Invention and Motion: The Wood Sculptures of Craig Kassan
Just outside of Franklinton, artist Craig Kassan works inside what was once an old horse barn. Over the past 25 years, he’s steadily turned it into a cathedral to motion, memory, and meticulous craftsmanship. Sitting along the walls, on the shelves, and placed wherever there is space you’ll find a lifetime’s worth of collected wood. From exotic seed pods, to long-cured mahogany boards, beautiful slabs of purpleheart and decades old massive burles, Craig has slowly built up an inventory he can draw upon at any time. And, with careful hands and precision, he turns these blocks of wood into massive sculptures on a lathe he invented himself.
Craig didn’t set out to be a sculptor. Or even a woodworker. But looking back, the signs were always there. As a boy, he was the kind of kid who dismantled alarm clocks to understand how the gears turned. His grandfather, a patient man with a pocketknife and a vision, helped him build a toy sailboat by hand—hollowed out with a brace and bit, fitted with a small deck, rigged with sails sewn by Craig’s grandmother, a seamstress and interior decorator. Craig was nine.
“I’ve always loved taking things apart to figure out how they worked,” he says. “Now I’m doing that same thing, just with wood, metal, and gravity.”
He sketched constantly. Dabbled in acrylics, oils, pen and ink, ceramics. He considered the idea of furniture-making as a profession but didn't yet know about woodworking schools. He assumed it meant framing houses, not sculpting heirlooms. So he followed another path until wood pulled him back.
In the early ’90s, living in Florida, Craig taught himself to turn wood. There were few formal classes then, but plenty of trade magazines and just enough stubbornness. “I bought a lathe and figured it out,” he says. “A lot of mistakes. But that’s how I learned.”
By the time he and his wife moved to North Carolina in the late ’90s, woodworking had become a constant in his life. He joined a local woodturner’s guild and started pushing boundaries. He was turning vessels with voids and root arms, shaping manzanita and myrtlewood into sculptural forms that seemed to defy structure. But he wanted more.
Then came a work trip to Salt Lake City in 2008. Flying over the patchwork of farmland and irrigation circles, Craig glimpsed something from 30,000 feet that changed everything. “I looked out the window and my head just went nuts,” he recalls. “I saw patterns, crop circles, all on the ground and then I started sketching my ideas out on the plane.”
He went home, built a four-foot face plate, and mounted a block of wood onto his lathe. “When I turned it on, I stepped back and thought, ‘You’ve got to be the biggest idiot in the world,’” he laughs. “Just because of the mass and the speed—it looked crazy.” But he kept at it, perfecting the setup. In 2015, he expanded the lathe again, this time at 7 feet in diameter with a custom-fabricated rotating system capable of supporting sculptures nearly 300 pounds.
Each piece starts not on a screen, but with tape, wood, and instinct. “I start with painter’s tape and Styrofoam, maybe some cardboard mock ups. I lay out clear acrylic circles, stack them, move them around, photograph them, and keep trying new patterns until one feels right.”
He builds jigs, cuts puzzle-like pieces, and weighs counterbalances based on nothing but years of experience. The sculptures—some up to five feet wide and eight feet tall—can’t be turned all at once, so they’re broken into segments, turned individually, and later reassembled with invisible precision. Scrap wood is transformed into “story sticks” that help him align the pieces exactly as they were cut. Each movement is measured. Each rotation is calculated.
Before turning begins, every sculpture is a study in geometry and risk. “With traditional woodturning, you can toss a chunk of wood on the lathe and improvise. With these wall sculptures, it’s all planned, like furniture.” But, furniture spun at high velocity.
He balances every piece by hand, adjusting counterweights with the care of a jeweler. If he removes too much wood from one side, he rebalances again, sometimes many times. “I’ve had to stop, rebalance, and keep going. You feel it when something’s off. It’s like a propeller that’s about to take flight.”
Then comes the finishing work. Copper, bronze, and aluminum backgrounds are not paint, but cold-metal sprayed resin—actual powdered metal mixed with catalyst and resin, sprayed onto wallpaper or textured surfaces, cured, patinaed with acids, and buffed by hand. “It’s part alchemy, part patience,” he says. “Sometimes you have to spray it, walk away, and let it do its thing.”
The result is a kind of sculptural architecture. Large-scale works merge the warmth of wood with the shimmer of metal, geometry with intuition. “It’s the best of both worlds,” says Craig. “I get to plan like a furniture maker and sculpt like a turner.”
Though he’s still working full-time building trade show exhibits and designing everything from 10x10 booths to two-story towers for Fortune 500 clients, Craig is counting down the days to retirement. “When I have more time, I’ll be able to go back to making tables, furniture, and more sculptures. I’ve got so many ideas.”
In his home, nothing is square. Custom cabinets, curving bookcases, waterfall wood grain, angles drawn from dreams. One table was inspired by a shadow he saw during a James Bond film. He stopped watching halfway through to sketch his ideas on a business card. “When it comes to furniture for us,” he says, “that’s when I really get to play.”
His work is in homes from Chapel Hill to Albany, with each piece telling a story of motion and invention. One recent commission required months of planning and even scaffolding to install. Another sculpture, clocked at over 60 hours of studio time, took more than five months to finish due to the six-week curing time of the finish alone. “One coat a week,” he shrugs. “That’s just how it goes.”
Still, Craig isn’t interested in rushing. Or in mass production. “I make what I feel like making,” he says. “If someone wants to buy it, great. If not, I’ll take it to a show and see what happens.” He’s even offered payment plans to help collectors afford the larger pieces. “No interest. No pressure. I just want the work to go somewhere it’s loved.”
And maybe that’s the secret to Craig’s work: it’s patient, serious craftsmanship fueled by a childlike sense of wonder. A love of puzzles, of motion, and of building something no one else dares attempt. “I don’t do normal,” he says with a grin. “But I do love figuring it out.”
You can find more of Craig Kassan's work on his website at craigkassan.com and reach him at craigkassan@gmail.com
