Anders Nienstaedt

I’m an artist living in North­field, MN, and working at the inter­sec­tion of craft, narra­tive, and design. I love sculpt­ing in various mate­ri­als, making furni­ture, drawing, writing, and film­mak­ing. Most of my projects even­tu­ally incor­po­rate wood as a mate­r­ial. I like the way it can be either humble and insub­stan­tial (consider the tooth­pick or IKEA furni­ture) or monu­men­tal, opulent, or other­wise infused with meaning (say, a temple), and my work often play­fully engages both ends of this spec­trum. My mom once told me, ​“Every­thing you touch turns to wood,” which felt like it could have been a curse and which might be on my tomb­stone someday (a wooden tomb­stone, naturally). 

My sculp­ture and furni­ture pieces engage with and ques­tion the idea of what it means for an object to be func­tional. The ideal I strive for is an artwork poised at the brink of an action that is still partially unde­fined. As in the case of archi­tec­ture or theatri­cal props (two ways of making that run in paral­lel to my prac­tice) I seek to make objects that suggest an imag­i­na­tive or unpre­dictable acti­va­tion. Often this lies in a balance between care­fully rendered craft and moments of inten­tional space, incom­plete­ness, or constraint. 

I am deeply drawn to the idea of ​“wonder,” and I try to make my work a space for both the viewer and me to expe­ri­ence a form of wonder, each of us in our own way. 

This is a film I made about a my strange rela­tion­ship with Christ­mas trees, and which may indi­rectly explain some of my preoc­cu­pa­tions as a furni­ture maker and woodworker: 

https://​film​free​way​.com/​p​r​o​j​e​c​t​s​/​2​1​19931

I post photos of my smaller projects and in-progress work on Insta­gram: @marcelthechamp