Parks Anderson

Parks Anderson creates sculptures and installations in a variety of media. He received his Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of Washington in 1973. Anderson worked closely with artist Dale Chihuly from the 1980s until the early 2020s, when he returned to his own studio practice on Fox Island in the Puget Sound.

Parks says of his career: “Covid and time ended my 33-year working for Dale Chihuly, wherein all my creative focus was on his work and the arc of his success. I had allowed myself to become fallow as an artist without my own challenges.

Now, with time, I have built a studio and started working for myself again.

Over the past two years, I was drawn to several assortments of distinctive wood that had been discards given to me. These were remnants left from harvesting trees, from the rough cutting of lumber, from building construction, and from the making of fine furniture. These discards were saved by others because of their shape and their textures. They expressed the character of the wood determined by weather, cut, fire and decay and were a kind of diary of time.

Within these gifted savings of others, I began finding myself, as measured by this work.”