Michael Mode

intricate symmetry

​Solo Exhibition

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Wood Symphony Gallery is pleased to present Michael Mode's solo exhibition. This exhibition features 15 incredible delicate and finely finished pieces created by the artist. The new body of Mode's work are outstanding examples of the artist’s intricate and graceful work.

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Michael Mode is a self-taught lathe artist, born in Quakertown, PA, in 1946. His first experience of woodturning came in 1973 while watching a Moroccan craftsman using an Arab bow lathe to make chair spindles. A few years later when trying a lathe himself for the first time, his innate ability for woodturning immediately became obvious.  His earliest efforts focused on lidded containers created on a foot-powered lathe made from an antique sewing machine. A motorized lathe soon replaced the foot power, but the theme of lidded vessels continued through all his major works until May of 1999. At that time Mode began creating laminated bowls utilizing the BFAB (bowl from a board) method. Michael Mode’s work has been placed in numerous museum collections, including the Smithsonian, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Detroit Institute of art and many others.  

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"I like to gather a quantity of different woods in pieces of various dimensions and just look at them until, aha, one piece catches my eye, perhaps several together, and an inspiration has arrived. There is a language in the parts and proportions and colors as well as a satisfaction of seeing a new object arrive in the world in the form of a delicate and finely finished bowl form". Michael Mode

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