East End Gallery (eastend30a.com) 

by Katherine Johnson 

For this project, I had a true difficulty trying to find an artistic space near me. However, I was able to find a small gallery a bit outside of my hometown. East End Gallery is a local gallery filled with local artists living and working near the Gulf coast. With many of the images depicting ocean like scenes or abstracts of the scenery in Rosemary beach, I found it hard to find something that allowed me to have a thought provoking experience. 

Even in the midst of homogeneous paintings and this similar small town vibe that I got from the entire gallery, I did find a few pieces that I truly enjoyed. These came from artist Laurens Cotten who displayed a conglomerate of wooden sculpture like pieces that are all boxes highlighted with different meanings.

This man, just like any other from a small town, had a hidden gift of art. After working for over 30 years as a middle school teacher he began to chase after his passion of woodworking into a “retirement” business for him and his wife. He describes his work by explaining, “The twisted trees that emerge from the mountain’s magnificent boulders are a reflection of my work. The wood that I use is not straight-grained wood from the lumber yard. It is wood that has been salvaged from landfills, knocked down by storms and discarded without thought.” Each piece represents a story in his mind, with the unique new forms he finds in old wood he has salvaged. Much of this wood has large knots and internal clefts. Some pieces have spalting and insect holes. A few even have iron stains from rusted nails or buckshot. All have unusual grain and color that can only come with the passage of time. However, Cotten writes that, “Even though this wood is very difficult to work with I am drawn to it.” 

In a place where hegemony rules, I truly admired walking into a gallery in which I saw pieces that were different. Each piece felt like it had a different story to tell as well as an idea behind it. I felt as though I could see his creative process by the way that he used the wood’s imperfections

to encapsulate the idea that he wanted to show. Not to mention that his woodworking skills were astounding, Cotten has also mastered the new ways of the work by repurposing old found objects. This is extremely good for our environment, but also part of the new modern art movement. By using readymades or found objects in my own art over the course of this program I have learned how art can be made out of anything, which only made me appreciate his work more.