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::DEPARTMENTS:: Home Work Out of the Woods Tucked away between shops with brand-name logos like Dansk and Hanes in Santa Fe’s Premium Outlet Mall is a small but rewarding surprise.
The Woodworkers Guild Gallery, a local co-op staffed by those who display their work there, is something like a miracle of the hand-made, the innovative, and the take-your-breath-away beautiful. Open since last May, the gallery reveals the incredible breadth and stature of original work being created by New Mexico’s woodworkers. A once-over of the gallery shows it displays traditional santos, crosses, and “candeliers” as well as charming and over-the-top imaginative re-workings of Western styles and serious sculptural pieces that are also utilitarian. Any of the brightly painted cowgirl-backed and saddle-backed chairs incorporating elk horns and painted, carved skulls by Gene McClain would surely be the focal point of any room. David Schultz recycles reclaimed lumber in the form of old fence posts and shipping crates to create rustic tables. And John Bauer makes gleaming sculptural chairs that resemble trees from exotic woods that are highly polished with wax finish. Parke Duttenhofer, gallery director, first got acquainted with woodworking as an architecture student working his way through Texas A&M by building cabinets for a Texas developer. The gallery displays several pieces of his work incorporating rustic New Mexico materials into the design of finely crafted armoires, beds, and tables in innovative ways. An armoire made of pine, the traditional wood long used in New Mexico, is stained and lacquered to a warm golden patina. A latilla-style arrangement of salt cedar twigs, their natural russet shades calling attention to their beautiful simplicity, ornaments the upper cabinet doors. The cedar-lined drawers open by means of wrought iron pulls, evoking the spiritual origins and frontier influences of the piece. Like what you see? Subscribe here. |
The work of Ruben Gonzales. |
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