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November 1999, SOFA in Chicago |
Releasing the Forms Within: The Studio Wood Art Movement by John Brunetti |
| Releasing the Forms Within: The Studio Wood Art Movement
by John Brunetti
Sculptors since Michelangelo have often referred to the process of
creation as the mystical releasing of the "living" forms of their
sculptures from the imprisonment of their surrounding material, whether
stone, clay, or wood. This description is especially applicable in not
only articulating the processes of the artists who comprise the studio
wood
art movement, but is also an appropriate metaphor in describing the
emergence of their distinctive art form from the shadows of the
high-profile craft movements of ceramics, fiber, and glass, and the
prejudices and misconceptions of the contemporary fine art world. For
critics, curators, and collectors passionate about sculpture and its
multiple and richly developing hybrids, the contemporary studio wood
movement is compellingly defining itself as the field to watch in the next
decade. A young movement, slightly over fifty-years old and characterized by turning and sculpture processes, the studio wood movement is a spiritual sister in many respects to the studio glass movement and can attribute its unique formal progression, and unfortunate slow critical acknowledgment, to similar growing pains. Both contemporary wood and glass are indebted to technical processes whose roots are centuries old, yet whose application as a fine art form in the U.S. did not begin until after World War II; wood in the late '40s, glass in the early '60s. Breaking free of the traditional perceptions of their mediums as being used solely for the production of functional, domestic items was a challenge for both wood and glass that depended on the personal creative initiative and technical experimentation of, surprisingly, a few individual artists working in seeming isolation with little initial community or academic support. But while the visibility of the glass movement increased with hard-fought inroads into the sculpture curriculums of art schools during the '70s, which led to the establishment of its own high-profile workshops and cultivation of a few star artists with market cross-over potential in the booming, art market of the '80s, wood art did not follow this path. It remained a more isolated discipline of predominantly self-taught artists, perfecting their work outside the mainstream craft or fine art markets. While this is slowly changing, (especially with the founding of the important Wood Turning Center of Philadelphia in '76, and the American Association of Woodturners in '86, as well as a loyal, though small, collector base) the medium still critically suffers because it lacks a definitive presence in the academic network. More significantly, a surprising void in major commercial gallery representation for the medium has been a significant factor in impeding the critical and curatorial attention that it should command. "Collectors' Choice," a juried group show of twenty-four of the leading contemporary wood artists, curated by the Collectors of Wood Art and installed at SOFA/Chicago in November '99, was an important step in increasing awareness of the medium. It provided a necessary forum for initiating further critical dialogues on the significance of wood art as sculpture, its indebtedness to Modernism's abstract vocabulary, and its evolving relationship to the traditions and changing perceptions of craft. The contemporary wood movement, especially the dominance of turned-wood in the field, is the direct descendent of the philosophy of one man, James Prestini. A professor at Chicago's Institute of Design, Prestini began applying his Bauhaus principles to turned-wood objects in the '30s. His pursuit of perfect, thin-walled forms, resulted in an extraordinary body of work, exquisite vessels that were a synthesis of subtlety and beauty that transcended accepted notions of functionalism. "Prestini established this very significant precept: the turned wood bowl could be created, viewed and appreciated as an art object."
The large size of the "Collectors' Choice" show provides the opportunity to compare the evolution and divergent branches of this philosophy among a range of pieces that are, nonetheless, united by a shared heritage. This common lineage, a condition of other studio craft movements such as ceramics, rather than limiting the artists' creativity instead stimulates the pursuit of technical mastery and subtle formal invention that makes conceptual content and the act of making inseparable. However, the creative approaches to the medium are equally driven by the emotionally seductive nature of wood and its idiosyncrasies as a material. A living form, wood holds an aura distinctive from glass and clay. It beckons to be touched, and when this is permitted, wood adds another level of experience to the viewer displaying the power of intimate contact with the work of art. Even when touch is not possible, the intensity of the medium's visual experience emanates from the wood artist's unique working relationship with what nature has provided -- color, grain, hardness, softness, burls, spalting -- in essentially a subtractive process that reveals, rather than adds. This is a crucial characteristic of the technical difficulty that is behind what are often understated pieces of a sublime minimalism. For those respectful of the inherent danger of shaping molten glass, one should be as equally awed with the process of spinning a large tree trunk at high speeds on a lathe and turning its solid form into elastic curves as graceful as those produced in the most malleable of clays and flexible of fibers. The unseen physical prowess of this process remains imbued in the work, and is an important element in the particular power of studio crafts. The evolution of the vessel from Prestini's elegant, yet nonetheless unblemished functional bowl forms, to its present state of poetic, meditative symbol, was the result of four highly influential turners -- Bob Stocksdale, Rude Osolnik, Melvin Lindquist, Ed Moulthrop -- beginning in the '40s and early '60s. Though they worked unaware of each other, these artists shared a passion for pushing the limits of what had previously been accepted in the field. Working with exotic woods, developing new lathe techniques, drawing relationships to raku in ceramics, and uncovering the possibilities of what had been considered aesthetically unpleasant and unusable patterns of decay, these artists "gave permission" to current generations of turners to see the vessel as an evocative vocabulary that had just begun to be explored. This exhibition provides the opportunity to see turners who continue this legacy. The deconstruction of the vessel from functional object into abstract sculpture epitomizes the work of several leading figures in contemporary woodturning. For William Hunter, Virginia Dotson, and David Ellsworth, the activation of space and its interplay with form has more in common with modern sculptors such as Henry Moore and Isamu Noguchi than with traditional perceptions of craft. For the technical innovator William Hunter, dissolving walls of his vessels becomes a vehicle for revealing the contained energy of living forms. Space comes alive in Hunter's pieces. His meticulously honed, dynamic wood bands at times leave only the faintest suggestion of the original vessel, erasing comfortable boundaries between inside and outside. Appearing to always be in a process of transformation, Hunter's work speaks to the continual evolution that is necessary for maintaining equilibrium in life. In the subtle lateral striations of her laminated material, Virginia Dotson echoes the spirit of Hunter's work, as well as acknowledges the influence of the horizontal landscape of the American Southwest. Creating the convex shapes of her bowls through the skillful wrapping of a continuous open form, Dotson's pieces resemble the organic contours of shifting sand dunes. Like Hunter's work, Dotson's is about change, but marked incrementally. It is the duality of stillness and movement that informs her work's understated poetry and timelessness. While formally more reserved than Hunter or Dotson, David Ellsworth shares with them a passion for challenging one's complacency in accepting appearances at face value. In his distinguished oeuvre of monolithic vessels, form punctures the surrounding space, as much as it defines the internal area it contains. Subverting the symmetry of his vertical vessels with slight idiosyncrasies -- a subtle angle, a barely perceptible bulge, a partially scalloped edge -- Ellsworth invests these apparently anonymous forms with distinct personalities that bear closer relationships to ritualistic totems than domestic objects. In addition to these artists who choose to retain the vessel as a core element, there are significant members of the field who have left the vessel behind to create powerful abstract sculptures that appear to be more a descendent of Constantin Brancusi than James Prestini. For artists, such as Robyn Horn, Stoney Lamar, and Michael Peterson, turning is often just one avenue employed for shaping works that are inspired by both natural and man-made forms. While stylistically diverse, these artists share an intuitive understanding and passion for 3-dimensional abstraction. Frequently using the boldness of angular and asymmetrical geometries as physical protagonists to surrounding space, these artists alter perceptions of the medium as being one purely of contemplative, organic symmetry. The angular, stone-like slabs of Robyn Horn's work pay homage to Japanese garden design and expand on a modernist preoccupation with this ancient art form, exemplified in the stone and wood carvings of Isamu Noguchi. The symbolism of these forms, expressing man's physical and spiritual relationship to the environment, has been a seductive form for many sculptors. But what separates Horn's work from a complete embrace of this aesthetic is her obsession with enlivening her surfaces, making contemplation less passive and more participatory for the viewer. In addition to dimpled surfaces and carefully positioned, slits and holes, Horn also uses dense grids of grooves and attached plates of metal with corkscrewed shards, to provide a curious fusion of the natural and industrial. In these pieces, the contemporary and the eternal engage in constant friction. That the lathe is his principle tool would surprise anyone viewing the asymmetrical, rough-hewn sculpture of Stoney Lamar. Similar to Horn, Lamar's work recalls the abstract sculpture of non-Western cultures whose form was tied to its ceremonial function. Evoking these associations is something Lamar's work shares with contemporary sculptor Martin Puryear. Both artists are able to restore in their sculptures the spiritual presence of the ritual object by accentuating the physical act of their creation. Allowing the raw material of the log to remain visible through the multiple, diagonal cleaves and funnel-like borings that articulate his base forms, Lamar doesn't seduce one with the beauty of his material, but aggressively asserts its unwavering tactile and spatial authority. Michael Peterson shares with Horn and Lamar a desire to emphasize the rawness of wood for its emotional content. Bleaching and sandblasting are integral to creating the weathered patina's of his carved works. In the process, Peterson evokes the presence of nature that is crucial in establishing a context for his abstractions of landscape. Interestingly, the vessel as a conceptual idea is important to Peterson who views the land as a container that sustains us, as well as symbolizes our vulnerability. Capturing the amorphous sensuality of a coastline at low tide, the hypnotic rhythms of his pieces' curves and hollows are imbued with the metamorphoses brought on by the physical action of the sea and the wind. They are sublime pieces that represent the best qualities of modern sculpture. The studio wood art movement is a vital force in contemporary art. It is a unique extension of modernist and craft ideals, embracing exploration but revering tradition. The incredible formal beauty of the work is just a means of entry for examining important and universal issues of man's shifting relation to the world. The artists discussed here compel attention, not because they fuel debate about boundaries between art and craft, but because their work accomplishes what all exceptional art does -- it elevates and transports us to other places we didn't realize we needed to venture. John Brunetti is a Chicago-based critic and the Illinois editor of dialogue. notes 1. Mark Lindquist, Sculpting Wood: Contemporary Tools and Techniques, (Worcester: Davis Publications, 1986). p. 212 2. Ibid., p. 212 3. Edgar Kaufmann, as quoted in Sculpting Wood, p. 213 |