Our staff member Donovan Knowles met Warwick Franks at the 2011 Working With Wood Show in Brisbane. He was touched by the incredible story of how Warwick had found woodworking and what he had to overcome to be able to produce his unique range of furniture and sculptures made largely from found or recycled objects. Donovan spent the day with Warwick and his Lifestyle Development Workers Jolly Karumathy and Martin O’Hare, looking for materials and seeing first hand how he creates his distinctive pieces.

Warwick is a man with a naturally inquiring mind. He finds beauty in the everyday things around him and has a unique way of seeing them. He also has an uncanny ability to convert timber, metal and plastic into works of art and furniture using only a rudimentary set of tools. There are many aspects to Warwick that stand out and set him apart from others. He is a skilled and imaginative artist and I found his work to be highly original.

Much of Warwick’s life has been defined more by his physical and intellectual impairments rather than by his creative talents in woodworking and light metal fabrication. Without the opportunities that many of us take for granted, Warwick has spent many of his years living in institutions and limited by his circumstances.

Fortunately, opportunities for people in care have improved over the last decade and their individual needs are more catered for. Warwick is fortunate to have a few hard working support officers to guide and help provide an avenue for his creative work. For many years he worked in sheltered Disability Employment settings, performing simple repetitive tasks that he didn’t find challenging or stimulating. Though not really interested in the work, he was obviously inspired by the shapes and materials he came into contact with. Warwick would collect materials from around the facility and hide them away for a higher purpose.

It was difficult for him to communicate directly that this wasn’t an act of rebellion or inability to follow instructions, but a symptom of his desire to create something original. Fortunately there were people around him that understood and encouraged him in what he was trying to do.

When I visited Warwick’s home I was overwhelmed with the variety of projects that he had constructed, many had been influenced by depression-era furniture, a style from the 1920s that grew out of a necessity to re-cycle and use the limited materials that were on hand.

He doesn’t work to plans or sketches, but keeps all the proportions, sizes and materials in his head and works only from memory. I saw that he had made well-proportioned tables and chairs, as well as toys that are representative of their life size models that looked deceptively simple but displayed a rustic beauty. His signature ‘Lawn Chair’ may appear hard and angular, yet as I reclined into it I found it to be perfect, (imagining my day at an end already) and not feeling the slightest discomfort from the hard, flat boards used in its construction.

Warwick has rejuvenated a discarded home gym into a usable condition that allows him to keep himself limber and toned and a bike has been revived and converted from a two-wheeler into a four. No small engineering feat. Though Warwick is an eager collector of disused goods, his house is by no means a “junkyard”, each item is used and transformed, not having the opportunity to gather much dust or moss before moving on.

There is an extensive support system in place provided by Brisbane North Lifestyle Support Services. This enables Warwick to work at his craft and also helps him to find avenues for developing sales and revenue to purchase more materials. He has recently acquired a recycled computer to store photos of his work and he details his exploits on his blog. This can be found at http:/warwickfranks.blogspot.com. He has also purchased a trailer to transport his creations and pick-up new materials.

The staple timber source he uses is carefully selected timber pallets, these are readily available from a variety of places; he also uses stock timber from a hardware store in the local area.

Most of the material that Warwick uses is re-cycled - he is a real Bower Bird. He resources much of his material from Reverse Garbage, a not-for-profit co-operative that redirects and sells all sorts of amazing materials left over and discarded from manufacturers. You can find many materials to utilise, from craft construction foam, bolts of material, shade cloth and vinyl, buttons, lids, timber, glass and steel. The possibilities are endless.  When I visited there recently with Warwick there was also a selection of 16mm movie projectors (I couldn’t help myself, I picked up a working model for $45).

At their new premises in South Brisbane, Reverse Garbage has a sale and display area called Reverse Emporium, for artists who use their resources. The display featured a wide variety of artwork such as bags crafted from vinyl LPs, stitched paper lamp shades and metal silhouette wall decorations as well as some of Warwick furniture sitting proudly amongst the diverse range of wares.

Another great source of materials are the eagerly curb side clean-ups which occur around the country up to twice a year (local council web sites have details) this is a great source of discarded items for which you may find a purpose. Warwick finds great delight in discovering small gems and useful items sitting on someone’s footpath awaiting his attentive hand and extending the life and use of a previously unwanted object.

The liveliness of his imagination is apparent in the way he utilises raw materials and transforms them into wonderful furniture, toys, lawn ornaments and other items of interest. Warwick works within a limited budget and has only a handful of tools, but he is able to solve problems by way of ingenuity. At one point, a projects called for wheel shafts, there wasn’t anything that even resembled them in Warwick’s material stash, so after a couple of large steel plates were salvaged, he soon produced the round shafts without a lathe or oxy-cutting tools but with a grinder and a file. Having done a trade as a Fitter machinist, I have great respect for this achievement. Warwick is an animated character and he loves to receive appreciation and attention for his work. At the 2010 Working With Wood Show weekend, he was able to spend some time with Stan Ceglinski and produced a stunning coffee table that now sits inside his house that he shares with other people.

Warwick loves to express himself using bright colours to finish his pieces. The impact of this is startling. Many of these works wouldn’t look out of place on a plinth in a modern art gallery.

To me though, it’s his ‘Lawn Chair ‘ that is the great surprise. Its appearance belies the success of the design. As you slide into it each angle and curve of the body is supported into a perfect reclining position. This level of comfort isn’t easy to achieve in chair design.

Warwick is a great inspiration to those of us who can always find a reason not to do something, he just gets on with it and works with the resources he has at hand. Where we may see rubbish, he sees possibilities. The ability to create things has given him a way to relate to the world and communicate with others.

Visit Warwick's website.

Visit the NSW Marickville Reverse Garbage website.

Visit the Brisbane Reverse Garbage website.

Visit the Working with Wood Show website.