Norm Sartorius

місце: Salisbury

нарождення : 1947

біографія:

Norm Sartorius is an American woodworker who carves fine art spoons in many styles including natural, biomorphic, abstract, symbolic, ethnic, and ceremonial. His works are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other public and private collections. He is a frequent participant in woodworking and craft shows in America, and won the Award of Excellence in Wood at the 2015 American Craft Council show in Baltimore and the 2015 Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, DC. Since 2008, he has co-directed a grant-funded research project on the life, work, and legacy of American woodworker Emil Milan.
Born in Salisbury, MD, Sartorius grew up on Maryland's Eastern Shore, the son of a country doctor. In interviews, he said that the arts were not emphasized in his family, but he was highly attuned to nature as a child. He received his BA in Psychology from Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) in 1969, then worked as a psychiatric social worker for five years at Spring Grove State Hospital in Catonsville, MD. He changed careers and completed an apprenticeship with crafters Phil and Sandye Jurus (Jurus Studio, Baltimore, MD), who had studied with Emil Milan. There, he learned how to make small functional wooden items, including spoons.
In the mid-1970s, he moved to rural West Virginia and started selling wooden works including cutting boards, pie servers, canes, knife racks, and spoons at regional craft fairs. At Winterfair, an annual Ohio Designer Craftsmen show in Columbus, Ohio, he met studio furniture maker Bobby Reed Falwell, who encouraged him to focus on spoons and to see spoons as small sculptures. He was an assistant for 18 months at Falwell's studio in Murray, KY in 1980-81.
Early exhibitions of his fine art spoons included the West Virginia Craft Exhibit at the Union Carbide Gallery, New York City (1977) and an invitational exhibit of West Virginia craft at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum in Washington, DC (1979). In 1978, a work of his was selected for the Fine Woodworking Design Book. He was juried into the American Craft Council craft show in Baltimore for the first time 1979. In 1981, and again in 1989 and 1991, he received the Governor's Award of Excellence at the West Virginia Juried Exhibition, resulting in the works being purchased for the state's permanent craft collection. The annual Mountain State Art and Craft Fair in Ripley, WV was particularly important as a proving ground for his maturing design style and craft business. He met his future wife, glass artist Diane Bosley, at the annual Fair in 1981, moved to Parkersburg, WV in 1982, and they married in 1983.
In 1986, his spoons were featured in an exhibit at the Pro-Art Gallery in St. Louis in conjunction with the Craft Alliance's high-level Wooden Vessels exhibit. Other early exhibits included the Huntington Gallery (WV) traveling craft exhibit (1985–86); another exhibit at the Pro-Art Gallery entitled The Medium is Wood (1987); and the exhibit Contemporary Works in Wood at the Cultural Arts Center, Athens, Ohio (1986, 1989). The 1990 American Craft Council show in Atlanta has been cited as a major turning point for Sartorius' career. He focused exclusively on high end spoons and redesigned his booth to create a gallery-like environment, presenting each spoon as a sculpture.
Sartorius has stated that he sees the concept of "spoon" like any other craft category such as "bowl," "plate," or "teapot," in that each allows endless exploration of form, size, color, texture, symbolism, meaning, and emotional valence. His works have been said to not only "explore the possibilities of what it means to be a spoon," but "play with deep-seated assumptions regarding a spoon's characteristics." He has stated that, "Spoons are an infinite category. You can make thousands and no two are alike."
He credits James Krenov's book A Cabinetmakers' Notebook (1976) with stimulating his sensitivity to the unique character of each piece of wood. He attributes his sculptural style that shuns embellishment in favor of pure line and form to Emil Milan, an American woodworker who trained as a sculptor. Although Sartorius never met Milan, his first mentors, Phil and Sandye Jurus, studied with Milan and passed on key aspects of his approach and tool use. Sartorius' sculpture Homage now in the Yale University Art Gallery is a tribute to Milan. Other acknowledged influences are Dona Meilach's books on small wooden works and articles in the early volumes of Fine Woodworking magazine.
Sartorius has acknowledged several sources of inspiration. First, he has drawn on spoon-making traditions in diverse cultures ranging from Northwest Coast Native American horn spoons to carved spoons from West Africa. In 1996, he obtained a grant to study and photograph spoons from around the world at the Smithsonian's repository in Suitland, MD. Second, he stated in an interview that he "sees spoons" in everything, particularly in natural forms such as seedpods, leaves, flowers, and found and weathered objects. It has been noted that the influence of seashells, crustaceans, shore birds and other sealife often show through in this work. Third, he is inspired by the wood itself, particularly contrasting heartwood and sapwood colors, unusual grain, knots, textures, or weathering in a piece. Every piece he crafts, he has said, "starts with the wood itself." He has estimated that the characteristics of the piece of wood itself suggest the size and shape of more than 75% of his finished pieces.

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