To the Woods

At Marta, a chair and a ladder both look as if they have been plucked from the earth. Redwood Jacket Chair, 2024, auburn-colored with an impenetrable density, has a flat, sturdy seat that protrudes and resembles a bough. Carob Wishbone Ladder, 2024, curls upward––four light branches spotted with age sprout outward, as darkened carob limbs serve as horizontal rungs. Through these dendroid structures and textures, the objects reveal the arborescent forms that they have been drawn from. This is precisely the intention of the furniture practice Base 10, whose new exhibition “Treehugger” is on view through December 14 in Los Angeles. 

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“The craftsmanship is its own means of investigation, of having a conversation with the material… letting it show us what it has to say,” says Joshua Friedman, who trained in Japanese timber framing. With his partner Lindsey Muscato, previously a painter, the two coax the material potential of wood from their native California trees, creating naturalistic furniture through an organic and collaborative process.

The artist duo first met at art school when the former came into the woodshop where Friedman was working. He cut a piece of plywood in half for her, and years later, their sculptural practice continues to revolve around the material that brought them together. Now they garner this natural substance from the world they share together––redwood, pine, and others, sourced over multiple years across an area spanning from their Mount Washington studio to their sons’ elementary school. “It's always an exploration, for us, to take a very familiar material and somehow elevate it,” Muscato explains, “to show the qualities of the wood as somehow still surprising, potentially even unfamiliar in its organic nature.”

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A massive, winding piece of wood with years streaked across its body in variations of brown twists and folds while forming a sedentary plateau––Eucalyptus Entwine Bench, 2024. A wave of bubbling white wood crests to its right into a mythical sitting area supported by what appears to be an enormous ginger root––Ficus Convergence Bench, 2024. Behind it, in Elm Treehugger Cabinet, 2024, what appears as the section of a tree trunk is suspended on a wall as if by magic; its interior holds a series of hidden shelves. Together these diverse pieces are gathered like the trees of a forest, grounding the gallery space with a woodland energy. 

There is something unequivocally ethereal at the essence of Base 10’s furniture. Muscato concepts and sketches the pieces that are then hand-formed by Friedman, whose process is interlaced with Sōtō Zen practice from his years training in Japanese carpentry with Zen Buddhist priest Paul Discoe. “This is really where I started to understand wood as a living material and, in that way, also as sacred,” he recounts. Muscato invokes her own sense of spirituality, honing in on the obscure relationship between the human form and functionality. “The human body becomes a key constraint of concept,” she explains. “How can we take this timber, this tree, and relate it to the scale of the body, the scale of a home?”

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Base 10’s holistic practice finds beauty in the familiar. The duo’s sculptural furniture derives from common material and recognizable forms, and yet it invokes a natural sacredness. The result is breathtaking, both in its uniqueness and in its embodiment of the beautiful mundane––the grandeur of a simple tree.

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‍“Treehugger” is on view from November 2 through December 14 at Marta at 3021 Rowena Ave, Los Angeles, 90039, CA.

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