Roving Artist/ Local Wood

By Jenks Farmer | November 28, 2012 |

This is kind of an ad. A call for commissions? I’m not well versed in art world stuff, so I don’t know what to call it. I know that furniture, for parks, gardens and public spaces should reflect the space it’s in. That means, the local architecture but it means a whole lot more.

Andy Adams makes killer furniture. He’s a roving artisan and carpenter. He’s coming South this winter so we can do some projects together — and he may be looking for more. Furniture out of the box drives me crazy because its bland and because lots of it uses re-smelted metals, a process that puts dioxins in the air, or endangered woods. Andy uses local wood and materials.

It’s fun to reflect in furniture and gardens, history that the casual visitor may not see. So, on this farm, we made a bench that looks like the old plows that used to work the tobacco fields:

Plow Bench of Cypress & Stained Concrete

Here’s my working sketch:

Jenks sketch & concepts for The Plow Bench

I love heavy, made to fit a site stuff like this. Andy will be working with a local art museum to build a concrete, snaking bench soon.

But he can do little stuff to. Here’s a comma bench he did for a garden I designed that needed furniture and trellises to point the way along paths. Andy made this one in Boston and shipped to to me via Fedex. I put it together.

To reflect the history of garden design, once we made a bench that was designed by, but never built by Beatrix Farrand — I found a plan for it in one of her sketch books and Andy built it at Historic Columbia. It’s intention was to reflect the time period that Seibels garden was thriving but mostly it gets used by great big groups of wedding tourist. (It’s tough — 23,000 pounds of concrete.)

Here’s another small project, over all kind of simple, but just the detail of the rough cut wood is important especially in a really urban setting.