Steven Garen
Website: http://stevengaren.com
Bio: Steven Garen lives and works outside of Nevada City, CA at 3000' elevation amongst oaks, fir, cedar, pine, madrone. He is the proprietor of Free Grain Woodworks where he designs and fabricates custom furniture from local and salvaged trees. Steven holds an MFA from Stanford, and a BFA from Washington University in St Louis.
Statement: My work as a furniture maker derives from my desire to investigate the living materials around me and the traditional methods of creating functional, sustainable objects. In my former sculpture practice, I sought to explore the relationship between transitional landscape and the transitory nature of art objects through ideas of accumulation, erasure, and structure. I juxtaposed discarded objects with building materials and traditional sculpture materials of wood, metal, and plaster in reference to the constant construction and decomposition of the built environment. My current interests have led me from the Bay Area to the Sierra Nevada foothills—one edge of industry and manufactured nature, to another edge of the conflicted interests of the ex-urban, national and private forest land, and historical resource extraction (gold and timber). Through employing permaculture techniques, watershed stewardship, and use of local, salvaged wood, I am forever learning to be a functional and beneficial part of my socio-natural ecosystem.
