Tuomas Markunpoika is a Finnish plastic artist born in Jyvaskyla. In his series titled Amalgamated, he uses hundreds of colored pencils to create stunning wood vases.
Amalgamated’ is a collection which explores the relationship of a mass produced ‘tool’ and its individual purpose. The beauty of the pencil as an object seems to go unnoticed if utilised only for their primary purpose. ‘Amalgamated’ is a visual and tactile investigation by using pencils as a raw material. This holistic principle has been the fundament for creating this set of vases; let the pencils become a thing themselves. The vases are created by individually gluing one facet of a pencil to another, taking benefit of their hexagonal shape forming a network of pencils. The block of pencils is machined with a lathe and turned into the final shape. The flow of each shape unveils a different pattern of the inner structure revealing the beauty of the pencil.
Tuomas Markunpoika