Wendell Castle on his Creative Process

It will be among my enduring regrets that I didn’t arrange things to tag along on our recent visit to  Wendell Castle’s home and studio. The video team, along with American furniture scholar Oscar Fitzgerald (he was on our on-screen interviewer), spent a couple days in New York at Castle’s home and studio to film our latest “Legends” video: “Woodworking Legends: An Interview with Wendell Castle.”

In case you don’t know Castle (!!), he’s considered the father of the art furniture movement, and has been a sculptor, designer and educator for more than four decades, during which he’s reinvented himself numerous times. His work continues to be revered and collected, inspiring other artists and designers, and earning him many awards.

Born in 1932 in Emporia, Kansas, he earned a BFA in 1958 in sculpture and an MFA in Industrial Design in 1961, both from the University of Kansas. He taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) from 1962 to 1969, and afterward went on to teach at Brockport University. In 1980, he opened and operated his own school for a decade, before rejoining the faculty at RIT as artist in residence – a post he holds to this day.

But my brief summation doesn’t begin to capture his story;  “Woodworking Legends: An Interview with Wendell Castle” does. The video below – Castle on his creative process – is just an introduction.

— Megan Fitzpatrick
@1snugthejoiner

We’ve also filmed “legends” interviews with Toshio Odate (on which I do an excellent impression of a bump on a log), Frank Klausz and Garry Knox Bennett (with his long-time friend Alf Sharp as the interviewer) – that one will be available in 2017. So who’s next? I’d love to get your recommendations – leave me a note below.