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Bud Latven has influenced countless artists and craftspeople with his approach to wood turning, while following the path of a highly individual artist. He is a innovator, and the complexity of his constructed forms might lead one to think of him foremost as a talented technician.

Latven's life with wood began when he moved to New Mexico in 1972 and took a job at a woodshop in Albuquerque making cabinets and furniture. Soon after, he began making his own furniture and within two years he had a fully equipped studio. For the next en years he sold his furniture at galleries and craft shows across the Southwest. In 1982 he made the transition from furniture-maker to lathe artist. By working in a field that was not rigidly defined, he saw greater potential for artistic freedom. His work started out being inspired from Native American ceramics, but soon gave way to more contemporary forms.

By the early 1990's he started to open out the bottom of his forms, many of which had become based on rotated curves and conic sections such as parabolas and ellipses. He made these forms out of segmented bodies with randomly places contrasting elements and sections.


PERMANENT MUSEUM AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

· the smithsonian museum of american art, renwick gallery
· yale university art gallery
· l.a. county museum of art
· high museum of art, atlanta
· the contemporary museum, honolulu
· mint museum of craft + design, charlotte
· arkansas arts center
· minneapolis institute of arts
· the woodturning center, philadelphia
· mobile museum of art
· the albuquerque museum
· the hunter museum, chattanooga
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