Sculptor of wood exhibiting unique pieces at Tupper Arts

by Dan McClelland

Tyler Schrader from Johnstown, N.Y. fashions puzzle-type pieces of many kinds of wood into magnificent pieces of one-of-a-kind wooden sculptures. And many of them are on display this week at Tupper Arts on Park Street. His show runs through September 10.

Many of the 27 year old’s family including his mother Kaye, his grandmother and his father came up for the opening reception of his exhibit Wednesday. A number of local folks stopped by the evening for the preview of his incredible work.

Tyler’s brother Brett came up with him earlier last week to help him set up the show. Brett makes intricate home-make jewelry out of metal and some of his pieces are on display too.

Most dramatic of his pieces, a photo of with the young artist was carried on last week’s front page, is an eight foot high giant circle of rings called “A Cosmic Portal.” Embedded behind the hand-carved rings are thousands of LED lights of many colors. The piece was created for a music festival called “The Electric Forest” in Michigan in recent years.

It’s actually a double-side piece, but he only brought the front to the Tupper show.

“I kind of play off the idea of creating illusions with light and repetitions of cuts in the wood,” he said of many of his creations, including the Cosmic Portal. “It creates a sense of beauty using light with each!”

“Many people find them mesmerizing!” We certainly did.

He started working in wood and other art forms about eight years ago- honing his skills, developing unique techniques as he went.

Also on display at Tupper Arts this summer are the unusual sculptures of prominent Adirondack artist Barney Bellinger, who uses all sorts of materials in his pieces. Many of his sculptures are very abstract and incredibly inventive.

“I love Barney’s stuff,” Tyler told the Free Press last week. “He and I are pretty good friends!”

Although Tyler’s touring has been somewhat limited to date, he does have some of his pieces in a Miami show right now.

In the preparation of his wooden pieces he says he uses a lot of Adirondack species- walnut, ash and oak. He said walnut is probably his favorite, given its very pronounced grains.

Tyler attended SUNY Purchase where he studied painting and drawing. One of his abstract paintings- done in very pronounced shades of green and gray- is a part of his show here.

“I wanted to paint with wood because I love wooden materials- the smells, the touch.”

He typically creates curved and circular wooden pieces and then joins and glues them together. A wooden jig saw puzzle emerges as one piece after another is created and fit exactly into place by the artist. He says the progression of what piece is next, how it’s shaped and how it exactly fits the one before comes from his mind. There is no sketch or pattern to follow.

There’s plenty of routing and dremel work and band sand crafting.

“It’s all intuitive...nothing is drawn out beforehand.”

On several pieces he showed where he started with a piece in the center and then worked out from there.

In recent months he’s been using unique pieces of wood, polishing them brightly and then installing LED lights behind them which shine though cracks or intentional channels, or through a glass face.

They are all quite impressive.

He’s been developing what he calls “light concepts” and some of his pieces are illuminated with the switch of hand-held controls, like a TV’s remote control. He also equips some with blue tooth technology.

Some of his pieces can produce thousands of different patterns in light.

When the room is darkened, the wood on his pieces disappears but the lights come alive in unending different patterns.

The lights on some of his pieces are powered by conventional AC cords and plugs.

After this show, the artist is returning to Michigan with his Cosmic Portal, where he’ll be attending an international show called “Archives.” It will be on display in a park in Grand Rapids, Michigan for three weeks in late September and early October.

Would he sell it? “Absolutely,” joking that artists have to eat too.

He said he hopes the piece might bring as much as $25,000.

“We only had a month to build the Cosmic Portal,” in what he called “a very constrained time frame” before the music festival.

“It called for 16 hour days non-stop!”

He had created several smaller prototypes of his piece as first steps.

He used those in a video he created to submit to the festival organizers for their acceptance of his piece. “They loved the idea” and asked me to build it.

Tyler’s mother, Kaye, saw his talent when he was in the early years of high school. “He had a wonderful art teacher in high school who really influenced him. She was a wonderful woman who really encouraged him and it took off for him.”

She said when he started working with Adirondack woods, he “looked at a lot of books, read a lot of things and started, putting his own twist on things.”

Tyler’s father was “a junk collector,” according to Kaye. In his backyard was a huge collection of all sorts of stuff.

From those materials came some of the mountings in his show here. One, for example, was a semi-transparent plastic drum, where Tyler installed lights inside. Another of his mounting devices to show off a particular wooden piece was a large paper roll he coated in a plaster material.

She said she was very proud of her son and all the amazing things he has created. “It all just comes out of his head. It’s truly a gift!”