IAN CRESSWELL

CONNECTIONS

My woodworking career began in the early 1980s, at the start of an apprenticeship in bench joinery. For twelve years I worked alongside other makers manufacturing a range of non-standard architectural fixtures: doors, windows, screens and staircases, and bespoke cabinetry for the health and retail sectors. While a perfectly reasonable way of earning an income, I felt the nature of the work was becoming increasingly impersonal. More regularly, the output was destined for unlived spaces, to be generally received without ownership and used without expression. In 1993, in need of a change of direction, I began and subsequently completed programmes of higher study in both fine furniture making and 3-dimensional design. 

Since then, I have centred my effort around producing individual objects for individual people, albeit with some small measure of creative contradiction – of working independently on one-off pieces, while drawing conversely on the notion of connectedness and continuity. Within the context of any creative or artistic statement, these terms may seem clichéd but their appropriacy runs hand in hand with the methods, material and creative influence I remain drawn to. I still rely on those principle jointing techniques I was first taught: mortice and tenon and similar interlocking methods that have persisted as viable connections for over seven thousand years. 

Today, through their considered use, I create representational constructions in wood as freestanding and wall-mounted functional artefacts. Much of my inspiration continues to emerge from an interest in compositional form, allied to a broader propensity of simply wanting to piece things together. 

Transposed architectural detail and a use of words and numbers, often in combination, are typical starting points. Each of these human-made structuring devices I see as existing only through the abiding cooperation of the many. It is this idea of interaction and offered interactedness, through multiple joined elements and influences, that I aim to convey in my practice – the joinery of shared reference.