something out of it, much like it would reach its prey in a crevice in the wild. So as I was nearing completion of the carving, I felt it needed that little missing piece. Inside of the box is a scallop carved out of basswood to show that connection.
This years box has its own story to tell and perhaps that story will be different or have a different meaning to each individual."

-Terry Horne (Siyemches)