Silent Witness #1, Oppenheimer is one of the most important examples of contemporary American wood turning. Over the course of his career, Mark Lindquist has drawn upon new conceptual approaches and used unorthodox tools—like chainsaws—to realize his creations. When Lindquist first exhibited this work in 1984, it sparked debates within the wood-turning community that prompted some makers to start seeing themselves as sculptors, not just as craftsmen of utilitarian objects. In conceiving this work’s seven-foot-tall, stacked form, Lindquist was inspired by how the modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi erased the distinction between object and base in works like Endless Column (1918; Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Yellow Bird (1919; Yale University Art Gallery). In Lindquist’s title, Oppenheimer is an homage to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who was instrumental in developing the atomic bomb. Although the work evades any single narrative, it has been interpreted as a portrait, a devotional stupa, an atomic cloud, a grave marker, and an ascending symbol of hope.