Craig Nutt

(b.1950) born in Belmont, IA, lives in Kingston Springs, TN
Unmanned Interplanetary Probe, 1989
wood, oil paint, 25 x 27 x 15 inches, 2003.23.8

This wooden vegetable inspired whirligig (something that turns or spins) sculpture was exhibited at the Tennessee Arts Commission Gallery as part of the Governor’s 2003 Inaugural Exhibit. Nationally-known as a studio furniture maker, Nutt created his first vegetable-inspired sculpture in 1982 for a show and has continued the theme to this day.  Nutt has accumulated prestigious awards such as the Governor’s Arts Award for the State of Alabama, the Alumnus Arts Award from the University of Alabama, an Artists Fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation, and the Individual Artist Fellowship in Craft from the Tennessee State Arts Commission.

Nutt’s vegetable craftsmanship is in the collections of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA; the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Mobile Museum of Art in AL; the Columbus Museum, Georgia Museum of Art in GA; the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, TX; the New Britain Museum of American Art in CT; and the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville.

I am interested in the familiar and the unexpected, the real and the fantastic, the understated and the obsessive, the ancient and the space aged, nature and artifice, art and craft. — Nutt