When we were kids, we all thought of a “sculptor” as someone like Michaelangelo, chiseling away furiously until a masterpiece emerged out of a chunk of stone. Swap that chisel for a chainsaw, and you’d have Vince Skelly, a consummate California woodworker who whittles his creations from solid blocks of local redwood, cedar, or fir. The LA-based designer — who’s had a big year, with a solo show at Tiwa gallery, a commission for the Burberry store on Rodeo Drive, and an exhibition he curated at Marta — specializes in chunky volumes, asymmetry, imperfection, and charmingly wonky, at times almost zoomorphic shapes that reference disparate influences like “megalithic dolmens, ancient figurines, the sculptures of Brancusi, and the figures found in the paintings of Phillip Guston,” he notes. You might recognize a piece as his by some of the aforementioned characteristics, but his work is elemental enough, and shape-shifting enough, that you might not, which in a way we really appreciate. Staying open means staying interesting, and we’ll be on the lookout for his latest attempts to do so at two exhibitions coming up this year, the first a group show in Arizona next month and the second a solo show of outdoor works in Oregon, in July.