Hallmark Symposium Notes:

A recent speaker at KU’s Hallmark Symposium was Matthias Pliessnig.  Although he pursues other artist ventures, He primarily uses "computer-aided curves with laborious craftsmanship" to handcraft chairs and benches. The furniture is made up of thin bands of white oak that is steamed and then bent to the desired shape. He gained inspiration from studying boat building at RISD. As he continued to go through his graduate studies, he took inspiration from the process of boatbuilding to create unique furniture designs. Many of the furniture pieces looked like unfinished boats with exposed ribbing. He also uses rhino CAD software to model the work digitally before actually making them. The digital model helps him to interact with other designers, architects, and clients. They often want to see what the piece will look like or how it will fit into a floor plan. It was interesting to hear that many public buildings are required to spend a certain percentage of the building cost on Art for public betterment. A mid-sized piece for him sells for $40,000 and takes around 2,000 hours to build. Even when he works with an assistant it takes a long time. The time set up each joint is very short. He has about 30 seconds to set up a single joint before the wood starts to lose it malleability. He has several hundred clamps that he works with at a time. The thing that interested me the most about Matthias’s work is the blend between using digital tools to design along with the pain staking work of classic craft.