Arden Carlson
Artist Site


       
                              untitled drawing
    
               poplar, basswood, ply

               18 1/4 H x 25 3/4 W

               July 2025

               Photo Credit: John Carlano





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My affinity for craft stems from a rural Kentucky upbringing, where I roamed the woods and watched my father, from the bottom of the ladder, building one house after another. It was here that I acquired a language for wood: understanding that each object begans as the trunk of a tree - and it might be in the maker’s favor to regard such a ‘time-centric growth’ throughout any process of transformation.

Woodworking is a vehicle to explore these enchantments with transformations - whether that be in form or spirit or purpose.



Drawing from this upbringing in the American South, I’ve often employed domestic or rural motifs as points of departure, reinterpreting them through abstraction to question how identity and desire are embedded within the built environment.

In recent work, I have shifted from constructing instantly recognizable objects—a radio, a fence line, a bird in flight—toward more ambiguous objects. These new forms have a certain “hard-to-place-ness”, inviting personal contemplation and an exploration of more interior modes of thinking; a shift drawn by the legacy of surrealism amongst intensive social structures.








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