13. November 2008 by Joe Gergen.

I need to write this entry so I can stop my obsession with lamps. Or have all the work bear great fruit. Either outcome would be fine.

This is the story of the  four lamps and the evolution that occurs from the first to the last. Or perhaps it is devolution that occurs.

It all started with some scraps of wood sitting around that were too small to make into anything substantial. So I thought I could make some funky table lamps out of them.

Lamp 1. So I made a bunch of 4×4 squares of cherry about one half inch thick and started stacking them in different configurations. Once I had stacked them ad nauseum I started to narrow the options down to what I could string a lamp cord through (I know that seems like such a creative-limiting move but since i didn’t want to install a battery powered light fixture and since I don’t know much about the transferring of electricity via microwaves I accepted this limitation).

You will see that what I ended up with was a simple rectangular Base with the rectangles cascading linearly in a backwards direction (or forwards depending on how you place the lamp). Creates kind of a nice offset feel while retaining some pleasing lines. Almost has a grand staircase feel to it.

Lamp 2. Second verse same as the first. Almost. But we throw a twist in there to break up the lines. The swirl creates some sense of motion, more like a spiral staircase. The twist carries the plane away from us then brings it back a little. Perhaps keeping us grounded.

Lamp 3. If one is good two is better. Here we try to add mixed motions (or maybe mixed emotions).  If one spiral staircase is good, a second will be even better, especially if they seem to be dancing with each other, or perhaps juxtaposed. I sometimes think it has that Ziegfeld follies synchronized swimming swirling feel to it. Or maybe a tango dance as someone has suggested.

And you’ll notice here the wood lamp shade.  I decided that since the lampshade can be such an integral part of the  lamp experience, why leave it to chance. So we created here a nice geometric design with a subtlety patterned paper to diffuse the light.

Lamp 4. Then we decided to take the idea horizontal and have the spiral come out at us and attacking the new plane from a different angle. Not only does the spiral come out at us it also dips in slightly, due to the walnut squares being thicker on one side than the other. The movement is very subtle and is difficult to see in the photo. The slight dip creates a bit of an off-putting feel about it and throws the lines into a slightly different place than you expect. It also manages to make sure that nothing about the piece is level.

Which takes us to the lamp shade, which is square and level.  This opens up options on how to situate the shade.  In the photo the front lip of the shade is level but is raked slightly forward, like a fedora raked slightly forward. You could also set the shade level on all sides or you could set it level to the top of the post, creating challenging  reactions from the people viewing it.

The few reactions I have had to it so far have been hard to guage. Linda said it looked like a wild animal. I think it looks like something sprouting from the earth.

So I guess this kind of what I mean when I say my style is evolutionary. Hard to predict, hard to explain, but I think easy to look at. I can’t imagine how anyone would not want an evocative lamp like one of these.

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24. October 2008 by Joe Gergen.

Elegance.  Such a simple and beautiful word. But what  a tough word to pin down. It does wonderful duty in describing something you see that is, well, elegant. I think elegance falls into that category of word that elicits the phrase “I know it when I see it.” You just know.

And you can probably even look at the object and pick out what gives it elegance. Elegance does have a definition, or many definitions, though they seem to press the play button on the quote attributed to Pontius Pilate “What is truth?” What is elegance?

One definition is “Grace, refinement, and beauty in movement, appearance, or manners.” I think that works for me.

I know you’re asking why am I interested in the definition of elegance. Perhaps it’s because I want my furniture to be elegant. And yes, sometimes that is true, though clients sometimes want different qualities. But it’s mostly a need to get my hands around this for when that client wants something elegant. Where does one begin?

So we come back to “What is elegance?” First off, I need to know what that means to me. Second, I need to figure out what that means to the client.

To me elegance begins with movement and all the ways one can achieve that. Sometimes that means simple. But introducing simple into the equation just adds more abstractness to something we are trying to unabstract. I had a client who said she wanted something elegant and to her elegance was paired with simplicity. I had to ask whether simple to her was uncomplicated or was it minimal. It was minimal, which was a characteristic I could chase but probably not define.

I did find a definition of elegance that I liked though I think it actually was referring to an ecosystem or ecology. “Elegance denotes the minimum activity that is necessary and sufficient to produce the desired outcome.” I like this probably because it confirms it some way may initial gut feel on what makes elegance, and that was movement. Activity. Movement. Perhaps activity is movement with a goal.

So in order to achieve elegance with movement I need to infuse that movement with a goal. Movement for movement sake may or may not churn out elegance and most likely becomes artifice instead of art. Which believe it or not takes me back to my main belief about what is required to elevate art, any sort of art: Intention. What is the intent?

Though perhaps harder to achieve than elegance, intention may actually be easier to define and describe, assuming there is intention in it. So, you have to ask yourself, what is your intention? Do you have one?  Do I have one? That, I suppose is the question. 

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29. September 2008 by Joe Gergen.

A potential customer, who shall remain anonymous, asked me to design a mid-century modern looking table base for a kitchen table.  He wanted a darker color and a sleek minimal look. I did my research on mid-century modern and actually came up with a design partially based on that feel and partially based on some scraps of walnut I had around.

Needless to say my uninspiring drawing capabilities did not win me the day. But I liked the design so much and had most of the wood available, I decided to build it anyway.  I had enjoyed the challenge of accounting for a customer’s desires, keeping true to my own design sense and using available materials.

The legs to the table are what led to part of the design because they were the negative waste, if you will, of a long curved bench I had made. I had to smooth out the curve on the inside of the legs but other than that I used them in the shape that had come out of the bench. I think they look like rocket fins, which makes perfect sense for a mid-century jet age look.

 The remainder of the design was  aimed at keeping it simple and sleek. I think the spindles reaching up from the square base to the apron achieve elevation in a minimal way. The other option was to have a single larger column rising up from the middle, but since I had the thinner spindles as waste from the bench, they won the day.

So this is my version of modern.

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21. September 2008 by Joe Gergen.

I was at the Weisman Art Museum last Friday for a fundraiser for the Twin Cities Music Foundation. They were having a silent art auction to benefit the foundation and I had donated two pieces. The lamp I donated actually sold so that was good for the foundation.

I know that sounds very generous of me but my real motivation was to have some exposure for my work. I think it worked. What was more fascinating to me though was to not only  watch the silent auction process but but to ponder the art and the artists.

I don’t usually consider my furniture art though some of it can be sculptural in nature, so maybe it’s unintentionally art. But there the lamp was surrounded by paintings and photographs and sculpture and more. My friend Linda and I tried to contemplate the amount of effort and creativity and inspiration that went into the pieces (most of them anyway). I wondered what a strange process it must be to try to price art.

Maybe my challenge is that I look at it as having to make a living making art or making something, anyway. And in thinking of it that way perhaps I am doomed to not understand. I know it is often a labour of love that does not always have measurable financial gains.  I know also that some people only do it part time or have other financial support. If I was a real artist maybe I could get a patron, like some Duke of Chutney or something.

Where was I going with this. Oh, yes. The difficulty in pricing art. At the silent auction you could see the minimum bids (which I understand are not entirely reflective of what one might typically sell it for) and the prices ranged from $50 to $1800.   I looked at them and thought, having some reasonable knowledge of the effort involved, this artistry stuff pays somewhere below minimum wage. No wonder there are starving artists.

But I know also that artistry must follow the same market pressures as other things. Supply and demand, perceptions, brand recognition, credibility, death, etc. So I know that just like  for every 1000 bars of soap that sell for $5 there’s the one that sells for $100 and so the same is true for art however much we may not want it to be that way.

Or as Hamlet would say, It’s just a lamp, take it for all and all.

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16. September 2008 by Joe Gergen.

I just stopped by the Edina Art Center to pick up some pieces I had entered in their fall juried art show.

I was walking with the woman helping me find my pieces when I saw one of the lamps and I said, Oh, there’s one. And she says. Well, that’s in the show. You don’t want to take that.

I didn’t even know I had made it into the show. So what  pleasant surprise. I guess I hadn’t heard from them so I figured I hadn’t made it. But these assumptions will kill me one day.

I didn’t win a specific award but was one of the judges’ selections. So if you want to go see the lamp and other good art, the show is on exhibit through the end of October. The website is http://www.edinaartcenter.com

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10. September 2008 by Joe Gergen.

I usually don’t dwell on my dreams too much. Not to say that they don’t have meaning, but that I don’t make any real effort to recall or analyze them. But, sometimes they do shed some light into the darkness of the soul. I don’t mean dark as in evil but dark as in shadowy and hard to see.

And now it sounds like I have some dark secret to reveal, which I don’t. But on to the dream.

So I have this dream where I have made a large quilt for someone, except that it’s a unique quilt in that it is made of wood, kind of like a butcher block but not glued but sewn together, kind of like those seat covers you see that are a bunch of wooden balls threaded together except in this case the balls are square. So several of us are moving this obviously heavy quilt up the stairs and it starts to fall apart in spots and I’m trying to hold it together and hoping no one notices so I can fix it later but it keeps crumbling and soon I am trapped in this now cargo nettingesque quilt and can’t move and fade to gray.

Really, it’s not that strange of a dream. I knew immediately where it came from. I just finished this headboard and footboard where I used dowels to attach the legs to the headboard and footboard. I had never done that before and was not sure how many dowels I needed, how big they had to be, how I was going to accurately thread them and secure them and so on. And last night I was showing some friends the bed and talking about the dowels and how I hoped it was strong enough.

It was this lingering doubt that  manifested itself in the dream. I was disconcerted to find out these doubts where so embedded in my subconscious. The good thing I took from it though was that the doubts were about mechanics and not about the design.  Mechanics can be fixed.

So hopefully no dreams about failed designs though it may be interesting to see what kind of dream manifests as a design doubt. Something tells me there would be pigs or bears in it.  

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11. August 2008 by Joe Gergen.

I am always being asked where I get inspiration from to design and build my furniture. OK, so maybe I only get asked every 6 months or so.  But you get the idea. Unfortunately I apparently don’t get the idea because when someone asks me I just flounder for some bogus answer about nature and other stuff.  Very lame and terrible. Just terrible.

So I need to come up with a cohesive (and coherent), short answer, or maybe a short, medium and long answer depending on the actual interest of the now captive subject.

First, I think I understand why I always pull the nature card (which is kind of a bizarre twist since I have relatively no interest in nature expect to notice when all the leaves show up or go away. So basically nature to me is “Leaves, no leaves.”) .  It is like nature but more in the sense of natural, or in more precise terms, it’s organic. The process is organic and evolvatory (yes, I know that’s not a word but it seems  more accurate than evolutionary).

So the nature part is the organic process and not the seed of germination. The inspiration must be coming from somewhere else. But where? As Pooh would say, Think, think, think, think.

Ahh.  You see there are certainly random inspirations like a Chinese character, a wrist watch, circus bears, M.C. Escher, Frank Lloyd Wright, boats, etc. But these don’t indicate much of a pattern except maybe a sampling of the items locked away in my brain that bubble up. So maybe that is a pattern. It’s like a toxic waste dump crammed too full and some waste leaks out the bulging sides now and then, drips onto my cornea and burns some apparently intelligible visual representation of its toxic essence. Yes, I think that might be it.

Wow, I thought I was going to write some hooey about math and proportions and negative space. But I like much better the idea of “trailing clouds of toxic glory” as impetus for inspiration. Wordsworth would be proud.

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23. July 2008 by Joe Gergen.

I just finished helping my friends Big Brian and Rosa do a little updating in his kitchen. New countertops, sink and range were the main additions, and all very nice improvements. The big opportunity, however, came from where things no longer were: the hole the built in range had vacated and the shelves whose doors had long since been removed as a nuisance. Read the rest of this entry »

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16. July 2008 by Joe Gergen.

Or maybe when talking about personality and design it is begin, well, at the beginning, or start with human archetypes.  I recently received that comment back from an excellent theorist on design, Trevor van Gorp. He has a blog/website called affective design focused on emotions and design.   Read the rest of this entry »

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24. June 2008 by Joe Gergen.

Or maybe the Personality of Design. My latest thoughts on design are coming from an angle of personality. I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist so I am looking at it from the angle most accessible to me, which is from the Meyers-Briggs Personality Inventory. Certainly not infallible or absolute but at least a starting point. Read the rest of this entry »

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