Furniture Art

Artists Describing Their Art:

Daniel Wend - In my work, I've drawn from nature in visceral ways to explore my connection to the natural world. Art is yet another way of discovering new vistas and learning new things about places familiar. Much of my current work is done in oil pastel, which I prefer for thier brilliance and versatility (I use them on a wide variety of surfaces). Oil pastels also allow me to weave back and forth between the disciplines of painting and illustrating. I use up to 10 different types of oil pastel in some of my paintings, because of the variations in softness, opacity or color selection that allows me to build, transform and evolve a work....

Paul Carbo - I started messing round with wood in 1999 while still working as a graphic artist for the Los Angeles Times. We all worked on computers at that time and I was craving to do art with my hands like we used to back in the "dim time" before computers. I initially started to build small functional art pieces for children. Things like paper and pencil holders. I then progressed to larger caricatures of famous people I thought kids should be aware of like Abe Lincoln and Mark Twain, still intended as furniture for children. I would store the finished cabinets in my living room. They mingled well with my other furniture and and found I using them to store CD's,books ans such. At that point I said to myself " Why wouldn't grown-ups like this kinda thing"? I left my job at the newspaper, forged on and continued to build....

Rick Garner - Garner Furniture & Design builds primarily custom Heart Pine furniture. I often use this antique wood which is salvaged from historic buildings such as cotton mills in the Columbus area. Although Heart Pine is the most requested wood at present, I also use walnut, cherry, oak, mahogany, alder, birch and poplar, and some exotic woods as well. While I have been working with wood for over twenty years, the past eight years have been dedicated to the art of furniture. I incorporate traditional design with innovation and function, using only solid wood--no particle or fiber board, ever. Each piece is hand crafted and hand finished to bring out the natural beauty of the wood....

Zophia Kneiss - I have built "Burning Art" from my dreams. It has come a long way from the semi-sheltered studio in the Fourth Ward of Atlanta. It really makes me appreciate the rain proof haven I have here in the hills of Tennessee. Burning Art is about appreciating and fostering the inner child in all of us. My goal is to build art that you can play on. Huge installation-landscape sculptures that foster imagination to play on. It is important that my art is not the art one glances at from outside ropes and barriers, but one which engulfs the senses. I imagine jungle gyms and slides that incorporate themes that have playful lessons. ...