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My folding console /dinning on view for the past year at the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville NC and written about in previous blog posts has just returned home and is now on sale on my Etsy site , click the link to be taken to the sale page
When people ask me how I categorize my work or better yet what I call my style of work,I tell them I make functional sculpture. I always avoid the other standard catch phrases like art furniture,contemporary furniture or artiture because functional sculpture best sums up what my work is about. I take a very personal fine art aesthetic to building functional objects for the everyday. I could probably leave it at that enough said, but as I think about it in more depth there is a history of functional sculpture going back to the earliest objects created by humans.
In museums and academia it is categorized as the decorative arts but essentially as humans built the tools and objects necessary for living they did more than just make a nondescript items. They imbued their objects with meaning along with making a tool whose handle was comfortable to grip or chair comfortable to sit by embellishing them with symbols and shapes of meaning to them and their culture. So I can draw a direct line from my work to that of cave man woodworker, now that is enough said!
Just a quick update on the hacking of my website. At this point I have replaced all the images that were deleted from my website gallery by the hacker. I have yet to replace all the information on the size and materials and other information about each individual piece, the task just seems to daunting for the moment ,but if you want specific information on a piece you see on my website please feel free to contact me.
I would like to thank one of my readers who pointed out to me this week that the gallery section of my website ,www.erikwolken.com, had been maliciously hacked. Someone with obviously nothing better to do hacked into my web site and deleted all the images and text in the gallery section and so for the moment that section of the site remains empty until I can rebuild it. Needless to say it was a stupid act of vandalism and will be a pain in the ass to repair but hopefully I will get the gallery section of the website up and going in the next week. If you would like to see images of my work you can still visit my site on Custom Made or view work for sale on my Etsy site
I belong to a loose collective of woodworkers called “White Cross Woodworkers”(WCW) that has shared shop space for the last ten years . Together we work in a10,000 sq/ft building and collectively own most of the large machinery while each of us maintains there own bench space. This past fall we made the decision to showcase all of our talents by creating a gallery ,open to the public, in the shop and now after month’s of toil The Gallery at WCW is open. If you are in the Chapel Hill North Carolina area please stop by at 3315 NC 54 West and view the many talents that WCW represents.
In my bio I have a line that says “I am inspired by the world around me” but besides being a glib line what does that really mean. What is my process to come up with my next idea or solution (design) for a client.The sources of my inspiration seems a topic for some self reflection and more than a brief article but here is an attempt.
Most of my ideas come from my sketch book ,and I keep them going back more than 20 years ,as I see things that interest me in both the natural world and the man made world I scribble them down. My scribbles though are often transformed into functional objects, if I see an architectural detail I like I might put it down as a detail in a table construction or a chair, so often I do not know the source of the original object. I also have another habit with my sketch books which is to create design problems and then sometimes spend years working out solutions. My “Little Big Man” series which I wrote about in the blog is a good example of a design problem I set up for myself in coming up with ideas for multifunction furniture. I have had one ongoing design problem running through many sketch books to design a simple yet elegant 36” diameter kitchen table that sells for under 1500$.I have called this my Noguchi problem or my search for my own Noguchi after Isamu Noghuchi’s brilliant yet simple 3 piece 1944 coffee table. I also just aimlessly doodle in my sketch books with no apparent object in mind and this sometimes is how I have come up with my most sculptural ideas. My Torso series came about that way as I identified some errant doodles as looking like human torso’s and devoted a few pages to developing the idea. At some later point in time when needing an idea for a gallery show I was in I went back to those drawings and developed them as cabinets.
Going to my sketch books is always a good first step for me but just as often I like to do some research around an idea and find sources outside my own head. At that point I start to look through my own design library of both furniture and architecture and look not only for other peoples specific design ideas but look for interesting details I can take out of context and use in other ways. I once found an image of a lid for turned vessel and used it as an idea for a table base. I also, like most scour the internet for cool ideas and images as sources of inspiration. Finally my last act is to take a walk not necessarily a walk in nature or a walk looking for inspiration but a walk to clear my thoughts and make me more receptive to the ideas rolling around in my head. Motion, just the act of moving forward has always been a way for me creatively problem solve or just clear the slate and let the ideas flow.
In this post I have excerpted a couple of segments from my interview with Molly Matlock on her radio program Inside the Artists Studio which originally aired on WCOM Carrboro,NC on December 1,2008. The titles to the audio clips are as follows, please click on the highlighted text to listen and as always please feel free to comment or contact me.
The building of the torso pieces
In keeping with the theme of black friday I have reduced the price on my Little Big Man stool/side table and Red and Yellow #1 cabinet on my etsy site.I have 2 of the Little Big Man in red and one in black available for 500$ plus 75$ in shipping and 1 Red and Yellow#1 available for 900$ plus 150$ in shipping.Enjoy your holiday weekend and stay at home and shop online
The Furniture Society (FS)is holding its annual conference in Boone, NC June 10-13 for all those interested in the field of furniture and furniture design as well the more esoteric issues of the meaning of craft this is the best event in north america to attend. I will also being donating work to the annual FS auction which happens during the conference check out the FS website for details on the conference and the auction page to view the work I have donated and details on bidding
Hi all and welcome to my blog I am the furniture maker and designer Erik Wolken. As I enter into this new venture my hope is to be better able to connect with the community of people both making and buying contemporary art furniture , for lack of a better word. To that end the goal for my blog is to keep you up to date on where my work can be seen, new work as it emerges from the the sawdust and ideas for new pieces. I also want to point out cool work I see as I wander around the internet and mention happenings in the furniture world that might be of interest to others. So let’s go
Panorama theme by Themocracy
