SCULPTURE COLLABORATON

Besides the work I have been showing here, my drawings and paintings, I am also a furniture artist and designer, and I thought it would be interesting to show where I crossover in my creative thinking. Yes I make functional woodworking but I also think and create pieces, using these kind of materials, from a more idea base than mere functionality. If you are interested in this other persona I have, check out my website at http://www.terrybostwickstudio.com/   I also have a blog, http://www.terrybostwickstudio.blogspot.com/, where I do much the same thing as I am doing with the fine art blog - I talk about why and how I make my sculptural furniture, including some narratives and musings if you browse back through the archives.

And, yes, I make a living doing this work.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to do a collaboration with a jeweler friend of mine, Ben Neubauer, http://www.benneubauer.com/. I had always seen his work as very architectural in design. We had an opportunity to show this piece in a collaboration show at Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland. We wrote a statement for that show and I included it here because it gives you a pretty good idea about how we went about not only creating this piece but how we worked together on the concept.

the Statement:

"Three Stories"

When we were asked to do this collaboration I began thinking 

 of a number of people and their unique ways of thinking and how I 

 could find a blend with my own current design interests. Ben Neubauer 

 stood out with his extraordinary geometric forms, both in his jewelry 

 and in his sculptural pieces, work I saw as very architectural in 

 nature and I was very fortunate to find him willing and available to 

 work on this. My own interests these days are architectural as well, 

 basing much of my exploration with the Columbia Gorge Columnar Basalt 

 rock formations' relationship to architectural form, and used in my 

 furniture designs.

 It was a real pleasure discovering our outside interests also were 

 similar with each having some architects that stand out for us. We 

 both had been drawn to Santiago Calatrava's work, I shared my interest 

 in Carlo Scarpa. Ben brought my attention to Rem Koolhaas and in 

 particular the Seattle Public Library which he had visited recently. 

 These beautiful layered and suspended 'slabs' struck me as very much 

 in keeping with my thinking. This began our process.

 After a few meetings we began to formulate our 

 thoughts around the idea of balance. Many aspects of balance play 

 against each other with this piece. The obvious precariousness of the 

 slabs is apparent, representative to us of the natural sloughing 

 off of the rock slabs as they fall and create a skree at the base of a 

 rock column. Other elements of balance include the visual relationship 

 of planar with organic, hard edge with curved, the mass of the slabs 

 with the transparent and seemingly delicate nature of the sterling 

 silver geometric 'bubbles' - certainly a diaphanous support for the 

 mass of the slabs.

 The 'slabs' are torsion boxes fabricated in their compound angular 

 forms and skinned with matched pieces of Fiddleback Maple veneer. The 

 cascade of black 'color' is graphite. "

The silver spheres are fabricated from fourteen gauge sterling wire, 

and these are attached to each other with straight lengths of eighteen 

gauge wire. Sterling pegs are fit into holes drilled into the wood to 

hold it all together without glue. A coat of laccqer will prevent 

tarnishing of the silver without affecting it's appearance.

Terry Bostwick

www.TerryBostwickStudio.com

503-557-2251

Ben Neubauer

www.benneubauer.com

503-358-1113

here are some pics of Rem Koolhaas' drawing, and some photos of the Seattle library that inspired Ben and I.

concept drawing

the library