A good friend of mine, Tony Millares III, owns an exceptional architectural woodworking firm called Urthwurks Furniture Inc. Starting in Brooklyn, NY, he moved his shop to Vancouver in 2001 and has designed and built for Jasper Johns, Francesco Clemente, Bette Midler, ALIFE NYC and the list goes on and on. Last year, he worked on the restoration of the Wing Sang building, which is now the home of the Rennie Collection . In the end of 2009, he was busy completing Canadian artist, Rodney Graham’s new line of work called POSSIBLE ABSTRACTIONS, which is a series of sculptures in the shape of a painting made out of wood and corian. Tony was hired as the artist’s technical advisor and built the entire collection which is now showing at the Museu Pablo Picasso in Barcelona. He has written a few words on his blog about the process.
In mid-January, the pieces were shipped to Barcelona along with privately owned Rodney Graham pieces that were lent to the museum for Through the Forest, Rodney’s first solo exhibit. Unexpectedly, Tony was given a well deserved first class ticket to Barcelona to attend the opening and unveiling of POSSIBLE ABSTRACTIONS and as I write this article, he is on his way home.
Over the past year and a half, I have had the opportunity to shoot a lot of his work, and looking through te lens, I have learned that he is an extreme perfectionist when it comes to his own work. I have never seen so much passion and love put into every detail. With each job, he hones his skills as a designer and craftsman and he blows my mind every time I shoot his work. The photos I took are only a fracture of what went on behind the scenes in the last few weeks before the opening in Barcelona.
“Ok, what’s next?”
Welcome home Tony, and congratulations to you and your team at Urthwurks!
Jonathan Cruz fotos 
