CFDA Newsletter

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

***ELECTIONS***

The CFDA's business is handled by its Executive Board rather than the general membership. There are ten board members and we will choose them at the September CFDA regular monthly meeting. Returning board members who are standing for re-election are:

Antanas Abraitis, John Kriegshauser, Lloyd Natof, Sean Scott , Matt Speer.

Current board members who have not expressed an interest in standing for election are:

Burt Engelberg, Barry Newstat , Helen Maria Nugent, Pradeep Shimp i, and Maxine Snider

People who have been cited as potential candidates for the Board are:

Dolly Spragins, Jamie Lis Stevens , Lisa Elkins, John Jaqua, Phillip Haywood, Dave Waycie

We need to put together a final list of candidates for September's meeting. If you would be willing to be a candidate or if you wish to nominate a candidate, please contact me, John Kriegshauser, kriegshauser@iit.edu , as soon as possible. -JK

Program Schedules:

September 11 - Let's Talk About Ash - Bruce and Erica Horigan
Next year's show at the Morton Arboretum will celebrate ash, which because of the destructive effect of the emerald ash borer, is going to be in abundant supply for the next few years. Bruce and Erica will talk about the wood, the beetle and the special working properties of ash. Ash has always been a prominent wood in Japanese furniture, but not so much in the western tradition. Let's find out what we need to know to insert ash into the western tradition! If you have experience working with ash, come tell about it. It's time to begin designing.

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CFDA Meeting Report:

CFDA Minutes - August 14th, 2007
held at Bretford, Inc., located at 11000 Seymour Avenue, Franklin Park

8 members present, with a new member, Bob Eneberg

The Cultural Center proposal for the August 2008 -January 2009 timeframe is still under review. Their next meeting will be September 19th, and we've been advised to please wait until then for a report back to us. As it stands we're hoping to secure the downstairs lobby area, a space that's approximately 2000 square feet.

Per Dolly Spragins, 18 additional counties have been included in the affected ash borer zone. So attention to this problem continues to expand. This attention should tie in nicely with the show publicity.

The business portion was concluded here and Chris Brandel then lead the group on a tour of the plant and processes at Bretford.

Chris lead the group through the metal fabrication area first, where workers were stamping, CNC laser cutting, welding and bending steel sheets and tubes into hundreds of shapes. The wood production area was next, where workers shaped and faired dimensional lumber and high tech composite materials into finished products. The lamination and finishing departments kept us entranced for a while, which then lead to the powder coating and baking stations within the facility.

The meeting concluded in a corner area where Chris discussed his ongoing efforts with a new conference table prototype. The journey of this prototype has required outsourcing some of the materials to a company that has a 5-axis CNC laser tube cutter. Chris demonstrated the benefits of this outsourcing, showing how the laser cut tubes could be bent into shape and then snicked into place. This eliminated time-consuming and costly welding operations and ensured a higher degree of uniformity in the parts for a lower overall product cost.

Separately, Dolly arranged for a tour at Lyon & Healey, a maker of upscale concert harps and which was held on Saturday, August 18th. Four CFDA members attended, touring a design and fabrication process through five stories of the near-downtown building. The tour concluded with a sidebar tour of Lloyd Natof's nearby shop.

Matt Seiler, Secretary

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Member Profile:
Chris Brandel

I began designing furniture in college about mid way through my studies. I had been pursuing several different degrees, including Engineering, Geology, and Microbiology, but none of them seemed to satisfy my interests. I decided to take a short break by taking a semester of classes in the arts. I had always been interested in art and craft and I was lucky enough to grow up amongst people who worked intimately with objects. My father was a woodworker hobbyist and my uncle restored antique cars for a living. These two people were the biggest influence on my decision to take that first woods class in college.

I have enjoyed drawing and sketching since I was quite young, and I especially liked incorporating spatial relationships into the drawings. When I took that first woods class, I quickly became fascinated not only with woodworking and furniture, but with sculpture as well. Now I had found a way to further my interest in spatial relationships. My early pieces in college were, as I look back on them, fairly complicated undertakings, but that was also part of the fascination. Another element that they all had in common was having a story behind them. I suppose this was a way to help introduce an additional sculptural element into each piece. I think this aspect carries through on to the pieces I design today.

Before I graduated from college, I spent a semester in Rome, Italy where I believe my growth as a designer really began. The amount of stimulation in that city was so immense that every day was gratifyingly exhaustive. For me, seeing the evidence of thousands of years of history and grasping what was accomplished with the available technology of the time was inspiring. It was as if the city was screaming "There's nothing that can't be done!".

I later returned to the U.S. thinking I would start my own business as a furniture maker. This task would not prove to be as easy as I had expected. After a couple of years with little progress in the start up, I decided to take what was supposed to be a temporary job as a model maker for a production furniture manufacturer. The thought appalled me, but I needed the money and I wanted to stay tied to furniture in some way. Needless to say, temporary it was not. I still work for Bretford, however my role there has changed dramatically. I am now developing furniture products for the contract market. This new role has allowed me to expand my explorations into new materials and production methods and has greatly expanded my palate for design options.

I often question myself as to whether I "sold out" by doing production work given that my background had such an emphasis in handwork and traditional methodologies, but I think that this role has become another defining period in my growth as not only a furniture designer, but as a product designer. The past 8 years have been something of a give and take between production aspects (both good and bad) and custom aspects (both good and bad) as it relates to furniture design, however I feel that the dichotomy has strengthened my understanding of design possibilities in both realms and has led to some interesting approaches in each. As a result of this dichotomous world I work in, I tend to think of projects in a different light as far as process goes, but I think that it strengthens my ability able to come up with truly original works.

If anything has changed my approach to design, it is technology. I have both expanded my thoughts and contracted my abilities by thinking in this realm. It is a constant tug of war in my mind as to how and when to use technology and the importance of incorporating details by means only possible by the touch of a skilled hand with a keen eye behind it.

In all, I am happy with the path that my designs and explorations are taking me. I would even say that I am more excited about design today than at any other time in my life.

Some books that inspire me:

Biomimicry - Janine M. Benyus
Art and Visual Perception; A Psychology of the Creative Mind - Rudolf Arnheim
Shape - George Stiny (whew...tough read)
Imperial Ambitions - Noam Chomsky
Beyond the Conscious Mind, Unlocking the Secrets of the Self - Thomas R. Blakeslee