J Paul Fennell
biography |
portfolio | artists listing
b. 1938, Scottsdale, Arizona
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH
Craft & Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA
The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, NC
Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
Wood Turning Center, Philadelphia, PA
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2008 Turned & Sculptured Wood, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Collectors of Wood Art Forum, Scottsdale, AZ
2006-08 Selected Works, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2005-08 Turned Wood-Small Treasures, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2004-08 Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Exposition, New York, NY
2005-07 Sculpture, Objects, Functional Art Exposition, Chicago, IL
2006 Woodturning on the Edge, Pritchard Gallery, University of Idaho, ID
Our Turn Now:Artists Speak Out in Wood, Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus, OH
2004-06 Nature Transformed, Wood Art from the Bohlen Collection, University of Michigan
Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
2005 Collectors of Wood Art Forum, Philadelphia, PA
Art Beneath The Bark, 42nd Annual Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts Exhibit, Oregon
2003-04 Turned & Sculptured Wood, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2003 Selected Works, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Collectors of Wood Art Forum, Santa Fe, NM
2002 Solo Exhibition, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2002 Branching Out: Contemporary Wood Turning in 2002, Ellipse Art Center, Arlington, VA
Collectors' Choice, Collectors of Wood Art Forum, SOFA, Chicago, IL
2001-02 Nature Takes a Turn, International Juried Exhibition,
Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN
University of California, Davis, CA
University of New York, Purchase, NY
Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN
2000 The Fine Art of Wood: The Bohlen Collection, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Turning Wood into Art: The Jane & Arthur Mason Collection, Mint Museum of Craft +
Design, Charlotte, NC
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
2006 Woodturning, “Hollow Victories,” No. 165, August
Craft Arts International, “Forms of Abstraction,” Kevin V. Wallace, No. 67, Sidney, NSW,
Australia
2005 Phoenix Magazine, " J. Paul Fennell--Artist of the Month," October, AZ
2004 Craft Arts International, “One Step Back, Two Steps Forward," Terry Martin, No. 61,
Sidney, NSW, Australia
Nature Transformed: Wood Art From the Bohlen Collection, University of Michigan
Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
Beneath the Bark: Twenty-Five Years of Woodturning, Utah Woodturning Symposium,
Inc., Provo, UT,
2001 Phoenix Home & Garden, " Giving Wood A Turn--Portrait of Artist J. Paul Fennell", June
2000 The Fine Art of Wood: The Bohlen Collection, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI,
1999 Contemporary Wood: New Designs in a Rich Tradition, Del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles,
CA
1998 Woodworker West, Profile of artist J. Paul Fennell, Nov.-Dec
1996 Fine Woodworking Design Book Seven, The Taunton Press, Newtown, CT
1995 Arizona Republic, Featured article, January
1993 Conservation by Design, Scott Landis, Editor, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of
Design
1992 Fine Woodworking Design Book Six, The Taunton Press, Newtown, CT
ABOUT THE ARTIST
J. Paul Fennell, resides in Scottsdale, Arizona, and has a studio at his home. He is a woodturner originally from Massachusetts, and has had an interest in creating original objects in wood from the lathe dating back to the early 1970’s. His hollow form vessels are turned from woods that are generally not available commercially, being harvested locally from land clearings, woodlots and the like. These species include locally-grown Citrus, African Sumac, Carob, Olive and Mesquite, woods that are all considered exotic in the woodturning field.
The work traditionally has been focused on the aesthetic of the hollow-form vessel. These forms are derived from variations of simple, but pleasing classical shapes, ubiquitous throughout civilization, crossing a multitude of cultures. Exploring themes, concepts and influences through the process of surface texture, carving and other treatments on these forms is presently the primary focus of Fennell’s work.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
My experience of making works of art is largely rooted within the desire for creative expression. The medium I have chosen is wood, and stems from my deep reverence for the material since childhood. For me, one of the first physical steps of the process of making involves the lathe, a machine which allows me to explore forms very quickly, with found wood that is generally not available commercially.
My early work explored the seemingly infinite variety of pleasing shapes and forms that have existed throughout millennia. During this time my desire for expressive work was focused primarily upon the discovery and subsequent presentation of the inherent beauty of the material itself, within the vessel aesthetic. Living in Massachusetts with abundant resources of found wood, I was able to create a large body of work that took full advantage of the material’s color, figuring, grain and texture. At a point in time, however, “the natural beauty of wood” became a cliché, and had run its course; I realized that it represented only one component for creative expression, and was certainly not the only criterion upon which I could base my work.
In his remarkable book, Art as Experience, John Dewey states: “Because objects of art are expressive, they are a language.” I cannot think of any other way of more effectively communicating to the world—through the medium of art—regarding just who you are, what your interests focus upon, your reverence for things, your experiences, and the relative importance of each to yourself. Furthermore, these creations are a “language” that everyone can respond to. The body of work, if it is expressive, is due as it has been said, to the connection you make between the visual world as you see it, and your inner self--that is, your experiences in this world. This “connection” cannot be constrained by employing only one aspect of the medium without limiting the effectiveness of the work itself as a narrative.
As a result, I decided to look for inspiration from those things which have had a decided influence on myself throughout my life—namely, the natural world, architecture—its elements and their cultural diversity, memories and experiences of the past, artists that I admire, patterns—natural and man-made, and the workmanship of things made. With these in mind, the creative experience—through my work—makes the “connection” for me in “what I see plus what I feel.”
Concerning his art, the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko remarked in a Life Magazine article in 1959 that “a painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.” After contemplation, I found this statement intriguing to say the least. And significant: an experience as noted by Rothko is the type of creative exercise I strive for in the process of making my work, the culmination of which is a sensation of joy and fulfillment in translating an abstraction into a tangible, visual and tactile object- something others may enjoy as well.
The process begins by being inspired from influences as described above. These sources provide an almost infinite reservoir of ideas and concepts from which I prepare for the journey, that is, the experience of making. Being acutely aware of one’s surroundings and experiences with an open mind—something the photographer Freeman Patterson calls “the art of seeing”—enhances the creative process. It is requisite: John Dewey cites, “…the artist is of all men the most constantly observant of his surroundings….” Then, through visual and tactile senses, an observer of my work is offered expressive links to the experience in an easily-understood “language.”
Specifically, my work references both nature and life’s experiences--or more exactly a simultaneous combination of both, but not necessarily of equal proportions. Also, inspiration does not necessarily happen instantaneously, and can often be “diffused” over time, softening the sharp edges of reality, and rendering the essence of the inspired idea or theme more abstract.
One such a theme is the de la mer (from the sea) series, which is based upon the reflection of sunlight off ocean waves, which cast ever-changing random patterns of light on the ocean floor. The work is a metaphor for the dynamic, restless movement of the sea, frozen in an instant of time. These images were likely integrated into my childhood imagination from living on the East Coast, whereupon the Atlantic Ocean was virtually the “front yard” of my home.
With the Fatehpur Sikri pieces, the inspiration resulted from memories of touring the old abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri in India some years back. What fascinated me mostly were the intricately carved piercings of thick marble screens on a mosque within the ancient city compound, intended and erected for the original artisans and construction workers. The screens were massive and thick, but seemingly delicate and sufficiently “transparent” to allow observers to see inside without intruding upon the sanctity of the place, or of the worshipers inside. The transparency of the pierced vessel’s surface also allows the observer to peer inside, and is perceived to be the “quieter” side of the vessel, a kind of sanctum, which was my impression of the screened mosque in the first place.
Another such theme is the biomorphism series, a body of work intimating life forms through abstract organic curves bounded by representative cellular structures.
Another theme is the discovery series, architectural in concept, depicted by an illusion of a hidden layer beneath the vessel surface, which is revealed when the top surface is broken through in random patterns. This theme suggests a metaphor that there is more to an object or idea than implied by the outer visual surface alone. This lends the idea of mystery to the work.
A theme designated leaf form, is a three-dimensional interpretation of a skeletonized leaf. In my youth, this act in nature fascinated me, how everything except the major veins in a leaf would be consumed by beetles.
A garden series is based upon many inspirations from the past and from my deep interest in patterns, specifically geometric designs. One such body of work within the series is entitled la passion de mon père (my father’s passion), a tribute to my father, an avid lifetime gardener. The inspiration comes to mind from multiple sources: that from my interest in nature at an early age--instilled by my father, memories of him enjoying the simple, ritualistic act of toiling in his garden just for the love of it, and the decision to use floral carvings for the piece, reminiscent of an earlier twentieth-century artistic style, which seems appropriate to me in evoking an experience of the past.
Another concept currently being explored in the garden series is View from the Garden, which employs lattice patterns of Chinese heritage, highly developed in that country from the 18th century onwards, for door, window and wall openings. The Chinese garden is traditionally a quiet place for solitary or social contemplation of nature. And the variety of the garden’s sensory features enhance the its appeal: architectural elements such as windows and wall openings with lattice patterns to frame garden views; trees and flowers to provide shade and aroma.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH
Craft & Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA
The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, NC
Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
Wood Turning Center, Philadelphia, PA
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2008 Turned & Sculptured Wood, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Collectors of Wood Art Forum, Scottsdale, AZ
2006-08 Selected Works, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2005-08 Turned Wood-Small Treasures, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2004-08 Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Exposition, New York, NY
2005-07 Sculpture, Objects, Functional Art Exposition, Chicago, IL
2006 Woodturning on the Edge, Pritchard Gallery, University of Idaho, ID
Our Turn Now:Artists Speak Out in Wood, Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus, OH
2004-06 Nature Transformed, Wood Art from the Bohlen Collection, University of Michigan
Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
2005 Collectors of Wood Art Forum, Philadelphia, PA
Art Beneath The Bark, 42nd Annual Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts Exhibit, Oregon
2003-04 Turned & Sculptured Wood, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2003 Selected Works, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Collectors of Wood Art Forum, Santa Fe, NM
2002 Solo Exhibition, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2002 Branching Out: Contemporary Wood Turning in 2002, Ellipse Art Center, Arlington, VA
Collectors' Choice, Collectors of Wood Art Forum, SOFA, Chicago, IL
2001-02 Nature Takes a Turn, International Juried Exhibition,
Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN
University of California, Davis, CA
University of New York, Purchase, NY
Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN
2000 The Fine Art of Wood: The Bohlen Collection, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Turning Wood into Art: The Jane & Arthur Mason Collection, Mint Museum of Craft +
Design, Charlotte, NC
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
2006 Woodturning, “Hollow Victories,” No. 165, August
Craft Arts International, “Forms of Abstraction,” Kevin V. Wallace, No. 67, Sidney, NSW,
Australia
2005 Phoenix Magazine, " J. Paul Fennell--Artist of the Month," October, AZ
2004 Craft Arts International, “One Step Back, Two Steps Forward," Terry Martin, No. 61,
Sidney, NSW, Australia
Nature Transformed: Wood Art From the Bohlen Collection, University of Michigan
Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
Beneath the Bark: Twenty-Five Years of Woodturning, Utah Woodturning Symposium,
Inc., Provo, UT,
2001 Phoenix Home & Garden, " Giving Wood A Turn--Portrait of Artist J. Paul Fennell", June
2000 The Fine Art of Wood: The Bohlen Collection, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI,
1999 Contemporary Wood: New Designs in a Rich Tradition, Del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles,
CA
1998 Woodworker West, Profile of artist J. Paul Fennell, Nov.-Dec
1996 Fine Woodworking Design Book Seven, The Taunton Press, Newtown, CT
1995 Arizona Republic, Featured article, January
1993 Conservation by Design, Scott Landis, Editor, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of
Design
1992 Fine Woodworking Design Book Six, The Taunton Press, Newtown, CT
ABOUT THE ARTIST
J. Paul Fennell, resides in Scottsdale, Arizona, and has a studio at his home. He is a woodturner originally from Massachusetts, and has had an interest in creating original objects in wood from the lathe dating back to the early 1970’s. His hollow form vessels are turned from woods that are generally not available commercially, being harvested locally from land clearings, woodlots and the like. These species include locally-grown Citrus, African Sumac, Carob, Olive and Mesquite, woods that are all considered exotic in the woodturning field.
The work traditionally has been focused on the aesthetic of the hollow-form vessel. These forms are derived from variations of simple, but pleasing classical shapes, ubiquitous throughout civilization, crossing a multitude of cultures. Exploring themes, concepts and influences through the process of surface texture, carving and other treatments on these forms is presently the primary focus of Fennell’s work.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
My experience of making works of art is largely rooted within the desire for creative expression. The medium I have chosen is wood, and stems from my deep reverence for the material since childhood. For me, one of the first physical steps of the process of making involves the lathe, a machine which allows me to explore forms very quickly, with found wood that is generally not available commercially.
My early work explored the seemingly infinite variety of pleasing shapes and forms that have existed throughout millennia. During this time my desire for expressive work was focused primarily upon the discovery and subsequent presentation of the inherent beauty of the material itself, within the vessel aesthetic. Living in Massachusetts with abundant resources of found wood, I was able to create a large body of work that took full advantage of the material’s color, figuring, grain and texture. At a point in time, however, “the natural beauty of wood” became a cliché, and had run its course; I realized that it represented only one component for creative expression, and was certainly not the only criterion upon which I could base my work.
In his remarkable book, Art as Experience, John Dewey states: “Because objects of art are expressive, they are a language.” I cannot think of any other way of more effectively communicating to the world—through the medium of art—regarding just who you are, what your interests focus upon, your reverence for things, your experiences, and the relative importance of each to yourself. Furthermore, these creations are a “language” that everyone can respond to. The body of work, if it is expressive, is due as it has been said, to the connection you make between the visual world as you see it, and your inner self--that is, your experiences in this world. This “connection” cannot be constrained by employing only one aspect of the medium without limiting the effectiveness of the work itself as a narrative.
As a result, I decided to look for inspiration from those things which have had a decided influence on myself throughout my life—namely, the natural world, architecture—its elements and their cultural diversity, memories and experiences of the past, artists that I admire, patterns—natural and man-made, and the workmanship of things made. With these in mind, the creative experience—through my work—makes the “connection” for me in “what I see plus what I feel.”
Concerning his art, the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko remarked in a Life Magazine article in 1959 that “a painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.” After contemplation, I found this statement intriguing to say the least. And significant: an experience as noted by Rothko is the type of creative exercise I strive for in the process of making my work, the culmination of which is a sensation of joy and fulfillment in translating an abstraction into a tangible, visual and tactile object- something others may enjoy as well.
The process begins by being inspired from influences as described above. These sources provide an almost infinite reservoir of ideas and concepts from which I prepare for the journey, that is, the experience of making. Being acutely aware of one’s surroundings and experiences with an open mind—something the photographer Freeman Patterson calls “the art of seeing”—enhances the creative process. It is requisite: John Dewey cites, “…the artist is of all men the most constantly observant of his surroundings….” Then, through visual and tactile senses, an observer of my work is offered expressive links to the experience in an easily-understood “language.”
Specifically, my work references both nature and life’s experiences--or more exactly a simultaneous combination of both, but not necessarily of equal proportions. Also, inspiration does not necessarily happen instantaneously, and can often be “diffused” over time, softening the sharp edges of reality, and rendering the essence of the inspired idea or theme more abstract.
One such a theme is the de la mer (from the sea) series, which is based upon the reflection of sunlight off ocean waves, which cast ever-changing random patterns of light on the ocean floor. The work is a metaphor for the dynamic, restless movement of the sea, frozen in an instant of time. These images were likely integrated into my childhood imagination from living on the East Coast, whereupon the Atlantic Ocean was virtually the “front yard” of my home.
With the Fatehpur Sikri pieces, the inspiration resulted from memories of touring the old abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri in India some years back. What fascinated me mostly were the intricately carved piercings of thick marble screens on a mosque within the ancient city compound, intended and erected for the original artisans and construction workers. The screens were massive and thick, but seemingly delicate and sufficiently “transparent” to allow observers to see inside without intruding upon the sanctity of the place, or of the worshipers inside. The transparency of the pierced vessel’s surface also allows the observer to peer inside, and is perceived to be the “quieter” side of the vessel, a kind of sanctum, which was my impression of the screened mosque in the first place.
Another such theme is the biomorphism series, a body of work intimating life forms through abstract organic curves bounded by representative cellular structures.
Another theme is the discovery series, architectural in concept, depicted by an illusion of a hidden layer beneath the vessel surface, which is revealed when the top surface is broken through in random patterns. This theme suggests a metaphor that there is more to an object or idea than implied by the outer visual surface alone. This lends the idea of mystery to the work.
A theme designated leaf form, is a three-dimensional interpretation of a skeletonized leaf. In my youth, this act in nature fascinated me, how everything except the major veins in a leaf would be consumed by beetles.
A garden series is based upon many inspirations from the past and from my deep interest in patterns, specifically geometric designs. One such body of work within the series is entitled la passion de mon père (my father’s passion), a tribute to my father, an avid lifetime gardener. The inspiration comes to mind from multiple sources: that from my interest in nature at an early age--instilled by my father, memories of him enjoying the simple, ritualistic act of toiling in his garden just for the love of it, and the decision to use floral carvings for the piece, reminiscent of an earlier twentieth-century artistic style, which seems appropriate to me in evoking an experience of the past.
Another concept currently being explored in the garden series is View from the Garden, which employs lattice patterns of Chinese heritage, highly developed in that country from the 18th century onwards, for door, window and wall openings. The Chinese garden is traditionally a quiet place for solitary or social contemplation of nature. And the variety of the garden’s sensory features enhance the its appeal: architectural elements such as windows and wall openings with lattice patterns to frame garden views; trees and flowers to provide shade and aroma.