Words Chris Hartman  Photographs Martin Crook

Originally published in No 11

Kieran Kinsella does not consider himself a formally trained artist. Not having had experience in art history, he modestly and thoughtfully says he’s still trying to figure out the relationship between the materials he uses and their artistic significance, which he increasingly believes says a lot about what art truly is. 

He has based himself in a rural community that he has said affords him the space and solitude to produce the sculptures and furniture he creates with hand and power tools — typically small tables and stools that are cut, shaped and fired out of sections of locally-sourced logs of maple, walnut and other hard woods of varying colors and grains. His “stumps,” as they are often called, are sumptuous objets d’art that with their various textured and polished forms are highly desired and prized by collectors. Each piece dramatically reveals its own personality, which is viscerally gratifying to the senses. In addition to wood, he also creates strikingly beautiful ceramic stools in his studio. Kinsella says that his own “upstate” is a pleasant dichotomy between the very rural countryside where he grew up and the city where he once lived. 

Kinsella uses all kinds of locally sourced and salvaged wood. By salvaged he means that, if he can find wood through a tree service or from a place where the logs are just going to be used for firewood, “that’s my favorite to use, because it’s rescue wood; I mean, the most pleasing discovery for me is wood that was just in a firewood pile or what the tree service was going to put in their log dump,” — though he refrains from calling himself a “dumpster diver” for every piece he creates. Repurposing salvaged wood is what he considers an homage to nature.  

Kinsella is a great admirer of the Shakers. “What always left an impression with me, beyond just seeing their work in a museum, was their whole idea of community — how it was put together, and how it flowed — where you can see what shaped their vision.” For them, he notes, “doing something well was really an act of prayer, or meditation,”— even as he modestly adds he doesn’t believe his own work rises to that level. 

He says that in choosing particular types of wood in log form, there’s what Kinsella calls “this funny balance of human manipulation. In the end, I could put 30 hours of carving into a piece, then stand over it, count its rings, and see how old it is. You can also learn if one year was a good year, where it rained a lot, or if it had grown on a slope. So, I really like trying to show a very natural, beautiful kind of form, mixed with the human urge to manipulate that nature to inform and express it.” These trees exhibit all the uniqueness and idiosyncrasies of their natural upbringing. To highlight this, Kinsella applies what he calls “butterflies” to help fuse cracks naturally occurring in his log furniture. 

According to Kinsella, furniture maker and designer George Nakashima often used these butterflies in his “slab tables” to keep the wood from splitting. Kinsella, on the other hand, uses them to emphasize and acknowledge the natural imperfections in the wood. For him, it’s important to demonstrate a natural substance like wood becoming an object of utility, design, or art. He has embraced this medium for so many years because he appreciates the immediate organic connection he makes with the material.

In addition to Nakashima, Kinsella says some of his major personal influences include woodworker and furniture designer Wharton Esherick; sculptor Andrew Goldsworthy; and the wire sculptor Rodger Stevens. Esherick, in addition to his furniture making, was also a sculptor and printmaker. Kinsella calls him a prime example of someone whose life was his work. 

Kinsella finds Goldsworthy inspirational because, in the manner of an artist like Robert Smithson, whose Spiral Jetty in Utah’s Great Salt Lake would appear or disappear depending on the time of year, Goldsworthy’s natural sculptures were ephemeral and meant to disappear over a brief period of time — sometimes in as little as a day. “It doesn’t ask to be kept or stored,” Kinsella says. “It just exists.” He equates this with great music that “just happens and then disappears.” 

As to sustainability, Kinsella is pleased the life he leads is so close to nature. The “argument in my head,” he admits always having, is that “this was honoring nature; but,” he, continues, “the ‘devil side of my shoulders’ would say the best way to be sustainable is to stop buying stuff.”  Yet another delicate balance to achieve. On the other hand, he is keenly aware there are objects that are very important to people — ones they forge meaningful relationships with. 

In terms of the hands-on labors of his craft, Kinsella is reminiscent of sculptors like Thaddeus Mosley, who lugged logs, for his large-scale pieces, weighing over 125 pounds. An admirer of Mosley, Kinsella similarly lifts numerous 60-pound blocks, he’s cut with a chain saw, up to his lathe where he shaves them with a chisel and no gloves — placing himself at considerable risk. He recently recovered from a hand injury that was the result of a mishap on his lathe. In this way, as Kinsella says, he can relate to Mosley’s physicality. Kinsella, who started sculpting 25 years ago, originally thought of it as “honest work that leaves me tired — in a good, physical way.” He enjoys sketching in the studio but adds that if he doesn’t actually “shake the sawdust off” at the end of the day, he feels like he hasn’t really done anything. For Kinsella, the labor is his love.

Kinsella notes that for many artists, “scaling up,” as he terms it, is viewed as a marker of success. Kinsella, however, prefers being hands-on with his own work; each of his pieces reflects his unique, solitary labors. For example, with BDDW, the gallery that represents him, he’s always considered himself “a barnacle on this whale of a business;” he can work quietly and they, in turn, seek to place his work. He says he really prefers his current studio space to what one would have to “eke out” in the city — that having that space in the countryside to draw on is what’s so fulfilling to the creative psyche.  

Finally, when considering the challenges we as a country are facing these days: the COVID-19 pandemic, racial inequality and protests, and almost unprecedented political divisiveness, Kinsella asserts he would be happy if his work were to somehow help us, in effect, start over again — that would be very meaningful to him. As he observes, “We’re ready for a new chapter.”  

Learn more at kierankinsella.com and @kierankinsella

Chris Hartman is a regular contributor to Upstate Diary @book_builder

Martin Crook shoots for Tiffany & Co, Hole & Corner and Conde Nast Traveler, among many others. martincrook.com