Art: Form follows imagination

Glance at the furniture around you right now, and what do you see? Most likely it's familiar banality that functions: Synthetic fabrics stretched over metal frames. Puffy cushions. Glass and chrome. Wood veneers. Styles ranging from Ye Olde Early American to Ikea Moderne.

Now step into "Studio Furniture: The Next Generation" at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design through Feb. 21, and what do you see? Innovative novelty that works: a boxy recycled-cork chair. A wok-shaped coffee table made of corrugated cardboard with a mahogany spin-top and conical '50s legs. A stainless steel chair upholstered with a recycled vinyl-billboard graphic. A low "sofa" that looks like soft rocks wrapped in felted wool and colorful yarn. A bench made from recycled bamboo rods in a walnut case.

"What the buyer of studio furniture is looking for is a singular piece, like a painting," said Dean Wilson, the veteran MCAD professor who heads the college's furniture-design program. "That's the target market where studio people want to go."

Anyone in search of venturesome stuff to sit on or just to think about will do well to check out the "Studio" show, which features pieces by 15 recent graduates of furniture-design programs at nine of the country's top art schools, including San Diego State University, the University of Wisconsin in Madison; Rhode Island School of Design and MCAD itself. Everything is handcrafted and unique. Several of the designs could readily be adapted for manufacturing, while others would be right at home in a sculpture gallery. The verve of the designs is invigorating, and craftsmanship is meticulous throughout.

Style mavens

"Form follows imagination," Vivian Beer wrote in the show's catalog, neatly summing up her design philosophy and what could be the show's motto. It certainly fits her elegant "White Current" chair, which was formed by making a dozen parallel incisions in a thin slab of steel and bending the resulting ribbons into two interlocking waves. Joined at top and foot, one wave forms the chair's seat, the other its back. Finished with automotive paint, the chair takes whiplash curves worthy of an Art Nouvelle classic and gives them a modern feminist spin.

Isaac Arms' steel armchair, which looks like a block of lead on the go, is the conceptual opposite of Beer's airy ribbons. Called "South Bound," it evokes the dynamism of classic roadsters with its low-slung chassis, powerful fender-like arms and narrow seat. Every curve and angle is exquisitely refined and streamlined, the proportions calculated for maximum aesthetic impact and masculine appeal.

Tanya Aguiñiga turned scraps of upholstery foam into three soft rocks that can be arranged into a flexible sofa. Wrapped in felted wool crisscrossed with colorful yarn -- teal, plum, coral -- the "rocks" are irregular and free-form yet stack neatly as back or arm rests.

The recycled bamboo poles that Heath Matysek-Snyder corralled in a walnut frame are perhaps unintentionally flexible. Designed as a bench, the vertical bamboo rods look like they would be awfully uncomfortable as seating. With the addition of a glass top, however, the bench could convert instantly into a novel coffee table.

Daniel Michalik makes attractive use of a renewable material in his cork "Tilter" chair. So does George Mahoney, who makes a Pop statement by topping a stainless-steel frame with recycled billboard vinyl, and Jason Schneider, whose bowl-shaped cardboard table supports a lazy-susan top.

Updated modernism

One of the show's most impressive qualities is that the designers are able to adapt and advance their field's history without resorting to irksome quotations or cheap stylistic ticks. Thus the aptly named Ryan McNew, who should incorporate his moniker now, paid candid homage to mid-20th-century modernism in his low, pod-like cabinet. Timothy Maddox turned out a perfect black-lacquered chair whose refined lines recall the subtleties of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The odd biomorphic ornamentation on Todd Partridge's cabinet has something of the understated beauty of folk art.

Several pieces cross from function to sculpture, none more obviously than Jennifer Anderson's "Wegner Study #2," which recasts Hans Wegner's famous "wishbone" chair in mud-covered steel. Working with recycled scraps, Katie Hudnall concocted a fanciful 18-foot "table" that is really a 3-D drawing-in-space, while Bob Marsh embellished a long wooden shelf with more than two dozen carved-bird heads. Sylvie Rosenthal applied her woodworking skills to the construction of a miniature pagoda perched on a complicated base, and Yuri Kobayashi produced an exquisite pod-and-ladder sculpture whose silken surface is a triumph of refined woodworking.

It's heartening to see American colleges graduate such skilled and talented students, especially at a moment when the very survival of American-made furniture is in question as domestic firms in North Carolina and elsewhere move production overseas. The kind of studio furniture shown at MCAD is not intended for a mass market, but perhaps it will help revive America's can-do design spirit.

Mary Abbe • 612-673-4431