Artist James McNabb learned woodworking as a furniture maker and has transformed that knowledge into a career as a sculptor who crafts stunning geometric cityscapes out of wood scraps.
Armed with a bandsaw, the Philadelphia-based artist creates massive pieces which he says “explore the limitless possibilities of the urban landscape and our human relationship to it.”
He combines his traditional woodworking techniques with experimental methods he’s come up with along the way to evolve cityscapes into something new.
McNabb’s website describes his scupltures as, “A collection of cityscape inspired sculptures that explore sociological concepts regarding transformations of cities and urban landscapes, their beauty, uniqueness, and over-development.”
McNabb takes wood scraps and discarded pieces of wood to create his pieces with a bandsaw.
“Some with very unique and alluring characteristics, that are contextualized to draw new meaning out of the material and force viewers to create their own perspective of the urban landscape,” his website states.
He even created his own process he refers to as “sketching with a bandsaw” where the artist can quickly create his shapes and build his form without having to plan out a design.
“This approach to woodworking is an attempt to capture the fast paced, crude mark-making that is commonly found in contemporary urban art,” his site states. “The resulting works are distorted compositions of abstracted architectural forms, exploring the limitless possibilities of the urban landscape and our human relationship to it.”
According to This Colossal, McNabb didn’t intend to build these skylines.
He was actually aiming to create individual wooden pieces that look like tools or other familiar objects.
However, after he built 250 of them in one day he started to realize that together they looked like a mini city.
McNabb doesn’t really know what his pieces will look like until he’s actually working on them.
“As the wheel turns, it keeps on evolving,” he wrote on Facebook.
McNabb’s most recent works are currently on display at the Galerie Magda Danysz in Paris from now through Sept. 24, 2017.
“So many early mornings and late nights required to make this show come together,” he wrote on Instagram. “STRUCTURE opens tomorrow @magdagallery 6-8pm. Lights, camera, action!”
He was recently featured in My Modern Met with a video that shows the work that went into producing his solo exhibition in Paris. You can watch that video below.
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