Rago Auctions

 Thanks to Ken, I saw that poetry could be found both in the serene simplicity of Bert Marsh’s work and the complex inventions of the brilliant German miniaturist Hans Weissflog.

We did borrow from Ken for the Yale/WTC exhibition, but for me at least, his influence on the project ran far deeper; his collection, built up thoughtfully over the course of many years, provided something of a conceptual armature for us. It was with Ken that I had some of my first and best conversations about wood art, first at his house and subsequently over pizzas and beers at BAR (a local spot that he co-owned, and a contender for best pizzeria in New Haven—which is saying a lot). His experience and clarity were a great help to me as I developed my own ideas about the art form. It was partly through those discussions that I first came to grasp the key difference between the virtuosic hollow-carved vessels pioneered by David Ellsworth, and the more sculptural, massive works made by artists like Mark Lindquist—fundamentally, an opposition between abstract form and raw materiality. Thanks to Ken, I saw that poetry could be found both in the serene simplicity of Bert Marsh’s work and the complex inventions of the brilliant German miniaturist Hans Weissflog. I remember talking through the stages of an object with him—the way that post-lathe articulation, in the hands of a master carver like Jacques Vesery, could breathe new life into an otherwise classic vessel form. In summary, then, Ken was a crucial advisor, as I sought to define the shape of this still-burgeoning field, tracing the lines of its development and future prospects.

That future has now arrived. What is remarkable to me, seeing the works again after so long, is how fresh they still seem. Yes, these artists now constitute a canon: a group of foundational figures against which any subsequent work in the medium will inevitably be defined. Their names are, in the domain of wood art, what Brancusi and Hepworth are to modernist sculpture, or Pollock and Frankenthaler are to painterly abstraction. Yet, as in the works of those artistic luminaries, there is always more to discover: the drape of the grain in a Stocksdale bowl; the fine rays in Marsh’s oak, like so many shooting stars; the river-like cascades in Dan Kvitka’s stately ebony vessels; the converging fish that swim across a Michelle Holzapfel, as if a Pisces emblem from the zodiac were stirring to life; the aura that seems to hover at the midpoint of John Jordan’s walnut vase, like a portal to another world.

Yes, these artists now constitute a canon: a group of foundational figures against which any subsequent work in the medium will inevitably be defined. Their names are, in the domain of wood art, what Brancusi and Hepworth are to modernist sculpture, or Pollock and Frankenthaler are to painterly abstraction. 

When Wood Turning in North America opened at the Minneapolis Institute of Art—the first venue on its national tour—I remember that Holzapfel offered a set of remarks for the occasion (transmitted via video, a novel occurrence in those pre-Zoom days). She was, admittedly, an outlier in our exhibition; more carver than turner, as much storyteller as sculptor. True to form, she spoke about an ancient myth: the tale of Procrustes, a bandit who made all his victims the same size, stretching out the short and trimming the legs of the tall so they would fit his iron bed. Quite a forceful image, and it was meant to be. Holzapfel was reminding us that even a well-meant history can exert its own sort of violence. Art, in all its infinite complex variety, should never be forced into a neat narrative. It’s a lesson I have tried to keep in mind ever since. But you know, when I think back to that first encounter at Ken’s home—a model of thoughtful and informed collecting, in which the wild energies of materiality and creativity were nonetheless wholly present—I realize something. What I really needed to know about art, whether in wood or any other material, was all there for me. Right from the start.