RHYTHM IN THE GRAIN

An artist and associate professor of architecture at SIUC, Wessel has been exhibiting his wood sculptures nationally since 1999. These works take their inspiration from many things: architectural models, furniture design, religious objects--and music.

Wessel's sculptures, some of which are free-standing and some wall-mounted, have straight, clean lines. They're abstract, intricate, and elegant. Some of them shelter organic-looking shapes within their geometric structure, and many of them consist of series of forms.

"What I enjoy about sets of things is that it's like theme and variations in music," Wessel says. "There's a motif you repeat, but room for improvisation. This idea of sets also goes back to furniture design. Furniture usually exists in repetition: Three cabinets, not one."

If these series seem like ritual objects, that's no accident. "When you repeat similar forms, it gives the piece a ceremonial or even religious feel," Wessel says. He has been influenced by "vernacular churches"--those whose design, especially for icons and appointments such as cabinets, was done by local carpenters and reflects local styles.

Wessel's love of music--classical when he works; jazz and rock at other times--is reflected everywhere in his work in the rhythmic repetition of detail. Some of his pieces even echo the shapes of instruments such as clarinets, flutes, and guitars.

"I really like musical instruments as objects," says Wessel, who plays the drums, piano, and flute. "A set of drums is almost a piece of furniture or a sculpture."

Calling himself a "modernist at heart," he admires 20th-century master architects such as Mies van der Rohe and Eero Saarinen, whose styles emphasized geometry and clean shapes. His work also has been strongly influenced by 20th-century artist Louise Nevelson, whose large sculptures are constructed of many pieces.

Wessel works mostly with American hardwoods--walnut, cherry, pecan, poplar, ash, red cedar. For large, wide, delicate pieces, he turns to birch plywood, often used for architectural models.

"One of the beauties of using wood is the color and the intricacy of the grain," he says. "You look for unique patterns, which are a natural design. Some woods have a cool feel to the hand; some are warmer. With some of the softer woods you can always feel the grain pattern, no matter how you finish it. And some hard woods you can finish to feel like glass."

Wessel's art also can go by the rubric "fine craft," a term he likes for its emphasis on workmanship. "The combination of [artistic] concept and skills development keeps it interesting for me," he says.

The tools of his trade are familiar to any woodworker: table saws for straight pieces, band saws for curves and big pieces, scroll saws for intricate work, planers to smooth surfaces and control thickness, routers to shape edges and cut grooves, plus belt, disk, and spindle sanders.

Most of Wessel's sculptures play off a light wood like poplar against a darker wood like walnut or cedar. He uses pegs and glue to assemble the pieces, for both aesthetic and technical reasons. "I don't use any metal fasteners if I can avoid it, because I do a lot of working of the wood after it's put together," he says.

Using acrylics, Wessel sometimes paints components of his sculptures. "I'm starting to use a lot more color in combination with natural wood," he says. One recent piece includes painted panels with incised branching patterns that look like river valleys. That harks back to architecture's emphasis on setting, says Wessel, adding, "Nature influences all art."

He's branching out in other ways too. He's begun including copper inlays with etched designs in some of his pieces and hopes to expand his metalworking skills.

Wessel began making things out of wood when he was only five. "My dad was a cabinet builder and a carpenter, and we had a basement full of scraps of wood," he says. "I can remember spending whole days down there, gluing and hammering pieces of wood together. I never really stopped doing that."

For many years after high school he worked for his father, learning to build houses. He earned an education degree from SIUC in 1983, then went to work for a Texas architecture firm, where he also designed a lot of built-in furniture. The concept of a piece was always more important to him than function, however, and he later went to the University of North Texas for his MFA in studio art, focusing on interior design and sculpture.

Over the years his works have "become more and more narrative," he says. He feels uncomfortable talking about what his art means, preferring that viewers find their own stories in it. But some themes are undeniable. For example, his sculptures often include human figures, sometimes caged within the wood, but sometimes breaking free. This motif of entrapment and escape "is part of the human condition," he says.

Wessel's office in Quigley Hall is a work of art in itself. One side is lined with Scandinavian-style tables he made from discarded office doors. Shelves above display brochures and awards from exhibits that have showcased his work. Other shelves hold art books, along with a flute and small sculptures made by his students. At one end of the room is a drum pad; at the other, a set of bongo drums. ("I can play those after five o'clock," Wessel confides. "They banned me from playing them any earlier.")

Wessel teaches furniture design, a beginning design studio, and a seniors' architecture studio. Many of his courses, he says, stress the same concepts, such as rhythm and narrative, that he explores in his art.

"There's a strong relationship between what I make and what I teach," he says.

"What I ask of students is almost exactly what I pursue myself as a creative activity."

--by Marilyn Davis, ed.

Comments: Perspectives Webmaster
Copyright © 2005, Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University | Privacy Policy