About the Artist
Mel Johnson
Mel Johnson was born and raised in a small farming town in Central Utah, where he was introduced to woodworking as a boy, working the family farm alongside his father. After college and starting a family of his own, he moved to Las Vegas, where he spent ten years teaching high school carpentry and cabinet making. From there, he built a full career applying that craft — first full-time in cabinet making and high-end custom building design, then in management, eventually leading a large manufacturing operation in Las Vegas. Retirement didn't slow him down — it gave him room to return to the wood itself. He began gathering unique and difficult-to-find material from fallen trees in the mountains of Utah and other natural environments, drawn to the idea that each piece still carries something of the life it came from. For more than a decade, working as Wildgoose Mountain Woodcrafts, he's turned that salvaged wood into fully hand-sculpted creations — carved, shaped, and finished by hand, often incorporating chains, keys, locks, resin, crystal, and gold flake alongside the raw grain and burl of the wood itself. His most recognizable body of work centers on the heart — dozens of variations, from simple polished hearts in richly figured wood to more elaborate pieces bound in rusted chain, sealed with a lock, or stitched and mended like something healing. Crosses, found-object assemblages, and larger freeform sculptures round out his catalog, including tributes built from wood, chain, and vintage photographs. As he puts it, he sees his work less as creation than as honoring — taking wood that already lived a life, and giving that life a second chance to be seen. He's represented today at PTG & AV Gallery in Las Vegas.
“Step into the workshop of Mel Johnson — Wildgoose Mountain Woodcrafts — where fallen wood from the mountains of Utah is given a second life as fully hand-sculpted hearts, crosses, and found-object creations, each one carrying the spirit of the tree it came from.”
The Process
Inside the Studio
The Painting Process
Woodcrafting Process Mel Johnson's process starts long before a tool ever touches wood — it starts with the search. He seeks out unique, difficult-to-find material from fallen trees in the mountains of Utah and other natural environments, drawn to pieces with unusual grain, burl, or history rather than a clean, uniform board. Every piece he picks up already has a life behind it, and that life becomes the starting point for what it will become next. From there, the work is entirely hand-sculpted: forming, carving, shaping, sanding, and finishing each piece to reveal what's already inside the wood rather than impose something foreign onto it. Decades in cabinet making, custom building, and manufacturing management gave him the technical precision; retirement gave him the freedom to slow that precision down and turn it toward one-of-a-kind, personal work. Many pieces don't stop at wood alone. Rusted chain, keys, locks, resin, crystal, and gold flake are worked directly into the final form — a heart bound in chain, a cross wrapped in wire, a found photograph set into carved wood — adding a second material language of memory, restraint, or repair on top of the wood's own grain and history. It's a physical, deliberate process he describes simply: honoring the tree, so its beauty and spirit can live on.
Where to Find the Work
