Michael Chinn

How did you happen to utilize both wood and metal in your work?
As a teenager I really enjoyed slot car racing and became pretty good at building custom cars. I fabricated my own frame assemblies out of brass, rewound motors to run a lot faster and did assorted other things related to the hobby. While in college and pursuing an undergraduate degree I took a jewelry and metalsmithing class and found working with metal in a creative way to my liking. Because of my former hobby I felt at home with metal and the scale (used in metalsmithing) so decided to concentrate my studies in this area. Later I attended graduate school to pursue a degree in jewelry and metalsmithing. It was then that I took a wood design class because I liked some of the work I saw coming out of the program and wanted to investigate. In wood I found a material, and what was then an emerging field in art, more conducive to the kind of work I wanted to pursue. Having a background working with metal on a small scale I found the idea of combining these dissimilar materials intriguing. As a result, most of the work that I would subsequently make, including the pieces in the In-Balance show, were combinations of wood and metal.

What is your attraction to these materials?
Wood has a number of desirable properties including its many hues, texture and figure, a favorable weight to mass ratio, and an warmth not found in other materials. Metal, on the other hand, is malleable, can be precisely formed and readily accepts mechanical fasteners. Both materials can be colored in a variety of ways that maintain most of their visual and tactile qualities.

Is there a hierarchy in your combinations - i.e. does one material play a more key part than the other?
I consider myself to be a wood artist so wood and wood-based materials are the primary materials in all my creations. Metal, usually aluminum, plays a supporting role in most of my work. I also paint wood for certain effects.

What would you use if wood or metal were no longer available to you?
I have worked with plastics and like the properties that some of them have. I also like glass and ceramic materials and could see them being used in my creations.

Who is your favorite artist(s) and how did they inspire your work?
That's a tough one because my favorite artists do not inspire my work per se. Rather, they are inspirational to me as makers of art work. Martin Puryear, Wendell Castle, Willie Cole, all sculptors.

What else can you tell the audience about your work?
My work tells stories in an abstract and symbolic manner. Many of the stories come from my work as a college professor and administrator.

Robyn Horn

What led to your eventual explorations with wood and metal in your work?
Steel is a much different material than wood, not only in the way it is worked, but also in the way it is perceived. I have always been attracted to rust, and the patterns that rust makes on steel. I had been working with wood for almost 10 years before I began tentatively adding steel components. The first steel elements were purely decorative. Later came bases and then the conveyor belt hinges with their repetition of form.

What is your attraction to these materials?
I like the imperviousness of steel, its resistance to change and its rusted surface which can vary greatly. Wood has a "livingness" that is incredibly unique. The work that I want to make lends itself to the dimensions that wood is available in. There are also characteristics that different woods have that are helpful when making certain work, whether it is stable or volatile, hard or soft, dark or light. It is also a very immediate material, in that you simply cut it or sand it. No firing or annealing is necessary.

Is there a hierarchy in your combinations – i.e. does one material play a more key part than the other?
I will always have a preference for wood. but the steel adds another dynamic dimension that has different properties visually and physically.

What would you use if wood or metal were no longer available to you?
Paint

Who is your favorite artist(s) and how did they inspire your work?

Isamu Noguchi, Barbara Hepworth and David Nash have had the most influence on my sense of form. They are mostly minimalists, and I am attracted to the combinations of forms and textures they use. I am also influenced by Cubism and Futurism. The geometric elements of adjusted planes and space that these two movements employ are essential to the way I see form.

What else would you like to tell the audience about your work?

I am drawn to abstract, geometric sculpture, the volume of it, the form, the textures, the negative spaces. I am obsessed with tension and movement, the gestural qualities of sculpture. I believe that the individual character of the material can be preserved by the inspiration of the artist, that they can both exist by the combining of the curving lines of nature, together with the angular lines of geometry, resulting in a gentle merging of the two entities, one working with the other in a union of souls. I am influenced by the nature of the material and its resistance to being changed. I think in terms of wood and stone, of the things of which nature is made, of the ease with which nature develops into shapes and forms, created throughout centuries of accumulated time. I persist in seeing sculpture in a purely visceral way, line and mass, the interplay of angles and planes to create effects of light and shadow, with a strong emphasis on visual grace, and a sense of structural strength and unity.


Todd Hoyer

How did you happen to utilize both wood and metal in your work?

Having studied metals in college and working as a machinist, I found the material cold, harsh and difficult to form without a variety of machines. At this time, my mother wanted a loom, so I built her one and learned to weave. I found textiles to balance the metalwork with its warmth and softness, but I was looking for something in between. Wood was the perfect compromise for me. I have now come full circle, incorporating metal and wood, sometimes using weaving techniques within the metal wire elements. I balance the two materials, such than neither dominate, but both complement each other.

William Moore

How did you happen to utilize both wood and metal in your work?

The answer is rather involved. In the late 1960s when I was working on an MFA in sculpture I created a number of pieces one might describe as mixed mediafiberglass and wood, cast bronze, wood and plastic, etc. In these sculptures, the different materials added emphasis to the constructed nature of the work. When I moved to Oregon in the 1970s, I focused exclusively on wood in my work. My sculptures from this period were constructed entirely of the same wood in each piece. At some point in the late 70s and early 80s I began using wood as a color, mixing a variety of woods in a single sculpture. It was about the same time I started to use lathe-turned elements in my compositions.
During the mid 80s, I returned to my interest in mixed media with experiments using ceramics and wood, fibers and wood, and leather and wood. While I found these pieces interesting and enjoyed the contrasts between the elements, none of these other materials held the same interest for me as the wood. In 1988, while on a sabbatical year from my teaching, a number of things came together that led to my exploration of metal and wood. One was the purchase of a new (to me) lathe that had been used by a previous owner for metal spinning. Second was seeing Lynn Hulls spun metal pieces in the International Turned Objects Show and, after viewing the rest of the show, wondering why no one had considered combining spun metal with turned wood. On my return home, I began experimenting with the combination and found that the symmetry of turned wood and spun metal naturally fit together to create a rich relationship far more satisfying than my earlier attempts at mixed media.

What is your attraction to these materials?

Both of my parents were hobbyist woodworkers. I grew up with a rather complete wood shop in the basement. My mother taught me to turn on her lathe when I was a teenager. Wood just seemed the natural material to make things from. I like the wide variety of woods, their colors and textures. Wood seems the most workable of materials, far more malleable than steel or stone, yet not so mushy as clay. I enjoy the tools and processes used to transform wood from its raw state into my sculptures. Non-ferrous metals, and particularly copper and its alloys, such as bronze, have always appealed to me, partly for their workability and also for the wide color range they can present through patinas. I find that wood, copper and bronze are complementary to each other, and at the same time are capable of creating rich contrasts, emphasizing the qualities of each.

Is there a hierarchy in your combinations i.e. does one material play a more key part than the other?

I am a sculptor who has worked with wood for many years. In most of my pieces the idea is developed in wood, but always with the concept that the metal elements must be integrated to the whole. Having said that, occasionally a piece will have no metal and in others the metal seems the dominant material.

What would you use if wood or metal were no longer available to you?
This is a hard question to answer in that my wife claims I have enough wood to last two lifetimes. As mentioned earlier, over the years I have experimented with many other materials, I have used stone, both carved and turned. I have used plastics, both turned and cast. I am intrigued with possibilities in concrete, leather, and fibers.

Who is your favorite artist(s) and how did they inspire your work?

At age 64, I have had many artists who have inspired me. Early on, as an undergraduate sculpture major, Henry Moore was a big influence. Then the raised copper work of Philip Grausman inspired me. I learned from Arp, Brancusi, and Gabo. When I saw Noguchis constructed work, I was intrigued by the relationships of individual elements and how they worked together to create the whole. I saw Robert Strinis sculpture in an exhibition at the Portland Art Museum and was so impressed with how he was able to orchestrate so many complex elements into a cohesive simple whole. When I first started seriously to use woodturning in my pieces, Steven Hogbins work was a revelation. The idea that one could alter or reorganize turned form in new ways set my mind abuzz. Lynn Hulls spun metal pieces opened up possibilities for me that I am still exploring twenty years later. These examples are but a tip of the iceberg.

What else can you tell the audience about your work?

I am pleased that these four pieces are being shown together for the first time. While there is a fair time between the creation of the first and last pieces, there is an obvious relationship, all being an exploration of the sphere. They illustrate that my approach is not always linear but sometimes circular, returning to ideas or forms to explore their potential. They also exhibit a range of how metal and wood might interrelate while exploring a similar form.

Mark Nantz


What led to your eventual explorations with wood and metal in your work?
What led me to combining metal with wood was an evolution that took place over many years. I have always been fascinated by the degree precision that both machinists and jewelers are able to achieve with metal.

What led to your eventual explorations with wood and metal in your work?

I began my career twenty three years ago in the field of cabinetmaking. I worked as an apprentice in a local cabinetmaking shop where I developed my joinery skills. I worked full time as a cabinet maker for ten years. While I found the work rewarding, I felt as though my creativity was being suppressed. I began experimenting with other areas of craft such as making jewelry boxes, wood jewelry and knife making. It was knife making that was really the initial phase where I felt the true relationship of the two totally different materials come together.

Is there a hierarchy in your combinations – i.e. does one material play a more key part than the other?

I started seeking out rare and magnificent wood specimens to use for handles on the knives. The handles, also known as scales, were held onto the blade using either brass or nickel silver rod. I quickly developed a passion for combining the materials. I immediately incorporated metal and joinery into my bowls and vessels as soon as I started woodturning.

What would you use if wood or metal were no longer available to you?

Exercising my creativity, maintaining an uncompromising attitude toward my work, a passion for the materials that I use, and constantly seeking the personal reward of successfully completing a project defines who I am and what I do. If these materials were no longer available to me I would have to develop new skills to work with other materials like stone, glass, plastic, clay or anything that could be cut, shaped, molded or formed into beautiful objects.

Who is your favorite artist(s) and how did they inspire your work?

While I do not have a single favorite artist, I greatly admire and am inspired by the works of countless artists and designers in all aspects of art and craft in both the past and the present.