A new exhibition recently opened last week at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum titled “Tom Loeser: Trees are the Biggest Vegetable” that brings to Milwaukee the fine art furniture of this University of Wisconsin-Madison Art Professor. As head of the Furniture Design program at the University, Loeser exhibits both previously shown and new work to the museum's second story gallery. His engaging and fascinating furniture, both modern and post-modern, functional and as art, has been exhibited nationally and internationally through prestigious galleries and museums across the country, including New York's Cooper-Hewitt and Washington, D.C.'s Smithsonian Renwick Museum. In the exhibitions, chairs realte to one another with human like qualities, and often appear as two interconnected chairs, whether stacked on top of one another or as in side by side rocking chairs. The invite a viewer to sit on them, and it is difficult to stay standing when surrounded by Loeser's chairs. In his small bench titled Heavy, made from crushed wood with its one broken leg that has been repaired, the wood used was actually crushed in the machine that tests for a given material's strength. At the exhibition opening and in a phone conversation, Loeser eagerly discussed his fine art furniture currently on display at Villa Terrace until January 23.
When is the last time you exhibited in Milwaukee?
I came from the East Coast, and have Fine Art degrees from Boston University, and then worked in Cambridge [Massachusetts] for a while. I moved to Madison in the early 90's to teach, and although I have shown at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and the Milwaukee Art Museum, I usually show on the East Coast. Then Martha (Villa Terrace Curator Martha Monroe) asked me to exhibit at the Villa Terrace museum. This relates to the[museum's] focus on decorative arts only in a sophisticated, contemporary way.
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How do you combine your teaching schedule with completing new work as you did for this exhibition?
It's always a challenge to be working in your studio and teaching, and I'm in the middle of completing being the chair of the art department [usually a three year term]. And I have some students assist me. The Madison program in furniture design is one of the best in the country, when there are only six to seven [total programs in the country]. I am only the second person in this program to teach furniture design. In Madison, the program has a strong connection to functionality. Even sculptural furniture gets its meaning and context from function, playing off function.
All your work uses the element of a painted finish? Could you explain why and how?
When the construction part of the work is done, then I think about color in exaggerating an edge or the entire form. I use a special tool, completely freehand, to create the texture on my furniture. The color is the compositional element that relates to the construction so I spend time on this, similar to Josef Albers. I mix all the colors myself and use milk paints, a casein based paint, in combination with the textural carving to make them one.
You have several small sculptures that you title Fractal Chairs. How are they constructed?
In my artist's statement I say the idea came from observing nature. Similar to how a coral reef grows larger through repeated growth of a small element. The construction is a subtractive process where I carve these chairs from one piece of wood using a band saw. I make a mark on each of the four sides as to how and where the chair will be carved. It becomes sort of like a puzzle, and easier than putting together a chair in pieces. Then after being completed, I consider color and paint the sculpture.
Why do you frequently use the chair for your concept and think it is such an artistic, iconic object?
I believe the chair is a stand in for the person. It stands for the body and has names similar to the human parts: arm, back, feet, legs. It's almost a negative space sketch of the body, and the most basic functional object with a connection to the body, and always a familiar object that people relate to.
What's your next exhibition?
I'm working on an exhibition for Gallery NAGA in Boston on Newbury Street, in the first block. It's in a brick church on the ground floor and they've been a fine art furniture gallery for 20 years. It opens the first week in January [2011] and I hope to finish some long, skinny boxes [similar to the one in the exhibition's glass case, only slightly larger] with Asian influences. I hope to finish five or six before then. You never know until they're complete, or how many you will actually finish, all possible, it's experimenting.
