By M.V. Moorhead
With the weather finally tolerable and the gift-giving season looming large, the Tempe Arts Festival is a jolly way to spend a few hours (and some money). Wandering the dizzying bazaar crammed with artists, craftspeople, curio merchants and food peddlers has become an annual tradition in our family.
Among the exhibitors at this year’s fest, scheduled Dec. 4-6, is Jeff Walker. The Valley-based metal sculptor and furniture maker will be showing off his industrial yet elegantly angular work throughout the weekend.
A native of Greensboro, N.C. who has lived in Arizona since 2000, Walker has been a full-time metal artist for only the past two years. Prior to that, he spent almost 12 years as a technician at Channel 12.
“I started out doing camera and graphics,” he recalls, “but for the last few years I was a director and technical director for live broadcast. I still do some freelance technical directing.”
Somewhere in there Walker decided to try his hand at creating furnishings.
“I’d been doing it all my life as a hobby,” says Walker, who also worked for a time with Tempe-based sculptor Gary Slater.
Walker’s decision to get more serious about it, however, may have been spurred by economic considerations, at least at first.
“The first apartment I lived in, I had a lot of ideas for stuff I wanted, but I couldn’t afford it,” Walker says. “I’m a pretty handy guy, so I just started making it myself. My initial motivation was functionality, along with being unique.”
The result of this ambition is Walker’s business, Big Time Stuff, under which banner he sells outdoor fireplaces, some intricately ornate and detailed, others clean-lined and simple—furniture ranging from traditional tables to end-tables to cabinetry, and small items like containers and oversize stainless-steel dice.
There are also non-functional sculptures, like a geodesic-looking sphere, or a robot bearing the weight of such a sphere on his shoulders, like a sci-fi vision of Atlas—all of it is rendered in metal with a cool, steampunk-ish edge that’s somehow both futuristic and vintage.
Walker’s works often have another distinctive trait:
“I do a lot of things with three legs,” he observes. “Tables with three legs, fire pits with three legs.”
This isn’t a self-conscious eccentricity, however. According to Walker, it’s functional.
“Things with three legs fit in a corner,” he explains. “Plus there’s zero chance it’ll wobble. I don’t know why it isn’t more common.”
Go to bigtimestuff.com for details on Jeff Walker’s work. For general information on this year’s Tempe Festival of the Arts, go to tempefestivalofthearts.com.
