University of Wisconsin-Madison art professor Tom Loeser teaches furniture design while creating his own serendipitous and witty furniture for solo and group exhibitions. His post modern/modern designs grace galleries and collections across the United States, even in selected countries throughout Europe. The current exhibition in Milwaukee at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum “Tom Loeser: Trees are the Biggest Vegetable” showcases his furniture highlighting hand hewn construction and a striking sense of proportion seen frequently through chairs large and small.
When Loeser attended the museum's November opening in Milwaukee he discussed an upcoming exhibition in Boston for January. Gallery NAGA located in the Back Bay on 67 Newbury Street opened the show “Meredyth and Meg Go 3-D,” on January 7, a show initiated by guest curator Meredyth Hyatt Moses and NAGA's permanent gallery curator Meg White. Loeser's relationship with the gallery first began in 1985, and as this exhibition indicates, still continues in 2011. At the November opening his boxes now on exhibit were still works in progress, waiting for his completion, and a somewhat experimental design for Loeser. So very different from the one exhibited in the glass case at the Villa Terrace Musuem.
Loeser's finished artwork from the six works he originally talked about completing produced four stunning boxes finally presented in the 22-artist exhibition concentrating on 3 dimensional art. The covered boxes bridge his familiar post modernist/modernist aesthetic, referencing past and contemporary art in these elegant wood sculptures that could find a home on a fireplace mantel, table center or a lonesome window ledge.
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The sculptures titled Bellows, Canoe, Dunker and Swish fashion Loeser's familiar mahogany wood into curved boxes with interior dividers that allows them to be used for storing trinkets and treasures. Their true beauty derives from the hand carved surfaces, the curved shapes of the wood implicit in the age-old traditions that Loeser exploits with the hand gouges. The bold black and white striped exteriors, covered with the classic milk paint, heighten the contrast to the bright blue, green, orange and red interiors that appear to reference pop art with this graphic decoration.
Being the lonely viewer in the gallery on a cold Boston afternoon before the official opening, Meg White allowed several clean fingertips to explore the sensuous surfaces, the smooth and textured mahogany inherent to each and every ripple in the stripes. White even permitted the viewer one chance to fit a cover to a box, a true delight, to experience the useful playfulness to Loeser's sculptures, which were surprisingly affordable for an artist of his stature. While she watched this viewer closely, White claimed she personally enjoys, “Loeser's unique carving and curves to the wood, along with his gift for combining art and furniture.”
(View Loeser's small scale and exceptional additions to Gallery NAGA's January 3-D exhibition online at gallerynaga.com. or experience another entire Loeser exhibition at Milwaukee's Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum through January 23.)
