Andy McConnell was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. As a student at Fairhaven College, he studied poetry and painting with the poet Robert Sund in a multi-semester independent study, and conducted oral history interviews with Pacific Northwest art luminaries Mary Randlett, Guy Anderson, Bill Cumming, Lisel Salzer, and William Radcliff. His artistic references run deep into the Northwest tradition — Mark Tobey, George Tsutakawa, Alexander Calder, Henry Moore — artists he has identified with since childhood, when he imitated their work in the margins of homework. He went on to earn a master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Science at Bastyr University. Most of his working life has been spent in the construction trades, and that background is the direct source of his art.
His sculptures have evolved from the dust and din of job sites: scribing trim became carving forms; gluing up counter slabs led to making large stable carving blanks; finishing blackened steel developed into staining split or carved cedar. The material is salvaged — old-growth cedar pulled from job-site dumpsters, boards held by friends for years, free piles on the side of the road, and occasionally a cedar burl. In Cancellation Myth, McConnell constructs concentric circles from painted wood and textured dark fibers against a cedar-strip ground that transitions from warm tan and rust tones above to charred black below, the wood's grain visibly scored and weathered to emphasize material decay. The composition flattens depth through symmetrical, target-like rings of mint green, pale blue, and acid yellow that float equidistant from the picture plane, creating optical pressure rather than spatial recession. The dark fibrous rings—possibly burnt cork or charred material—function as visual stops that interrupt the chromatic progression, suggesting less a complete form than something deliberately fragmented or arrested mid-dissolution. In Center Point, McConnell constructs this work from horizontally stacked cedar planks that weather into varied amber and rust tones, their grain patterns disrupted by a recessed circular cavity housing a chartreuse disk with a black textured center. The wooden substrate's linear rhythm creates a stabilizing ground against the geometric intrusion, while the dark base operates as a visual anchor that prevents the composition from floating. The work's tension derives from its collision of craft traditions—the humble wood grain tradition of carpentry meets industrial material selection—which asks whether the fluorescent disk represents an interruption or completion of the cedar's inherent narrative. In Filter Correction, McConnell constructs a precisely calibrated color wheel in acrylic and resin—coral, forest green, cyan, chartreuse, and charcoal black—whose concentric bands pivot around a textured dark hub, while weathered cedar at the base grounds the optical abstraction in material decay. The composition establishes a vertical axis that moves from earthy, splintered wood through increasingly synthetic and chromatic zones, positioning the viewer's eye in a trajectory from decay to digital perfection. The work's critical tension lies in its collision between the computer-screen palette of the disc and the actual, aging wood beneath it—a formal contradiction that suggests digital color correction as a kind of denial rather than enhancement. The work is abstract throughout: non-representational metaphors of the inner human landscape, concerned with identity, accident, balance, and difference.
He lives and works in West Seattle. His work has been shown at VAIN in West Seattle and at JG Art Gallery + Events. The craft is key — a habit formed across years of carpentry — and the calm compositions that result offer, in his own description, a counterbalance to change and unrest.
My art has evolved from the dust, muck and din of construction sites. Scribing trim became carving forms; gluing up counter slabs led to making large, stable carving blanks. I scrounge for my materials. Much of the wood I work with has been salvaged from job-site dumpsters. People give me boards they’ve been holding onto for years. What gold is to aluminum — that’s what a cedar burl is, in my mind.
