The work of artist and furniture designer Chris Wolston is often connected to the body. Yes, there’s the literal aspect—that he makes chairs for bodies to sit in, or tables and credenzas that are meant to share space with human beings—but also the way his wicker chairs sprout arms and legs (or even ample derrieres), or that the curvy, interlocked designs carved into his tables are, upon closer inspection, enmeshed hands or torsos.
“As humans, we’re kind of obsessed with our bodies,” Wolston says of this corporeal leitmotif. “And everyone’s obsession is totally different. We probably know our own body better than anything else physically in the world around us, it is this thing, this physical thing, that we have with us for our entire life. So in terms of creating physical forms that forge conversations and exploration, there are endless connections and perspectives with that.”
Wolston fans have a reason to rejoice this week as he will be showing his latest work at The Future Perfect’s booth at Design Miami. Included will be a fuzzy club chair covered in a dense thicket of embracing wicker arms and a table made of aluminum hands joined together and tinted with new tropical-tinted glazes. The tiles were made in Arkansas, and stand on bases of wood or bronze. “The sand-cast aluminum base, it’s nothing new,” he says. “But the way that the material is presented, the techniques that we developed for this particular table, are totally new. The way I work with materials is like language—there are the letters of the alphabet, there are the words within the language, and it’s about how you use those words to create to say different things.”
Additionally, Wolston will be taking part in “Disco + Design,” at The Standard Spa, hosted by The Future Perfect and Supermarket Creative, an immersive show that explores the ways in which disco has influenced the design world.
But it’s not just an interest in the body but his approach that makes Wolston’s work so immediately charming. “Another thing that’s always present is the humor,” he says. “I make things that are funny because it is a really nice entry point. It makes people feel comfortable. It makes them happy.” Indeed, all the askew limbs and overlapping parts—not to mention the whimsical use of color, a vibe that shifts from earthy to candy-colored— in Wolston’s work imbues it with a feeling of celebration and joy. It is that feeling of levity that has attracted plenty of buyers to clamor over his statement-making pieces.
Wolston, 37, was raised in Providence, Rhode Island, where one of his first strong memories is going trash picking with his father on Sunday mornings while his twin brother was at soccer practice. Another foundational recollection: antiquing with his parents, where speckled enamelware, which piqued an interest, at a formational age, of technique.
“Those were informative experiences,” he says. “I think that that idea of being interested in the space in which we live and the objects which surround us comes back within my practice today.”
Wolston matriculated from Rhode Island School of Design where he studied glass, but it was when a Fulbright Grant brought him to Colombia to study pre-colonial ceramics that he fell in love with domestic objects after experiencing the rich craft industry there. He recalls seeing the beauty in quotidian items like chocolateras (pitchers for making hot chocolate), garlic presses, and colanders, all made from sand-cast aluminum, a technique and material that’s found frequently in his own work now.
“So I shifted my investigation from looking at process and material utilizing these industrial contexts to create sculpture, to thinking about furniture as a media for presenting these material investigations,” he says. “Because I always say that we have a very intimate relationship with our furniture. We sit in these chairs, they’re interactions that are very natural.”
“For me, furniture is very democratic,” he added. “When you add functionality into creating sculpture, it totally changes the dynamics that have existed for centuries around the accessibility to art, and accessibility to sculpture.”
Wolston’s obsession—with materials and craft, with the body, with nature—are on constant display with his output. There’s the undulating organic ridges of his signature wicker chairs; the smooth, shiny aluminum puzzle-piece coffee tables; chandeliers made of exploding fluorescent fauna; and the knobby divots and finger markings of his ceramic side tables or chairs-as-planters to name just a few. Indeed, he’s so transfixed with craft that he has moved full-time to the Colombian city of Medellin to be closer to production. “I have a great fascination with the presence of the human hand in the craft process,” he said.
As for the future, Wolston’s endless curiosity keeps him busy and inspired. He’s currently looking more deeply into craft traditions in other regions of Colombia. “I am still a foreigner, but in the experience of having lived here for 12 years my perspective has shifted—these things that were once foreign to me are actually very commonplace. So for me, as an artist in my practice, it’s like, ‘Okay, how do I continue these material investigations? How do I continue putting myself into environments where I’m inspired and excited by the discovery of new techniques?”
“What really interests me is the investigation,” he added. “But also presenting these materials that are not new at all. These are craft techniques that have been around for centuries.” Still, by recontextualizing them helps them be seen with fresh eyes.
Additionally, he sees his work as a bridge, or conversation between the worlds of art and design. “There’s something fundamentally democratic about making usable objects,” he wrote me in an email after our conversation. “When you build use into an art object, you’re breaking a historical barrier between the individual and whatever the thing is that art accesses. You can depict God touching Adam’s hand, but to me it’s a step further if you build the actual hand for the viewer to touch.”
“To me, that’s what furniture is all about. You’re taking whatever the huge idea is—spirit, nature, grief, grace, joy—and you’re giving an individual body direct access to it.”
Design Miami begins this week, with an invite-only preview on Dec. 5, and is open to the public Dec. 6-10. The fair is at Convention Center Drive & 19th Street, Miami Beach, Florida.
