Jun 9, 2014
On Father's Day
Father's Day is coming near, and it's got me thinking about parents.
Our parents are the people who raise us up, support us, and love us, who pass to us the narrative of our genetic origin, in stories and DNA.
But as artists we have different types of progenitors: fathers and mothers and guides, teachers and mentors and communities.
One of my art-fathers is Gustav Stickley, a furniture maker who worked during the first half of the twentieth century and is often known as the pioneer of the American Craftsman movement.
A lot of beginning woodworkers gravitate to Stickley, because of the honesty in his work. But I think he's someone everyone should gravitate to. I think of Stickley, and William Morris, and others like them, as some of the more progressive makers of the time. They knew that the ornament shouldn't be applied, as with Victorian furniture of the time, but that the grain and beauty of the wood was ornament enough.
Stickley would use quarter-sawn oak with a gray flake, and the straight grain made it strong and durable, and exposing the grain honored the wood's beauty. His was a very modern way of thinking about it, even as it was harkening back to Medieval-era natural stains and finishes.
Unfortunately, as industrialization spread, his design aesthetic fell to the wayside. With mechanization, people could change their furniture as quickly as their clothes: it was fashion and trend, not art and craft. There was a sudden loss of depth.
But with the force of Stickley's vision, and others like him, over time American Craftsman work has developed into an indelible part of the story of woodworking. I think of it as really modern. There's a continuum to today's modern work that starts there.
He believed in bringing the hand back to furniture, and when I began my own woodworking in the early aughts, I saw this idea have a renaissance: with sites like Etsy, and a spreading surge toward the DIY. Happily, like Stickley, I celebrate this.
Stickley wasn't allergic to technology, however. He brought in routers and planes so that the craftspeople could focus on the design, and bring attention to the material. I believe too: work should heighten the worker, not enrobe her drudgery.
Consciously I have inherited Stickley's idea of marrying the modern with the material, and I think it shows in my work. I want to make designs that push the possibilities of wood design while paying homage to its grain and strength. That alchemy is what I call my art. And I thank Stickley for it.
Our parents are the people who raise us up, support us, and love us, who pass to us the narrative of our genetic origin, in stories and DNA.
But as artists we have different types of progenitors: fathers and mothers and guides, teachers and mentors and communities.
 |
| Gustav Stickley, via the Stickley Museum Pinterest |
One of my art-fathers is Gustav Stickley, a furniture maker who worked during the first half of the twentieth century and is often known as the pioneer of the American Craftsman movement.
 |
| a Stickley table, via MOMA |
Stickley would use quarter-sawn oak with a gray flake, and the straight grain made it strong and durable, and exposing the grain honored the wood's beauty. His was a very modern way of thinking about it, even as it was harkening back to Medieval-era natural stains and finishes.
Unfortunately, as industrialization spread, his design aesthetic fell to the wayside. With mechanization, people could change their furniture as quickly as their clothes: it was fashion and trend, not art and craft. There was a sudden loss of depth.
But with the force of Stickley's vision, and others like him, over time American Craftsman work has developed into an indelible part of the story of woodworking. I think of it as really modern. There's a continuum to today's modern work that starts there.
He believed in bringing the hand back to furniture, and when I began my own woodworking in the early aughts, I saw this idea have a renaissance: with sites like Etsy, and a spreading surge toward the DIY. Happily, like Stickley, I celebrate this.
Stickley wasn't allergic to technology, however. He brought in routers and planes so that the craftspeople could focus on the design, and bring attention to the material. I believe too: work should heighten the worker, not enrobe her drudgery.
 |
| one of my bracelets |
May 30, 2014
Irwin, Einstein, and Me
The other day on our Facebook page, we quoted the fine Robert Irwin bio Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, by Lawrence Weschler. It's an endlessly giving book, and one that I highly recommend.
There is a way in which I want my work to do the same thing: it is a magnification of the natural world, curated as a reminder. It's not an imitation of the natural world, nor representational one. Instead it is a talisman of the organic, a gesture towards returning to nature, a cue.
Looking around our world, tables are square, and chairs hold right angles, paper is crisp enough to cut the skin. But none of the materials which made these objects began at 90 degrees. Rather, it is all a function of mechanization and convenience; when the Industrial Revolution came, we were suddenly able to mill large amounts of trees into uniform lumber. One product could be made same as the next product, each squared-off and ready to sell.
Like Irwin, I use new technology to embrace the organic and primal. Where he uses plastics and mirrors to reference light and emotion, I use treated wood, to create tree-strong curves. We both use advancement to honor timelessness, and time passing, simultaneously. It's an exchange and a process that makes me think of Einstein (obviously), and his E = mc(2).
Matter can be transformed into energy. Energy can indeed be transformed into matter. These are the processes of art, and of life. We do the best we can to preserve and call attention to beauty and meaning. At times that calls for choices, the will of transformation.
We must remember, there is no lost matter, and there is no lost beauty: we simply evolve and people and artists to understand ways to rediscover, to embolden, to honor. I reclaim wood, and shepherd it into a new life, preserving other matter for its own organic functions.
The amount of earth that must be destroyed, the amount of matter that becomes immediately unusable, the amount of energy expended, for one ounce of gold: it's shocking.
So I instead prefer to pair the old and the new, to find resource in what once seemed like waste, to make the transformations smooth and graceful and dignified, minimizing impact to bring my art into the world.
There are so many ways to do this! Let us do it, on our own terms, and collectively! We must celebrate it! We must account for our relationship to nature! We must resolve to care!
"...color in nature is made up as much from texture as it is from the actual color itself. You have a color that’s made up of, say, fifty points of light, rather than on a painting, where it may be a single smear of color. Even in a pointillist painting, where you may be trying to approximate those fifty points of light, you’re never going to get the complexity and richness which you get here in nature."
 |
| © 2014 Robert Irwin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via the Art Institute of Chicago |
Of course, my work is very different than Robert Irwin's, who is known for conjoining a deep Zen-like singularity with materials that became newly available in mid-century California: molded plastics, spray paint, reflective surfaces, and the like. He learned, seeing that it was impossible to create painted work as true as nature, that he could work with light and space to create atmospheric experiences that reached far outside of of the materiality and physical footprint of the work.
There is a way in which I want my work to do the same thing: it is a magnification of the natural world, curated as a reminder. It's not an imitation of the natural world, nor representational one. Instead it is a talisman of the organic, a gesture towards returning to nature, a cue.
Looking around our world, tables are square, and chairs hold right angles, paper is crisp enough to cut the skin. But none of the materials which made these objects began at 90 degrees. Rather, it is all a function of mechanization and convenience; when the Industrial Revolution came, we were suddenly able to mill large amounts of trees into uniform lumber. One product could be made same as the next product, each squared-off and ready to sell.
Like Irwin, I use new technology to embrace the organic and primal. Where he uses plastics and mirrors to reference light and emotion, I use treated wood, to create tree-strong curves. We both use advancement to honor timelessness, and time passing, simultaneously. It's an exchange and a process that makes me think of Einstein (obviously), and his E = mc(2).
Matter can be transformed into energy. Energy can indeed be transformed into matter. These are the processes of art, and of life. We do the best we can to preserve and call attention to beauty and meaning. At times that calls for choices, the will of transformation.
 |
| "The Cuff" in hickory. Click here to learn more. |
The amount of earth that must be destroyed, the amount of matter that becomes immediately unusable, the amount of energy expended, for one ounce of gold: it's shocking.
So I instead prefer to pair the old and the new, to find resource in what once seemed like waste, to make the transformations smooth and graceful and dignified, minimizing impact to bring my art into the world.
There are so many ways to do this! Let us do it, on our own terms, and collectively! We must celebrate it! We must account for our relationship to nature! We must resolve to care!
May 21, 2014
The Constructs of Art & Time, or:
...getting a little philosophical before lunch.
Today at the studio, we were talking about the wood used in the GR pieces, where it comes from, and what it means to work so closely with these materials. I consider it an honor. "It isn't about time or what's old or what's new," I said. "Because time is made up." And the materials, warm and strong, we can hold in our hands.
In a Smithsonian Magazine article published two winters ago -- when the hunker-down and wait-it-out habits of the season (and time!) were in full swing -- writer Joshua Keating asked, how does time function in society? Anthropologists have concluded that not only is time a human construct, it is one that differs from culture to culture. From the theories of anthropologist Edward T. Hall:
In the studio, I use craft traditions established long ago, and also some of the newest technology. Lately, for instance, I've been experimenting with a 3D-printer, in order to find new forms and possibilities.
As process and technology evolve, our sense of time evolves, our sense of art evolves, and so too our connection with each other, citizens of the universe. When I look at something like the Signature Organic Coil bracelet, its ebonized white oak, its elegance and deceptive simplicity, I see all of this within it.
Art is a pure, pulsing thing within the complicated network of nature and all life, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Now it's time to get a bite.
Today at the studio, we were talking about the wood used in the GR pieces, where it comes from, and what it means to work so closely with these materials. I consider it an honor. "It isn't about time or what's old or what's new," I said. "Because time is made up." And the materials, warm and strong, we can hold in our hands.
In a Smithsonian Magazine article published two winters ago -- when the hunker-down and wait-it-out habits of the season (and time!) were in full swing -- writer Joshua Keating asked, how does time function in society? Anthropologists have concluded that not only is time a human construct, it is one that differs from culture to culture. From the theories of anthropologist Edward T. Hall:
"In monochronic societies, including Europe and the United States, time is perceived as fixed and unchanging, and people tend to complete tasks sequentially. In polychronic societies, including Latin America and much of Asia, time is more fluid and people adapt more easily to changing circumstances and new information." [emphasis mine]
Art is polychronic, but the craft of it is monochronic, I think. Working in the studio, I experience both senses of time. Art transgresses time, and art transgresses cultural understandings of time. Which is pretty neat.
Art is polychronic, but the craft of it is monochronic, I think. Working in the studio, I experience both senses of time. Art transgresses time, and art transgresses cultural understandings of time. Which is pretty neat.
In the studio, I use craft traditions established long ago, and also some of the newest technology. Lately, for instance, I've been experimenting with a 3D-printer, in order to find new forms and possibilities.
 |
| our new 3D-printer, alongside an important reminder: "Let the tree hug you." |
As process and technology evolve, our sense of time evolves, our sense of art evolves, and so too our connection with each other, citizens of the universe. When I look at something like the Signature Organic Coil bracelet, its ebonized white oak, its elegance and deceptive simplicity, I see all of this within it.
Art is a pure, pulsing thing within the complicated network of nature and all life, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Now it's time to get a bite.
Aug 19, 2013
New work by Gustav Reyes
Working hard in the shop for the Ingrained show at the Patina Gallery and LOOT at MAD. Check out these designs I did using wood and titanium. Woods are mixed between Cherry, Walnut and Hickory.
Aug 16, 2013
Curious New Brooch Design
I've been in the shop preparing for some upcoming shows (see "On the Road Again" a few posts back for a list of shows). With these pieces I was exploring space and weight. They are pretty far from anything I've created before.
Materials used are Cherry, Walnut, Titanium and Stainless Steel. All handmade in Pilsen, Chicago at Gustav Reyes Studio.
Aug 12, 2013
Signature Series Two Piece Bracelet
This new design is a shift from the continuous wood pieces I often do. It is made of two pieces that snap together. I also experimented with a rough texture.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)