September 11 – November 25, 2009
On September 11, 2009 the Messler Gallery began its fall exhibition, Boxes and Their Makers. This show will be at Messler Gallery through November 25th, 2009 and will then travel throughout the United States. Additional venues include the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, the Mobile Art Museum in Mobile, Alabama, and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin. Complementing the exhibition is a 215 paged, full-color catalog published by Fox Chapel Publishing. New masters of the Wooden Box: Expanding the Boundaries of Box Making is at amazon.com.
Boxes and Their Makers makes a strong case for viewing contemporary craft, in all its forms, as a deeply personal exploration of the human spirit. To do so, it presents the astounding breadth of expression achieved by contemporary artisans within a single form (boxes) of a single medium (wood). “The makers of these boxes didn’t go into their workshops because there was a shortage of containers in the world. Rather, they went into their workshops on voyages of creative exploration—to transform raw materials into expressive objects,” says Peter Korn, Executive Director at Center for Furniture Craftsmanship.
The boxes in this exhibition range from geometric, architectural, and aquatic abstractions to literal interpretations of an iron, a beetle, and a chocolate glazed donut. The materials used by the artisans are just as diverse. Hans Wiessflog’s box includes Central American cocobolo wood and Po Shun Leong’s piece incorporates parts of a southern magnolia tree planted at the White House by Andrew Jackson. Other boxes are detailed with fossil mammoth ivory, leather, semiprecious stones, silver, and Xerox transfers.
The 33 craftspeople in this show come from the United States and beyond. They represent diverse professional backgrounds including furniture and musical instrument making, sculpture, carpentry, and aerospace propulsion. Exhibitors from the United States include: Bonnie Bishoff, Andy Buck, Kip Christensen, Jim Christiansen, Michael Cullen, Jenna Goldberg, Louise Hibbert, Ray Jones, Kim Kelzer, Bonnie Klein, Po Shun Leong, Tom Loeser, Michael Mode, Craig Nutt, Jay and Janet O’Rourke, Emi Ozawa, Jeffrey and Katrina Seaton, Tommy Simpson, J.M. Syron, Jacques Vesery, Phil Weber. International exhibitors include: Andrew Potocnik and Richard Raffan from Australia, Michael Hosaluk and Steven Kennard from Canada, Jean-Christophe Couradin from France, Ulrike Scriba and Hans Weissflog from Germany, Yuji Kubo from Japan, and Andrew Crawford, Robert Ingham, and Peter Lloyd from the United Kingdom.
