The sculpture now known as ?Martha? began as an old rotting piece of cedar on the grass in front of the Masterworks Foundation in the Botanical Gardens.

Masterworks? director Tom Butterfield wondered whether there was beauty beneath the grey lump and asked sculptor Chesley Trott if he could ?do? something with it for the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art.

For three months, Mr. Trott chain sawed, hacked, scraped and polished, until he formed ?Martha?. The piece was unveiled Tuesday night by Lady Vereker at the Masterworks Foundation.

?It was basically about a year ago when Tom Butterfield asked me to come down and see a piece of cedar that was just outside of the gate in the grass,? said Mr. Trott.

?The large piece of cedar was almost completely rotten and it had been there for decades ? I don?t know exactly how long, but I know it had been there for a long, long time because I had seen it there.?

Upon examination, Mr. Trott found that the wood was workable, but it would not be easy.

?Although the wood was rotten termites had not moved in,? he said. ?It was all dry rot and all white. And I said, ?you can do something with any piece of wood really?. I asked if he could get it to me and he did. I looked at it for a very long time and I cut away as much of the rotten part of it as I could and there, underneath all of that, was some beautiful cedar.?

Once he found the beauty in the wood it was only a question of finding the inspiration for its eventual form.

?I looked at it long enough to envision a reclining female nude, but sort of a large female nude if you think about it,? he said.

?I used my imagination and carved ?Martha?, but initially I thought of the name ?Bertha?, because anything large is called ?Bertha?. But from that I carved ?Martha?.

?It is a very tactile piece ? it is a piece that you want to touch and feel so all the way through I used my hands to guide me ? even more than my eyes.

?It was a hands-on piece and touching ?Martha? was the big thing ? so I have ended up with this feeling piece.

?It isn?t anything copied from anyone ? and I don?t think that Henry Moore, the English sculptor, had did anything that looked like this.?

As the sculptor worked his magic, Martha?s beauty was gradually enhanced.

?It took about three months of looking at it and making it evolve,? he said.

?The actual physical aspect of carving it, imagining it, (took a while) because one needs to look a long time and in this case one needs to touch.

?But once you know the actual direction in which you are going, the carving doesn?t take that long.?

Mr. Butterfield said Masterworks has been delighted with the piece. ?I think it is absolutely stunning that a piece of wood, that was a giant log, that had been abandoned for so many years could be given that interpretation,? he said.

?It is funny when I looked at it and was given the challenge to get it off the property ? I thought in my mind that Chesley would have never hollowed it out ? I always thought that he would fill it in and work with it the other way.

?But instead he hollowed it out and put human form to it ? it is a testament to his genius in dealing with the medium and using the material in front of him.

?I was dazzled by it! When I first saw it I was absolutely awed and I still am. The fact that you can rub it and touch it make it a very textural piece and it?s one of the great items in our collection ? it is absolutely wonderful.?

While ?Martha? was unveiled Tuesday, it has been in the West Wing Gallery for several months.

?Because it (the log) was outside for so long, there is still a little bit of water that is seeping through ? so Chesley comes by every so often and cleans her up, but that process is slowing down,? said Mr. Butterfield.

?We need to understand that this piece was not a victim of Hurricane Fabian ? she has been down for decades ? it?s been down so long it looks like up to me.?