MEANING: To have a Woke Heart you may have an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those related to civil and human rights...Stay Woke
The ORIGINAL HISTORICAL USE of "woke" goes back to an early American Blues artist named Lead Belly. He supposedly coined the term "stay woke" in his music. One anecdote says that he said it at the end of a show in a Juke Joint in the south. The way black people use it, it means basically "stay aware"...don't forget that you can be a victim of discrimination at any moment. Back in the 1920s, that meant you can be lynched at any moment. Today, that means that you can be murdered by the cops or that people won't hire you because you have dreads.
White liberal Americans became aware of and adopted this phrase during the BLM movement and used it to mean "stay aware of systemic injustice and fight against it".
Right-wing performative conservatives co-opted and bastardized "woke" as a pejorative to dismiss anything that seems even vaguely like basic human decency. Offensive and intellectually lazy, it's used as a political dog whistle for right-wing extremists.
THE CARVING: Our carvings are single pieces of western red cedar, designed and carved to be wall hangings. Each carving begins as a 1 X 12-inch cedar board. While we use power tools (Scroll Saw, Rotary shaft Tool, handheld detail sanders, etc.), we use no lasers, CNC machines or computer-operated cutting machines. All work is done with our hands and eyes…
We cut the 2-dimensional blanks with scroll and jig saws (double-sized custom orders have to be cut with a jigsaw). Carving is done with rotary shaft tools and disc grinders. The 80-grit sanding is the final phase of the carving process, removing the nicks and gouges from the carving tools, and finishes the shaping of the weave. The next 2 sandings with 120 and then 220 grit finishes the smoothing and polishing. They are finished with Clear Danish Oil to seal the piece, bringing out the grain and the color.
