Please contact the gallery for purchasing information

Bill's HCT Painted wood, mixed media

Offspring Painted wood, mixed media

Bird Blob 3: Invasion Painted wood, mixed media 18 1/2" x 16 1/2"

Renovated TLC Painted wood, mixed media

Quarry Pot Painted wood, mixed media

Renovated BB Painted wood, mixed media

Bird Blob 1: Landscape Painted wood, mixed media 18" x 18 1/2"

Monument Painted wood, mixed media 13 1/2" x 14" x 4"

Plan Cleveland Painted wood, mixed media

W's Detector Painted wood, mixed media

FSZ's Evolving Gift Painted wood, mixed media 17" x 19" x 17"

Rob's U.D.O. Painted wood, mixed media 12" x 23" x 10"

WORKS SOLD

About the Artist

Travis Townsend, born in Pennsylvania, is an assistant professor in the Art Department at Eastern Kentucky University. He lives in Richmond, Ky. with his wife Felicia Szorad, a metal smith who is also a faculty member in the Art Department at EKU. Townsend received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. He has exhibited work in a number of East Coast galleries and was awarded the Emma Lake Collaboration Grant, Saskatchewan Craft Council, Canada in 2002 and an Emerging Artist Grant from the American Craft Council, New York in 2001. Townsend is also a 2004 recipient of the prestigious Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Fellowship Award.

Artist's Statement

Playing off the functionality of tools, instruments, and toys, my pieces are idiosyncratic objects that record and discover their own making. These process-oriented works take a winding path to completion, evolving from continuously redrawn sketches and traveling through many transformations before being cut apart and rebuilt. Through this method of construction and reconstruction, I am able to intuitively build and make necessary changes at a later time.

My sources include vernacular architecture, Surrealist painting, and the sculpture of Martin Puryear and H.C. Westermann. A direct influence has come from the containers and carved vessels made by studio furniture makers; the most impressive of which is the home (human container) Wharton Esherick built for himself over the span of forty-five years.

Disregarding the aesthetic of efficient design and traditional craftsmanship, my "devices" push boundaries of usefulness to create oddly familiar forms with quiet room-like interiors. Viewers can see that my objects have handles, openings, and moveable parts, but the physical or metaphorical functions of these objects are left to the imagination. Curious inspection allows the viewer to patiently discover previously unseen drawings and spaces within the work. In an increasingly fast, displaced world, I am attempting to build personal, impractical, and sometimes clumsy inventions that relate to our domestic experience.

Travis Townsend, 2003

For more information on TRAVIS TOWNSEND, please visit the artist's personal site

Travis Townsend's work may also be seen by visiting: http://www.westonartgallery.com/ex2007-01.php