Harvey Fein

b. 1940, Brooklyn, New York

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Museum of Arts & Design, New York, NY

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2006       Harvey Fein, Solo Exhibition, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
        Woodturning on the Edge, University of Idaho, Prichard Gallery, Moscow, ID
        ARTScottsdale, WestWorld, Art & Antiques, Scottsdale, AZ
2005       A Nation of Enchanted Form; Wood Art Across North America,
            American Association of Woodturners Gallery, St. Paul, MN                          Messler Gallery, Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Rockport, ME
        reTURN to the Land of Oz, American Association of Woodturners,
            traveling: Overland Park, KS, St. Paul, MN
        Collectors of Wood Art Forum, Philadelphia, PA
2004-07   Sculpture, Objects, Functional Art Exposition, New York, NY
2004-06   Selected Works, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2003-06   Sculpture, Objects, Functional Art Exposition, Chicago, IL
2003-05,07   Turned & Sculptured Wood, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
        Turned Wood - Small Treasures, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2003       Put A Lid On It: Containing Human Experience, American Association                            of Woodturners, Brand Library Art Galleries, Glendale, CA
        Collectors of Wood Art Forum, Santa Fe, NM

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

2004       Ray Leier, Jan Peters, Kevin Wallace, 500 Wood Bowls, Lark Books,
             Sterling Publishing, Asheville, NC
        Woodturning, American Association of Woodturners, Spring vol. 19, # 1

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

If asked, those who know would say that I’m in love with the mechanics of things. I need to know how things work. While in college, I earned spending money as a mechanist and used to imagine that when I retired I'd work in a machine shop again for fun.

But a much better future announced itself to me when, in 1997, a friend gave me a wooden bowl he had made, and then showed me how he had made it. Holding the gouge in my hand for the first time, I knew that this was for me. I bought my first lathe that very afternoon.

As I moved away from imitating the many generous teachers and critics I encountered both in person, on the page, and on video, I saw that my creativity and my skills as a machinist and a maker (I have been manufacturing window treatments for 45 years) were showing up in my turnings. What started out as a desire to find a way to insert pieces of a contrasting wood in the rim of an open-form bowl, eventually evolved into the fixture that enables me to make the work that I do now.

The jig components grow and change as I have new ideas I want to try. New designs come to me as fully completed objects from which I work backwards in my head figuring out the steps required to make them. Then I work them forwards as I put them down on paper before going to the lathe.

The mechanical process, which is so familiar to me, has been incomparably enriched and deepened by the addition of the aesthetic concerns involved in making a successful piece in wood. It pleases me a lot to think that in looking at my work you might experience some of the joy I have in making it.

The Work

The work in this show is new for me. It has more changes of plane, more complicated designs and is larger than I have been able to do before. As always, new ideas lead to new modifications of equipment and the differences in the lathe set-up lead to even more varied ideas.

Many of these pieces are made up of two separate elements. I can use more than one kind of wood in a single piece which adds excitement, or I can use the same wood, but choose contrasting parts of the board, to get a somewhat quieter effect. To provide an even lower-key variety, I can use very similar parts of the same board and rely on design and plane to do the work.

I am using more heartwood and burls than before. They can be counted on to have interesting pattern and coloration, while at the same time they have more inconsistencies and, for better or worse, surprises. Part of the fun and challenges is to find what's inside and then overlay the design to complement and enhance what goes on in the wood, and to incorporate the surprises into the design.

I recently increased the size of the piece I could make from fifteen to nineteen inches in diameter. Given the inherent vibration encountered in the technique I use and wood's unending desire to warp, this 60% increase in surface area presents an enormous technical challenge. Aesthetically, I find that some forms grow pleasingly, while others need to be completely rethought.

When my pieces were twelve to fifteen inches in diameter, I intended them to be mounted on table stands. Some of my newest pieces are sixteen to nineteen inches across and I feel that at that size they are substantial enough to be wall mounted. While wall mounting removes the geometry on the back from view, I think that the added effect of proper lighting and the shadows thus created are a worthwhile tradeoff. I have therefore included both a stand and hardware for wall mounting for each piece.

The Jig

About five years ago, I made a bowl and used a router to cut straight grooves in the side. I then made purpleheart and plastic inlays to put into those grooves. While the technique was simple, it was the ideas that it sparked that were really exciting to me. I envisioned a whole realm of possibilities that would open up if I could just get more control of the movement of the router over the surface of the wood.

Since that time, the set-up I made has grown into a collection of thirty or forty pieces in steel and plastic as well as threaded rods, gears, and coupling, of various shapes and sizes. I assemble the parts required to move the router as needed for each form. Often I have to redesign the jig on the fly and the setup and testing can take as much as two hours. Then I start cutting the design, first from the front and then from the back.