I feel that recognizing and celebrating this overlap of nature, science and creativity is essential in these times. Through honoring the handmade process and the traditional techniques of my medium, I strive to make pieces that are full of truth and meaning. My hope is to create a beauty that is true and pure, and resonates in the mind. Seducing the senses through the opposition and balance of forms, textures, and content. To create pieces that are raw and honest and express the perfection in imperfection. Layered with reference to nature, culture, creativity, life and living, they are meant to be monuments to our existence.
-Dean Pulver
Woodworker Dean Pulver Wins the 2017 Bob Stocksdale Award
Dean Pulver is a full-time sculptor and furniture maker working in wood. Growing up in a multi-cultural family of artists in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he was influenced by his German and Irish father, a commercial illustrator, art director and painter, and his Japanese mother, a clothing designer and fiber artist. Pulver graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1987 in sculpture. He has been exhibiting and teaching extensively in the United States and his works are shown in galleries and museum exhibitions and collections including the Fuller Craft Museum, Bellevue Art Museum and The Center for Art in Wood.
Pulver has taught at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Penland School of Crafts, and the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. In 2017 he was awarded the Bob Stocksdale International Award for Creativity from the Center for Art in Wood. Living in Taos, New Mexico for over 20 years with his wife, ceramic artist Abby Salsbury, Pulver and Salsbury are currently developing “Taos Mesa Arts”, a center for exhibitions, classes, retreats and residencies.
