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FeedFantastical Furnishings
By Holly Dolezalek
Photo by ERIC MOORE
Menges will build more standard looking furniture when clients request it, but he’s clearly dedicated to the unexpected. His clocks—reminiscent of Salvador Dali’s trademark representations—start on a square base, and then droop over to one side as though they’ve melted. His cabinets are perched on an oddly angled stand, and his lamps wield triangular faces and curved, sail-like proportions.
“I was interested in surrealists like Salvador Dali, but I got restless with the two-dimensional limitations of drawing,” says Menges, who studied drawing and painting at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, but quickly found that designing and building furniture was his passion. He’s been creating his unique pieces since 1989 and, at the same time, working as a part-time carpenter for a steady income. “I always create pieces that are different, that play with shape and perspective,” Menges says of his design philosophy. “I let the piece arouse the senses of the viewer.”
Most of Menges’ furniture fuses wood and metal; he makes the faces and hands of his clocks from copper—only the mechanism is purchased elsewhere. His favorite woods are maple, oak, and cherry, though he occasionally adds details in purpleheart, an expensive purple-red wood found in Central and South America. “I try to combine different types of wood so that there is a good contrast with the colors,” he says. His creations come together in his tuck-under garage, a space filled with prototypes, tools, stacks of wood, pieces of metal, and a layer of sawdust.
“When people see my work for the first time, they are always very intrigued,” Menges says. “I get a lot of responses like, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before.’ And some people are just amazed the pieces don’t fall over.”
Photo by Eric Moore
Bored by 90-degree angles and passionate about the surreal and unexpected, Menges knows his work doesn’t appeal to everyone. “I would probably sell more furniture if I made more ordinary stuff,” he admits. But he’s an artist who creates first, then sells—and he seems willing to accept the limitations that style imposes.
“I’m not IKEA or some mass-producing furniture company,” says Menges, whose work will be profiled this spring on That’s Clever! on Home and Garden Television. “[My pieces] take some time, and sometimes people don’t like that. But when I’m done, they get a unique, one-of-a-kind piece of furniture that nobody else has and will last them a long time.”
Holly Dolezalek is a Minneapolis freelance writer.
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