Art at the Cave welcomes furniture artist’s vision to Vancouver

Chuck Moffit builds furniture to be solid, well-crafted and command a nice price in the showroom. But he’s always fascinated by the angles and ideas that don’t appeal to run-of-the-mill furniture shoppers. Moffit said he’s fascinated by the transformation that happens when you turn a chair on its side or a table upside down. Suddenly you’ve got a different relationship with a completely different kind of thing, he said — a formerly utilitarian object that’s revealed as so much more.

Moffit started out assuming math and science were the way to make a living, he said, but he always loved “weird creative endeavors” too; those different aspects of life came seamlessly together when he visited the Bavinger House in Oklahoma, an architectural marvel (now gone) that wrapped a winding sandstone staircase around a tower of “floating disc rooms that were suspended by cables,” he said. “When I saw that, everything just clicked.

“In my mind there’s always a formal, conceptual object that doesn’t have a use,” Moffit said. “That’s a divide I keep falling back and forth over. There are beautiful forms and there are useful things. How do they come together? How do they come apart?”

Now a celebrated Los Angeles sculptor and furniture artist with a growing reputation for bold, “brutalist” metalwork chairs, tables and lamps, Moffit will bring those questions and ideas to a site-specific April exhibit at downtown Vancouver’s Art at the Cave gallery. An opening reception is set for tonight’s First Friday Art Walk; Moffit will visit at 4 p.m. April 10 for a talk and demonstration, in conjunction with Design Week Portland, which runs April 6 to 13.

Viewing the world we create for ourselves from refreshingly different angles is the point of Design Week Portland, a festival of design in every form you can think of and many you probably never did — from architecture, interiors and urban landscapes to fashion, websites, consumer products and “user experiences.” There are also many sessions on related topics, like social justice design and public speaking for designers. Visit designportland.com to see the whole schedule.

Wherever there’s creativity, festival organizers say, there’s design. Even north of the river, where Art at the Cave aims to be Vancouver’s edgiest, most ambitious venue for exhibits that draw both artists and audiences from across the region and beyond. This is the first time Vancouver has participated in Design Week, according to Kathi Rick of the Cave gallery.

“What’s going to be seen in Vancouver is works in progress,” Moffit said. “Some objects are meant to work together but they will be installed separately and people will be able to move things around. That allows a whole new conversation to open up.”