This piece has two chair backs facing each other linked by a leaf of a dining room table. The chair backs are too close for two people to sit comfortably together unless they allow for some cooperation or intimacy. They are necessarily in each others’ space. The wheel dangles amidst four stationary legs, somewhat provocatively, offering the element of movement, of work, and of progress. Is this a space of splitting or sharing, reconnoitering or redemption?
The entrance hall is a space of entering and of leaving, of preparing and of returning. The Hall Monitor assists with the physical and psychological readiness for crossing the threshold. It uses materials reflecting the stages of wood use, like the stages of life, from tree limbs to turned bedposts. Like an old, musty butler, cobbled together from vestiges of storied pasts, it none-the-less proposes Socrates scrutiny: Does this mosaic constitute an examined life?
This reliquary evokes an honored individual and the multiple elements that make up a life. Like the bird’s nest, the supporting structure is constructed from natural and man-made materials. The large turned ball-like foot, from a bedpost, suggests the history from which multiple strands rise up to support the stage for this person’s life. The turned leg holding the nest evokes the careful craft of a life’s work of self-definition. The natural branch, with its many abandoned branches and dead ends, its twists and turns, tries to bury the dichotomy: Is it fate or choice?
The tea table is a traditional hub of social exchange. The industrial wire spool ends used to make this table represent another conveyance of social exchange: telephone wire. While the cables are less and less essential to communication, the social centrality of gathering for food and drink remains. The spools are dismantled and dressed for Tea with lace and Gingham, and a spoonful of ugliness.
This piece explores a variety of materials spanning the progression of wood from branches to simple broomsticks and pressed wood fiber, to elaborate turned legs, and incorporation of other materials such as glass and metal window hardware. The third frame created by the overlapping window frames suggests the creation of new vistas derived from the intersection of used materials in new construction.
This was a commission: a table next to a lounge chair to hold a lamp, the TV remote, and a book. The owner, despite retirement, spends a great deal more time in a desk chair working then in front of the TV or curled up with a good novel. The conversion here of a broken desk chair symbolizes the transition from work to retirement as subliminal encouragement.
Built in the aspen filled mountains of Colorado in a class conducted by Clifton Monteith, this chair of aspen and willow invites one to be cradled by nature, to relax amidst the tall trees and quaking leaves. Its strength is the tension between the complexity of the many pieces and its stark simplicity.
This vessel, pierced by light, was constructed using bent lamination followed by coopering, a traditional barrel-making process. It leans slightly to suggest the rays of sunlight that angle down through clouds. It casts an alternating pattern of shadow and light.
Drawing inspiration from the traditional pie safe, this piece looks at first a bit off kilter. Odd angles, open and closed spaces, alert one that this temple of the totem of Americana, the pie, is evolving. Grounded in tradition, thematically, and physically through the use of recycled wood, the (re)construction of this piece suggests a phylogenic new “safe”, an evolving and inclusive repository of cultural identity.
While referencing a child’s hobby horse, and the bygone time of Tonto’s paint horse “Scout”, this little multicolored side table, like all of us, bears its experiences and scars visibly and invisibly, inviting the viewer in to try to reconstruct its history.
Built for twins, one left-handed and one right-handed, this is a desk for two, constructed of 4 school desks. As Vygotsky said, learning is socially constructed. This desk facilitates the shared focus on one central desk area, as well as the individual work on each side of assimilation and accommodation.
This piece is made from a used glass scientific volumetric flask within bent wood lamination as support and protection. The stamen-like flask neck and radiating points reminded me of a tulip rising from its bulb. This piece sits in a beautiful setting in a private home.
This table is made from a solid core door pulled from a building during deconstruction. The door was used to make a large coffee table which is since lost. Remnants from that project were used to make this small table which has the marks of its provenance: the holes to house the doorknob and locking mechanism, and the industrial room number tag. The pattern of the wooden core material reminds us of the potential hidden beauty in all things when we step outside the provisional frame of reference.
In the basement of a 1922 house we purchased in Wisconsin were dusty, but none-the-less beautiful, old tongue-and-groove wooden slats that might have been used for floors, or for cabinet construction. They were beat up, but stacked and cut vertically, produced some beautiful lines. I left the original green paint and added the old orange broom handle, recycled plexiglass, and recycled hardware. My father had a similar house when he was growing up in the Depression and it seemed fitting to make sure that every scrap was reused.
Music stands have long been a traditional craft form, a part perhaps of the enduring rapport between instrument craft and musical performance. This stand attempts to allude to the many curves in music: the clef, the bow, the string instruments, as well as, in the music desk, the musical staff. The height adjustment stop is from a door hinge.
(see Simian Side Table). This piece is out of “new” wood, wood without a utilitarian history, rather coming from a living history and a harvesting/economic story. In giving an animal form to the piece I tried to evoke both Piaget’s animism and spiritual animism. The long legs and playful form suggest the young spring litter of the forest.
(see Spring Table). This is an early piece out of “new” wood, wood without a utilitarian history, rather coming from a living history and a harvesting/economic story. In giving an animal form to the piece I tried to evoke both Piaget’s animism and spiritual animism. The simian form I believe arose as a metaphor of getting to the root of making, as if getting to my phylogenetic roots.
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