|
Mark Lindquist Chronology
1949 Born May 16 in Oakland, California, to Helen Lilly Lindquist and Melvin Lindquist. Melvin, an electrical engineer and master machinist, works for the General Electric Company during the day and creates vases in his woodturning shop at home during the evenings. Mark has one older sister, Catherine.
1954 Melvin Lindquist is transferred by General Electric and the Lindquist family relocates to Schenectady, New York. Melvin builds his woodturning studio in the basement of their new house, and at the same time creates a small workshop for Mark. Over the next ten years, Melvin teaches Mark woodworking and mechanics, Mark observes his father woodturning, and they work together on projects such as building racers, go-karts, and motorized bikes.
1956 Melvin purchases 93 acres of land in Chestertown, New York, in the Adirondack Mountains. Over the next ten years, Melvin and Mark visit this land on weekends and in the summer, building a log cabin, clearing trails, and gathering wood for turning. It is on this land that they first discover spalted wood.
1959 Begins woodturning and using the chain saw.
1967 Becomes engaged to his high school sweetheart, Kathleen Bragg. Graduates from Niskayuna High School; enters New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire.
1969 Builds house and studio on Patch Road in Henniker, next to the "Cascades" waterfalls. Meets and begins dialogue with Darr Collins, potter and interim art instructor at New England College. Works with John McAlevy, local furniture-maker.
1970 Receives grant to create metalworking studio for the college and to learn metal sculpture. Studies welding with maintenance personnel. Makes large-scale metal sculptures. Begins part-time apprenticeship with Darr Collins. Sets up woodturning studio in house and begins turning again, translating ceramic forms into wood using the Shopsmith his father gave him. Introduces into woodturning the concept of the "happy accident," incorporating spalting, natural tops, holes, and cracks as potters use sgraffito and accept glaze crackling and irregularities.
1971 First child, Benjamin, is born in March. (From an early age through mid-high school, Ben works with his father, learning woodworking and participating in all aspects of the studio.) Graduates from New England College; receives Creative Arts Award. Enters into full-time apprenticeship with Darr Collins, which is interrupted for three months when Mark enters Pratt Institute's M.F.A. Program and is then resumed when he leaves Pratt. Assists Collins in building studio, kiln, and kickwheels.
1972 Mark, Kathy and Ben spend two months with Mark's parents in Schenectady. Mark and Melvin work together in Melvin's studio. After returning to Henniker, Mark resumes his apprenticeship with Collins. Joins his father in showing woodturning at regional craft fairs.
1973 Begins exhibiting in craft galleries, The Place, Pound Ridge, New York; Julie:Artisan's Gallery in New York City; Ten Arrow Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Fairtree Gallery, New York City. With his father, exhibits at American Craft Council (ACC) Northeast Craft Fair, the year this fair, which becomes ACC's premier craft marketing event, moves to Rhinebeck, New York. Melvin and Mark continue to exhibit at Rhinebeck every year through the last Rhinebeck Fair in 1983.
1975 Second child, Joshua, is born in February. (From an early age through high school, Josh works with his father, learning woodworking and participating in all aspects of the studio.)
1977 Writes article on spalted wood which is published in Fine Woodworking magazine. Mark's work is included in the Young Americans: Fiber, Wood, Plastic, Leather show of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts of the American Crafts Council in New York City. Becomes American Crafts Council Northeast Region Representative, a position which he holds until 1980 when the council becomes a national organization. In the fall, becomes Head of Woodworking for the Worcester (Massachusetts) Craft Center. Moves with his family to Worcester where they stay until the summer of the following year.
1978 Acquisition of two pieces, the Lapping Wavelet Bowl and the Brancusi Cup, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, Curator of Twentieth Century American Decorative Arts, introduces Mark to the work of James Prestini. The Art of the Turned Bowl, an exhibit of the works of Melvin and Mark Lindquist, Ed Moulthrop, and Bob Stocksdale, opens at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Meets sculptor Will Horwitt; begins friendship and exchange of visits between Mark's New Hampshire studio and Horwitt's Tribeca, new York City studio; assists Horwitt with woodworking techniques and photography, produces a catalog of Horwitt's work. Mark and Will carry on a dialog about work and life until Horwitt's death in 1985. Writes article on turning spalted wood for Fine Woodworking magazine.
1979 Work included in New Handmade Furniture at the American Craft Museum in New York. Lectures at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. Establishes the woodturning program at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine. Creates his first Ascending Bowl, which marks his decisive departure from smooth-surface vessels. One-person exhibition at Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, South Carolina: ten-year overview. Sculpture Forbidden Fruit Tree (DeFunctional Sculpture) acquired by the Greenville County Museum of Art. Begins acquiring, refurbishing, and refitting large early industrial-age machinery for innovative woodturning techniques.
1980 Spends the months of February and March as a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Creates environmental sculpture, The MacDowell Woodpiles. One-person show of Zone-Line and other photographs at Kendall Art Gallery in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
1981 Initiates the woodturning program at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The National Museum of American Art purchases Mark's Ascending Bowl #3, the first turned wood object acquired by the museum since its acquisition of several Prestini bowls. Creates MacDowell Bowl, the first large-scale completely chain saw lathe-turned bowl.
1982 Invents incremental chain saw/lathe plunge-cutting technique, a furtherance of the cone separation technique. At request of Sandra Blain, Director, and Robert Skinner, Business Administrator, designs woodturning studio addition for Arrowmont School.
1983 Purchases twenty acres in rural Quincy, Florida, with abandoned tobacco packing plant and tobacco barn. Begins creating home and studios including an apartment for Mark's parents and a studio for his father, Melvin. Continues to maintain New Hampshire home and studio until 1986, when he and his family relocate permanently to Quincy. Begins series of large turned wood sculptures (6' to 8' in height) that he calls Totemic Series sculptures.
1984 First one-person show of Totemic Series sculptures, At the Quadrangle, Human Arts Gallery, Dallas. Develops, with Sandra Blain and David Ellsworth, plans for the first National Woodturning Conference, which is held at the Arrowmont School in October of 1985. Organizes first awards honoring pillars of studio woodturning movement.
1985 Survives serious automobile accident en route to Baltimore. As a result, gradually adjusts to new slower pace in life and work. Sculpture in the Totemic Series, Ancient Monolith #1 acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art.
1986 Exhibits in Ob'Art, Les Ateliers d'Art, Paris, France at special invitation of the French delegation to the ACC's 1985 West Springfield Fair. Visits museums (including Brancusi Museum in Paris) and travels in France, Switzerland and Luxembourg. Mark's book, Sculpting Wood, is published by Davis Press.
1987 Teaches drawing and design at Florida A&M University School of Architecture.
1988 Enters Florida State University M.F.A. Program. Studies Japanese art history with Dr. Penelope Mason. Begins Ichiboku series of large wood sculptures inspired by ancient Japanese Heian sculpture. Begins series of Stratigraphs and De-Compositions, carved paintings on plywood.
1989 In the summer, Mark and Kathy travel west to New Mexico, visiting Chaco Canyon, and Acoma and other pueblos. Included in The Grand Masters of Woodturning, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, Washington, D.C. One-person show of sculpture at Franklin Parrasch Gallery reviewed in Art in America. Receives Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award.
1990 Receives M.F.A. from Florida State University. One-person show of painted reliefs at Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York, NY. Travels to Paris, Barcelona, and Valencia, visiting museums. Takes on Roger A. Paph as artist's assistant; begins rebuilding machines as primitive robotics.
1990-93 Concentrated period of research and design, reconfiguring studio, and building robotics. Begins Les Couches Decouvertes series of painted reliefs.
1993 Work acquired for the first White House Craft Collection. Installation of Totemic Triad commissioned (through Hodges Taylor Gallery) by Nation's Bank for its new corporate headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Gail Severn Gallery has one-person show of Mark's work at the Chicago International New Art Forms Exposition.
1994 Gail Severn Gallery shows Mark's work concurrently with Dale Chihuly's in two one-person shows at the first International Exposition of Sculpture, Objects & Functional Art (SOFA) in Chicago.
1995
Mark Lindquist: Revolutions
in Wood,
twenty-five year retrospective curated by Robert Hobbs, opens at the organizing
institution, the Hand Workshop Art Center, Richmond Virginia. A catalog of the
same name with an essay by Robert Hobbs is published. Included in the National Museum of
American Art's exhibition, The White House Collection of American Crafts.
Gail Severn Gallery has one-person show of Mark's work at the first Miami
International Exposition of Sculpture, Objects & Functional Art. 1996 The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution exhibits Mark Lindquist: Revolutions in Wood from March through July.
2000
Mark's father, Melvin
Lindquist, passes away at the age of 89. He was still working in his studio
until three weeks before his death.
2001-02 Works included in the Wood Turning in
North America Since 1930 exhibition sponsored by The Wood Turning Center
and Yale University. Venues include the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum,
the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Yale University Art Gallery.
2002 The Smithsonian American Art Museum purchases a major Totemic sculpture, Silent Witness #6~Dh0:\Taciturn (Post Totemic Series) 1991-95. The Renwick Alliance donates the funds to purchase the sculpture in memory of our nation's loss on September 11, 2001.
2003 Participation by invitation in the Kanazawa World Craft Forum, Kanazawa, Japan, as one of four American wood artists selected for the exhibition. Gary and Suzette Rogers donate three sculptures to three museums: the Delaware Art Museum, the Arkansas Arts Center, the Wood Turning Center. Mark and the collectors attend a reception and exhibition of the three works hosted by the Wood Turning Center in Philadelphia.
|