ABOUT

Form Follows Nature

I transform fallen, diseased and unwanted trees into sculptural objects and to works on paper. You’ll see piles of logs, root balls and gnarled limbs surrounding my studio. As I roll them around to study them, I wait patiently for my inspiration to be provoked – as if the tree itself may speak to me! I make exploratory cuts trusting that I will stumble upon what form will best express this tree’s inner beauty.

My best creations come when I allow myself to work in isolation where I can tune into the natural environment and hopefully gain insight and inspiration for my pieces. In my creative process, I seek the essence of beauty, simplicity and purity, and as a result my work is mostly free of adornment. I hope that what I create is both a pleasure to look at and a delight to hold, but also an accurate translation of my partnership with nature.

I feel that my work radiates the nature of many things – growth and decay; inner beauty and outer; and collaborations between nature and humans. I hope that your experience of seeing my work will be akin to my experience of creating it – that of discovering Nature’s mystery and the soul of the tree.

Design Foundation

As a child of the 60s I have been most drawn to the work of the Modernists. I love minimalist design and my formal education in design instilled this defining era’s influence with axioms such as Form Follows Function, Less is More and Ornament is a Crime. This conditioning is most evident in many of my early furniture pieces where function was foremost and the rest - proportion, symmetry, materials, and craftsmanship were all refined and congruent. With time and experience I dispensed with that rigidity and tapped into trusting my collaboration with the materials. I now allow the wood – the trees – to influence my design decisions – hence the revised expression ‘Form Follows Nature’.

Biography

I attended the University of Washington for architecture and planning (BA, 1989) and Urban Planning and Design (MUP, 1992). I first studied furniture design and craftsmanship at Seattle’s Pratt Fine Art Center and then traveled for intensive woodworking study at several destination arts and crafts schools including College of the Redwoods, Penland, Haystack and Arrowmont. I established my Art Studio in 2000.

Watch Laura Yeats on YouTube a 10 minute artist profile by Patricia O’Brien for The Seattle Channel