New Bigfork artist leaves corporate films for furniture

One of Bigfork’s newest artists has dabbled with paint and wood off and on for the last 30 years and dedicated his life to it since last September.

His salvaged wood furniture holds natural lines with one-of-a-kind handmade teal green tiles that are often inlaid into the wood. His landscape paintings are like photos, detailed, tight and reminiscent of an illustration.

The Frame of Reference gallery started showing Ed Gillenwater’s work last October, and will host Gillenwater’s first big show this August.

“I’m tickled with it,” Gillenwater said. “It’s exciting, but also stressful because a lot of the stuff that was going into the show is gone.”

Gone meaning sold. In the last year, Gillenwater has sold what feels like “a lot” to him. And it’s about even, half furniture and half paintings.

Gillenwater and his wife Sue have owned a home near Bigfork for the last five or six years, spending half their time in Cedar Hill, Texas and half their time on the Swan River outside of Ferndale. They finally sold their home and were able to move to Bigfork full-time last year.

“When you start spending half the year here and then drive back to Texas, you don’t really look forward to it, not so much the drive, but the place,” Gillenwater said. “We really like it up here.”

He worked for the General Telephone and Electronics Corporation for 30 years mostly making corporate film packages.

He helped package the merger between GTE and Bell Atlantic that became Verizon Communications in 2000. He retired from Verizon in 2001 and went into business for himself making corporate and marketing film packages for companies like The Ritz Carlton and organizations like the Boy Scouts of America.

But, Gillenwater said the more time he spent in Bigfork, the less time he spent working with clients, the more he thought about working on his art full-time.

He averaged about one painting every two years and managed to find time to get his artwork into a couple of small shows over the years, but never really put a ton of time and energy into it.

“I loved it and I loved to look at it, but I never really had the time to focus on it,” Gillenwater said.

Gillenwater took some drawing classes to help fulfill credits toward his advertising and marketing degree, and has painted as a hobby since then. He got into furniture making about 15 years ago with a friend of Texas.

They worked with a lot of salvaged wood from the forests around the north Texas area. The woodlands are populated with mesquite, pecan and sycamore trees.

His inspiration comes from the work of George Nakashima, who was one of the founders of the American Craft movement in the 1930s and 1940s.

“It’s very organic, he sort of just lets the wood do it’s thing,” Gillenwater said. “A lot of the stuff he built years ago still has a very contemporary feel to it. I just like it.”

And for his paintings he draws inspiration from the likes of Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth.

It’s that tight, realistic style that’s evident in all of Gillenwater’s work. He uses it to paint what he sees around him, the landscapes of river bottoms, barns and rocks.

“Most of the things that I like use light really well,” Gillenwater said. “So when I paint that’s what I like to do.”

But, now that Gillenwater has a little more time on his hands to focus and learn about other styles of art, that’s exactly what he’s trying to do.

“I’m trying to learn how to be looser and more impressionistic,” Gillenwater said. “Because I see stuff (art) and I like it, I think, ‘I wish I could paint like that.’”

To learn more about Ed Gillenwater’s artwork visit his website at edgillenwatersart.com.