Jay Wiggins

“There is more beauty in beautiful utility, than in beauty alone.”

Jay Wiggins—the man gets around. He’s tall, bearded, plays a mean guitar and rolls a fat burrito. 

All of these things aside, Wiggins is first and foremost an accomplished designer. Jay has been showing work all along the east coast for close to 20 years. Beginning his exhibition career at the very first Nexus Contemporary Art biennial in 1984, he has continued to exhibit and has seen his work published in books from the American Craft Museum, NYC.

We recently visited Wiggin’s studio. Tucked away in a corner of North Atlanta in a beautiful wooden manor guarded by a drawbridge, is the J. M. Wiggens Furniture Studio. To reach it, we had to off road our badass Prius, that’s right I said it.. Once we arrived, Jay led us inside. The manor is an eclectic jumble of beautiful and interesting thing-ama-jiggers. People say you can judge a lot about a man according to his belongings. The first things in Jay’s house are a fish tank, an unbreakable chair and a Theremin.

Courtney Hammond/Dashboard Co-Op: How long have you been creating art?

Jay Wiggins: I was quite young when I embraced my lot as an artist. Art was a refuge for me. I spent a great deal of my childhood exploring an internal world of my own creation.  I am an only child, my father died when I was young. It was always my mom and I. She exposed me to art and popular culture and fueled my fantasies of who I could be in this world.

Dash: How quickly in this time do you arrive at wood as your primary medium?

JW: I have worked with wood for nearly 20 years. I want to understand as much as I can about wood, the material. The thought of delving into other materials to the extent I have with wood, is rather daunting to me. It takes years to become proficient in an endeavor. From the point of proficiency, one can truly began to explore and understand the task at hand.

I discovered my love for furniture when I saw the LCW chair by 20th century designers Charles and Ray Eames. It was the first time I’d seen a piece of furniture as a piece of sculpture. I had to know how to bring such a thing of beauty into being.

Dash: And before then – what kind of work did you produce? Tell us a little of your history.

JW: Well, I fancied myself a poet and writer for many years as a young man. I traveled across the country by motorcycle, hitchhiking and so on.

At the age of 27 I settled down long enough to open a little dive of a restaurant in midtown called Frijoleros. It was the first San Francisco style “roll em’ in front of you” burrito joint here in Atlanta.  At the age of 28, I married the most wonderful woman in this world for me. We had our first, and only, child.  I sold the restaurants to stay home with our son and pursue my passion as a furniture maker and designer. 

I have been very fortunate in this life.

Dash: How do you feel about the role craftsmanship and skill play in Contemporary art?

JW: I will say that I don’t like the turn that fine art took during the later half of the 20th century. Conceptual art has gone down the same path that our country has. It’s all about how well you can talk with little, or no skill to back it up. So much art relies on the description, next to the artwork, that the piece of art really need not exist at all. If I were a writer, I would write. I am a sculptor. I sculpt. My work is exactly what you see. There is nothing hidden, nothing to fool the eye. A proper piece of furniture not only feeds the lofty aspirations of the mind, but serves the body as well. There is more beauty in beautiful utility, than in beauty alone.

Dash: Are there any Atlanta artists that fuel your creative spirit or spur creative momentum in your belly?

Well, you know, Sam Parker said to me a year or so ago, and I am paraphrasing here “ I approach my art like a job that I really like. I go in every day and put in my time”. That really stuck with me. I think we can all spend too much time thinking or talking, as opposed to doing. Doing – that’s where it’s at.

Also, Charlie Smith rocks my world.

Dash: Agreed about Charlie.

Let’s talk about exhibiting in Atlanta. Fitch and Co. Gallery should have lasted longer. The work there was amazing and this is actually where I first discovered you. We find that there is very little market for handcrafted, well-designed furniture. What do you think will bring this to attention and become a priority among the lot?

JW: I believe educating the public is paramount to our success. It has taken me years to understand that. I think, more than anything, people have no idea how time consuming it is to build a proper piece of furniture. It takes weeks and months of a very skilled, focused labor to produce a one of a kind furniture piece. Americans have accepted ill constructed, low cost, factory made goods for so long now that we no longer, in general, have any idea what quality is. Our products are made with a short life span. It is used up, thrown out, and purchased again and again and again.  We don’t make investments in our purchases.

Dash: Describe an exhibition that swept you off your feet and sticks in your mind to this day. 

JW: At the Richmond Museum of Art - a traveling exhibition from The American Craft Museum in NYC (now The Museum of Art and Design).

This art was technically demanding and constructed with great skill and care to standards far above and beyond the ordinary. These weren’t grandiose ideas hastily thrown together and passed off as art; these were grandiose ideas perfectly executed.

They stood on their own as objects of beauty. There was no need for a half dozen paragraphs of bullshit trying to make the pieces something they were not. I know I may ruffle some feathers with my disdain for conceptual art, but so be it. 

It is my desire that people get back to seeing with their own eyes, feeling with their own emotions, formulating for themselves what something is, or isn’t, without relying on a “tablet from on high” to skew their perceptions of reality. Power to the People!