Glenn Adamson Talk

I went to Glenn Adamson's talk yesterday sponsored by The University of Oregon/Architecture and Museum Of Contemporary Craft. Adamson is a noted writer/curator from Victoria Albert Museum in London. I've heard him speak before at The Furniture Society conferences and met him briefly at one of those events, and I've enjoyed his offering for the world of creative furniture and other crafts. Yesterday's talk was more broad than specifically furniture. I wasn't particularly enlightened with the talk, he was speaking of material that is not new to my experience and I agree with his assessment of the state of the Craft 'movement', not unlike Garth Clark it's pretty dead as a movement but there will always be a need for individuals to carry on a rigorous investigation of their own thoughts and objects, and maybe the result of the Craft Movement attention it will naturally be assimilated in some form with acceptance into the broader ART context. If you'd like to listen to this talk I understand that it will be offered online and you might go the the MOCC website and check the lectures section. But I'm sharing these thoughts today as they are revisting my thoughts at my previous posting "Some Definitions".

But I was taken with the end of the talk with some picture juxtapositions of various designers with artists. The first two pics above are from Toord Boontje a wonderful designer (http://www.tordboontje.com/), an innovator of product design. This piece is a wardrobe, a piece of furniture with laser cut steel carefully enameled for color and detail and cast bronze. I have been aware and really enjoy what he has done as an industrial designer, how he has stepped away from the easy and trendy and has attempted to redefine design. Not a maker per se, although I don't know enough about his business so I'll happily stand corrected, but he finds resources/people in the industry to realize his ideas into product form for sale. So much of what the media presents to the public as 'truth', beauty, and 'current' thinking is sadly more retro from people with a profit motive, who didn't grow up with stuff my parents delivered to the landfill when I was young. Little of what is being 'created' is innovative except only in the sense that they are using new materials and processes but it's a meager effort and frustrating to me with the amazing potential available with our new technologies today- Toord Boontje is one of the few willing to take chances. Adamson's presentation yesterday gave him little credibility only by using him as a reactive counterpoint to a more conceptual/artistic offering by Yoshihiro Suda's "weeds" - the third photo above (http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1637_outoftheordinary/artists_detail.php?artistTag=suda).

Suda was a discovery for me, thank you Glenn, his weeds ring my bells as an artist to be sure. His renderings are carefully and exquisitely carved out of wood and painted by hand in extraordinary detail. One can easily explain his efforts as the result of his cultural artistic history, a reverence for beauty in the simple form, very Japanese. Even at second and third glance it would be easy to place him squarely in that genre. He is, yet he isn't. His rendering of weeds and other plants would be far too subtle to allow as representative of current ART until you become aware of the context in which they are installed. You will find these delicate little plants and flowers growing out of cracks in gallery floors and walls- not in vitrines upon pedestals - as weeds tend to grow regardless of our lifelong efforts to eradicate them. A little too mundane, not quite overtly beautiful enough to fit the Japanese stereotype - a little too LA, a little too aware of what kind of impact a simple weed might have when one is exposed to it in an unorthodox context.

The chord he strikes in me is one that is always hanging around, nipping at my heels - the obvious is too easy, too much of what we are inundated with today in the media is the celebrity object. I am far more enamored with garden hoses, a popsicle stick on the side of the road, the run in a woman's stocking instead of her beautiful face, finding beauty by drawing it out of the mundane. Finding beauty in these things is part of my task, my rigorous inquiry as an artist. Of course the furniture you view at my site is clearly aware of it's own beauty or it's inherent presence - yup it's overt, it's in your face a counterpoint to simplicity. But what I'm referring to is my other personality, the painter, and other, that is going on separately from the furniture designs. I'll get to that in a future post and show you some of this work, but for now an appreciation for Yoshihiro Suda's beautiful little pieces and the wonderful designs of Toord Boontje.

Thought you might enjoy a little contrast in the thinking of creative people.

Here's a quick couple of pics of some work I did for a client last year. Might show a bit of range, give a little courage to ask for a variety of designs. The first, a cocktail table, is a copy of someone else's work, I take no credit for this pretty piece only building it. It was seen in a design showroom but was the wrong size and configuration for the need. With all due respect to the original designer, this is a very pretty piece, I normally would make an effort to do some redesigning, make it more mine but in this case it was what was desired. It is bigger than the original and uses a unique veneer and wood (Pacific Yew).

The second one comes from my Slab series, visit my website for more, and is a little different take on the theme using Vertical Grain Douglas Fir and Patinaed Steel. It's a display table for an office about 6 ft long, sits in a window overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

This is also my own photography, a first attempt at doing this for myself. I'm working on it but must humble myself to all those wonderful photographers and friends I have used over the last 30 years. They don't get credit on my website, so I'll take this opportunity to honor them here until I get a chance to do my credits properly. Here's a list, hope I haven't forgotten anyone, apologies but I'm sure I have:

Laurie Black
Harold Wood
Phil Harris
Jon Jensen
and
Mark Stein (who has shot the greater proportion of the work on my website)

THANK YOU ALL!

Keeping The World A Little More Beautiful...

There was another purpose to my last posting. It so easy to be pidgeonholed, so easy for people to apply tags. It's understandable because we all need some means of reference, some way of describing something that may have had an impact on you - in my case good or bad, you decide. 

Having embarked on this mission of mine to redefine furniture for my satisfaction and hopefully for your pleasure and enjoyment, I think there have been assumptions made about what I am as a furniture designer/maker. I'm afraid it's my doing, I have devoted myself to 15 years and close to $100,000 in developing this body of work you see on my website. I redesigned my website to include mostly work that was of the provocative kind - certainly this is the work that has been the most stimulating for me and appears to have garnered the most attention. But it is most certainly not all that I do or have done for many many years. Why is this important for you to know? We're in tough times right now, work is hard to come by. No games, it's tough out there and I find myself struggling along with most creative people trying to find relevance in a world where a lot of people are just pulling in the horses and circling the wagons for a while. So I have a new mission and that is to open myself up, make myself available in more ways than those previous assumptions might allow, and keep potential customers thinking of me when there is a need for what I can do with furniture. Yup, I find myself regrouping.
Artists and arts organizations are starting to drop off like flies. Take a moment, look around you at the beautiful things you have gathered in your lives - your clothes, your furnishings, your cars, the things that stand out as important in your world, music, movies - all of this was created by creative people, people with talents and skills and a passionate commitment to making the world a little more beautiful, a little more interesting. IKEA serves a good purpose, sure, I've even bought furniture from Dania (nope, sorry can't bring myself to IKEA...they are raping our world of integrity in so many ways, but they aren't alone).
I'm hoping by diversifying my offering, maintaining the level of quality I have always committed to, that the last men (and women) standing are those making a high level beautiful work. So, lest one thinks of me solely a man of madness, a designer who disregards the practical, and a maker who doesn't have need for functionality, let me assure you I'm quite capable and willing to make a very beautiful SHAKER TABLE. Or other...

Some Definitions?

Well, let's see if I can do this without rufflin' too many feathers. I'm going to attempt to talk about some definitions because it may be important for those out looking for a furnituremaker who may also be somewhat confused by the different kinds of people who are making custom furniture. Actually there are differences that are critical in making decisions.

As for the ruffled feathers part, all of those folks out there making things are usually doing it for some passionate reason - or at least they were at one time. Those MBA graduates from U of Michigan normally aren't planning their lives around making furniture for a living, they are driven by some other muse, more like making a lot of money - won't find it here. With that in mind all of you other furnituremakers out there need to know I have a deep respect for your motivations choosing to do this 'making things' for a living thing, it's not easy, not all fun, and we're all a little different - kind of like people, huh?....

Let's talk about 'furnituremaking'. There are furniture designers, there are woodworkers, there are artisans, there are furniture artists. Whew, what's this all about and who cares? Well, it probably doesn't matter a lot to some but it might to others who are after something but don't know who they are talking to. I'm going to head into some sticky, messy territory here, but please know there are no clear distinctions, there is no place where one kind starts and another stops making it clear what they have to offer. So, I'll do a little with some generic descriptions. All of these groups do some of this and some of that and some do it all, but what I'm exploring here is more relative in terms of the initial motivations and training. Well, here goes, but I know I'm sticking my pretty shoes into some rather brown and smelly stuff....it's not my intention to make one kind look better or worser, just make intentions clear and how that might manifest itself in the kind of product that is produced.

"Woodworkers": Passionately driven, will do anything with wood and feel like they are a cabinetmaker when it's right, a furnituremaker when it's right, a finish carpenter, a carpenter, etc. They love working with wood and sometimes specialize at this or that and get very good at that specialization but probably aren't great at the others most likely because they haven't been trained to do so and haven't put the time in. You won't find me building a house any time soon, and if you do it certainly wouldn't be very efficient, more head scratching than work getting done. With the economy like it is right now I just might try to pass myself off as one of them - watch out.

"Furniture Designers": Usually had some education at a design school, probably more motivated at production with a profit motive. This where you'll find the trends happening in all of the current magazines. At those schools craftsmanship isn't generally considered at the forefront of intention, but they have an understanding of the history of furniture beginning in the mid 20th century with a clear description of that from a manufacturers perspective. They are familiar with the latest technologies and materials. The industry is about production, materials, and processes being paramount to the direction of this business model. Hand crafting is not held in the highest regard because it requires too much skill which is experiential, and just plain takes too much time to make. Wood can be an annoyance rather than a resource for aesthetics because it is so gall darned persnickity when it expands and contracts and you have to deal with things like matching grain and color differences from one tree to the next - why can't they just grow oak trees that are brown? Gimme a CNC machine and a piece of aluminum, stick some upholstery on it and call it good...and the money flows, right? Maybe.

[see it's getting messy, huh? Don't get me wrong I don't know how many times I would have taken a piece of aluminum over a chunk of maple that just wouldn't stay straight, no matter how many times I flattened it out. I can't help myself, let me digress for a minute with a little story of my own history. I was a young art student at San Francisco State back in the early 70's, full of myself like most art students, who had a curiosity about everything to make. SF State had a seperate school in Industrial Design- actually a very good program. That was a world I had no concept of. It was run by a barrel of a guy named Dr. John Kasay, not the warm and fuzzy sort I was used to over in the Art Dept (we were a bunch of spoiled coddled kids MAKING HIGH ART, I mean we were "Painters and Sculptors", but don't tell anyone I said that). The ID students were more like Marines, they knew their tools and their materials and their processes. I don't think we would have stood arm in arm together in the protests with S.I. Hayakawa at the time (SF State/Viet Nam, you know?). Anyway, a guy named Arthur Espenet Carpenter had a crafts guild in Bolinas and he was one of those people in the 60's and 70's who headed off on his own tangent and started making furniture that didn't look like amoebas or Scandinavian stuff - know what I mean?- well Art was asked to come over to SF State and do a combined class with the ID students and the Art students. My gooness that first day was interesting. Here was 6 guys looking at 6 guys without the slightest thread of recognition, circling, sizing each other up wondering what language the other spoke but sure as hell wouldn't sit next to one of 'them'. As for me, I was of course above all of that and proceeded to assume I knew what was the truth, the first day I found out the truth. One thing I learned was you don't get one of those electronic glue gun thingies too close to your midsection or you won't have any kids, among other bad results not related to furniture making... Well, it was one of my more informative years in school -Art made those other guys make tables that looked like "leaves" and such, and made guys like me make tables that stayed together without invoking the name of Jesus or Gracie Slick. I made a table that only had one leg and required a wall to lean on. In the end we all ended up friends and learned an extraordinary amount of life and 'woodworking' from each other. Art Carpenter has passed on now (we stayed in touch now and then, what a great guy). Don't know about Dr Kasay, but you should be able to find out a lot about Art, turned out he was a pretty famous guy in the world of artisan makers around the world (Bolinas Craft Guild). Kasay turned out to be a great teacher and even wrote the definitive book on Shaker furniture and it's relationship to their religious philosophy - a beautiful book and the first of its kind in the 70's, no one had heard of Shaker furniture in those days.]

But back to business.

"The Artisan": Might have studied at School of the Redwoods or North Bennet Street School, that sort of place, or read Fine Woodworking magazine cover to cover every month (that was my training). It's all about the CRAFT, an admiration for the love of working wood, hand work, and joinery at a very high level of expertise (for me it's a pain the waddyacallit at times, one of those necessary evils like castor oil). Here in Portland, Oregon we have Gary Rogowski at Northwest Woodworking School doing a wonderful job of passing on this skill that is fast dying off. It is pure passion, the driven need to make something well by hand. To learn all aspects of wood and it's vagueries and frustrations. A lust for the next gorgeous piece of figured wood and how to make it be gentle and compliant in your hands rather than a bucking and screaming young stallion with places to go.

"The Furniture Artist": Now here's an interesting sort. Whatever happened to sitting on a chair to rest your bones, or setting the table for dinner? Isn't that enough? Nah. They gotta shake things up. Gotta have FUN, make you THINK if you're gonna do it. A "15 Minute Chair", are you kidding? Their aspirations are The Museum of Modern Art! Well, except they'd also like you to buy it because their spouse is on their back to pay the rent. Oh, and so they can make another one. With the advent of internet communication they were finally able to establish an immediate ready made network of people all over the world. It was pretty amazing watching (and of course I have to admit I inhaled). It actually had roots going back to the mid century but was really a bunch of individual maverick types doing it all by themselves. Wharton Esherick, George Nakashima fit in as well. Later (60's) came Sam Maloof, Art Carpenter, but I think it was Wendell Castle who really kicked butt and inspired folks to take chances in a more provocative rather than just a beautiful way. Plenty of others along the way, mostly on the East Coast but out here in the West we had the "ORGANICS". I was one of them in the 70's - sure had a lot of fun. The movement ended up a with lot of milk paint and found objects like old truck springs and over sized screws - things moved and went in the wrong direction a lot. I kind of labeled it as the "milk paint, make me smile" stuff. Pretty much centered around the Furniture Society, a wonderful orgnization that has conferences around the country and Canada each year. I was a member early on, I was pretty hungry for interaction and excited to see who was doing what next.

But I didn't completely fit in to their descriptive very well (I refused to use milk paint...altho I finally did a wonderful desk last year for a client and used milk paint! but keep it to yourself it will ruin my image), but I don't really fit in any of the other categories of furniture makers completely either. I find interest in all of it, and incorporate all of it at one time or another into my designs as long as I satisfy my reverence for the beautiful object - it can be fun, it can be conceptual, doesn't always require functionality, but for me it must pay respect to an historical narrative, an awareness of the history of why furniture design started out a long time ago as a rock or a fallen log that needed a little berry juice and ended up where we are today.

Enough for today.

better slide show available

After going to all of this work to get these slide shows up and running I realize they are pretty dismal in size so you can't really see anything. If you are interested I'll send you a link to a better quality Quicktime video. If you send me an email directly (info@terrybostwickstudio.com), I'll send you a better show. In the meantime someone told me I can do a Youtube video, but I have to learn how for future slideshows, etc., this will have to do while I'm learning.

I went to a gallery opening last night for a friend who was having a show of his wonderful photography (here's a link to his website: www.kenhochfeld.com). It was fun seeing his work again up on the wall, we shared many years and many ideas as young artists in San Francisco - we also together began our exploration in furnituremaking in those days as a sideline passion which obviously grew into careers for both of us (here's a link to his cabinet shop website: www.rosemontdesigngroup.com). My main interest in those days was in painting, drawing and conceptual art, but more on that in another posting in the future.

I've digressed from what I started to tell you about. At the opening I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in many years who proceeded to tell me how much he's enjoyed checking out my work on my website (and the blog) from time to time but that he was bored with reading the same postings that remained from more than a year ago without change. HMMM. So here I sit today trying to get myself back to what I thought was a good idea at the time, blogging about my work, but my distractions sort of took over my best interests. But I'm back now, let's try this again.

Another thing I realized was that Blogspot isn't always consistent in letting me know if someone has tried to comment on the blog - I am supposed to get a message at my email that there is a request for a new comment, I found that some never came thru to me. So if you try to send one my way and I don't respond it is because I didn't get the notice and I haven't gone through the rigamarole of checking back after signing in to see if anyone has commented. Bear with me, I'm not one who spends his life blogging.

So today I'm posting two new posts (this is the second) on a little of the process of what I do. It's not meant as a tutorial as such rather it's a quick look at some of the steps it takes to design a new chair or how veneering is done.

Chairs have been a wonderful exploration for me, it wasn't enough to design and build the typical custom furniture, I found I had a need for the challenge of not only learning how to build a very fine chair but a serious exploration of ergonomics, and of course pursuing my need for new designs and ideas. Along the way I think I've probably designed and built 30-40 new chair designs - many of which were for the express purpose of matching a table design commission. It's no small effort, it's actually very involved developing a new chair but has really been a wonderful part of my life as a furniture designer/maker. The chair pic shown for this posting is a variation using some of my graphic work (see the SLAB section of the website for more of this graphic work).

The veneer slideshow is for the Pacific Heights Dining Table on my website for your reference.

Slideshow of Moderne Dining Chair Process