Last Friday we attended Marv Graff's delightful solo M.F.A. thesis exhibition, "Remains of the Day," a mingling of many media, from sculptural elements, to textiles, and repurposed antiques. Many of his sculptures implemented wood from our shop, either as sculptural bases we cut for him from antique wood, or our massive, rough hewn, piling points salvaged from the old Savannah wharf.

His work "expertly merges the fields of avant-garde fashion, textile design, sculpture, and historic preservation in order to re-imagine the purpose and aesthetic of old-world objects into contemporary sculpture," and deals with the nuances of "forgotten, swept-aside objects" which is quite apparent with his use of our pieces. Their new context in a gallery stands in explicit contrast with their previous residence in our reclaimed wood shop and piles of salvaged materials, and allows them to yield to the senses a new meaning.

This contrast is even more apparent with our river recovery heart pine, used as a base for these horses. The wood comes from pieces of Savannah river pilings, driven sometimes 15 feed into the muddy riverbed. Over time they've accumulated this grey hue throughout the interior of the wood, which accents the color of the horses. We were impressed with the keen eye by which Marv actively wove together the texture of wood we supplied with the work he made.

This base he selected with Eric and Chris in the woodshop, and over time had it custom fit to this capitol, with a rod stuck through it to support his deer.

The opening proved to be well attended, and appeared to us to be a great success.

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Marv Graff's work has been featured in Women's Wear Daily, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and New York Magazine. In 1979, he won the Pré de Cache award for Young Designer of the Year. He created a knotted tunic commissioned by Mary McFadden that is part of the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

You can find more pictures of his work on his site, here are a few:

Personally the most impressive example of Marv's repurposing is shown with his implementation of our piling points for sculpture bases and elements. These rough pieces came at the bottom end of our river recovery wood, and were pointed to be piled deep into the Savannah river. Seen in a gallery, they are almost transfigured from their original scarred faces.

"Remains of the Day" will be showing until April 30th at the Pei Ling Chan Gallery (322 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Savannah Ga.), so stop by!

We love collaborating or assisting artists with our pieces, and are always willing to do more. If you have any ideas, please contact us!