New Exhibition at The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design: Torqued & Twisted: Bentwood Today

February 10 through  June 29, gallery hours 12PM - 5PM at The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design, 1181 Broyles Road, between Hwy 64 and South Rugby in Hendersonville, NC - Opening Reception: Friday, Feb. 10 from 5-7 PM.  Torqued & Twisted: Bentwood Today.  Co-curated by Katie Lee and Tom Loeser, this exhibition explores the work of nine furniture makers and sculptors who use the technique of bending wood in innovative, unusual and eloquent ways.

Wood bending is typically accomplished through one of three approaches: Ñsteaming, laminating or greenwood bending. Steaming requires the application of heat and moisture to allow the wood fibers to bend and slide against each other.  Greenwood bending uses freshly cut smaller diameter saplings, often willow, which are inherently flexible due to the high moisture content in the freshly cut wood.

Bentwood came to symbolize the modern movement in furniture design, but it still offers a tempting territory for a range of aesthetic and formal explorations. The artists/designers in this exhibition push the limits of wood bending to create extraordinary functional and sculptural works of art that are conceptually challenging and expand  understanding and expectations of wood as a material.

This exhibit was funded, in part, by a Grassroots Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts; administered by the Arts Council of Henderson County.