New Mexico Magazine

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

WOODWORKER CREATES ARTISTIC FURNISHINGS

by Jeanie Puleston Fleming

A desk, a coffee table, a bench. Mention these everyday objects and familiar pictures slip easily into the mind—unless the imagination of Mark Levin gets there first. Then all bets are off. As one of New Mexico’s most innovative and skilled contemporary furniture makers, he regularly confronts the puzzle of how to fill a practical need while creating a unique piece of wood sculpture. His flair for design and impressive woodworking skills have led to a powerful and distinctive style with the end result being contemporary furniture at the highest level, a happy coincidence of function and art.

Fruit, leaves, flowers: These are five-year plans if you’re talking with Mark Levin, 50, an accomplished wood craftsman and artist who considers himself a businessman first, although it is obvious that the passionate and perfectionist artist in him is close behind. While the businessman charts timelines and finances on spreadsheets, the artist creates wood sculpture so sensuous and delicate that its function as furniture seems like a surprise bonus.

A native of Illinois, Levin began his woodworking career early. At the age of 8 when he received a hammer, a hand saw and an electric drill, he promptly put holes through the dining room and kitchen tables. Later, despite his father’s hopes for him to become a medical doctor, Levin went to Northern Illinois University to study under Bobby Falwell, himself a student of Wendell Castle, whom Levin calls “the godfather of woodworking.”

For a student project in 1974 Levin made a plant stand so feminine in design that he was embarrassed to claim it—until the orders started rolling in. Priced at $1,200, it still sells well.

After 10 years of designing curved profile benches and office furniture for Chicago commodities brokers who, he admits, “kept me in deep gravy,” he took a break and joined the business world himself, representing woodworking machines and software. Eleven years later, he took up saws and chisels again and was pleased to discover he hadn’t lost his touch, or his woodworking interests.

He came to New Mexico in 1997 when local sculptress Melinda Morrison agreed to be his wife: “When she said yes, I moved, built a new studio and have never been happier,” he says.

Longtime collectors are still with him and he appreciates the adventurous taste of Texans, Californians and New Mexicans. He travels to a few major shows a year and presents sales seminars for artists, warning, “You can get your clock cleaned financially doing a show if you don’t know what you’re doing.” He is a member of the New Mexico Woodworkers Guild.

Mark Levin’s talent for marrying form and function is readily apparent in his cherry wood Leaf Desk, Series #2 which measures 30” tall, 75” wide and 38” deep.

Tucked into the hills between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, Levin’s studio is set up for serious business, and inside he usually has at least three projects going. Recently a shell of laminated cherry wood blocks awaited the chain saw and air chisel to become a “pear” coffee table while another one was ready for shipping. The fruit series includes giant apples, cherries and pears with functional flat tops and smoothly curved sides, the hardwood polished to a sheen that begs to be touched.

Although this series is nearing the end of a creative timeline (but still available by request), the leaf series of delicately carved low tables and desks is in high cycle and garnering awards, publicity and sales. “These have really taken off nationally,” Levin says. A $25,000 cherry wood desk, being wrapped for shipment to California, stands on two tapered, stem like legs bracketing a smooth-running drawer, while the deceptively sturdy third leg is an extension of the large leaf that form the desktop, then bends to touch the floor. It is a work of technical virtuosity, one that Levin admits is showy. “I like to manipulate the wood,” he says. Coffee tables in the series, made of alder wood with mahogany splines are priced at $15,000.

Still in design phases, a flower series of pure sculpture is set to debut in 2003. A bleached maple prototype sits in a corner of the studio, a lovely, even ethereal, white fluted shape to the casual observer, but Levin wrinkles his nose: “It’s firewood. Not right yet.” When ready, he says, “These flowers will be my 3-D interpretation of Georgia O’Keeffe. The first designs will be natural wood, the second bone white, the third in colors like purple morning glories, and last, I’ll cast them in bronze, maybe as fountains.”

For more information about Mark Levin’s work and where to see it, visit his Web site www.marklevin.com or contact him at (575) 421-3207