Construction Techniques...Wendell Castle with Mr Chips MAG(03)
Wendell Castle REMASTERED
This exhibition presents the recent, digitally crafted works of Wendell Castle, master furniture maker, designer, sculptor, and pioneer of the American art furniture movement. In his meditation on a career that spans nearly six decades, Castle revisits the technique that he innovated in 1963—a unique method of stack wood lamination—and re-examines it through a contemporary lens. In 2011 he purchased a computer-numerical-control (CNC) milling robot, nicknamed Mr. Chips, to investigate the role that digital fabrication might play in expanding his studio practice. The results were dramatic, allowing him to create works of greater structural complexity that were ever before possible.
Stack lamination served as Castle’s primary means of production throughout the 1960s. In this process, layers of wood are glued, clamped, built up, and carved to create the final form. This technique had been used in sculpture, but Castle applied it to furniture, and his work developed a unique, organic character that has become his signature style. Most important, this process liberated him from the rectilinear forms associated with traditional wood-working joinery.
Invited to respond to a selection of historically significant works from the 1960s, Castle has created new works through his latest practice of incorporating digital technologies into the stack-lamination process. He combined 3D scanning, 3D modeling, and CNC milling with hand building, carving, rasping, and finishing. These new works are installed in dialogue with the earlier pieces that inspired them, providing a study in form, scale, volume, and visual language. The exhibition also includes Castle’s recent explorations in bronze and fiberglass.
Castle links the past with the present by blending craftsmanship with state-of-the-art digital technologies to create ever increasingly sculptural works. Yet they remain quintessentially the hand of Wendell Castles, the master.
From the placard… Memorial Art Gallery Rochester, New York.
Construction Techniques...Wendell Castle with Mr Chips MAG(03)
Wendell Castle REMASTERED
This exhibition presents the recent, digitally crafted works of Wendell Castle, master furniture maker, designer, sculptor, and pioneer of the American art furniture movement. In his meditation on a career that spans nearly six decades, Castle revisits the technique that he innovated in 1963—a unique method of stack wood lamination—and re-examines it through a contemporary lens. In 2011 he purchased a computer-numerical-control (CNC) milling robot, nicknamed Mr. Chips, to investigate the role that digital fabrication might play in expanding his studio practice. The results were dramatic, allowing him to create works of greater structural complexity that were ever before possible.
Stack lamination served as Castle’s primary means of production throughout the 1960s. In this process, layers of wood are glued, clamped, built up, and carved to create the final form. This technique had been used in sculpture, but Castle applied it to furniture, and his work developed a unique, organic character that has become his signature style. Most important, this process liberated him from the rectilinear forms associated with traditional wood-working joinery.
Invited to respond to a selection of historically significant works from the 1960s, Castle has created new works through his latest practice of incorporating digital technologies into the stack-lamination process. He combined 3D scanning, 3D modeling, and CNC milling with hand building, carving, rasping, and finishing. These new works are installed in dialogue with the earlier pieces that inspired them, providing a study in form, scale, volume, and visual language. The exhibition also includes Castle’s recent explorations in bronze and fiberglass.
Castle links the past with the present by blending craftsmanship with state-of-the-art digital technologies to create ever increasingly sculptural works. Yet they remain quintessentially the hand of Wendell Castles, the master.
From the placard… Memorial Art Gallery Rochester, New York.