Artwork Details
- Title
- With You in a Moment
- Artist
- Date
- 2016
- Location
- Dimensions
- 120 × 35 × 21 in. (304.8 × 88.9 × 53.3 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of the artist
- Mediums Description
- honey locust, ash, shovel and lawn mower handles
- Classifications
- Keywords
- Object — furniture
- Object Number
- 2021.58
Artwork Description
“If the furniture we sit on every day were totally different, would our lives be different, too?” wonders furniture maker Tom Loeser.
The natural edge of this honey locust timber slab pays homage to George Nakashima’s original conoid bench, a design first introduced in 1960. When the artist, Tom Loeser, was young, he sat down on a conoid bench by Nakashima at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and that’s when he realized the power of furniture.
Loeser has added a row of discarded shovel handles to form the back. Every spring in Madison, Wisconsin—where Loeser lives—people throw out their broken shovels, a sign as sure as spring blossoms that another harsh winter has passed. Loeser collected these tools and repurposed them. While shoveling snow can cause backpain, now these handles lend their support.
This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World, 2022