Fraser Smith:
Essentially, I carve things that are 'keepsakes'; objects that we tend not to throw away; things that people, in general, will relate to on a personal level, that connect us to events or people from our past; something that we save, even after it's too worn-out to use. Our lives are full of interesting things that we don't necessarily pay much attention to. By making the effort to recreate these items from an unlikely medium and presenting them in an unusual location, it causes the viewer to pause and consider the object.

Understand, I do not carve exact replicas of cloth, but rather something that looks like what our 'minds eye' perceives as cloth. Consider walking into a room and seeing all the usual things that you would expect to see - table and chairs, a painting or two and ... well, what's this? Someone has hung an old tuxedo on a hook in the middle of the wall. You have to ask yourself, 'Why is this thing here?' At first, you see an incongruous object and you'll make some sort of mental judgment on that. Then you discover that it's a block of wood, and you have to immediately change that judgment. So in a way, on another level, it's like magic.

Fraser Smith will be exhibiting a trompe l'oeil box for SOFA Chicago 2007.

Relic -at SOFA Chicago 2007	Relic - Carved & Stained Basswood