TOM EMERSON: Sculptor Tom Emerson likes junk. This furniture maker, house builder and artist incorporates the "natural world" into his highly stylized chairs and figurines. But his natural world is not limited to trees, birds or mountains; his includes detritus that has been sitting in salvage yards. His sculpture pieces, which each possess a constructed personality, have included filing cabinets, ladders and even wheelbarrows. For quite some time, Tom Emerson worked from a studio he intentionally built in the middle of a local salvage yard. There he would mine the detritus of our civilization for the overlooked gems that would find new life in his pieces. With a very discerning eye, Emerson selects elements, some having been discarded and dormant for over 50 years, for their uniqueness, color, and texture. He then assembles these parts into very unique and sculptural studio furniture.

ABOUT
"Sometimes the elements of beauty come to us not first hand from the mountain or meadow, but through the manufactured parts of the human world. I find these elements especially in those parts that have completed their incarnation as a sign or a tool, a pipe, or a ladder and have come to dormancy in a salvage yard."