Close up with Anne Shutan
January 7, 2010 by Aimee Heckel
Filed under Close Up, Cover Story, Featured, Inspiration U
Anne Shutan believes every piece of wood bears a secret. It is her job, as an artist, to help that secret emerge.
“Sometimes the design hits immediately,” says the Boulder County sculptor, nationally known for making furniture and doors. “Other times, I sit with the wood for a while, then suddenly visualize the piece.”
Shutan originally studied creative writing. (She even had a teacher tell her to “forget art.”) But she wanted to work with her hands and ended up learning from a traditional Dutch woodworking master. That’s where she crafted her first door.
Her teacher died a few weeks later — after telling her, “You don’t need me anymore. Look at you.”
Twenty-eight years later, Shutan boasts custom doors around the country, including many throughout Boulder County. She etches movement and curves into her one-of-a-kind mostly mahogany doors; she wants to call out the “sensuous” nature of wood. She rides the band saw like a pencil across the rugged material.
Each door takes two to four months. Her only limitation is that it must fit in the door jam, she says.
“But within that boundary, I can go quite wild,” she says. “It’s like life.”
Her doors are functional, but with abstract qualities, she says. And as with her abstract sculptures, the results always surprise her, she says.
In fact, she adds, often “the accidents are more interesting than the original idea.”
Perhaps the accidents are the secret hidden inside the wood.
Check out Shutan’s work on display at the Osmosis Gallery, 290 Second Ave., Niwot, and online at www.ashutan.com.
— By Aimee Heckel
