Paul Tellier
I choose this line of work for a simple reason - I love woodworking. It became a career after a battle between my heart and head. My heart won and I ventured into, and survived a 4 year apprenticeship with a European cabinetmaker in Ottawa, Ontario. In 1982, I received Ontario certification in Cabinetmaking, and in 1983, certification in Industrial Woodworking.
I was a loyal employee for many years before moving my world to North Vancouver in 1995 and establishing a one man woodshop. I have done 5 exhibitions over the last 2 years, at galleries in Vancouver, New Westminster and Port Moody.
I like to build stuff. I like collecting wood. Unique boards, local woods, whatever - I love it all. Occasionally, I use some of that collected wood to build something. And sometimes it actually looks like furniture! If a speculation piece sells, then life is good - the cabinetmaker in me becomes a craftsman for awhile. My design sense comes only from osmosis during my time in the trade. I'm not sure if I have a personal style - I only hope my passion for the craft is translated in my work and that you enjoy looking at is as much as I enjoy making it.
Van Varga
My work over the past year has been a conscious attempt to deal with the components of workmanship, namely: dexterity, judgment and shape determining systems. The soundness and comeliness of my work, its degree of precision, I make dependent on workmanship. I take the best practices of wood craft, handed down through tradition and apply modern machine tools mediated through jigs, forms, molds, and gauges to extend those traditions.
I try to answer the questions of life with my woodwork rather than just satisfying a function.
Maybe it is simply this that makes Van Varga an artist and transforms his pieces from furniture to meditation.
I see the harmony, peace and balance in daily life. These are the values and sensibilities that I seek, that I want to see.
Varga brings to his creations everything he is and has become. A classically trained violininst, Varga understands…senses pattern in wood. You can see his designs have a rhythm, an architecture, like music moving through them.
Opening Sunday March 7, 2004, 10am to 1pm.
