MODERN’s Studio Tour with Vivian Beer
Furniture maker Vivian Beer has established a reputation for taking risks. She manipulates a welder the way traditional furniture makers use a hand plane, and her materials of choice are distinctly industrial: stainless steel, concrete, and automotive paint. Beer creates her arresting works in a subterranean studio in manchester, new Hampshire, and her “studio mates” are restorers of classic cars who trade stories over beers in the lounge. the irony of this milieu reflects the wit of Beer’s work—a heady mix of modern and historical, industrial and custom, rough and elegant, masculine and feminine. Beer plays with these stereotypes the same way that she plays with techniques, and the results are eye-popping.
—By Lori Ferguson, Winter 2013Alison Swiatocha photos