ICFF here we come!

We made it!!!

2009-05-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well, the dust has settled and we have all gone our separate ways after an intense week in New York for the ICFF. Above you see the tent as it was installed at the Javits Center and us hitting the streets after striking the set, so to speak. I will upload a video of the interior of the tent as soon as possible. The interior was so dimly lit that photos were not very successful.

We Have a WINNER... Luiz Tuazon!

2009-04-28T20:43:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all of you who bought raffle tickets for the beautiful Isaac Arms bench. We did the drawing and Luiz Tuazon was fortunate enough to have his ticket drawn. He came by SDSU in his station wagon and made off with his prize just yesterday! Here he is shaking the hand of Rebecca Goodman minutes before tearing off with his prize!

The RAFFLE!!! is OVER!

2009-04-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all of you who bought raffle tickets for the big event. We greatly appreciate your support and are now in a good position to make the ICFF event a success!

We are no longer selling raffle tickets for the ICFF fundraiser raffle of Isaac Arms bench. We will gladly accept any and all donations using Paypal.

Donations by Artists

2009-04-10T17:28:00.001-07:00

Micki Whelan

"Big House"

Silver Brooch w/ encaustic

Aprox. 2"H x 2"W

Christina Smith
untitled brooch
riveted aluminum
4" wide, 2.5" h

Tom Loeser
Japanese Chisel purchased in Kyoto in 1993
(Sharpened too!)

Chris Lee
"folded creased overlapped"
2003
Outdated phonebooks
5”H x 16”W x 16”D
Minimum bid $50

Christy Oates
“Ms. PacMan Mirror”
Wood, etched mirror, paint
22" x 22"
Minimum bid $50

This bowl was modeled on the computer and cut using a computer controlled router at San Diego State University. It is an example of some of the new approaches to craft that Wendy Maruyama and myself are integrating into the department at SDSU.

Artist: Matthew Hebert
Title: Waffle Runoff
Material: Jelutong
Dimensions: 10"x14"x2"
Minimum Bid: $50

Jon Bonser

"goldencircles.3dm" and "36turns.3dm"

CNC wood engraving mono-prints

15"h x 14"w
minimum bid: $100 for the pair

Chulyeon Park

"Structūra"

Steel, Stainless Steel

W8" x D9 1/2" x H3"

Minimum Bid $50

Mia Hall
"untitled"
carved and polychromed wood, image transfers, stones
approx. 20" h x 7" w x 4" d
minimum bid: $100

Rebecca Goodman
"Bird Cage"
17" tall x 12" wide x 8"deep
mild steel, cotter pins, CNC cut birch ply, paint

This wall hung cabinet is intended for use in an entryway. The perch can be used to hold the keys of "flighty" folks who always seem to be misplacing them.

Minimum Bid: $100.00

Gail Fredell
"Road Rage"
2009
19" high x 19 " long x 21" wide
Painted spruce legs, steel details with gun-blue patina, cherry top, flat road bike tire tubes.
Minimum bid: $500

For over 25 years, Gail Fredell has pursued a career of studio furniture work, teaching, and arts administration. Her work is in the permanent collection of SF MOMA, the Oakland Museum, Stanford Universtiy Memorial Chapel, and the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. She has taught extensively at the college level nationwide and in summer workshop programs at Penland, Haystack, and Anderson Ranch. She also directed the Furniture Program at Anderson Ranch from 1993 to 2001. Gail's current projects range in scale and context from residential, functional furniture to public sculpture, both for interior spaces and landscape settings.

Adam Manley, Cork Chair, 2009. Cork, Plywood, gold leaf, paint
minimum bid: $100

Artist: Judy Kensley McKie
Medium: cast bronze
title: "Fish Plate"
dimensions: 18" diameter, 3" h
minimum bid: $300

Judy Kensley McKie is recognized as a premiere figure in the American studio furniture movement.

Her furniture in carved and painted wood and in cast bronze, marble, stone, and resin occupies a singular position in the field. The work is infused with a lively awareness of modernist and contemporary art and also of the approaches to design to be found in indigenous cultures throughout the world. Playfulness and power are summoned by her incorporation of sculptural, totemic animal forms.

Her work has been featured in major survey exhibitions of the studio furniture field at such venues as the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, all of which hold examples of her work in their collections.

In 2005, two groups with highly trained and deep appreciation of furniture honored Judy Kensley McKie's career.

The James Renwick Alliance, supporters of the national collection of decorative arts at the Smithsonian Institution, gave her its Master of the Medium Award.

Her peers in the Furniture Society, furniture makers throughout the country, presented to her its Award of Distinction, also a recognition of great achievement over time.

If our society designated national treasures, Judy would be one. Admiration of her work is universal among furniture makers, collectors, curators, and dealers and within the audience of enthusiasts who encounter her marvels in museums and galleries, in both fine arts and craft contexts.

Artist: Robert Brady
Medium: mixed media
title: Bird
dimensions: 14"X12"7"
minimum bid: $400

Robert Brady began his artistic career as a potter. This led him into figurative ceramic sculpture and eventually to figurative wood sculpture. Brady describes the initial shift in media as a risk, but something which made sense due to the warm and receptive nature of both materials. He is very prolific and seems to move effortlessly between pottery, ceramic sculpture and wood sculpture, with his unique style and imagery morphing, yet remaining uniquely distinguishable. Brady is currently a Professor of Art at Sacramento State University and maintains his studio in Berkeley, California.

Artist: Sandy Simon
Medium: Porcelain
Title: #7 Porcelain Covered Tea Jar with Amazon "Lucky" seed knob
Minimum bid: $40.00

Sandy Simon is a studio potter and in 1994 opened TRAX Gallery in Berkeley, CA to provide greater representation for ceramicists dedicated to utility. Simon keeps her forms minimal, thus highlighting the beauty of a form, the detailed addition of wire handles, or subtle alterations including cutting, piercing, and relief. Her pots feel modern, yet familiar and comforting. "I want my pots to express timelessness with obvious spontaneity." She was a student at the University of Minnesota in the late 60's studying under Warren MacKenzie and having contemporaries such as Mark Pharis, Wayne Branum, Michael Simon, Randy Johnston as her classmates. The "ball was rolling" at that time and energy in the pot shop was at an all time high. Young people were struggling to avoid the Vietnam war, struggling to avoid the white bread money trap hoisted upon them by their parents' generation and struggling to find Meaning in life. Clay provided all of the solutions. Making something by hand found an audience and personal values, once again, had a time to flourish.

Artist: Jenna Goldberg
Medium: painted and carved maple
title: breadboard
minimum bid: $40

"My passion is making furniture that I would want to live with everyday,
so it must be both beautiful and functional. I see my work like I see
people, very different on the inside than on the outside. My cabinets,
tables and wall-hung vanities incorporate elements from the decorative
arts and are inspired by patterns and textile designs from many
cultures."

—Jenna Goldberg
www.jennagoldbergstudios.com

Artist: Mary Donald
Medium: rubber, nylon cord, nylon-coated steel cable, glass beads
Title: Random Discs (Pendant)
Minimum bid: $30

Artist: Mary Donald
Medium: rubber, nylon, vermeil, nylon-coated steel cable
Title: NOT Made in Indonesia (Pendant)
Minimum bid: $30.00

Artists' Statement: Mary Donald
With the eye of a jeweler, I practice the art of hunting and gathering. Like an urban aborigine, I collect a variety of materials and even detritus plus remnants and miscellany from natural and other resources, carrying it back to the studio where it’s examined and then used to create body adornment, objects and sculpture. It’s hard to say sometimes, exactly, what this work is all about. It’s about so many things and nothing at all; I’ve come to think of it as a meditation on aesthetics, both the philosophical and the material. It’s a study in value and values, materials and materialism, consumption and waste, collecting and purging, art and craft, the precious and the banal, difference and indifference, nature and culture, permanence and ephemera, rich and poor, mind and body, urban and rural, organic and synthetic, personal and political, high brow and low brow, intuition and rationale, object and idea.

Artist: Po Shun Leong
Medium: wood
title: "Crouching Along"
dimensions: 14"l x 8"w x 8"d
Minimum bid: $75.00

Artist: Marcus Papay
Title: Knife Block
Medium: wood, Skewers
Minimum Bid: $25.00

Artist: Heather McCalla
Medium: turned and painted maple
Title: "Rocket" 2008
dimensions: 12"h x 4"w x 4"d
Minimum bid: $25.00

Artist: David Fobes
Medium: Color duct tape on panel
Title: "Chromehenge" 2008
dimensions: 12"h x 48"w x 1"d
minimum bid: $250

Artist: Jason Schneider
Medium: cardboard, plaster, encaustic
title: Target
dimensions: 10" x 10" x 2"
year: 2008
Minimum bid: $40.00

Artist: Tommy Simpson
Medium: carved and turned wood
title: "Tommy's Flowers"
dimensions: between 12" - 9"
2008
Minimum Bid: $100 (for the set)

Twenty or so years ago, sculpture in the form of furniture enjoyed a considerable vogue. Today a lot of people still make impressive art furniture, but they rarely escape from the craft ghetto to the wider world of fine art. Tommy Simpson is an interesting case. His wacky cabinets, chairs, dressers and other wood objects look as if they were made by a sweet, simple-minded backwoods eccentric.

What is most rewarding in Mr. Simpson's work is the formal invention. His deliberately contradictory play with structural elements is endlessly ingenious. Within the same piece you find parts that are severely geometric, gracefully sensuous and naturalistically gnarly. Colors and textures of different kinds of woods combine to almost painterly effect. It also points toward the possibility of a more deeply off-beat Yankee Surrealism. (from the New York Times)

Out of Town Bidders WELCOME!

2009-04-07T21:11:00.001-07:00

If you do not live in the San Diego area, but would like to bid on one of our Silent Auction Items, you may do so by emailing wendymatt@sdsufurniture.com. Please give us your name, address, and telephone number and the maximum amount you would bid on this item. On auction night, our grad students will place your bid for you by predetermined increment. For example: Judy McKie’s Bronze Platter has a minimum bid amount of $300 with an increment amount of $50, your maximum bid is $2000.00. At the fundraiser bidding on her platter goes up to $1000 before we announce the group is about to close. An SDSU grad puts down your bid for $1050, someone else bids $1100, your bid goes up to $1150. No body else bids before we call the end of the lot. You win the Bronze Platter for $1150.00!

Don’t forget, you can also buy tickets for our raffle of Isaac Arms’ “Little Bench.” We can deliver any auction or raffle item won within the San Diego area. If you live outside the SD area, we will be happy to ship your item to you for an additional cost or crating and shipping.

Sponsors and Supporters

2009-03-16T15:21:00.001-07:00

We have been off to a very good start with sponsors, donors and supporters. We will be adding to this list in the next few weeks!

Design Within Reach
Taboo Gallery
Christina Smith
Robert Marsh
Tom Loeser
Sandy Simon
Robert Brady
Judy McKie
Tommy Simpson
Jenna Goldberg
David Fobes
Po Shun Leong
Jason Schneider
Mary Donald
Matt Hebert
Jordan Gehman
Chulyeon Park
Adam Manley
Jon Bonser
Rebecca Goodman
Christy Oates
Chris Schwab
Richard Ford
Mary Little
Robyn Horn
Kathy Duffin
Ronald Abramson
Phillip Tennant

Project Proposal for ICFF

2009-03-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

To explore the power of light and study how objects are migratory entities, the students of San Diego State University's Furniture Design Program plan an exhibition that they call "Cabinets of Curiosity". The idea comes from the classic "Wunderkammer", a room filled with an encyclopedic collection of wildly various curiosities from all corners of the world. This particular Sideshow Tent will contain actual cabinets, sideboards, highboys, and chests of drawers, all reclaimed from the streets of San Diego. The cubbies and drawers of each case piece will house everything from light installations to original, student-created objects, to full-on design fetishes. At the end of the ICFF, the students plan to donate the furniture to New York City thrift stores, so that it can continue to change hands and homes, leaving traces of San Diego in NYC.

http://icff.com/page/content.asp?AnID=designschools&Nid=75

ICFF Here we come!

2009-03-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

For the first time in almost 20 years, San Diego State University will be taking part in this year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair this May, 2009. We have a winning proposal which was brilliantly conceived by the SDSU furniture grad students under the guidance of Matthew Hebert. Using the theme “Cabinet of Curiosities”, strong work has emerged this semester for the project.

On Saturday, April 18th from 6-9pm, San Diego’s Design Within Reach will be hosting a fundraising event in support of our participation in this Fair. The fundraiser will provide assistance to get their show to New York and represent West Coast Design. Our target goal is to raise $15,000 to help us cover the costs of the booth design, shipping and travel. The event will include a silent auction with donated art and furniture pieces from such contemporaries as Tommy Simpson, Po Shun Leong, Bob Brady, Gail Fredell and Judy McKie. SDSU alumni, Jason Schneider, Mia Hall, Mary Donald, Shawn Goodell, Dave Fobes, and Heather McCalla will also be contributing pieces, as well as current grad students and faculty. Rockler Woodworking and Hardware has also donated some power tools that will also be on the silent auction table. The event will also feature a hosted bar and refreshments, and all are welcome and encouraged to attend. DWR is located at 393 7th Avenue San Diego CA 92101. Please contact wendymatt@sdsufurniture.com to have your name added to the guest list.

More information about the event and contact information will be posted at www.sdsufurniture.com.