INTRODUCING
Erick Van Vleet
In 1967 I graduated from Long Beach State. Set out to become a parole officer. After watching 50 guys use the restroom to detect heroin use I became less enamored of this as a vocation. So I got a job as a custodian at the Santa Ana Courthouse.
Erick Van Vleet, Owner/Artist
Being fast and strong, I’d finish early and hide out in a janitor closet. At around midnight, with my clipboard and a Flair pen in hand, I’d light up my pipe and start drawing. When you are more or less trapped inside an enormous eleven-story building it’s not unlike being in prison. Late at night, inside the small closet room-cement floors, gray walls, deathly silent–all you can do is focus inward.
You just have the pen, the paper, an uncomfortable metal folding chair, and your imagination. Each night a battle to finish four or five football field lengths of terrazzo floor to get that one hour to allow you to do another drawing. You hope your sacrifice of time, your youth, the low pay: all will eventually be worth the struggle.
So for twenty years I persisted – never showing anything to anyone but my wife. During the day I worked on paintings, sculpture and furniture. Finally the stress took its toll. I feared a nervous collapse and stopped drawing.
I packed up all the years of drawings, all in plastic folders, put them away in drawers and boxes, and, at the age of 51, started just making furniture. To amuse myself I also drew cartoons and gave copies away for fun.
So making serious furniture was an easy transition from my abstract drawing: the ideas for these pieces just came out of the end of a pencil. The fun is the challenge of drawing something and then finding a way to make it. Yes, I love the wood, but unlike the famous Yakashima, I make the wood do what I want it to do. Thus the laminates, the breadboard ends. No, I do not hand-cut dovetails. I’m an old guy nearing 82, and I’m still in a hurry.
These pieces are a lot like a sculpture: the shapes, the special joinery. No guide books here. I invent a lot of it as needed. I just fell into the idea of one-of-a-kind. It’s all I ever do. So, yes, I sometimes work myself out on a limb and hope I can work my way off of it. You have to take risks to get something new-not seen before. When it turns out well it’s a great feeling.