Wendell Castle
Wendell Castle (November 6, 1932 – January 20, 2018)[1] was an American furniture artist and a leading figure in American craft. Castle was born in Emporia, Kansas. He grew up and graduated from Holton High School in Holton, Kansas Class of 1951. In 1958, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in industrial design, and in 1961, he received a Master of Fine Arts, both from the University of Kansas.
From 1962-1969, he taught at Rochester Institute of Technology, School for American Craftsmen, in Rochester, NY, and was an Artist in Residence.[2] In 1980, he opened the Wendell Castle School in Scottsville, NY.
Castle is famous for his use of stack-lamination, a woodworking technique he pioneered in the 1960s, which was based on a 19th-century sculptural technique used for making duck decoys. Stack-lamination allowed Castle to create large blocks of wood out a series of planks, which were then carved and molded into the biomorphic shapes for which he is best known.[3]
He has garnered a number of awards, including a 1994 'Visionaries of the American Craft Movement' award sponsored by the American Craft Museum, a 1997 Gold Medal from the American Craft Council and a 1998 Artist of the Year Award from the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester.[4] He has also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Comfort Tiffany Foundation. In 2001 he received the Award of Distinction from The Furniture Society.
Permanent collections[]
Museums[]
- Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA
- Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
- Art Museum Project, Dearborn, MI
- High Museum, Atlanta, GA
- Mount Dora Modernism Museum, FL
- Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
- Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY
- Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
- Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH
- Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI
- Design Museum Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
- Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
- Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
- Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY
- High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
- Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN
- Ithaca College Art Museum, Ithaca, NY
- Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, Denver, CO
- Lannan Foundation Collection, Los Angeles, CA
- Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY
- Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
- Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Manhattan, KS
- Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York, NY
- Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
- Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
- Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, NC
- Mobile Museum of Fine Arts, Mobile, AL
- Museum of Art, St. Louis, MO
- The Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY
- Museum of Decorative Arts, Montreal, Canada
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
- Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
- The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
- Nordenfieldske Kunstindustrimiseet, Oslo, Norway
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
- Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI
- Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC[5]
- Rochester Institute of Technology, Bevier Gallery, NY
- Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
- Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS
- Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH
- University of New Hampshire Art Museum, Durham, NH
- University of Utah Art Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT
- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
- Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS
- The White House, Washington, DC
Public/corporate installations[]
- American Express, New York, NY
- Bausch and Lomb, Rochester, NY
- Best Company, Richmond, VA
- Dupont Center, Orlando, FL
- Encyclopædia Britannica Company, Chicago, IL
- Forbes Company, New York, NY
- Gilman Foundation, New York, NY
- Greater Rochester International Airport, NY
- Gannett Corporation, Washington, DC
- Hammerson Canada, Inc., Toronto, Canada
- Johnson Wax, Racine, WI
- Maccabees Mutual Life Insurance, Detroit, MI
- Nationsbank, Atlanta, GA
- Pillar Bryton Partners, FL
- Rosecliff Investments, New York, NY
- Steinway Company, Long Island City, NY
- Sydney Bestoff, New Orleans, LA
- Wolfsonian Foundation, FL
Publications[]
- Patricia Bayer, editor. The Fine Art of the Furniture Maker, Conversations with Wendell Castle, Artist, and Penelope Hunter-Steibel, Curator, about Selected Works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rochester, NY; Memorial Gallery of Art of the University of Rochester, 1981.
- Wendell Castle and David Edman, The Wendell Castle Book of Wood Lamination. VanNostrand Reinhold Publishers, 1980.
- Davira S. Taragin, Edward S. Cooke, Jr., and Joseph Giovannini. Furniture by Wendell Castle. Hudson Hills Press, 1989.
Examples of work[]
"Cassettone"
"Leggio"
"Stipo Che Cammina"
"Tavolino da Caffè"
References[]
- ^ "Wendell Castle, renowned 'father of the art furniture movement,' dies at 85". www.rit.edu.
- ^ "Leap of Faith: Wendell Castle exhibits at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris". artdaily.com. Retrieved August 2013. Check date values in:
|access-date=
(help) - ^ Yates, Joey. (30 November 2013). Wendell Castle Forms Within Forms. The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft. Retrieved October 19, 2020.
- ^ "Arts Awards Recipients". Arts and Cultural Council for Greater Rochester. Retrieved 2010-03-19.
- ^ "Wendell Castle". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
External links[]
- American furniture designers
- American woodcarvers
- American sculptors
- 1932 births
- 2018 deaths
- People from Emporia, Kansas
- Artists from Kansas
- University of Kansas alumni
- Rochester Institute of Technology faculty