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Mark Levin
"My aesthetic is based on nature’s small wonders—flowers, leaves, and fruit, as well as the female form. I appreciate soft, sensual forms that have an interplay of curves and movement. "
Mark Levin builds with solid wood for its intrinsic value, virility, and rapidity of execution. Surprisingly, the grain and beauty of the wood have little influence in the design conception for he visualizes new designs in matte black. Levin believes that if a piece has presence and dignity while camouflaged in black, the design will carry the soul, and only then the wood’s beauty will manifest the personality.
Mark Levin builds much of his work using the stack lamination process where smaller pieces of wood are glued together to form much larger pieces that he refers to as "blanks." This stack lamination process provides strength, scale, limitless shapes, and endless artistic possibilities. Once the blank is completed, he roughs out the work with chainsaws and automobile disk grinders. As the final form emerges, he tapers to more delicate power tools and finally hand tools to define the details and the perfectly smooth curved surfaces.
Levin learned woodworking through the industrial arts program in junior high school and had his first commission, a blanket chest, while a high school senior. At college, he studied under Bobby Falwell, a graduate student of Wendell Castle. Immediately upon graduating college, he opened his first shop in Evanston, Illinois. After a few detours and going down several one-way streets the wrong way, he set up a new shop in 2012 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Mark Levin builds with solid wood for its intrinsic value, virility, and rapidity of execution. Surprisingly, the grain and beauty of the wood have little influence in the design conception for he visualizes new designs in matte black. Levin believes that if a piece has presence and dignity while camouflaged in black, the design will carry the soul, and only then the wood’s beauty will manifest the personality.
Mark Levin builds much of his work using the stack lamination process where smaller pieces of wood are glued together to form much larger pieces that he refers to as "blanks." This stack lamination process provides strength, scale, limitless shapes, and endless artistic possibilities. Once the blank is completed, he roughs out the work with chainsaws and automobile disk grinders. As the final form emerges, he tapers to more delicate power tools and finally hand tools to define the details and the perfectly smooth curved surfaces.
Levin learned woodworking through the industrial arts program in junior high school and had his first commission, a blanket chest, while a high school senior. At college, he studied under Bobby Falwell, a graduate student of Wendell Castle. Immediately upon graduating college, he opened his first shop in Evanston, Illinois. After a few detours and going down several one-way streets the wrong way, he set up a new shop in 2012 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
