October 9, 2002
Furniture show merges functionality and artistic flash
Leelanau Furniture Show sets up shop in Heritage Center through October 13
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
The Leelanau Furniture Show is back!
Merging function with flash, utility with beauty, the more than 100 pieces by 30 artisans from northern Michigan and beyond are a feast for the senses. The show debuted Friday evening at the Grand Traverse Heritage Center and drew more than 600 people to look at and touch everything from chairs, lamps and quilts to bed frames, desks and clocks.
From sleek wooden desks to stools made of retired vacuum cleaners to wild, abstract cabinets - one a dog, whose head and tail moved on hinges, another a frog made from old violin cases - the show is again making its mark on the area's cultural scene.
"Even when we were setting up, we had people coming by, saying they heard about the show but were heading out of town and wanted to see it," said Bill Perkins, one of the organizers.
Perkins, owner of Sleeping Bear Twig Furniture in Cedar, noted that the juried show started seven years ago as a way to highlight the work of some Leelanau County furniture makers. Over the next few years, the striking, innovative pieces displayed drew crowds that quickly overwhelmed the display space in Leland. Taking a year off to regroup in 2000, organizers moved the show last year to the Heritage Center, where the larger space, central location and soaring windows make it an excellent venue.
"It is very difficult to find a large space you can rent for a reasonable price where you can leave up a show for a week," said Perkins. "We found this space and think it is great and we have even more space this year with a third gallery."
Furniture maker Matt Joppich attended the Leelanau Furniture Show for the first time last year. He was so inspired by the show that he began making furniture himself and this year is back as an exhibitor. The veteran builder and finish carpenter brought a coffee table and a matching end table made of quilted big-leaf maple with quarter-sawn cherry legs.
Joppich believes that his work, as well as the other pieces in the show, are heirloom pieces. He said the excellent craftsmanship and styling appeal to people in this era where everything, including furniture, is disposable.
"That is certainly how I build my pieces, to make them so they can be passed on to future generations," said Joppich, who plans to build the whole gamut of furniture.
"Really, trees are wonderful things and they've given us shade, beauty and oxygen in their lifetime," he continued. "We give these trees a second life by building a beautiful piece of furniture, building it with a good design and good craftsmanship and give the wood a long life so other people can enjoy it for years to come."
Tucked upstairs in the third gallery, Aaron Van Wyk's 'dining composition' dropped jaws and raised questions as attendees delved into his vision. Van Wyk, a Holland resident, transformed one large wooden table and six dining room chairs into a stunning safari tableau, with chairs featuring horns, animal hair, stained glass and branches complete with birds and butterflies. The table, finished the day before the show, is painted in a detailed African motif.
As artist who has worked in everything form clay and jewelry to painting and writing, this piece is Van Wyk's first venture into furniture making. The project began two years after rummaging through the attic of a friend's upholstery shop, where an encounter with some mundane dining room chairs inspired a vision.
"I saw those chairs and the first thing that popped into my head was to put stained glass into them," he recalled. "I thought about doing a National Monuments theme - like the Washington Monument because I'm very patriotic - something on a grand scale that was universal, not just blas‚."
He abandoned the monument idea after he created the leopard chair, which he did as a way to learn about working with furniture and stained glass. Van Wyk decided to continue the safari theme and began researching the animals for his chairs, which ended up being a gazelle, lion, zebra, elephant and leopard. The sixth chair was initially going to feature a monkey, but he abandoned it for a tree theme with wildlife, fearing a large paper mache monkey perched on the chair's back would be intimidating.
Van Wyk used paper mache to create elephant tusk for the arms of one chair and gazelle horns for the back of another. He also used a combination of horse hair and dog hair to create the lion's mane. Each chair's theme extends to the legs and rungs. His initial idea was to sell the chairs separately but as the project progressed, an idea for a comprehensive piece began to form.
Van Wyk, whose younger brother tragically died while he was working on this project, said it may be difficult to let the finished piece go. He stopped working on the it for more than a year because of his grief. He only picked it up again last spring, completing the sixth chair in his hotel room in Traverse City Saturday night.
"Art is a part of you, like your child, and the project itself has a certain kind of soul, a living entity to it," said Van Wyk, who discovered the Leelanau Furniture Show just a month ago and barely scraped together the money to rent a van to transport his work north. "It amazes me when I set and look at the completed chairs, that I completed it and it is done. It was very therapeutic."
The Leelanau Furniture Show is being held in the Grand Traverse Heritage Center, 322 Sixth St., and will be open through October 13. Hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.