Exhibition dates: January 20 – March 25, 2005
Garry Knox Bennett: Preoccupations of a Serial Chairmaker
Gallery 555 and the Sculpture Court

Gallery 555
555 12th Street, Oakland, CA
Lobby. Hours 7am - 6pm.
located in downtown Oakland
Open and free to the public. BART, AC Transit and Wheelchair accessible.

Oakland Museum of CA Sculpture Court
1111 Broadway
Located in downtown Oakland
The Oakland Museum of California Sculpture Court at City Center is a collaboration between the Oakland Museum of California and the 1111 Broadway Building.
Sculpture Court hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Monday through Friday. Closed on holidays.

Presented by the Oakland Museum of California Professional Services division
Professional Services Exhibition Archive

Chair #858, 2004, 32.25” x 20.5” x 26”, wood, G-10, brass, paint, Photo: M. Lee Fatherree

Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) Off-Site presents Garry Knox Bennett: Preoccupations of a Serial Chairmaker at Gallery 555 and the Sculpture Court in Oakland City Center. The furniture exhibition features hand-crafted chairs by renowned Alameda furniture maker Garry Knox Bennett.

The chairs featured at the Sculpture Court are based on the iconic “Zigzag Chair,” which was designed and built in 1934 by Dutch architect Gerrit Reitveld. Bennett loves to work in series. Because he rarely brings preconceived notions to the construction of a piece, he sees each as an opportunity to develop innovative techniques. He is able to pursue alternative directions while gaining inspiration for new designs. Bennett explains, “I put pieces together in my head – I work out most of my designs at night instead of counting sheep. Then I come into the shop the next day and start sawing.”

The chairs at Gallery 555 are inspired by well-known furniture makers George Nakashima and Philippe Starck, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and some that are rooted purely in Bennett’s imagination. While several chairs are constructed mainly of wood, such as Modified Nakashima and Modernized Nakashima, others demonstrate his ability to bring together unexpected materials and colors. Prototype #4 – Joe’s Chair includes wood, aluminum, paint and upholstery in its construction. Chair #857 combines wood, leather upholstery, 23K gold-plated brass, paint and G-10 (an epoxy-filled woven glass composite reinforced with glass fiber).

Wing Chair #6, 2003, 41.75” x 29.25” x 17”, wood, paint, aluminum, Photo: M. Lee Fatherree

Throughout his 30+year career, Bennett has been defined as a maverick, an urban cowboy. His coming-of-age in the alternative culture of the Bay Area during the 1960s planted the seeds of Bennett’s irreverent attitude toward the establishment. One particular source of his frustration was the academic bent of East Coast woodworking and craft practitioners. He even coined the term “technoweenies” to describe those who were preoccupied with technically sophisticated woodworking.

Bennett attended the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland from 1959 – 1961, studying painting and metal sculpture. He later founded Squirkenworks, a metal plating business that specialized in making roach clips and hippie jewelry. By the early 70s, Bennett began working with wood and developed a series of clocks using aluminum, brass and wood. The pieces were sold at the San Francisco department store Gump’s, thus cementing his role as a commercial artist and woodworker.

By the late 1970s, Bennett’s career as a furniture maker was fully established. Over the course of the next decade, Bennett pioneered the use of nontraditional materials in his furniture, including plywood, aluminum, brass, plastic and ColorCore Formica. His judicious use of material, color and paint is considered by many to be his main contribution to the furniture field. His skill in this regard is clearly apparent in many of the chairs in Preoccupations of a Serial Chairmaker.

American Craft Museum curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman developed the retrospective exhibition, Made in Oakland: The Furniture of Garry Knox Bennett for the American Craft Museum and the Oakland Museum of California. She describes his furniture as “…emblematic of a period of transition when new furniture designs challenged established visions of everyday household objects, away from the handcrafted wood tradition and toward exuberant eccentricity full of visual surprises, unexpected shapes and angles, striking colors, and contrasting materials and surface treatments.”

Today, Bennett remains one of the foremost furniture makers in the U.S., creating most of his work here in Oakland. He has been widely collected and exhibited, including exhibitions at the Jewish Museum, San Francisco; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Museum of Craft & Folk Art, San Francisco; the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles; the Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His work is represented in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s Renwick Gallery; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the American Craft Museum, New York; the De Young Museum, San Francisco; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Oakland Museum of California; and many private collections.

Garry Knox Bennett: Preoccupations of a Serial Chairmaker is presented by the Oakland Museum of California in partnership with Shorenstein Realty Services. The exhibition is part of a changing exhibition series at Oakland City Center and represents an ongoing collaboration between the museum and Shorenstein to showcase contemporary artists. Gallery 555 is located on the lobby level of 555 12th Street. The Sculpture Court is located in the rear lobby of 1111 Broadway.

Gallery 555 is managed by the Oakland Museum of California’s Professional Services Division. Professional Services is a museum department that shares the institution’s resources with the community by developing fine art and artifact exhibitions in public venues. For more information about Professional Services, please go to www.museumca.org/off-site.

Oakland City Center is a focal point for commercial and government activity in downtown Oakland. For more information about Oakland City Center, go to www.oaklandcitycenter.com.