Vladimir Kagan's Blog

The Indomitable Wendell Castle

 Copyright Vladimir Kagan October 24, 2015

 

If there is one person who’s work I have admired all of my life, who’s work stands out as art transmuted magically into furniture, who has been true to his muse and at age 83 still creates monumental works, it’s Wendell Castle.

 

A reunion of old friends: Nancy Jurs, Wendell's wife, Vladi and Wendell Castle at the opening reception for Wendell's Retrospective show at the Museum of Art and Design (MAD Museum)

Wendell Castle is not a furniture maker; he is a sculptor creating vessels for sitting. He is not motivated by a need for comfort. It is what separates his art from us mortals who make furniture. We are driven by rules: seat height, seat depth, lumbar support, and feasibility – strictures that do not bind Wendell. 

 

Wendell is currently being honored with a major retrospective of his work at the Museum of Art & Design (MAD) in New York City. It is befitting that some fifty years earlier Wendell had his first show at this same museum, formerly The America Craft Museum. What goes around – comes around.

 

Wendell Castle grew up on a farm in Emporia, Kansas. We don’t quite know what motivated him to venture from the bucolic life of raising cows to a love affair with wood and sculpture. But the world he inhabits today is a more beautiful place for it.

 

 

A sculpture  by Wendell Castle created out of discarded gunstocks

A scribe chair, vaguely resembling a piece of furniture, is another early work created with gunstock elements

This is the Wendell Castle we all recognize, an organic stool on four legs. Ironically Wendell carved this stool upside down, starting with the legs, he  had no idea of it eventually becoming a seat!

In 1958, Wendell Castle received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in industrial design, and in 1961, a Master of Fine Arts, both from the University of Kansas. From 1962-1969, he taught at Rochester Institute of Technology, School for American Craftsmen, in Rochester, NY, and is now an Artist in Residence. In 1980, he opened the Wendell Castle School in Scottsville, NY, not far from Rochester, where he became a shining star. His classes nurtured generations of creative woodworkers that have spread his gospel worldwide, but there is only one Wendell Castle.

     

 

By the mid-sixties, Wendell's signature handwriting was well established. He glued-up huge slabs of wood and called them Stack Laminations, which he deftly attacked with his chainsaw to create the furniture illustrated above.

 

Eager to try his hand at new technology, In the 70's Wendell developed a collection of fiberglass furniture named the Molar Group. This sensuous chair was the masterpiece of the collection.

The Museum's caption about his fiberglass work

In a beautiful documentary film, Wendell demonstrates that he is still the master of using his tools including rasps, chisels and chainsaws.

 

 

An artist with a huge vision, in the 21^st Century Wendell discarded his traditional tools of creativity. Gone are his ubiquitous chain saw, chisels, rasps and spoke-shavers. They have been replaced with the industry’s latest technology: precision scanners, sophisticated 3D printers and C&C carving machines, tools more apt to be found in a Ferrari model shop than in a sculptor’s atelier. Wendell transformed his studio into a high-tech laboratory. With this new technology Wendell’s work has exploded to new flights of imagination.

 

  

Today, Wendell carves precise miniature models he then scans into his computers for his machines to replicate into larger-than-life sculpture-furniture

 

One of the exhibits graphically illustrates the stack build-up of his furniture. Wendell is a VERY precise worker!

     

The NEW Wendell Castle designs are carved on his high-tech C&C carving machine. This technology has liberated Wendell from the workbench to explore the stratosphere.

 

The MAD’s comprehensive show illustrates the transition from his early sculpture using discarded gunstocks to create his skeletal shapes vaguely resembling furniture. By the early sixties, Wendell experimented with stack-laminated wood and using his primary tool, a chainsaw, deftly wielded it to create bold, arboreal shapes that morphed into chairs, tables, desks and sofas.  In the seventies, Wendell explored fiberglass to create sinuous tactile curves of color that became chairs and stools.

 

Wendell is never a man to stand still and the second floor of this retrospective is devoted almost entirely to his monumental creations on the C&C carving machine.

 

This show has just opened. If you are planning a visit to New York, Wendell Castle’s retrospective is a must.

 

 

 

 

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The Joy of working with your hands

 

The Zen of Model Boat Building

 

Copyright Vladimir Kagan October 15, 2015

 

Zen 

noun: Zen; noun: Zen Buddhism

a Japanese school of Mahayana Buddhism emphasizing the value of meditation and intuition.

 

Several weeks ago I ranted about my niggling personal faults: “I am compulsive - impulsive – slap-dash and never measure!” There is one cure for that: Build a model boat! It teaches patience and precision, resulting in the deep satisfaction of working with your hands. It liberates you from the computer. It is reasonably quick and does not exhaust your attention span. And most satisfying: it gives you bragging rights of having done it yourself and yet one more model to put on your bookshelf or mantle.

 

My latest accomplishment - a scale model of a Gloucester Dory, in the library of my Nantucket home

A closeup photos of the intricacies of the Gloucester Dory model.  

 

 

Nantucket is blessed with a number of dedicated craft centers: NISDA, (Nantucket Island School Design and Art) an unofficial offshoot of RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) and AAN (Artist Association of Nantucket) founded by artists for artist – have wonderful teaching programs. And there is also the 1800 House, a beautifully restored historic building dedicated to teaching historic crafts. It is one of the NHA’s (the Nantucket Historic Association) notable properties and an example of alternate uses of historic structures

 

The 1800 House is where my wife, Erica Wilson, taught adorable children’s classes, a tradition now carried on by my daughter Vanessa. It is also where my friend, Mark Sutherland teaches a class in model boat building.

 Mark is one of the finest model makers in the country. He has made a career out of his childhood love and builds exquisite models for museums and private collections. It is fortunate that Mark owns a family house on Nantucket and spends part of his summers with us. It allows him to teach this program. This was my second class with Mark.

(At the end of this article, please see a few photos of Mark's work) 

This years’ project was a model of a Gloucester Dory. Some fifty years ago I owned one of these beautiful boats. It was unfortunately smashed into smithereens during one of Nantucket’s hurricanes. I had saved the sternpost all these years until finally this spring I cleaned out my garage and asked, “Why am I saving this?” and dumped it into the landfill! (One of my listed faults: impulsive knee-jerk reaction.)  Here was my opportunity to create a memorial for this handsome boat.

 

My original Gloucester Dory  photo taken in the 70's with Erica and my three children - note: we had a center well for a small outboard motor

 

 

The most famous Dory: A Winslow Homer's painting of a fisherman returning home with his catch

 

The beginning

On the first day, Mark provided us with a perfect model of a Dory. We took one look at it and questioned “Was that what he intended us to produce in four half days???” He assured us it would be done!

The bits and pieces that made up Mark's boat building  kit. 

We were handed a ‘kit’ consisting of a bundle of white pine wood cut to different sizes and shapes.  A handful of stainless steel stickpins, a bag of clothespins, an Exacto knife, a sand paper block, pencil, cardboard, scissors, a pair of fine nosed pliers and a variety of fast drying glues. These were all the tools we were to work with. The only machine available was a table mounted belt sander. We were ready to start. 

The delicate task of assembling the first planks

The model boat building process is exactly the same as building a full size version. You start from the bottom with the floorboards and add the stern and bow posts. Quickly, we understood why we were given a sand paper block, you must whittle and sand each component to fit perfectly as they will become inaccessible once assembled. This is painstaking, laborious work and the first test in patience! Each lap strait panel needed to be bent to fit the curve of the boat. Pins and clothespins substituted for the heavy clamping used on the full-size boat.

Each day moved us closer to fulfilling our goal. The pleasure was seeing this boat take shape from the ground up. The most challenging and rewarding task was carving the oars. They are so pretty and delicate.

 

 

 

The first lesson in diligence is patience!

Mark Sutherland demonstrating how to set the steel pins.

My favorite bi-product: carving the oars

Satisfaction at last: My finished model on the left - Mark's on the right.

Mission accomplished: Four days later -  the proud participants in the class showing off their models

 

Each year Mark offers a different class of a boat for us to recreate. My first model was a half-hull of an Indian, a venerable day racing boat designed by John Alden in 1927. It is still one of the most competitive classes racing in Nantucket each summer. I have owned my Indian for over forty years.

The half-model of my Indian hanging over the entrance door to the kitchen

 

Mark Sutherland's models - to contact Mark, use the Link below 

Mark Sutherland <[email protected]>

 

 

A half model of the whale ship Essex is next year's project: I am already itching to get started!

 

 

 

 

Zaha Hadid - the Doyen of Modern Architecture

 

 

The Indomitable Zaha Hadid 

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, October 6, 2015

 

There is no glass ceiling that can hold back Zaha Hadid – she has catapulted through shatterproof glass and is today, the best modern architect in the World. Zaha is a force to be reckoned with, the most creative architect in the 21^st Century. She has out-curved Frank Gehry and Santiago Calvatava, the acknowledged masters of the genre. Zaha is the only woman to win the Pritzker award – the World Series of architecture. Awards have been piling up ever since.

 

She is not a computer doodler. Zaha draws. She visualized her creative concepts in sketches with bold curvilinear strokes. She is my friend and hero; she inspires my work and she tells me that I have inspired hers.

 

Zaha paints her concepts. Only after she is happy with the design does she interpreter them on the computer.

Top: Zaha's rendering for the Vitra fire station ca. 1991 Bottom: her concept for the KMR Art and Media Center in Dusseldorf Germany

 

She is worshiped for her lyrical curved stadiums, undulating museums and amorphous concert halls. She prefers horizontal to vertical architecture. Her sprawling lines are inspired by the topography of the rolling landscape. As a proponent of linear design, designing a high-rise building imposes limitations to her creativity. The Zaha Hadid most of you recognize today was not always curvilinear – before anyone heard of Zaha, her work was angular with sharp shards of concrete soaring skyward.

  

I met Zaha in the early 1990s when she was commissioned to design the fire station for the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhine, Germany. Vitra is an innovative Swiss company dedicated to classic modern furniture and accessories. The new building was radical and its interior disorienting. The good German bürger-firemen assigned to the building refused to work in it. Rolf Fehlbaum, Vitra’s owner got the message and immediately put it to a better use. He turned it into an adjunct of his fledgling Vitra Museum. This was Zaha’s first building and kick-started her career on the road to fame.

 

 

The Vitra Fire Station 1993, with its stark angular deconstructionist esthetic

Cincinnati's Contemporary Art Center 2003. A masterpiece of compact use of space, delineated with strong horizontal blocks of concrete interspersed with glass

In both these examples of her early work, Hadid's work is strongly angular

The Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany, was completed in 2005. It looks to me like a giant battleship at anchor.

By 2005, Zaha softened her lines with introductions of curves. the BMW Plant in Leipzig, Germany

Abandoning angles and radical slashing lines, Zaha created a soft amorphous shells for the Nordpark Rail Station in Innsbruck, Austria 2007

 

Interpreting a gentle wave breaking on shore, this is Zaha's famous Aquatic Centre in London 2011

The swimming pools and high-diving platform in the Aquatic Centre

By 2013 Zaha became totally lyrical. This undulating curved roof seems impossible to create in concrete and glass. The Heydar Allyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan 

Pure sculpture dominates the interior of the center

 

 

Zaha was in New York last weekend for the New Yorker Festival, an annual event sponsored by the New Yorker Magazine.  As usual, she took the architectural community by storm. The waiting line of people at the School Of Visual Art’s Theater on West 23^rd Street stretched for one block around Eighth Avenue. John Seabrook, The New Yorker’s writer on design did a lively interview with Zaha, accentuating the depth of her commitments to complexity and precession. She explained how, with the use of fiber concrete she has been able to create seamless surfaces using vacuum bagging. 

To design the Aquatic Centre for the London Summer Olympics, Zaha looked at the harbor and envisioned connecting water back into the city. Her vision was to create liquid space.

Her sprawling public spaces are inspired by flow and movement. She told us that one of her most complex project was the theatre, library and museum in Azerbaijan, integrating three separate functioning entities into one flowing movement. 

One of Zaha's latest endeavor is the building of the parliament and central bank in Baghdad, her native home. 

Zaha is finally adding her imprimatur to the New York skyline with an eleven story residential building on 520 West 28^th Street, at the High Line in this rapidly gentrified Chelsea neighborhood. The building is a futuristic fantasy of 39 apartments with prices ranging from $4.5 million to $50 million!

 

520 West 28th Street

 The facade undulates and there are definite Hadid touches but the limitations of a high-rise structure are apparent in this New York Condo.it lacks the grandeur of her free-flowing spirit

 

Zaha’s designs are super expensive to build. Are they cost effective? Was the Parthenon or Versailles? Zaha’s work is linear sculpture in motion that liberates design from the pull of gravity. It is a joy that in today’s budget conscious bean-counter society, there are visionaries willing to build a 21^st Century Taj Mahal.

   

I Love this ski-jump tower in Austria 

...and this amazing bridge (don't know whee it is)

 

 Zaha's fertile mind does not limit her to concrete and glass, she has brought her creative esthetic to shoes, jewelry and furniture.

The sky is the limit for Zaha.