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© St. Petersburg Times, published December 13, 2001
A crafts pioneer
Sometime in the middle of the last century, a few superbly talented crafts artists began producing work that went beyond the limits of functional crafts and fought for their mediums to be deemed proper material for fine art. They were the pioneers in the studio crafts movement, which included clay (Peter Voulkos), glass (Harvey Littleton) and wood (Wendell Castle). Castle wondered why a functional work in a crafts medium could not be considered on the same aesthetic merits as a nonfunctional work in a material like marble. To force the point, in 1959 he entered what appeared to be an abstract sculpture into a show. Only after it was accepted and exhibited did he announce its title: Stool Sculpture.
He has been making original works, functional but with an organic flair, ever since, and his work has been accorded an honored place in the history of fine crafts. One such work, Box with Tusk-carved Lid, above, is now at the Tampa Museum of Art in "Craft Is a Verb: Selections from the Collection of the American Craft Museum," through Dec. 30. Carved from two tones of walnut, it measures 24 by 16 by 16 inches.