Mark Lindquist (born 1949) is an American sculptor in wood, artist, author, and photographer. Lindquist is a major figure in the redirection and resurgence of woodturning in the United States beginning in the early 1970s. His communication of his ideas through teaching, writing, and exhibiting, has resulted in many of his pioneering aesthetics and techniques becoming common practice. In the exhibition catalog for a 1995 retrospective of Lindquist's works at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, his contributions to woodturning and wood sculpture are described as "so profound and far-reaching that they have reconstituted the field". He has often been credited with being the first turner to synthesize the disparate and diverse influences of the craft field with that of the fine arts world.

Early achievements

Lindquist's work is characterized by an empathy with the natural aesthetics of wood, technical innovation, and art historical connections. Among his notable early achievements was the introduction of the aesthetic of Asian ceramics into American woodturning. Along with his father, wood-turning pioneer Mel Lindquist, he also developed new tools and techniques that expanded the vocabulary of woodturning, and pioneered the use of spalted wood. In the early 1980s, he applied techniques he had developed for large-scale woodturning to create his massive, textured "Totemic Series Sculptures," in the Modernist tradition of Brâncuși.

Ichiboku series

Beginning in 1985, Lindquist created his "Ichiboku series" sculptures: six- to eight-foot-tall (6 - 8 ft) sculptures from a single block of wood, applying the philosophy and techniques of ninth-century Japanese Buddhist woodcarving to the formal concepts of Modernism. Unlike his earlier works, woodturning was not the primary method for their creation. These sculptures were exhibited in 1990 along with seven other influential sculptors of the decade (including Raoul Hague and Ursula von Rydingsvard). Lindquist's "Ichiboku" sculptures distinguished themselves from others in the exhibition, and from the work of most wood artists of the time, by their identification with the spirit of the tree, a concept he adopted from the Japanese. Rather than imposing an external idea upon the wood, he "was engaged in a dialogue with trees"; This approach was antithetical to the mainstream of 20th-century art, which was intellectually removed from the appreciation of nature.

Public collections

Lindquist's work can be found on permanent display in many American museums and public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Yale University Art Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Honors and awards

Publications