Serious Fun, an exhibition of acclaimed woodwork artist Judson Beaumont's wacky furniture designs, at the Gordon Smith Gallery, 2121 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, Jan. 13 to Feb. 27.
World famous woodwork artist Judson Beaumont earned his accolades - and celebrity status in Asia - by going against the grain in making his eccentric, cartoony furniture.
"Why can't a piece furniture be a sculpture?" questioned Beaumont during his early art school days.
By thinking outside of the box and injecting levity into his designs, Beaumont's quirky conversation pieces have been installed all over the world, from a departures area at Vancouver International Airport, to a children's hospital in New York, to a shopping mall in Hong Kong to San Diego's world famous zoo, to the deck of a Disney cruise ship.
One look at Beaumont's whimsy furniture and immediately images of Toontown's screwy sculptures or the animated grandfather clock in Beauty and the Beast come to mind.
A miniature aluminum airstream trailer for pets, a peeled back tuna can bench seat, and a sultry, curvy chest of drawers in lipstick red are among his eclectic works, which have been featured in an equally eclectic range of publications from the New York Times to National Inquirer.
Locally Beaumont's handiwork can be found in the children's section of the North Vancouver City Library, a large leafy tree adorned with a small door and windows recreated from the pages of a storybook.
He is an accidental artist - his father, unbeknownst to Beaumont, signed him up for sculpture and other art classes at Capilano College.
"I was literally delivering pizzas in North Van and washing cars for a living," recalls Beaumont of his life in the late 1970s.
He never considered himself a conventional artist, but Beaumont always "loved woodworking."
"I was a typical kid, there wasn't Internet back then, you had to get out and make your own fun," says Beaumont.
Like most younger siblings, Beaumont looked up to his older brother, the woodworker, who was always making something, go-karts or a tree fort. So Beaumont also got busy with his hands.
Fast-forward to Beaumont's college sculpture class where he met an open-minded teacher who said he could create whatever he wanted for a project.
Until then Beaumont had always assumed in order to design or build anything, you had to read a set of instructions from a book or magazine. That it was only someone else's idea that he could bring to life.
From that day forward Beaumont armed himself with one hard-and-fast rule for his art.
"My rule is: if you can draw it and design it - you can build it," he says.
Beaumont went on to graduate from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design's 3-D division. At the time he decided he was going to be a minimalist artist, crafting hard-edged, geometrical, straight pieces. He even named his company Straight Line Designs Inc., which is ironic now given his current twisted design style.
"After five years of that I got really bored and thought, 'There has got to be more than this,'" says Beaumont. "I wanted people to look at my stuff and go, 'How did he make that?' You go, 'I can't believe that furniture is taking a pee, or melting into the floor.'" Beaumont bends the rules and says some people don't get his art. Going back to his college days, Beaumont has dealt with a lot of critics.
"There's always the negative stuff: 'Judson makes all this furniture, it's all outrageous. Why would anyone want it?'" says Beaumont reiterating some past criticisms. "That kind of spurred me on to prove them wrong."
You could say Beaumont got the last laugh, considering his international success.
In 2013 Beaumont was flown first class to Hong Kong where a whole shopping mall had been dedicated to celebrating his art.
"It was like Wizard of Oz meets Judson Beaumont," he describes.
As he walked down the corridors Beaumont was greeted by his furniture placed in comical situations, lifting weights or coming out of a hole in the ground. He says he was treated like royalty during that visit and was asked to sign many autographs.
"The kids dressed up as my furniture," recalls Beaumont. "It was very emotional."
A big kid himself, Beaumont says it's "very satisfying" to see children playing on his sculptures, "shrieking and having fun." Some kids, while waiting for their flight, jump around on Beaumont's lighthouse-inspired play area at the airport.
For other youngsters, those with serious health problems at B.C. Children's Hospital, Beaumont created a large castle façade around an MRI machine that transports tiny patients to an enchanted land where suffering is non-existent.
"To me it was letting the kids use their imagination, maybe playing hide and seek and having a sword fight," says Beaumont.
For three decades Beaumont has conceived and brought his designs to life from a studio housed in an old East Vancouver building with a lot of character, a one-time furniture factory, nestled in an artists' hub and the heart of the annual Culture Crawl.
He rises around 5 a.m. every morning and starts each day with a blank piece paper in front of him. Beaumont says he can be inspired by anything, including the mundane: the way the wood is stacked in his shop for example. That wood is sourced from all over, but Beaumont is a big fan of alder, because it's native to B.C. and has few knots, making for a clean canvas.
Beaumont works alongside a small team of artists who each make their specialized mark on the furniture projects because, as Beaumont explains, the quality is better this way.
Starting Jan. 13 the public will have an opportunity to learn more about Beaumont's process as an artist, as the Gordon Smith Gallery hosts a new exhibition honouring Beaumont, called Serious Fun.
"I take what I do very seriously," explains Beaumont of the show's oxymoronic title. "It's not easy because it's cartoony. It's a lot harder to make things melt, bend, twist and explode."
Beaumont is especially encouraging kids to come to the exhibition and open the wacky furniture drawers and get inside his head as an artist. Serious Fun will showcase Beaumont's original works, some prototypes and a lot of sketches.
"Because kids don't draw anymore, they use computers," says Beaumont. "Very few own sketch pads. I'm old-school but I think sketching is very important. I've never seen anyone who can take a computer and start randomly doodling. The freedom of the pencil and a piece of paper... it's a wonderful thing."
