Jack Slentz earned his M.A. in sculpture at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 1996 and went on to earn an M.F.A. in sculpture at the University of Memphis. He currently lives in New Mexico and teaches at the Santa Fe Community College. Slentz thinks of these wooden sculptures as individuals, and describes them as follows, "The forms are similar, yet each has a different surface treatment, which is the way we all are." The conical shape of the wooden forms gives credence to the sculptures' reference to individual human bodies, as do the tiny blackened caps, which rest on the truncated cones like heads atop an abstracted, slender body with broad shoulders. Slentz manipulates the wood surfaces to distinguish each "individual," creating an exacting surface with graduated bands of wood carefully burnt black, a textured surface that brings out the fibrous character of the wood, and a feathery surface, patterned and then accented with black ash.