With so many icons crowding into our national, if not global, consciousness, you have to wonder if wood, just wood, holds any longer those numinous qualities we hand out so profligately to tin-pot celebrities. The Druids worshiped wood in the form of living trees. And how many documents of iconic importance were penned under the regal branches of oaks and chestnut? Think of Boston’s own Liberty Tree, now just a bas-relief plaque on the edge of Chinatown, or Longfellow’s spreading chestnut boughs — crowded out by sprawl — under which the doughty village blacksmith labored with glistening brow and ropy muscles.

And yet, there are still some souls who roll up their sleeves and peel back layers of prejudice assigning wood, so unjustly, to the lumberyard of our consciousness. And where, you might ask, I hope with some curiosity, is this renaissance happening? In the feisty galleries of the Montserrat College of Art, nestled nicely beside the Beverly Town Common.