- [Announcer] Funding for Wendell Castle, a Portrait is provided by Nocon & Associates, a private wealth advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Services, Incorporated committed to programming that advances the arts.

The Sands Family Foundation, supporting efforts to strengthen education, healthcare, and the arts in New York's Finger Lakes region.

Additional support by the WaldronRise Foundation, the Lilliputian Foundation, and by Louise Epstein, Tom and Ebets Judson, Marty Messinger, Mimi and Sam Tilton.

And by the following.

And by viewers like you.

Thank you.

- [Bud] What is your name please?

- My name is Wendell Castle.

- My name is Wendell Castle.

- My name is Wendell Castle.

- [Bud] Only one of these men is the real Wendell Castle.

The other two are imposters and will try to fool this panel.

Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean, and Joan Fontaine on "To Tell the Truth".

- There had been a big feature in "Life" magazine.

Nobody ever actually told me this.

But it was very shortly after that that I was contacted by the people from "To Tell the Truth".

- [Bud] I, Wendell Castle, am a furniture designer.

I also build the furniture I design.

- It was really interesting.

Nancy and I both went down.

And they wanted to have some pieces of furniture on the set.

And they'd already chosen the two people who were gonna pretend to be me.

And we spent the day together with a coach, who would then try to let me convey a lot of information about what I'm doing to those two people who are gonna pretend to be me.

But then in the end, in a sense, the information that I gave everybody really never came into play.

I mean, they'd ask a stupid question like.

- What makes a knot hole?

Do you know?

- A limb.

- Well, I expect that I had my act together fairly well.

But I also think that setting those three things up there was in some sense confusing.

Because I don't think that any of those people had seen furniture that looked that before.

- The reason that he was on the show was because his furniture was very unique.

And his techniques were quite inventive for that time too, in the early '60s.

- Will the real Wendell Castle please stand up?

(audience applauding) - I believe that I wasn't conscious of trying to be famous.

I don't think that thought occurred to me.

I wanted to be successful.

- When thinking about Wendell Castle, he is not only one of the country's treasures.

He's one of the greatest artists alive.

He was gifted with two ingredients that we all should have, curiosity and creativity.

- It's not the typical designer who says, well I'm gonna design a chair, I'm gonna design a table.

These are sculptural pieces that also have function.

(contemplative music) - He stands alone really in his field.

I don't think of anybody else who makes furniture that the fact that you can sit in it doesn't even seem to matter.

It's just beautiful the way it is.

You don't buy it because you need it.

(contemplative music continues) - He's defined an entire world of creativity, art furniture.

A category of art.

Who's done that?

(contemplative music ends) - Every piece starts with a drawing.

And I think the very act of pushing this pencil around, that I am learning something of the feel of this piece.

My most important tool, is right here.

I got a whole workshop full of things but everything starts right here, with a pencil.

- The pencil is the preeminent tool for Wendell.

It is the mind-body pencil connection that enables him to deliver his thoughts in a tangible way.

I think that drawing, for Wendell, is really the birthplace of ideas.

And it's a visual extension of our thought process.

- My drawings are for my youth.

They are for me to put down ideas on paper, because I could never remember them all.

And I think that visualizing things that you see developed, and change, and add on to, and maybe throw out, is where the first part of the creative process takes place.

And what I'm working on here is the second generation of an idea, where I got the idea from tree limbs.

And it's this really interesting shape.

I never know whether to call it a log or a limb.

Neither one of those terms sounds very romantic.

I thought, keep it simple.

You could actually make a chair with just one of these limbs, if it kind of curved around.

And you could set the chair in a way that it would balance.

This really starts the idea.

I grew up in little town north of the Topeka, Holton, Kansas.

I'm dyslexic, and I did not succeed in school.

But in spite of that, I was never depressed as a child.

And I flunked the second grade, and had to repeat it.

- A lot of the quietness that is Wendell Castle comes out of that interior space that was developed as a young man, due to dyslexia.

- I think dyslexia is an important part of his personality.

And I don't think, I don't know if he would have become the same kind of artist, and creative that he is if he hadn't been dyslexic, because that was an extra challenge for him to try to assimilate.

- My parents had been to college.

It was just sort of assumed I was gonna go to college.

My second year, the first semester, I got a chance to take an elective, and I took art.

I hadn't planned on being an artist.

I hadn't done any kind of artwork since I was a child.

I was very good, better than good.

First time in my life I was ever the best student in the class.

- Wendell's career in furniture really starts where he had someone tell him he couldn't do something.

He wasn't allowed to make a piece of furniture.

He was in a sculpture class and a teacher said what are you doing, you're not allowed to make furniture in here, or something like that.

And that's what inspired Wendell to go ahead and challenge that notion of furniture versus fine art.

And goes ahead and creates a chair that looked so much like a sculpture that you wouldn't really be able to tell, in a way to try to kind of pull one over on them in a way.

And of course, that piece won great accolades, was printed in the press as a unique sculpture.

- That was the first time that I had made a piece that I thought really was both sculpture and furniture.

Now admittedly, it wasn't a very comfortable chair, pretty much the equivalent of sitting on a fence.

But you could sit.

And that to me, really suggested the way I wanted to go.

- Lo and behold, it was a piece of furniture.

And Wendell just, right there he knew he had something unique that others weren't doing.

And he could achieve something great in this field.

- Once I realized there was a field, and there weren't very many people in this field.

And when I saw what the people who were in the field did, I thought there's certainly another way to go.

They're all making furniture that's really based upon traditional furniture, and made the way traditional furniture is made.

And I knew that the way I knew how to make things was entirely different.

And so I saw this opportunity.

And seeing the field, I thought there's not a reason in the world that if I could work hard, that I couldn't be right up at the top of this field in no time.

And, I was.

This one has a feature in the seat, which it's got this notch, so you can sit in it sideways.

- [Woman] I like that.

- 90% of the time I'm thinking chairs.

Now, the reason for chairs is that chairs are the most intimate thing, in furniture wise.

I mean, you sit on it.

People are of a general size, so seats are within a few inches of more or less the same place.

And for me, it has become an exercise in where do you put the legs?

If you move the legs out from underneath the seat, the legs can become sculpture.

And that is my exercise.

And I think in some very simple way that describes what I do.

And now the original idea, this was not gonna have this piece.

But I like having this up in the air.

So, the chair now will be cut in to fit there, which takes it somewhat closer to the original thinking.

It's a. I'm beginning to think that this is the problem.

How can I make this more like this, so they seem to be all one?

Even when I added this, I still felt like it was kind of all one.

But as soon as I add this, it isn't.

Now there's no reason in the world that isn't a chair.

This is about the only place you can sit.

And it can be smaller, then.

It wouldn't be quite up to this, 'cause this was a much thicker spot.

So in this size, it'll probably be about five feet from here to here.

I didn't know anything about the furniture field when I was, in a sense, thrown into it by accepting a job, teaching it, when what I really knew was sculpture.

- Matter of fact, when he went to RIT he learned how to make a dovetail from one of the students.

He came in, in the woodworking shop, and I was in the ceramic studio studying pottery.

And there was this skinny guy from Kansas with cowboy boots on, and with a beard.

- But having this opportunity to come to Rochester and teach really meant that I would be around people who knew a lot about making things.

I'd be around other artists that are faculty.

And I would have use of this machinery.

- [Nancy] Wendell began his teaching at RIT in 1962.

And he taught there for a number of years.

And then he went to the state University of New York at Brockport, 'cause he could teach sculpture there.

And he liked that better.

They didn't have a woodworking program.

And then he started his own woodworking school.

- I'm a fan of organic sculptors, people like Moore, and Arp.

And most of all, Brancusi.

The type of vocabulary that Brancusi worked with appealed to me.

And so I began making furniture by laminating.

And laminating was a known process, that I did not invent lamination.

People have been gluing two pieces of wood, or three pieces of wood, or 50 pieces of wood together for 100 years.

I decided that would be the way I would work.

And my vocabulary started there.

I remember reading this article, and the article was "How to Build your own Duck Decoy".

And the method method that they suggested was stack lamination.

- He saw this article and realized that this was something he could maybe apply to his furniture.

- I'm not the first one to carve a lamination at all.

But as far as I know, I'm the first one to plan the cross sections before the block is glued up.

So the block already has the shape of the piece in it before you begin to carve.

So that's my contribution.

So many pieces glued together.

You can see that that's a glue line.

That's a glue line, that's a glue line.

- The other interesting part of that is that most of his contemporaries at the time, people like Sam Maloof, and George Nakashima who were making traditional furniture lambasted this work, and thought it was gonna be falling apart.

It was never gonna hold up.

It wasn't making joinery.

It wasn't doing furniture.

- They hated the idea of taking beautiful wood, taking cherry, and oak, and stack laminating and chain sawing it.

There are people who were aghast.

- I think Wendell simply didn't care about those divides.

He desired to go into uncharted territory, and to push others into that uncomfortable space as much as himself.

(contemplative music) - The loop and log, as it's known in the shop, is this log is already finished.

We just finished that glue up.

And this loop, we call it, is in three sections.

There's a joint, a joint, and another joint.

Two of these sections are already underway.

We did the core, those three laminations that go together.

And I'll start the third one.

- From stack lamination, Wendell went into this new series of pieces, these Trompe-L'oeil pieces, where he now is going into the extreme of carving wood, following the trends again of the art world.

So there's a lot of photo realist painters at this period.

He started doing it in wood, and really pushing to the extremes again with his level of craftsmanship.

- You have this chair, a frame of a chair, wood, falling into a pillow that looks like a pillow.

Trompe-L'oeil.

It's wood.

It does indeed fool the eye.

I've seen people touch it and say I thought it was a pillow.

- The first time I had an exhibition of these Trompe-L'oeil pieces in New York city, they sold nothing.

And then about a year later, I met another gallery guy named Alexander Milliken, who had a gallery, also in Soho.

Well he was interested, and he mounted almost the same show a year later and sold everything.

And at that point, I was ready to move on to a series of pretty elaborate grandfather clocks.

- Wendell.

It was Wendell's idea to do a series of tall case clocks.

And I suggested that the clocks travel without the works.

These to him that were based on the figure.

The size was human scale, if not slightly larger than, as we both believe art should be.

A clock has a face.

It has hands.

It often has legs, movement, a heart in a sense, not feeling but works.

And to present a series of different sculptured forms that were not only unique in their form, but had a kind of content about time.

They were sculptured.

They were sculptured, they were a presence of sorts.

What Wendell Castle's clocks will be 200 years from now, I have no idea.

I expect they'll be quite incredible, and famous, sought after, and in museums.

But now they are what has never been.

The ghost clock is a subject of great fascination for me because it was the one piece that when it first came in, I didn't even really understand as to what it was.

It clearly was not just a Trompe-L'oeil carving.

And yet it clearly wasn't a clock.

It ended up being to me what I imagined to be the connecting link piece, historically, between what is traditionally known as decorative arts and fine arts.

It was the one piece in the exhibition that everybody knew, knew it was a clock.

It was clearly a grandfather clock.

And yet, and God bless Wendell and his humor.

It was the only piece in the exhibition that was pure sculpture.

It didn't work.

It doesn't do anything.

It's just a total commentary on what we see is what we get.

And what people saw of that clock, sculpture, was a clock covered in a sheet.

And people came in and said, you better get it uncovered before Wendell sees it.

I would tell people it was a carving, and done from one block of wood, and bleached mahogany.

And they would say, how wonderful.

When can I see it?

- A lady came in and asked to see the person in charge, with a complaint.

And she said, she'd been to this exhibit three times, and they hadn't unveiled the clock yet.

The reasons Trompe-L'oeil works is because you think what you're looking at, so you don't have to study it very carefully to know.

(upbeat music) - The plastics work that Wendell did, I find to be some of the most interesting.

It actually started in about 1967.

Wendell has been working in this stack laminated work for a number of years, has this idea that he'd like to get out and away from everything being brown.

- In the '60s, I was aware of the avant-garde things going on in Italy.

And seeing the colors that the Italians were using.

And also, oh, that was a period of pop art.

And the kind of color I liked, automobile kind of colors, and automobile kind of surfaces.

- I think that the molar chair was a very hands-on endeavor for Wendell.

While it was very different from something which he would have added texture to, and carefully and lovingly delivered as an end product from his own hand, there's something else going on with this work.

And I think it's a romance with the material that comes very, very close to his romance with automotive technology, with cars, both in terms of the way that they're sculpted, and finished, surfacing, all that.

- Like some of the car bodies, the Corvettes and things that were being made, or the kit cars.

So he starts to make molds from these unique wood sculptures and started an idea of limited additions, in plastic.

- When I was a child, the predominant thing that I drew were cars.

(upbeat music continues) And all of the '60s work, and into the '70s has increased in value.

The plastic chair that you bought for $150 is now worth about $5,000.

But if it was a wooden chair, and which probably it would have sold for like $3000.

It's now worth probably about 100,000.

- Long time ago he has reconciled himself to the notion that this is a collaborative process.

I think if you were to ask him, he would speak very highly of those people he has working for him, in part because they bring an element of the work here that he couldn't impart, perhaps by himself.

He'd evolved quite a ways.

I think it was a lot more willing to consider other people's input into the work.

He would ask us to come down and look at the work, and make any observations that we thought were of concern.

So clearly his work has improved as a result of that.

But at the end of the day, he is the driver.

He's the one who drives the whole process.

- He's never afraid to try something he's never done before.

And I think now, Wendell in his in his '80s is still pushing those boundaries.

- I do not want to design in the computer.

I design on paper, and then make models.

If you design in a computer, the computer has a mind of its own about certain things.

Like if you're making a curve, and the one that I make may have a little blip in it.

Well I might, I want to keep that blip.

If you try to do that in a computer, it would want to make a smooth line.

It wouldn't have that blip.

And the only way you can get them the way I want them is to scan the model, and knowing there's imperfections.

I want to keep them, and you can keep them that way.

I'd rather draw on paper, and then take the next step to the model to fully realize it three dimensionally, and make sure it balances and everything.

- We're trying to make it as close to the original model as possible.

So by scanning it, and creating these new surfaces that are smoother, and when we scale it up then it's exactly what he had in his mind.

And we're able to edit things on the computer that he may have wanted, part of a loop, or part of something to be a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller.

We're able to do those edits in the computer rather than build it full scale, and then have to go back in time sometimes and either add material, or delete material.

- I began to think more and more about how digital technology could affect my work.

And the more I looked into it, the more I thought, gee this is what we gotta do.

We made a giant step, then, after that.

We sprung for a large robot.

(wood carving blade spinning very quickly) (contemplative music) - I think that the real benefits are not necessarily the carving of the surface, which, I mean we do it because it's setting here.

But really it's the, I think, the milling of the flats, the joinery that happens, and then knowing that this piece is gonna fit nicely to its corresponding piece.

- We use the robot on almost everything.

But we don't carve 100% with the robot.

Because it, for example, the robot is great on the inside of the seat.

It's hard to get work inside of curves.

It's easy to work on the outside of a curve with the chainsaws, and various kind of power tools.

So we do on the robot what would be too difficult to do by hand, and then do still a high percent by hand.

- The robot is not a feature in this evolution of technique, that it is simply another tool.

I feel as he does.

It facilitates certain aspects of the work.

But it doesn't drive it.

It has expanded his repertoire.

- Well, there are people who think about a robot, and think, well, he's not making these by hand.

This machine's making them.

And that's, that's not right.

It's also a silly idea today to not use the tools that are available.

It's a tool.

And I think of it the same way as any other tool in the shop.

And it doesn't really do anything all by itself.

You have to tell it what to do.

And the way I tell it what to do is through these models which I make by hand.

Now, I don't spend all my time making models.

I still do some hand carving, and laminating, and these other things.

I just believe it doesn't make an inferior product.

And it's still made my hand, the large, I mean it has to all be glued together.

The robot doesn't really finish it.

And we want to put some texture on it, some hand tooling.

The robot won't do that.

So there's still a lot of hand work.

(acoustic piano music) To be asked to design the 500,000th Steinway Piano was certainly not only surprising, but it was an honor.

Because I knew what their expectations were, and what it would do, and where we go.

It was gonna go all over the world.

Obviously, I really was kind of on the spot to make something that was important.

- When a company like Steinway approaches a designer to tackle, visualizing their product, re-skinning it, addressing it in some way, it is a very design centric project.

Because at the heart there are a lot of concerns.

I mean you've got the epic sound and construction.

They call it the guts of the piano.

And everything that you do to address that has got to pay homage to that central core.

I'm sure that Wendell thought of that project in that sort of way.

How can I build the home for these people that are the innards of the piano?

What a special opportunity to deal with sound.

Wendell is a real romantic with his guitar and his ukulele.

And I'm sure that doing a piano had a special value to him, to think about music in his work.

- There was a lot of stringent limitations about what he could do.

As a matter of fact, the gentleman from Steinway came up every week to test the piano, to see that he wasn't affecting the tone of anything.

- In a sense, it came at a time when my thinking was kind of architectural.

I was giving some thought to postmodernism, and how architectural elements, the architectural kinds of shapes and forms that I might use in my work.

And so I decided to kind of make the piano more like an architect, piece of architecture.

But it was a beautifully made piano, and something I actually am very proud to have been asked to do.

(acoustic piano music) Because it's a- - People have asked him about his passion for wood.

And he's always said, I don't really care about wood.

It's not the wood, it's just that's the material that allows me to do what I want to do.

What he cared about was having ideas in his mind, and translating them, and figuring out how to make them, and making them.

And it's sharp all along this part.

- And you whack it with a hammer.

- He's not romantic about carving and about wood.

And that was really something that I think I didn't, I know I didn't realize before.

And I think part of me was like, oh.

It's too bad because there's something really special because you're the special one carving.

You're the one with the ability.

But now I see that that's silly.

That's completely silly.

- Wendell really doesn't like wood that much, as far as the appearance of it I guess.

I think he likes how easy it is to manipulate, and speak to his vocabulary of sculptural needs.

- I did not want to be identified as a woodworker.

And I thought that would pigeonhole me in a place I did not want to be.

In hindsight, it's even much more important that when this Renaissance about how important furniture as art has become.

That was, very definitely, put me into a category I wanted to be in, which was designer, not woodworker.

Actually, not broad like this but getting thinner, and thinner, and thinner, but it really goes all the way.

But it's very thin.

- All right.

- It's just a normal break.

- Yeah.

Just like you sand it over a little bit.

- Okay.

- The most important and best part about it is the idea, and the taking that idea, and producing that in reality.

- You know that I am getting older, and begin to think about I really wanted to make sure I'm doing the right thing, and that I have the right vocabulary, and I'm putting all my efforts in the right direction.

And I thought, how do I decide that?

And I thought the way to decided is to think as if I had no help in the studio, what would I do?

And I knew exactly what I would do.

'Cause over the years I've had assistance.

If I was the only one in the studio, I wouldn't be making any clocks.

I wouldn't be making any furniture with dovetails in it.

I'd be carving, 'cause that's what I can do.

And that's what I'm doing.

I mean, it's a wonderful time, because I feel like I have so much more freedom now than I did ever during my career.

And it really is because I couldn't be making these big things if there was no audience.

And it's only because there's been a market for crazy things.

I like doing crazy things.

- I think he really enjoys the freedom that he has right now to just come up with things.

I really respect Wendell, 'cause he overcame maybe some of his shortcomings, as like he was shy, a bit of an introvert.

But he really spoke with his art.

And when his artwork and his furniture were attached to him, he became almost different person, as far as his personality, and his willingness to speak publicly, and do all the things that somebody that's a little bit shy might not do.

I find that amazing, that a humble guy could overcome that sense, and become an outgoing kind of character.

- The gallery installation people.

- I first met Wendell in 1991.

He was doing forums that no one else was doing.

He was doing an approach to furniture, with the stack lamination, like a sculptor would approach it, not with the traditional joinery of furniture.

So for me, it was really thrilling to see his work.

I didn't know that much about studio furniture when I first came to it, and had a very quick learning curve.

But he had a very unique voice, a very unique vocabulary, form.

It was a very fresh voice.

- Something that I've always admired in you, that you don't seem to repeat yourself.

You seem to have this wealth of ideas that, sort of this bottomless well.

And this particular exhibition was quite beautiful, is that the differences are very subtle between the works.

- Well, thank you.

But I do feel a great freedom.

I really do.

- I think one of the interesting things, and it's hearkening back to a binary system, is taking the middle road and doing something ambiguous.

And I think that's what interests him most.

For a lot of these pieces in the room, actually, if you look at them from behind, you don't know what they are.

And as you approach it and come around it, you see oh, it does have a function, there is a seat.

- If a young designer chanced upon these, they could build a whole career out of making these.

And you just do these for a couple of years, and move on.

That's the biggest privilege you have, is that you have created such a huge universe that there's never enough time to just do it all.

- [Wendell] There will never be enough time.

- [Marc] You make the work that you need to make.

And people buy the work that they like.

But for true great works of art, they don't happen because there's a demand.

They happen because there's a supply of ideas.

- [Wendell] Exactly.

- I had a conversation with a friend and client not too long ago, and they told me that they were walking through their apartment to get a glass of water in the middle of the night.

And there was very, very dimly lit sort of room that they had to pass through.

And there was one of your chairs.

And they had the shock of their lives because they thought that somebody was there.

They thought there was a presence, and they realized it was just your chair.

There's a truth to it.

There's a presence in these.

There's a soul to these works.

(contemplative music) - Oh, it's comfy.

Oh, is that comfy.

I will never make the most beautiful piece of furniture ever made.

And I don't want to, frankly.

You can sit all over it.

I don't really want to make anything, where I'm trying to get the response that it's beautiful.

I'd like to think there's other words that are much more powerful, and much more meaningful to say than beautiful.

Engrossing, challenging, questioning, maybe even a little darkness.

What's going on here?

Am I missing something?

Anything that'll make you think.

Be great in the park.

(contemplative music) - [Jonathan] Remastered is a way to talk about a master.

But in this case, the master is sort of remastering himself.

- It's a look at my early work, when I began to laminate.

- He's inspired by himself as if who he was, was someone else.

And he's using that early work as a jumping off point.

- And how the vocabulary has been able to change.

It seemed like remastered, is a pretty good word for that.

- Thank you for the beauty.

- Thanks for coming.

- I'm overwhelmed.

The old sort of stack laminate pieces, the newer wood pieces, and then these bronze which are to die for.

- I have a really deep connection with the bronze pieces that are here as somebody who made them, and created them and helped create this life of this piece.

And then I see these pieces from 20 years before I was born.

And it's just, they have that same life to them that you don't necessarily expect or just understand being anywhere other than at Wendell's studio.

- There's a cohesive sensibility about the work that I just love.

But on the other hand, I could tell right away.

I knew what pieces were made in the '60s or '70s.

And I knew what the new work was.

So there's a difference of time, but not necessarily of thought.

You're folding back on yourself, but you're moving forward at the same time.

- Globally I'm just very, my heart is warmed by all the reception, all the people that have turned out, and all the support.

And it's wonderful to see it.

- Rochester is one of his adopted hometowns.

And it means that much more, I think, for Wendell and for the people in this community to know that this is one of our luminaries who is recognized by the world outside.

Rochester knows Wendell Castle is a great artist.

They've been looking at his work, and have been admiring it for decades.

But there's something new to celebrate, when that awareness includes an understanding of how the world outside Rochester adores Wendell Castle and his art.

(contemplative music) - I wanted to say just a little bit about randomness and risk.

And in many ways, the University of Rochester, and Memorial Art Gallery really launched my career.

I came to Rochester in 1962.

And the first thing I did, when they had their first Finger Lake show, is enter something.

And first year I got nothing.

No recognition whatsoever.

The second year I entered again, and I never, I didn't get in.

No prize.

The third time I got the top prize.

And the top prize in those days was that the gallery bought this winning piece.

And I was torn between being a sculptor or a furniture maker.

It seemed like I had to do one or the other.

And having won that prize for that piece, I was awarded a one person show.

Which this room didn't exist at that time, so it was upstairs.

And the success of that show clearly led me to the furniture field.

I thought, I can do this.

And that's what I've been doing ever since.

- He challenged the art world by bridging furniture and sculpture.

And the art world, for a long time, shunned that.

- We have to just think of Wendell as he is, a legend.

He's his own voice, such a clear personal narrative.

And despite his argument that he is completely changing, there is a clear thread.

And the thread is in the visual forms that he's striving to achieve.

And in the way in which those forms kind of traverse the new technologies, and the new materials, and the ways, the roadblocks he purposely puts in his way so that he could watch that language kind of wrap those roadblocks and move forward.

That's the magic of Wendell.

- I have made this thing, which is this quite large loopy thing.

And there appears to be no place to sit.

(audience laughing) But in one part of it, it is about seat height.

And you can sit it.

It's pretty much equivalent to sitting on a log, about that comfort level.

But I am calling it a chair.

(audience laughing) I don't think age has anything to do with creativity.

I have had some nice compliments in the last few years that the things that I'm working on now are the most creative of my life.

Whether that's true or not I don't know, but it's nice to hear.

And it's certainly what I'm trying to do.

And I don't see any reason why I can't keep doing that.

I'm not short of ideas at all.

- His nature is so prolific.

He's just made a huge body of work, with a pretty consistent level, and standard of excellence.

And that's not easy to do.

Artists burn out.

There are many artists that were like famous in one decade, and never surfaced again.

When you think about Wendell's career, '50s, '60s, '70s, all the way up to the present day.

That takes a certain amount of dedication, energy, focus, commitment, and a steady stream of developing ideas and concepts.

(acoustic guitar music) - His acceptance of the robot, of the computer, of ever increasing technology, while at the same time, going back to the very beginning and sustaining this concept of the creative act with a pencil and a journal.

And that act of pencil to paper is open to further exploration through a robot, through a computer, through a camera.

But there's that staying power throughout his career, from a young man to a master now.

- I would always remember.

We had a beautiful opening.

A lot of people came to him, saying how wonderful the show was, and wanted to get pictures with him.

And then we went to dinner, sort of small and quick.

There was four of us.

In the middle of the dinner, he wanted to raise a toast and say, I can't believe I'm this 85 years old guy, this little boy from Kansas, having dinner here with you in this fancy Parisian restaurant.

It was incredibly emotional.

I started crying.

To see how grateful he was to share these moments.

And this will remain for me as a incredibly intense memory.

- But what you were just saying reminded me of a story about this little girl in an art class.

And the teacher looked over her shoulder and asked, what are you drawing?

And the little girl said I'm drawing a picture of God.

And the teacher replied, but nobody knows what God looks like.

The little girl said they will in a few minutes.

(calm music) - [Announcer] Funding for Wendell Castle, a Portrait is provided by Nocon & Associates, a private wealth advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Services, Incorporated committed to programming that advances the arts.

The Sands Family Foundation, supporting efforts to strengthen education, healthcare, and the arts in New York's Finger Lakes region.

Additional support by the WaldronRise Foundation, the Lilliputian Foundation, and by Louise Epstein, Tom and Ebets Judson, Marty Messinger, Mimi and Sam Tilton.

And by the following.

And by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(calm music)