Ninety minutes spent in Bonnie Gulden’s workshop/studio/shop Spatial Issues on Bedell Avenue in Highland/ Clintondale will zip past like it was three minutes. Each piece she creates is a playful and one-of-a-kind answer to the most enjoyable game of “What if we combine this and …” that one may imagine. Spatial Issues is one of Yokel’s favorite local showrooms.
Artworks made of musical keyboard gears, a decorative coffee table planter composed of medical tools, floor lamps made of metal pipes with chemistry experiment beakers and unique filaments to illuminate the room all greet the visitor to Spatial Issues. The far wall is mostly lined with variations of her popular “The Original Gulden Lightbox,” which is often the first thing fans of her creations describe when they describe what she creates.
What is “The Original Gulden Lightbox?” Each one is unique and hand-crafted, but the idea is ingenious: a wooden or metal box that can be plugged into a standard electrical outlet with an oversized lightbulb—often a overturned chemistry beaker as the globe with a reclaimed materials hand-wound as the filament inside—on top. On the front some USB ports are installed for your USB purposes, along with some switches and dials that may not be functional but are always somehow aesthetically perfect, like just enough icing on a cake. Each box thus presents a “Doctor Who” or steampunk vibe in its willful combination of old wood and metal and contemporary need. Each one is a work of art that is also a desk lamp and fantasy of an alternate history come to light.
And everything—each nail, screw, length of pipe, piece of glass, and piece of wood—each part that Bonnie employs in her vision is reclaimed and repurposed industrial or household equipment that had been discarded and was to be forgotten. A carpenter for more than thirty years, Bonnie always hated to toss stuff in the dumpster, so she started to find ways to bring those objects back to useful life. Her imagination finds unique versions of that phrase “bring back to life,” for each creation.
It is not often that one finds art that combines utility with aesthetic interest and beauty, but much of Bonnie Gulden’s work that you will see and can purchase in Spatial Issues finds a perfect and playful 50/50 split between form/function and fun.
Each one of her works sparks a conversation about what each element in the piece had served as in its past industrial existence, and many of the parts in her pieces still bear an embossed “Made In” stamp of whichever city it had been made in—which can lead into another conversation about forgotten industries and cities, some local Hudson Valley ones, that are now finding new purpose and new industries, much like Bonnie’s creations. A home or office with one or more of Bonnie Gulden’s works from Spatial Issues has an object full of history that has been granted a new history.
Bonnie has worked as a carpenter and housebuilder for three decades. In keeping with her unique way of combining current life with old-time solutions, she likes to describe herself as someone who “has been a carpenter since the late 1900s.” It has an old-timey ring to it. Her high-quality, handcrafted workmanship is seen in each piece she creates. She found that she could see discarded equipment, tools, materials in new ways, as new solutions to new needs, as art, and she started to create that art. The art started to attract fans and buyers, and she opened her first showroom and sales floor in her barn in 2014. Her mother became ill, and Bonnie became her caregiver so Spatial Issues became a way to stay close to home and devote herself to her creative vision.
Bonnie opened her Spatial Issues shop in its current location in 2016, and it continues to do well, and did well during the pandemic. As new residents moved into Ulster County, many wanted something unique, creative, and functional in their new homes. That’s Spatial Issues.
In his 1964 book, “The Act of Creation,” Arthur Koestler attempts to develop a theory of creativity and human genius. He starts out with wit, humor, playfulness. At one point, he writes, “To undo wrong connections, faulty integrations, is half the game. […] The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.” When a lamp is made of plumping supplies, or a circuit breaker panelboard is a piece of wall art, or farm equipment is lawn art, you have examples of forgetting to discover. Koestler would have enjoyed himself in Spatial Issues.
Spatial Issues is at 165 Bedell Avenue, Highland/ Clintondale, NY, 12528, and Bonnie’s open showroom hours are Friday-Monday, 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. Now, as any Ulster County local may know, this address is in Clintondale, but “the GPS says it’s in Highland,” as Bonnie says. She is very proud to be a vivid part of the life of Clintondale, and Clintondale is proud of Spatial Issues. Yokel loves this unique piece of Ulster County Americana in our midst.
Talk with you soon, Mark
Mark’s website: http://thegadabouttown.com/