LaTourette Wins One of Nine Arkansas Arts Council Fellowships

LaTourette will bring the “Illuminated Millipede Table” to the Little Rock reception for display.

A close-up of the “Illuminated Millipede Table.”

LaTourette used the millipede design on this jewelry cabinet.

A copper etching of a butterfly adorns the top of this art cabinet.

The art cabinet opens up to reveal a collection of butterflies.

This art cabinet holds a collection of stones.

Photo Submitted

Tim LaTourette will bring the “Illuminated Millipede Table” to the Arkansas Arts Council reception in Little Rock this Sunday for display.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Tim LaTourette is mostly self-taught at woodworking, which he didn’t start exploring until his adult years. However, over the past 20-plus years, he has continued to improve and expand his skills. A portfolio of his work recently won him an individual artist fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council.

LaTourette is the woodshop director and an instructor in the Fay Jones School of Architecture. He is one of nine Arkansas artists who each received $4,000 fellowships for their talents in three categories: Creating Contemporary and Traditional Crafts, Directing of Narrative and Documentary Films, and Playwriting. LaTourette and the other winning artists will be recognized at a reception from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 6, at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. This event is open to the public, and reservations are required by calling 501-324-9766.

LaTourette really delved into woodworking when he and his wife, Rebecca, bought the house next to theirs years ago in Champaign, Ill., when it was in foreclosure. Their restoration of that home segued into other jobs there – like helping a friend turn a decrepit downtown building into a bar. From there, LaTourette started doing a lot of contracting work, which lasted for about 15 years.

He had training and experience in creative works, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from Colorado State University and a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking from the University of Illinois in Champaign. Though he didn’t have any background in woodworking, he learned the craft as clients asked for built-in cabinets and revamped kitchens.

“It was a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and it just naturally moved toward furniture, which I found to be a lot more satisfying than cabinetry,” he said.

He did a lot of reading and thinking, and learned much through trial and error – “the same way I do it now.” In two classes in Massachusetts, he learned to build a table and a fine-woodworking cabinet.

Rather than utilitarian cabinets, he now makes art cabinets – display cases for found objects and treasures. They are almost reliquaries, or shrines. The design of the cabinet is usually inspired by the displayed objects – like bug-eaten wood or porous leaves.

“They contain objects, and they speak more to the object that’s in it than to the cabinet,” he said. “They’re very much one-of-a-kind things.”

LaTourette has done about five or six of these small art cabinets. He’s fascinated by the mechanical aspects of design and has added movement to some of them, using pulleys and gears.

Not only has LaTourette learned to create beautiful objects, he’s also learned to problem solve – a trait he shares with his students. Sometimes, the solution to a design means designing a tool to make that happen.

The school has several CNC (computer numerically controlled) routers, a multiple-axis cutting machine. He built a jig for the wood shop, which is a TNC: “Tim numerically controlled.” He built it because he wanted a way to duplicate a piece for one of his art cabinets.

LaTourette also created a smaller jig so he could cut a slit around the middle of a branch that he wants to set in a shelf, so it looks like the branch is above and below the horizon of the shelf. The branch will stay stationary while the jig moves around it to cut. These will become nightlights that use LED lights and hang on the wall.

“The teaching gets me going creatively, and there’s lots of problem solving that goes on with that. And then I try to incorporate the solutions to the problems that we come up with in class into my own work,” he said.

He teaches at least two furniture design classes a year, plus he works with students on independent studies. Their projects include chairs, tables and lamps. Chairs incorporate architectural issues such as loads and stresses – “and the design possibilities are just wide open.”

“The students are great. They’re full of energy; they’re very creative. I let them design what they want to design and then help them build it. And that’s just inspiring it its own way, to see what they’re doing, and to be part of that creative process that they’re going through.”

Many times, LaTourette does research to figure out how to teach something. That happened with the bent lamination and steam bending they use in class, which he’s also started using in his own work.

Students have full access to the power saws and router in the basement-level woodshop. They also build their own jigs to make specialized cuts. And they have a wide selection of hand tools available, including planes.

For his fellowship portfolio, LaTourette included a mix of the art cabinets and tables. For this weekend’s reception, he’ll bring a recently completed light table with an Asian-influenced design that incorporates several techniques and elements, including steam bending and LED lights. He also diffuses the light through a layer of wood veneer. The narrow table is about three feet long and two and a half feet tall.

He often takes a technique and uses it in multiple pieces – like this table, which has a bent lamination design inspired by a study he read about how millipedes walk in a coordinated fashion. He did steam bending studies based on that, and two of those studies went in a jewelry cabinet and an Asian-inspired altar table design.

The apron of this light table also uses another technique he’s been working on, based on his experimentation with table saw cuts to create apertures for light. He’s also used that technique for two lamps he’s made.

“Once I figure something out, I try to incorporate it into at least two or three pieces,” he said. Part of that is him testing those techniques, then learning and refining them. The other is exploring the possibilities of what he can do.

“It’s like a piece of design vocabulary, and then I can start to play with it,” he said. “The play part is definitely a part of it, too.”

LaTourette makes time to play at home in a separate garage building, where he tries to spend one day on the weekends. He recently finished restoring an old lathe that he hopes to start using soon.

LaTourette is pleased by the recognition the fellowship brings to his work. “I was really wonderfully surprised that they chose me,” he said. He’ll use some of the fellowship money to develop a website to showcase his work more widely. He plans to spend the rest on the craft, maybe some classes, some wood and some LED lighting – things from his “wish list.”

This semester, LaTourette also is teaching lithography in the university’s art department, taking him back to his printmaking days. Some of the pieces he included in his portfolio for this fellowship will be part of the October exhibit at the University of Arkansas Student Gallery (sUgAR), in the former Fayetteville Underground basement-level space in East Square Plaza on the east side of the downtown square. “Paint, Pixels, and Process” is an invitational group exhibition showing works by adjunct and visiting art department instructors, and a reception will be held from 6-9 p.m. Thursday during First Thursday.

The sUgAR gallery is a collaborative effort of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Art and the Fay Jones School of Architecture.