Three elegant meditations on the question of how to elevate a surface off the ground are embodied in a trio of side tables of Richard Helgeson, a designer and craftsman who began as a carpenter and went on to study furniture making in England. The subtle structural poetry of his variations on a theme all but dissolves the need to make any distinction between sculpture and furniture. The tables are made of recycled Douglas fir, ebonized poplar, and fiddleback maple. Dyed the blue of a northern lake, the figured maple gives the illusion wind is rippling across the water’s surface. You’d never know it to look at it, but the straight-grained fir was sawn with great care out of the beat-up plank seats of benches salvaged from Williams Arena, the University of Minnesota’s old hockey stadium. Helgeson has a studio in Minneapolis, where he does liturgical commissions and residential furniture, primarily dining tables and chairs.

— From Glenn Gordon's essay, Sculpture Designed to be Used.