Rago Auctions

The Eroded Vessel had a long life in the studio. The marblewood timber moved around my sprawling studio for over ten years. About halfway through that time, I cut the timber to a rough-sawn circle that would later become this vessel, but during that process, it had been on the top of massive cocobolo burl chunks and was going to be part of a figurative sculpture, which I decided against. It was up on its side, flat, among stacks of other cut timbers, and was moved from one room in the studio to another. It withstood the 100-degree summer temperatures, the frozen winters, and what seemed like a zillion hours of contemplation and dreaming—What is your essence? What part do I play?

It withstood the 100-degree summer temperatures, the frozen winters, and what seemed like a zillion hours of contemplation and dreaming—What is your essence? What part do I play?

Finally deciding on a simple open vessel form all about the material, I turned this huge bowl, which in my head became the Botero family soup bowl. I liked it; it floated on a tiny foot and seemed to defy gravity. It had moved after these ten years from the different rooms in my studio to the grand room in my new home, on a well-lit pedestal, resting proudly. It is unusual for me to leave a piece pure and simple at this point in my career, so I was not totally convinced yet.

The first knowledgeable viewer who came to visit happened to be Ray Lier, from del Mano Gallery. He casually looked down and said "I didn't know you had a Moulthrop." That's it! Back to the studio. I did not have my signature or fingerprint on this piece. Well...how about the whole handprint? I can't make it more personal than that.

It spent another month or two back in its old studio home and I went deeper and deeper, exploring the erosion concept and becoming infatuated with this new piece.

As I began carving this rather large handprint, I realized how exciting the marbled grain was to sculpt and so I manipulated the surface of the alternating dark and light figure in the wood. It spent another month or two back in its old studio home and I went deeper and deeper, exploring the erosion concept and becoming infatuated with this new piece. They say one of the toughest decisions for an artist is to know when a piece is finally done. It took some time, but I made the declaration "You are done! Soon I know you'll be moving to a new home with a new life and new friends." It was a long and educational process and I'm very happy that it found a good home.

Twenty-five years ago, I crossed the threshold of Ken Spitzbard’s Connecticut home for the first time. It was an entry into a new and unfamiliar world. At the time, I was a graduate student at nearby Yale University, and despite my wet-behind-the-ears status, I’d been invited to join the curatorial team for an exhibition called Wood Turning in North America Since 1930, a collaboration between the university art museum and what was then the Wood Turning Center in Philadelphia (today’s Museum for Art in Wood). The previous summer, I’d taken my first slightly anxious turn at a lathe. The experience had confirmed for me that my contribution to the field, if any, would be through writing and research rather than making. I’d learned quickly in the ensuing months, thanks to the guidance of Albert Le Coff (founding director of the WTC), as well as my mentors at Yale. Until I got to Ken’s house, though, I had never seen so many pieces of wood art at once. For that matter, I don’t think I had ever visited the home of a collector before.

Ken knows very well what he likes, but his collecting decisions have never been driven by taste alone...He’ll buy something not just for its elegant silhouette or spectacular material, but also for how it fits into the arc of an artist’s career, and the trajectory of the discipline as a whole.

It was a great place to start. Our exhibition project was meant to be the first comprehensive account of wood art, surveying the field’s historical development, leading protagonists, technical features, and aesthetic vocabulary. Remarkably, and (as I would later discover) very unusually for a private collector, Ken was trying to do exactly the same thing, all on his own. As he walked me around his house, patiently explaining each object to me—Michael Peterson’s lyrical landscape forms, Todd Hoyer’s powerful materialized metaphors, William Hunter’s transcendent twisting spirals—I felt like I was talking to a fellow curator. Ken knows very well what he likes, but his collecting decisions have never been driven by taste alone. His undeniable passion for the material is channeled through an analytical mindset. He’ll buy something not just for its elegant silhouette or spectacular material, but also for how it fits into the arc of an artist’s career, and the trajectory of the discipline as a whole. Thus, although it is contemporary sculptural work that most fires his imagination, he also has representative pieces by foundational figures like Rude Osolnik and Bob Stocksdale. When he takes a strong interest in an artist like Christian Burchard or Galen Carpenter—or the whole Moulthrop dynasty—he collects both in depth and breadth, capturing every facet of their creative vision.