Doug Meyer

Rustbelt Rebirth

"My work is mostly informed by growing up poor in Ohio and being forced to be resourceful rather than conceptually clever."

Both the materials and styling of Doug Meyer's furniture pieces evoke a sense of history. Post-consumer sheet metal is stretched across frameworks evocative of mid-century science fiction movies. Is it from a parallel past or a parallel future? Let this confusion become the transcendental jumping point from which the work is understood.

Meyer has pioneered a process called "segmenting." His frameworks are made using hand-pulled bends and cut-offs from other frames, resulting in a bamboo-like segmenting and a 99% conservation of material. The frames are then "skinned in" with fragments of recycled sheet metal that has been tack-welded to size and length.

Meyer fell in love with sculpture in high school, pursuing it a full semester in college before realizing that students, not artists, starve. His next move was attending Job Corps, a government-sponsored trade school, where he trained in the arts of welding. He started building furniture upon graduating, and ten years later had enough business to leave the factories of Ohio for greener pastures.

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Selected Exhibitions & Awards
American Craft Council Show, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, Md, 2013