Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality. He believed in life, creativity, health, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's energies, however socially prevalent those views might be. Often referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers, Nietzsche's revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries.

Giorgio de Chirico

The art of De Chirico centers upon the antithesis between classical culture and modern mechanistic civilization. These two elements are locked in struggle, and the tragic quality of this situation exudes an aura of melancholy of which De Chirico is a prime exponent. The iconographic elements of his early art, modern railways and clock towers combined with ancient architecture, are to be sought in the artist's childhood memories of Greece. For the strange visual images in which De Chirico cast his mature works, he used an airless dreamlike space in his townscapes with an exaggerated perspective artificially illuminated, with long sinister shadows, and strewn about with antique statues. There is an elegiac loneliness too (the Delights of the Poet, 1913) and the disturbing juxtaposition of such banal everyday objects as biscuits and rubber gloves with those of mythical significance.

Works of De Chirico

A favorite amusement of ancient Greece was the composition of enigmas. In De Chirico's art they symbolize an endangered transitional period of European culture. From the enigma to the riddle presented by one's dream life is but a short step.

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile on July 12, 1904. His family’s disapproval drove the young Basoalto to write under the pseudonym of Pablo Neruda, which he officially adopted in 1946. Although his published poetry was widely respected by the time he reached age twenty, Neruda found it necessary to follow his budding political career to Asia in order to make a living. In Europe in the 1930’s he became involved in Communism , which would influence his later political actions as well as much of his poetry. In 1946 he successfully campaigned in Chile for the regime of Gabriel Gonzalez Videla, but he soon publicly expressed displeasure with Videla’s presidency and was forced to flee his homeland for several years. Neruda was able to return to Chile in 1952, finally both wealthy and widely respected. In 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature . He died of cancer at age 69 on September 23, 1973. By that time he was recognized as a national hero and the greatest Latin American poet of the twentieth century.

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot, 1961 Odeon Theatre, Paris. Directed by Roger Blin and set by Alberto Giacometti.

Irish playwright, poet, writer, and critic, April 13, 1906 – December 22, 1989.
Widely considered one of the most influential Irish intellectuals of the 20th century, Samuel Beckett is a cornerstone of Modernity. Of his prolific body of work including poetry, critical essays, and prose, Beckett’s plays are the highlight. Waiting for Godot is Beckett’s most popular two act play that is famously about nothing but deeply considers the existential plight of humans. This play influenced many in contemporary culture, including Larry David and Seinfeld. During the 1961 Paris revival of Waiting for Godot, Beckett asked Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti to design the set, a scant tree by a country roadside. Of Beckett’s prodigious oeuvre, his lesser know short plays, radio plays, and experimental dance pieces are considered to be groundbreaking in Modern theatre and drama.

Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith:  A Gathering 1980--2005, installation view Walker Center for the Arts.

Born in 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany, lives and works in New York.
Born to opera singer and actress Jane Smith and architect and abstract sculptor Tony Smith, Kiki grew up in New Jersey surrounded by creative people and was exposed to many art practices. Her earliest works use the human body and its functions as a point of departure, using diverse materials—handmade paper, papier-mache, glass, plaster, wax, and bronze, to articulate unique visions of the body, from clinical to primal. During the 1990s Smith began to engage with themes from literature and history, reimagining biblical and mythological characters in corporeality. Smith’s focus on anonymous feminine forms rather than particular personalities led her to examine female archetypes in religion, mythology, and folklore. In some cases she sought unexpected variations on familiar themes. Virgin Mary (1992), for instance, renders the Madonna flayed skinless like an anatomical model, with muscles exposed.

Wassilly Kandinsky

Wassilly Kandinsky was a Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist, whose exploration of the possibilities of abstraction make him one of the most important innovators in modern art. Both as an artist and as a theorist he played a pivotal role in the development of abstract art.
In 1911, along with Franz Marc and other German expressionists, Kandinsky formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group (named for Kandinsky's love of blue and Marc's love of horses). He produced both abstract and figurative works during this period, all of which were characterized by brilliant colors and complex patterns.Kandinsky's influence on the course of 20th-century art was further increased by his activities as a theorist and teacher. In 1912 he published Concerning the Spiritual in Art, the first theoretical treatise on abstraction, which spread his ideas through Europe. Returning to Germany in 1921, Kandinsky taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, and became a French citizen in 1939. Five years later passing away

Mark DelGuidice

Born in New Rochelle, New York, Mark DelGuidice has been creating artwork for over 17 years. initially self taught, Mark went on to study with Alphonse Mattia and Jerry Osgood at Boston Universities Program in Artisanary. Their he was inspired to enhance his craftsmanship and develop my own aesthetics. DelGuidice is inspired by post-modern influences and eclectic use of materials. His current explorations include carved hieroglyphs and colorful surface treatments. Carving Morse code into his work, DelGuidice uses the text as a visual and textural quality to his furniture and sculptural pieces.

Alexander Calder

Born in 1898 in Philadelphia, legendary American artist Alexander Calder began his career as an engineer. But art soon won out over engineering At 28, Calder moved to Paris, where he came into contact with the avant-garde scene. Drawn to both art and technology, he developed a uniquely individual style of sculpture. His often large-scale pieces have a whimsical effect, and are painted in primary colors. Often mobile sculptures, they combine Calder's love of art with his knowledge of engineering. His most famous works of abstract art entitled “Mobiles” were viewed as the most innovative sculptures of the 20 th century. Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry and jewelry, and designed carpets.

George Lucas

George Lucas was born in Modesto, California. The son of a stationery store owner, he was raised on a walnut ranch, and attended Modesto Junior College before enrolling in the University of Southern California film school. As a student at USC, Lucas made several short films, including Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138: 4EB, which took first prize at the 1967-68 National Student Film Festival. Today George Lucus is an American film director, produce, screenwriter and chairman of Lucasfilm Ltd. He is the creator Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and more. Today, Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful independent directors/producers. Lucus has influenced 20th and 21st century popular culture.

John Lewis Glass

John Lewis founded his studio in 1969. He was one of the first artists to open a hot glass studio in the Bay Area where, for 10 years, his focus was blowing glass. After receiving an NEA grant in 1980, he started experimenting with the possibilities of cast glass as a sculptural medium. He built a furnace specifically for casting, which melted and poured glass, and began exploring the various forms possible with different types of molds.

John Cederquist

John Cederquist is a woodworker in San Juan Capistrano, CA, who references traditional forms but uses surface painting to create optical effects. Because his surface painting explores perspective and depth, his works appears to be 3-dimensional. His imagery is heavily influenced by contemporary culture: comic strips, television, advertising, and other graphic imagery as well as traditional Japanese woodblock prints. His work references to OP and POP art as well as cubism. He received his B.A. and M.A. from California State University, Long Beach. His work can be found in the Museum of Arts and Design, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Mint Museum of Craft and Design, among others.

Wharton Esherick

Wharton Esherick (1887-1970) was a woodworker who lived and was among those artists of the early 20th century who were concerned with conceiving and creating a uniquely American handwork. He lived and worked in Paoli, Pennsylvania, where his hand-built studio houses the Wharton Esherick Museum today. He was a modernist, influenced by Brancusi and others. Esherick kept in step by creating modern furniture, intriguing woodblocks, and inspired sculpture that spanned decades of changing artistic and design trends. Esherick only began using power tools (except for a ban saw built with bicycle wheels) in the 1960s. Thus, the majority of his works, including the massive ones for which he is most famous, were produced with hand tools similar to those used by eastern Pennsylvania's original settlers. Today, much of his work can be found at the Wharton Esherick Studio Museum in Paoli, PA, a must-visit for anyone interested in either woodwork or craft history.

George Nakashima

George Katsutoshi Nakashima (May 24, 1905 – June 15, 1990) was a Japanese American woodworker, architect, and furniture maker who was one of the leading innovators of 20th Century furniture design and a father of the American craft movement. Born in Spokane, Washington, He attended the University of Washington and received his Masters in Architecture from M.I.T. During WWII, he was placed in an internment camp where he learned woodworking from a Japanese carpenter. Drawing on Japanese designs and shop practices, as well as on American and International Modern styles, Nakashima created a body of work that would make his name synonymous with the best of 20th century American Art furniture.

Dale Chihuly

Chihuly was introduced to glass in 1964, when, as a weaving student, he made large and small tapestries incorporating strips of fused glass and metal. He didn't begin blowing glass until a year later. During the latter half of the 1960s, Chihuly studied with Harvey Littleton at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, finished his graduate work at RISD, worked in Murano, and then began teaching at RISD in all before the 1970's. He has revolutionized glass in the same way Wendell Caslte did for the studio furniture movement. His fusion of form and color has expanded the field beyond the realm of goblets and vases. He is responsible for founding the RISD Glass program as well as the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State.

Donald Judd

Donald Judd is typically associated with three dimensional installations and sculpture; however his furniture pieces are his most stimulating work. As one of the first artists to declare and explore minimalism, his furniture designs are elegant. At the same time the designs are practical and are appealing to the eye.Judd was very insistent that his furniture should not be seen as artist’s furniture but as real furniture.

"I’m very touchy about it being considered art. To me the chairs and benches are perfectly comfortable, not hard and uncomfortable as people sometimes seem to think they are. I have nineteenth-century wooden chairs from Sweden and I’ve sat on them for years. I think the thing to do is to either sit up or lie down or stand up: I’m not sympathetic to in-between positions.” *

* http://www.louisaguinnessgallery.com/exhibitions/donald_judd.htm

David Smith

David Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures. His stints of studying at Ohio University, the University of Notre Dame, and George Washington, led to Smith dropping out to become a welder on an automobile production line in his home state of Indiana. However, after moving to New York, Smith joined the Art Students League in 1926 in New York to focus on painting. Later to be influenced by the welded sculptures of Julio Gonzalez and the paintings and drawings of Picasso, Smith started devoting himself entirely to metal sculptures, constructing compositions from steel and found material. He along with many other sculptors during the 1930's and 40's raised a new awareness for effectiveness of materials both fabricated and found.

Jaume Plensa

Jaume Plensa is an internationally acclaimed Spanish artist. Plensa works in a variety of media, including; drawing, sculpture and print, to set design and video and sound installations. His work is made to meld the various elements from our shared universe, including water, light, nature and dreams. Crown Fountain(above) named after the multi-million-dollar gift from the Crown and Goodman families of Chicago, is derived from an ever-changing, year-round exhibition of lights, electronic images and cascading water. It is designed to provide a dynamic space for silent reflection. Jaume has worked and exhibited internationally, including Japan, Italy, France, Spain, Sweden, Germany and Austria.

Isaac Arms

Working with three-dimensional software, Arms turns rough drawings from his sketchbook into digital models on a computer screen. Exploding these digital renderings into flat, two-dimensional shapes--which are then cut out using an automated laser system--Isaac is able to generate his furniture objects quickly and predictably. Much of the guesswork and fitting of complex shapes is calculated by the computer, freeing the artist to focus on the creative elements of his designs, as well as the craft involved in the fabrication of his works. Once welded, his pieces receive a wide range of surface treatments ranging from natural patinas powder coating. He is a graduate of Wisconsin-Madison and currently operates his independent studio practice in Bozeman, Montana.

"Humans, like any other creature, have very specific ways of acting when they are surrounded by strangers. A bench or a chair is an inanimate object that forces interaction among strangers"- Isaac Arms

Andy Buck

Andy Buck's furniture falls on the more sculptural side of the contemporary studio furniture movement. Whimsical color schemes mixed with forms suggestive of tribal carvings render Buck's furniture humorous and distinctive. His work brings together traditional craftsmanship with sculpted forms and richly painted surfaces. His furniture is painted with layers of milk paint, carved and sanded. He is interested in the shared relationship between craftsmanship and idea, between the medium and the message. Currently he teaches at RIT and exhibits and lectures nationally.

www.andybuck.com

Anish Kapoor

Kapoor's pieces are frequently simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic and brightly coloured. Most often, the intention is to engage the viewer, evoking mystery through the works' dark cavities, awe through their size and simple beauty, tactility through their inviting surfaces and fascination through their reflective facades. His early pieces rely on powder pigment to cover the works and the floor around them. This practice was inspired by the mounds of brightly coloured pigment in the markets and temples of India. His later works are made of solid, quarried stone, many of which have carved apertures and cavities, often alluding to, and playing with, dualities (earth-sky, matter-spirit, lightness-darkness, visible-invisible, conscious-unconscious, male-female and body-mind). His most recent works are mirror-like, reflecting or distorting the viewer and surroundings.

Cloud Gate- Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high. Cloud Gate sits upon the At&T Plaza, which was made possible by a gift from AT&T.

Salvatore Quasimodo

Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968) was born of Sicilian parents in Modica, near Syracuse. Desiring to become an engineer, he attended technical schools in Palermo and later enrolled at the Politecnico in Rome. In addition, he studied Latin and Greek at the University there. However, for economic reasons he was unable to complete his studies. He obtained a position with the Italian government's civil engineering corps and was sent to various parts of Italy. In 1930 he had three poems published in the avant-garde review, Solaria, and later that same year appeared his first book of verse, Acque e terre (Waters and Lands). Two years later he published Òboe sommerso (Sunken Oboe), in which he proves a more mature poet. The "poetica della parole", the poetics of the word, which is, for Quasimodo, the fundamental and virtually limitless connotative unit, pervades his first book. While this concept still serves as the basis for Òboe sommerso, the main interest of this collection lies in the rhythmical arrangement of words around a lyrical nucleus. In both these and his later works Sicily is the constant, ever-present factor.

Quasimodo's later works show this change from individualism toward sociality, and moreover affirm the positive characteristics of life even in a world where death is an omnipresent fear. In La terra impareggiabile (The Incomparable Earth), 1958, Quasimodo has eloquently attempted to fuse life andliterature; he has developed a new language which coincides with man's new activities and ever-expanding investigations. Some of his poetry and two of his critical essays have appeared in English translation in The SelectedWritings of Salvatore Quasimodo (1960); his Selected Poems were published in 1965.

Arnaldo Pomodoro

Pomodoro designed a controversial fiberglass crucifix for the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The piece is topped with a fourteen foot in diameter crown of thorns which hovers over the figure of Christ.

Some of Pomodoro's "Sphere Within Sphere" (Sfera con Sfera) can be seen in the Vatican Museums, Trinity College, Dublin, the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and the University of California, Berkeley. His thematic work "Forme del Mito" (Forms of Myth) was displayed at Brisbane's World Expo '88 and was later purchased by Brisbane City Council for the City of Brisbane.

Pomodoro visited New York in 1956 and traveled in Europe in 1958. In Paris in 1959 he met Alberto Giacometti and Georges Mathieu, before returning to the United States, where he organized exhibitions of contemporary Italian art at the Bolles Gallery in New York and San Francisco. In New York the following year Pomodoro met Louise Nevelson and David Smith. He helped found the Continuità group in Italy in 1961–62. The sculptor traveled to Brazil on the occasion of his participation in the 1963 São Paulo Bienal, where he was awarded the International Sculpture Prize. A solo show of his work was included in the Venice Biennale of 1964.

Mariko Mori

Mariko Mori lives and works in New York. The works develop Mori’s continued interest in a fusion of art and technology, Buddhism, and the idea of universal spiritual consciousness. Drawing from ancient rituals and symbols, Mori uses cutting edge technology and material to create a strikingly beautiful vision for the 21st century.

Mori's Oneness is an allegory of connectedness, a representation of the disappearance of boundaries between the self and others. It is a symbol of the acceptance of otherness and a model for overcoming national and cultural borders. It also is a representation of the Buddhist concept of oneness, of the world existing as one interconnected organism.

Mariko Mori’s remarkable sculpture, Wave UFO (seen in the image above) was included in the 2005 Venice Biennale, after being exhibited in New York with the Public Art Fund and at the Palazzo Ducale, Genoa. It was recently included in her solo exhibition at The Groniger Museum. The Wave UFO is on view through January 2008, at the Aros Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark, as part of Oneness, their survey of Mariko Mori’s work.

Ram Dass

Richard Alpert is a man who is often called a burned out hippie.  Yet in his time he has used his experience with the spiritual effects of the chemical compound naturally found in nature, Psilocybin.  A professor at Harvard in the mid sixties, he and Timothy Leary introduced this compound to the masses and both were quickly let go as Harvard Staff.  Many famous folks aligned themselves with the two merry pranksters.  Ken Kesey, Alan Ginsberg of course the grateful dead and many others.  experimentation was the way, and what a way it was.

Alpert traveled to India in the late 60's and was forever changed in a spiritual sense and was now called Baba Ram Dass.  Baba, after the man who trained him, and Ram Dass meaning "servant of God".  After coming back west to spread his word he wrote "BE HERE NOW" and began to spread the word of the ever worsening ego of the humanrace.   Since then he has embraced a wide variety of spiritual traditions and practices, including guru kripa (grace of the guru); bhakti yoga focused on the Hindu spiritual devaHanuman; meditation in various schools of Buddhism such as Theravada and Mahayana (including Tibetan and Zen); karma yoga; and Sufi and Jewish studies. In February 1997, he suffered a stroke which left him with expressive aphasia, however, he understands his stroke as an act of grace and continues to travel giving lectures, as his health permits. When asked if he could sum up his life's message Ram Dass replied, "I help people as a way to work on myself, and I work on myself to help people... To me, that's what the emerging game is all about." He was awarded the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award.  

This man is an artist of peace showing us a strength of spirit we should all hope to obtain.

 inin  August 1991.^[1]

Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri, was a Florentine poet of the Middle Ages. His central work, the Divina Commedia, is often considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.

Dante's engagement with philosophy cannot be studied apart from his vocation as a writer, in which he sought to raise the level of public discourse by educating his countrymen and inspiring them to pursue happiness in the contemplative life. He was one of the most learned Italian laymen of his day, intimately familiar with Aristotelian logic and natural philosophy, theology (he had a special affinity for the thought of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas), and classical literature. His writings reflect this in its mingling of philosophical and theological language, invoking Aristotle and the neo-Platonists side by side with the poet of the psalms. Like Aquinas, Dante wished to summon his audience to the practice of philosophical wisdom, though by means of truths embedded in his own poetry, rather than mysteriously embodied in scripture.

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is now considered seminal in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. Blake's prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language".

Considered mad for his idiosyncratic views by contemporaries, later criticism regards Blake highly for his expressiveness and creativity, as well as the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterized as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its largely having appeared in the 18th century.

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor emeritus and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as the father of modern linguistics.

Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist, and a libertarian socialist intellectual. Beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War Chomsky established himself as a prominent critic of US foreign and domestic policy. He is a self-declared adherent of libertarian socialism which he regards as "the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society." His status as a leading critic of American politics has made him a controversial figure.

Hans Wegner

A master of 20th century Danish Modernism, Hans Wegner was instrumental in developing a body of work known as organic functionalism. His work belongs to a minimalist school, but preserves function. although he designed all types of furniture, Wegner is best known for his chairs .Wegner worked for some time for Arne Jacobsen, another famous Danish designer to produce limited production furniture lines. He designed over 500 chairs and retired from public life only in the last decade of his life.

http://www.designaddict.com/design_index/index.cfm/fuseaction/designer_show_one/DESIGNER_ID/336/

David Trubridge

New Zealand based designer David Trubridge is a leading participant in the fight for environmental awareness and action. Trained as a naval architect and self-taught as a woodworker, David is passionate about how efficiently natural materials are consumed today. He is highly influenced by marine inhabitants and is a firm believer of green design. He created his studio out of an abandoned joinery shop in a closed meatpacking district in New Zealand. In 2007, Trubridge was honored with the Green Leaf Award for artistic excellence, presented by the Natural World Museum and the United Nations Environment Program. These awards celebrate an artist's ability to inspire and engage the public in environmental awareness and action through green design.

George Nelson

Noted as a renaissance man, architect, furniture designers, exhibitor, writer, graphic artist, and teacher, George Nelson is considered the most influential designer or mid century design. As the design director for Herman Miller from 1945-60, Nelson built their corporate image from the ground up. However like many other architects and designers of the early 1950-60's, the contrast of settable objects to storage objects are stikingly opposite to one another.

Eero Saarinen

Of the mid-century furniture designers who were also architects, Eero Saarinen, Finish-born son of architect Eliel Saarinen, made a big impression of the landscape and homes of America. Though he saw his courageous design statements rendered in concrete and steel, like the sweeping arch of Yale universities hockey rink or John Deere's horizontal headquarters in Illinois, Eero never lost interest in pursuing good design.

http://www.eerosaarinen.net/

Wendell Castle

Commonly referred to as one of the founding fathers of studio furniture, Wendell Castle examines the role of material, form, and function in furniture/sculpture. Castle creates furniture that often strolls beyond the conventional borders of even early decorative furniture, placing him in a niche that has puzzled those wanting to make a specific distinction between designer and sculptor. Although he often exhibits as a sculptor, his furniture designs for residential clients and public spaces represent a distinctive investigation of the qualities and possibilities of not only wood but other materials such as fiberglass, plastics, metal all at a high level of craftsmanship.

Drawing most of his inspiration from his “what if” philosophy, Castle generates ideas in a very unconventional manner. What if a table had thirteen legs? What is a mirror had more than one perspective? What if? What if? Castle has also drawn inspiration from Pop Art of the 1960’s as well as both modern and contemporary Italian design, going on, in the later 1970s and 1980s to explore the possibilities of Surrealism and his trompe l'œil series. Currently he draws upon the assorted possibilities of Postmodern design.

Brad Nelson

Brad Nelson’s Asian inspired minimalist furniture. Nelson forces his users to question how minimal furniture can present itself before “it’s just a piece of wood” Nelson’s integration of drawers easily connects his pieced to concepts of furniture. Taking away the drawers however the user is left to decide what function Nelson develops his designs while he works on each piece of furniture, making strategic decisions as he goes. He responds to the materials at hand and their shapes to create the proper design elements. He also incorporates his love of the natural world and his concern for the environment wherever he can; often using reclaimed wood in his tables and stands. Rather than synthetics or plastics the inspiration comes from within each reclaimed piece of timber.

Matthias Pliessnig

Matthias Pliessnig is one of several up and coming furniture designer.

“Naturally, furniture became my vehicle due to the intimacy of interaction and the challenges of structure with form.” (1)

Focusing on conventional construction methods and boat build processes, Matthias chooses to use solar and air dried domestic woods harvested by U.S. arborsists. Comprised of only slats of timber and a water-based non-toxic epoxy glue to hold the wooden structures together, the forms present themselves more as sculptures forms than as functional furniture objects. Having been formally trained as a metal smith, Pliessnig’s incorporates his knowledge of smithing with his understanding of conventional furniture construction. He works with controlled yet free flowing and organic forms. Resembling the work of New Zealand’s most celebrated green designers David Trubridge, Pliessnig intends for his work to communicate an understanding of how materials can be used in innovative ways. He recently had a solo exhibition at the Wexler as well as being represented at SOFA Chicago.

1. http://www.matthias-studio.com

Salvador Dali

Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Salvador Dalí's artistic repertoire also included film, sculpture, and photography. He collaborated with Walt Disney on the unfinished Academy Award-nominated short cartoon Destino, which was completed and released posthumously in 2003. He also collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on the dream sequence from his 1945 film Spellbound.


Video of Dali Painting in Studio 1958

Winsor McCay

Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator. A prolific artist, McCay's pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades. His two best-known creations are the newspaper comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland and the animated cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur, which he created in 1914.

Jim Henson

Today's generation of students grew up with Jim Henson, Fraggle Rock and the Dark Crystal. Henson was the most widely known puppeteers in American TV history. He was the creator of The Muppet's and the leading force behind their long run in the television series Sesame Street and The Muppet Show and films such as The Muppet Movie (1979) and The Storyteller(1988). He was also an Oscar-nominated film director Emmy Award-winning television producer, and the founder of The Jim Henson Company, the Jim Henson Foundation, and Jim Henson's Creature Shop. The surreal yet informative quality of his films and TV shows have informed all of today's emerging artist's

Daniel Johnston

Daniel Johnston is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and artist. Johnston was the subject of the 2006 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

Johnston began recording John Lennon and Beatles-inspired music in the late 1970s on a $59 Sanyo monaural Boombox, singing and playing piano and chord organ. Johnston's drawings were featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. His artwork is shown in galleries around the world, including exhibits in London's Aquarium Gallery and New York's Clementine Gallery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_RbSAwMa3U

Daniel Kuhn

Porcelain, Walnut

Soda Ash Glaze

Malcolm Davis

Malcolm Davis has been a full-time studio potter since 1984 when he left his previous life as campus minister. He took his first ceramics class in 1974 and since 1985 has maintained his mountaintop studio in Upshur County, WV. He is internationally recognized for his work with shino-type glazes, specifically for the creation of a unique shino-type formula with a high concentration of soluble soda ash, which encourages the trapping of carbon in the early stages of the firing.

Daniel Kuhn

Matinicus Night 

Stoneware, Porcelain Slip

14"x8"x4"

Peter Pilven

Peter Pilven is a woodfired Ceramic Artist from Australia. He works primarily with vessel forms which he alters in an organic sense.  He is very interested in the uncontrolled aspects of the woodfired kiln.  One cannot use the ancient descriptive words such as yaki, shigaraki, wabi or sabi to describe current work but old words or not the layers of interest in Pilvens work is apparent.  Perhaps we need a new lexicon of terms (such as the Japanese use) in an attempt to accurately describe the plethora of marks, flashes, effects and subtleties that document and record the flow of fire and ash through a wood burning kiln. An indefinable proportion of woodfiring's unique qualities are due to the range and complexity of variables that only coalesce during a particular firing. Ash and flash, care and a prayer all contribute generously to the fired palette. Likewise, weather conditions and barometric pressure are often significant variables in the matrix of the equation.  All if these factors contribute to the end result which cannot be predicted.  Leaving ones work to the doings of the earth is a brave and exciting process, ancient and new at the same time.    

Anselm Kiefer

Painter, sculptor, and installation artist. Kiefer was born in 1945 in Donauschingen, Germany. At the close of World War II, Anselm Kiefer studied art informally under Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Academy in the early 1970s.

Kiefer reflects upon and critiques the myths and chauvinism which eventually propelled the German Third Reich to power. His paintings depict his generation's ambivalence toward the grandiose impulse of German nationalism and its impact on history. Kiefer's work balances the dual purposes of visually powerful imagery and intellectually critical analysis. One of his most important works is on six strips of burlap sewn together, which Kiefer drew perspective lines to form a deep theatrical space. The viewer is placed at the entrance of the cavernous room, slightly off center, engulfed by the wooden beams...The interior is at once a memorial hall and crematorium. Eternal fires burn along the wall as if in memory of the individuals, but the lower edge of the painting is darkened in a manner that suggests it has been singed.

Tommaso Campanella

Tommaso Campanella (1568 – 1639), was an Italian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet. Campanella's heterodox views brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities. Denounced to the Inquisition and cited before the Holy Office in Rome, he was confined in a convent until 1597.

After his liberation, Campanella's aim was to establish a society based on the community of goods and wives. Betrayed by two of his fellow conspirators, he was captured and incarcerated in Naples. Pleading insanity, he managed to escape the death penalty and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Campanella spent twenty-seven years imprisoned. During his detention, he wrote his most important works: The Monarchy in Spain, Political Aforisms, Atheismus triumphatus, Metaphysica, Theologia, and his most famous work, The City of the Sun (1602/1623). He even intervened in the first trial against Galileo Galilei with his courageous The Defense of Galileo.

Campanella was finally released from his prison in 1626, Campanella was restored to full liberty in 1629. He lived for five years in Rome, where he was Pope Urban's advisor in astrological matters.

Dorothea Tanning

Tanning is an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and has also designed sets/costumes for ballet and theatre. Born in Illinois, Tanning lived in Paris for twenty-eight years then moving to New York. There she exhibited with Julien Levy Gallery and met the German painter Max Ernst in 1942. She married Ernst four years later, in a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliette Browner. Ernst introduced her to the circle of the Surrealists. Her best-known work, Eine kleine Nachtmusik is a dark painting laden with symbolism; ironically named after Mozart's light-hearted serenade. This painting marks in her career when she was a member of the surrealist group for a while, but later her painting style became more lyrical. Tanning returned to New York in 1978 after the death of Ernst. In nineties, Tanning has often published poetry in The New Yorker and is completing several books. Her most recent novel is Chasm (2004).