ROUGH CUTS
Stuart Walker
Runs until January 4
Triangle Gallery
Stuart Walker takes the idea of sustainability out of the textbook and into the real world by turning an empty bottle of liquid soap into a lamp, and making a chair out of a pile of scrap.
In Rough Cuts, an exhibit located on the upper level of the Triangle Gallery, the associate dean (Academic) and professor of industrial design at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Environmental Design has constructed almost 40 objects to demonstrate the practical uses of reused and recycled materials. The genesis for Walker’s ideas on sustainability date back to when he was a teenager working summers in the steelworks of South Wales.
"I noticed that the workers often made simple, crude furniture (chairs, stools, tables) to use at their lunch places – items made from scrap wood, metal, whatever was at hand," Walker says. "The chairs were generally comfortable and serviceable, but no attention was paid to esthetics. They were, if you like, ’invisible designs’ – not meant to be looked at, not meant to be pretty, just junk hacked together in a very quick, pragmatic way.
"I've always been fascinated with this type of ad hoc design that isn't meant to be or even thought about as design, but often the very intuitiveness and humbleness of this kind of work makes it very beautiful."
Those "invisible designs" from Walker’s youth led him on a path to explore how locally found materials and easily found parts can be turned into functional and often inspiring objects that have the potential to change the way we relate to the spaces we inevitably find ourselves in.
"In a small way, I'm trying to suggest different ways of looking at functional objects, with a different esthetic sense that is perhaps more accessible, more comprehensible in terms of the ways things work, how things are made, what they are made from, how they might be repaired," Walker says. "My work could be described as crude and amateur, but in my view a problem with many contemporary products is that their design and making has been professionalized – design is done by professional designers, manufacturing is done by large companies – it’s taken out of the hands of ordinary people."
The Lather Lamp is a humorous example of these concepts. Using materials that would have otherwise been cast off into the trash bin, Walker has created a strangely beautiful lamp from standard electrical components, a concrete base and one liquid-soap bottle.
Another one of his designs, Kind of Blue, is a chair inspired by the liner notes of the 1959 Miles Davis recording of the same title. In those notes, jazz pianist Bill Evans wrote about a Japanese visual art "in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous…."
The response: a chair built from scraps of wood rescued from the floor of Walker’s studio. The rough hewn appearance of Kind of Blue not only suggests spontaneity but an organic estheticism. Its beauty invites the viewer to sit down and touch this welcoming piece of furniture that, ironically, would not be out of place at one of Calgary’s high-end furniture stores.
The Triangle is filled with similarly themed objects in hopes that this show will inspire others to think about how to change the very "culture" of consumerism – change that would lead to the end of our fascination with disposable products and replace it with a kinder, gentler system where objects would be crafted to meet the needs of people and the environment.
"I think people are genuinely interested in trying to be more environmentally responsible and in making choices that are ethically sound. People want to do the right thing," Walker says. "The problem is that they don't always see many tangible examples of different ways of doing things." |
