'Forming Function' Reception Slated for Friday at sUgAR in Bentonville

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A lamp and table created by Dustin Langford, a landscape architecture student.

A closing reception for “Forming Function: Furniture Designs from the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture” will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 2, at the University of Arkansas Student Gallery, known as sUgAR, at 114 W. Central Ave., in Bentonville. This reception is free and open to the public.

The exhibition showcases works designed and built by fourth- and fifth-year architecture and landscape architecture students from the Fay Jones School of Architecture and an art student from the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. The tables and lamps were created last year in Furniture Design, a professional elective course taught by Tim LaTourette, woodshop director in the architecture school. They were designed and built with a focus on function, as well as craftsmanship and originality.

It’s common for students in the architecture school to make cardboard or basswood models of projects, but those are at a fraction of their design’s actual size. For many students, this was the first time they’d made something at full scale.

During the five or six weeks they spent on the projects, students learned techniques such as bent lamination, steam bending, coopering, veneering, and mortise and tenon joinery. They also used power tools and hand tools, including a table saw and milling machine. They used regional hardwoods – walnut, cherry, ash and various oaks – and incorporated the different colors of the wood as part of their design.

The “Forming Function” exhibition is on display from 2-6 p.m. Thursday and starting at 10 a.m. Friday until the end of the reception.

For more information about sUgAR gallery, call 479-273-5305 or visit the gallery’s Facebook page or art.uark.edu/resources/sugar. Cambry Pierce-Duperier-Newton, the gallery’s student director, can also be reached at cpierced@uark.edu.

Listen to a recent interview with LaTourette on KUAF's Ozarks at Large.