I had the privilege this year to be commission to make a rather unique chess set. Although I usually shy away from requests to make utilitarian objects, when I was approached to undertake this particular project, I simply could not resist. History is littered with examples of fine artist making chess sets, Marcel Duchamp, Bauhaus, Calder, Damien Hirst, Yoko Ono and too many more to list have all designed chess sets during their careers. But for me the connection was much more personal.
Growing up, I had two very separate experiences building chess sets which I had all but forgotten until this project surfaced. My first set, I built when I was in middle school. I had stumbled across a large box of hardware and bolts in my basement. A find that I quickly and instinctively assembled into a crude chess set made of wing nuts and other fasteners, it was one of my first experiments with building things out of found and metal parts.
Then, years later, when in high school, I set about commissioning each of my classmates and artist friends to create one unique chess piece each for a community board I had decided to assemble. Each artist was assigned a game piece (a pawn, rook, knight and so on) and it was to be based on his or her particular art or aesthetic. The result turned out to be a bit of a jumbled mess, but it was fun nonetheless. When I look back though, both of these were very formative sculptural experiences for me, so building a chess set now seemed like a very natural concept to revisit.
The entire endeavor ended up being quite a reflective experience. It became an opportunity to look back at the visual vocabulary I had been building over the last ten years, and see if I could employ it to make something that functioned on two very distinct levels. I needed the individual pieces and even the chess board itself to some extent, to function as their intended symbols when placed in the context of a chess set, but I also wanted them to stand alone as individual sculptural works of art when they were removed from the game environment. This balancing act was one of the most difficult challenges I had ever undertaken, but I feel I was able to achieve the desired function for the set with out betraying my aesthetic in the slightest.
Chess is a very unique game that has a timeless nature to it. The same sort of timelessness many artists strive for when creating works of art. It was a wonderful project and I could not be happier with the results.

Carl Grubbs & Friends brings you slowly through the doors of the New Haven Lounge, the sounds of Speak Low, drifting to your ears. There Is no mistaking the voice of Elmer Gibson, whose piano solo lifts you and brings you into the room and into the magic of the evening. Live at The New Haven Lounge is a combination of original tunes written by Carl and Earl Grubbs and tunes written and/or recorded by their mentor, saxophonist, John Coltrane This is an impromptu recording session and a gathering of old friends. Carl Grubbs - Alto and soprano saxophone; Elmer Gibson- Piano; Edward Crocket - Bass; and Rashid Rahman - Drums are old friends from Philadelphia. Their performance history goes back to the late 1960's. This recording features some of their favorite tunes.

"hub" series shows my fascination with formal quality of objects and the contrasts between positive/negative, symmetry/asymmetry and movement/stillness. Within elegance and craftsmanship that I always value in my aesthetics, it is my journey to explore the validity of making "High Craft" in terms of Contemporary Art.