Welcome to Terry Bostwick Studio. If you’re new to my work and this site, I hope you like what you see. Communication is important to me, and my latest efforts to reach out to prospective clients, other artists, furniture makers and crafts people of all kinds is this blog. I look forward to addressing topics important to anyone that makes art or has an interest in the works of artists here in Portland and of course anywhere in the world. I receive so many inquiries from all over the world, I’m still amazed at this communication tool, the Internet.
Recently it came to my attention that people had approached this website and found the work here intriguing, beautiful, provocative, or even controversial. Some of these people confided to me that there was an intimidation factor which kept them from finding out more about buying this work or work like it. Some were even reluctant to approach me to just ask questions for fun about who I am and what this is all about. I’ll try to talk about the commission process for those wondering, and even fill you in on projects that are in progress.
I realized this was a great opportunity to create a discussion forum, a web log, where I could talk a little about this work and about me. What I would like to do is make it a dialog that you can participate in as well. So please feel free to respond, react, ask questions about anything related to this website, or your interests. Your questions should open up ideas for me to talk about as well, hopefully I’ll give you answers, provoke new thoughts for you, but more than anything make it more comfortable to interact with me. Because human nature strikes on occasion I have to use the editing tools to weed out stuff that just isn't appropriate - or nice. So try to be nice, I'm just trying to make the world a little more interesting than it was yesterday.
I know some people spend their lives at the computer, but I need to spend most of my time in the studio making furniture. So be a little patient with me if I don’t respond right away, I’ll try to get back with my response as soon as I can. And if nothing else thank you for visiting, enjoy the site and feel free to provoke my thoughts - I want to know your ideas as well. If you would prefer to talk to me directly, or without the whole world watching...send me an email, or a phone call (contact page). Thanks again for taking the time! Terry
A wonderous path opens when the nose is thumbed at convention. Thanks for the honesty and discipline.
ReplyDeleteFate can't resist temptation for long.
Thumbing one's nose at convention in these times can be a convention in itself, 'heroin chic' was very cool for a while. Tattoos and piercings are more a convention today than they were some years back. But thank you for your response, it gives me an opportunity to talk a little about my intentions while making this kind of work.
ReplyDeleteAs a professional I've stepped into a serious world of commitment. Committing myself to the design and construction of a chair or a table is no small thing, nor is maintaining an expensive studio like mine. When I choose to do some of my more provocative pieces I am sticking my neck out, I am taking a risk and spending a fair amount of money, and it has to have more motivation behind it than 'thumbing my nose'. I'm certainly not bound by furniture conventions as I believe your thoughts were sincerely directed, but I am passionate about exploring new ideas. Thank you for your intended compliments.
If you were to wander around my house you would find piles of design magazines with colored tabs hanging out all over the place. I love browsing these magazines, hoping to find 'designed' furniture and objects that are stretching convention and truly exploring new ideas.
There is some wonderful work being produced, but what I have trouble with is the assumption that the 'tried and true' is all that is necessary for the consumer. Many young designers really are just reworking old ideas - clearly evident with the resurgent interest in the ideas from the 50's and 60s so 'current' today. They may also be so consumed with the wonder of the technological availability that they forget to consider a well styled, thoughtful design - rather it reflects the machines basic capability to produce many pieces inexpensively. The media, struggling for something beyond 'Craftsman' styling has once again grabbed onto something that fits with some very interesting architectural work being explored today. The 'Modernist' furniture fits in nicely with this look, but is really only reflecting a lack of creative exploration by overworking, over hyping Eames', Noguchi, and similar styled furniture. This work was provocative in its day, even though the intention was to put to good use, including the profit based motivation of mass production, the equipment and machinery produced for the military industrial complex of WWII. And it served the homes of returning veterans very well, as did Levitown communities.
My motives are different. I seem bound to explore familiar materials in a new way, work with symmetry by stretching and prodding, take a look at colors like black and white, even conceptually incorporate subtlety and an ironic sense of humor. I'm hoping by doing so I will get my more adventurous, maybe those bored with the conventional offerings, to rethink their expectations when it comes to decorating their homes. Allow them the chance to take a chance and not be bound by what their neighbors have as home decor. Maybe make their lives a little more interesting and provocative.
Welcome to the world of blogging. (OK I hate turning nouns into verbs, but now I'm doing it)
ReplyDeleteAs a new blogger myself, I know how much one welcomes comment, even short ones. So I'll try to check in periodically and leave a short note. BTW, love your new web site.
Well, Terry, I have been your fan since I was born. (Ha! Let the world figure that one out.) I must say, though, that I have sincere awe working now. It is one thing to know and understand someone that you have grown up with, admire them, look up to everything they do and say, to respect their choices out of unconditional love and acceptance, to measure your success by their nod of approval--and an entirely different thing to be shocked out of your conditioned responses to this relative you love and see profoundly who this person really is.
ReplyDeleteWow! What I experience now is as an individual, separate and removed from the old context. What I experience now is this guy, Terry Bostwick--on the one hand avant garde designer, experimenter, risk taker, passionate muse-driven artist--and on the other hand pragmatic craftsman, realistic entreprenuer, nurturing employer, and masterful businessman.
What you have accomplished since you graduated from college in 1974, when we as youngsters spent so much time together, is mind-boggling. I don't even know the emotion that fills me. It is this feeling that I have been lucky, or got a gift not too many others have. The gift to experience first hand your fantastic, wonderous accumulated knowledge, skill, dedication to artistic and professional integrity, and total immersion into the artistic realm. You are a creator in the truest since. How lucky I am to be your little sister. Mar
I'm not quite sure how to respond to this...except maybe 'thanks for that', hmm. (Maybe I didn't give her a hard enough time when we were little.) T
ReplyDeleteHi Terry!
ReplyDeleteI am proud of you!
How are your life-sized, graphite drawings coming along?
Winnie says hi.
Love
Ashley