David Gelfman lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut just down the road from the Garden of Ideas. He’s spent most of his life in this town. At one time, there was a neighborhood gravel quarry where his life-long infatuation with machinery began and found nurturance. Gelfman left Ridgefield to attend St. Lawrence University and then earned an MFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1994. Many of his design ideas derive from this fascination with the mechanical world.
Functionality and beauty are allies, not contradictions in his work. Strongly influenced by the antique machinery, urban infrastructure, mission style furniture and modernism, Gelfman began his career in art with sculpture , but soon realized that designing furniture with the same careful formal considerations as his sculpture using the same methods would reach a wider audience. Furniture lent a utilitarian purpose to what was often willful mechanical excess. David fabricates all parts from scratch to press the idea of total design of the whole piece. He uses materials that are prevalent in the industrial world, but unusual in a residential setting.
His sculptures have been shown at the Katonah Museum, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, and the former Nardin Gallery of New York City. His furniture has been shown at the Archetype gallery and the Syncromesh gallery both in New York City. Large outdoor sculptural commissions can be seen on the Campus of Wooster School in Danbury, CT and at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, CT.
Usually working directly with clients, David produces custom one of a kind pieces of Furniture, as well as sculpture and Architectural metalwork. The scale of his projects varies widely from small tables to large custom staircases and entire residential interiors. The working environment resembles a 1950’s era machine shop. Many of the aesthetic decisions are possible because of the particular machinery in Gelfman’s shop.
We are pleased to show Gelfman’s work at the Garden of Ideas.
