Derek Secor Davis
I
started early as
a maker of objects. Born in Denver, CO in 1954, I was making furniture
by the time I was in my early teens, and became a "professional" when
I joined Artel, a cooperative wood shop and show room on 17th Avenue in Denver,
while I attended East High School. After high school I attended Colorado
College graduating with a degree in music theory in 1976. Today my wife,
ceramic artist Kate Inskeep, and I live and work in our self built home and
studios above Gold Hill, an historic mining town in the mountains just west
of Boulder, CO. Kate and I are both deeply involved in the raising of
our two preschool children and often comment on our careers taking a back seat
for a few years. Nonetheless we still try to keep some presence in the
national scene. I show my work primarily with the Tercera Galleries in California,
have a piece in the collection of the Denver art Museum and do a steady amount
of commissioned work.
Over the years
my work and attitudes have seen tremendous change. As many furniture makers
of my generation, I am self taught and started as a maker who was drawn to and
influenced greatly by the medium of wood and the beauty therein. My designs
were a stage for the medium to express itself. Largely formal and symmetrical,
they echoed many of the values and tastes of studio furniture being made in
the sixties and seventies. As many a young maker, I was enamored with
both the medium and technique. Though my pieces were never explicitly
about the process of their creation, the techniques and difficulty involved
were still an important aspect in the design of the overall object.
As I continued as a maker,
I realized a couple of very important things. One was that I was entirely
too serious about my work, that there is plenty of room for humor and whimsy
in a "serious" piece. The other revelation was that furniture
could be so much more than technique and design, it could be about an idea,
a joke, a caricature. To some extent I felt a liberation from the confines
of precious and meticulous craftsmanship meld into something much more fun,
exasperating, and challenging.
In
a broad sense I see my career as a practice in loosening up. The early
years were spent learning and developing technique in my medium. Now,
with thirty years experience I have a technical foundation and confidence that
allows me to let go and do as I please with in the limits of the medium. I
remain as meticulous a craftsman today as I was in the early years, but I approach
technique now as a foundation and tool of expression rather than an end in itself.
Some of the work I create these days has a rough or raw essence to it,
but the interesting thing to me is that it remains as fastidious and exacting
as some of my earlier more "precious" work. The technique is
simply more in the background and is of a less refined variety.
As my attitudes toward
technique have changed, so have my choices of materials. Color and texture
have become important components, as have an occasional found object. Hand
in hand with these new materials numerous themes constantly reoccur in my work.
To quote from my artist statement:
My life and my work
have always been greatly influenced by the natural world. I live and work
in a rural mountainous area and spend a great deal of time in a quiet and wild
setting. My forms are an interpretation and organic conglomeration of
what I see in my daily life. Any look at nature reveals a world that is
remarkable in it's precarious balance and inevitable disintegration and change.
This ever changing world is a constant source of inspiration for me as
I create pieces that are either in an unlikely state of balance, merging or
dividing, showing signs of fracture and disintegration, or are indicative of
weathering and erosion. I am interested in simple, elemental forms that
can be a metaphor for humankind's relationship to nature. Similarly, I
am drawn to cast off, weathered industrial items that serve as a contrast to
my natural elements and are representative of the influence of man in nature.
I find in the relationship and presence of both these organic and industrial
forms an elusive essence that speaks of the ongoing metamorphosis of our world.
And then of course, if
it looks like I'm taking myself too seriously, I'll do something totally silly
or light hearted just to let go. My son Haiden has been helpful in some
of these projects in which I have plagiarized some of his innocent drawings
or writings.
When I begin a piece I
usually do a very rapid full scale sketch, just to get the feel and movement
that I want. The sketch then becomes the goal or essence of what I want
to do in three dimensions. I always destroy the drawings afterward, so
as to encourage an uninhibited approach to the initial thought. I am a
self conscious person and it is a constant effort to be uninhibited in my work.
Materials usually fall into place; sometimes a piece is created around
them sometimes not. Reclaimed materials are being used more frequently,
often exemplifying the eroded or changing appearance that I want. Not
to mention the joy and satisfaction of finding a great object to make something
with.
I often wonder were I to
see twenty years ago what I am producing now, whether I would appreciate the
work or not. I truly don't know, as my values and esthetics have changed
so drastically. It's an on going adventure, this life of creativity.
Return
to Main Page