crashed furniture

A pile of crunched fenders, hoods, and trunks captured my attention at my friend’s auto body shop. These once industrial, mass-produced unblemished parts were forever changed and twisted by a traumatic event into free-form organic scrap metal.

Growing up poor, I saved everything; fixed it and reused it. How to make these crushed pieces of metal into some type of sculpture or functional furniture occupied my ADHD brain for the next few months. I started thinking about the big contrast between something milled and something organic. The challenge became combining beautifully milled work and twisted metal.

I borrow the auto designer’s lines, incorporating the crashed parts into the design of the furniture, such as the arc of the wheel well. I let the wrinkled lines of the metal replace the rigid traditional lines of the furniture. The contrast is evident within each piece.

My overarching theme is taking unlike objects and combining them to create a new identity. Materials that are foreign to each other enhance the properties of one another. Salvaged, found, and raw materials have a former life or an event that changed their form. I like materials that show the scars of their past lives. I combine them in uncommon and unexpected ways giving them a new life and a new purpose.

Although my intent is art first and furniture second, these pieces are to be used. The viewer is drawn in to explore, not only the materials, but how the wood is formed to follow the curve of the crumpled twisted metal. Sitting on a bench made from a salvaged truck bumper and some worm-eaten discarded flooring is so much better than a chair stamped out in China.