Among the ordinary assortment of tools and scrap wood inside Mitch Fry’s workshop is something less common: a 900-pound wooden sphere with an 8-foot diameter made from recycled wood he and his son collected.

Mitch, 56, a Scottsdale resident, is part of a growing movement in sustainable art, said Clark Olson, co-owner of Bonner David Galleries, an art gallery in Scottsdale, and jury member on The Contemporary Forum.

Julie Anand, assistant professor of photography at ASU, said sustainable art has been an emerging movement since the late 1960s. These artists are expanding awareness about the human impact on the environment, she said.

“The people alive now are dealing with the consequences of hundreds of years of misunderstanding,” Anand said.

The sphere won Fry and six others grants from The Contemporary Forum, an organization that supports and contributes to the Phoenix Art Museum, Olson said.

Fry was awarded $1,500 to create new projects to be displayed at the Phoenix Art Museum next May, he said.

“He is working to explore the role of the sphere,” he said.

Olson is currently displaying a scaled-down version of the art piece at his gallery in Old Town Scottsdale, he said. It’s about 36 inches in diameter and weighs around 120 pounds, he said. The wood has a polished finish giving it the resemblance of a giant marble, Olson said.

“People love it,” he said.

Opportunity stems from recession

Although he has always been an artist, Fry said it has not been until this last year that he has been able to focus solely on art.

He graduated with an art degree from ASU and worked his way through school doing construction jobs, he said. He used to build the counter tops for the restaurant Black Angus, Fry said.

Eight years ago he started his own workshop tucked away in Phoenix’s industrial sector and began building custom furniture for private residences, he said. Fry’s typical clients were those who have a true interest in furniture, he said.

“It’s expensive to make a prototype piece of furniture as compared to getting it off a production line,” Fry said.

When the economy dived, there were less jobs in furniture, so Fry had more time to focus on art projects, he said.

Building the sphere

He began working on the 8-foot sphere with his 22-year-old son Kenneth, Fry said. Kenneth Fry would haul giant pallets into the workshop from the trucking company next door and rip them up with a crowbar, he said. Afterward the pieces were cut and sanded into small blocks.

“It was a geometric challenge that I welcomed in the beginning,” Mitch Fry said.

Mitch Fry did all the calculations on a calculator and a drafting board. What started as a few calculations for each layer blossomed into 50 calculations, with each succeeding layer adding to the sphere, he said.

Kenneth Fry said four dimensions must be cut on each block. First, the sides must be cut to form the outside ring. Then, the top and bottom of the blocks are cut in wedges, similar to pie slices, so the blocks will make even layers for the sphere. The pieces are then fit together using a combination of glue, nails and corrugated fasters. The end product is a giant hollow wooden sphere with a hole on each end nearly large enough to fit a fist into, he said.

“It took a lot of time,” Kenneth Fry said.

A friend in the art community told the pair about the grant opportunity and suggested they enter the sphere, he said. The Contemporary Forum appraised the piece and awarded Mitch Fry a grant at a May dinner where he presented a slideshow of his work.

Mitch Fry said he was inspired by the form of the sphere. It’s not often that a sphere is formed from linear objects, he said.

The idea was to use simple forms and create a process that would allow them to take shape in a uniform manner, Fry said.

The result is the use of simple blocks using a simple formula to create something both fundamentally simple and natural, he said.

The process turned out to be increasingly complex as each layer was added.

The sustainable art movement

Mitch Fry said his current work stems from similar principles. He is now using Redwood from replenishable lumber forests to create one large section of a sphere.

This one will be propped in a way so people can walk around and view the inside and outside of the project, he said.

The piece will be oiled to bring out differentiations in the colors, making them richer and allowing the natural beauty of the wood to show through, Mitch Fry said.

He is constructing his current project so it can be broken down into pieces and moved into the museum for May’s showing.

Anand said sustainable artists often take into consideration the materials they use for their art projects. Sustainable art is about examining the relationship between humans and the environment to offer different perspectives and to re-imagine their shared relationship, she said.

Kenneth Fry has grown up working on sustainable art in his dad’s shop since he was less than 13 years old, he said. As he got older, his dad gave him larger and larger projects to work on until the two were working side by side, Kenneth Fry said.

He spent time at the shop helping his dad construct the sphere while doing side work of his own building furniture for friends and businesses.

Kenneth Fry called his dad very disciplined, adding that he works six days a week.

“He’s like a machine, he always has been,” Kenneth Fry said.

Kenneth is the youngest of three brothers who have all done their time working in the shop, which taught him to be a great communicator, he said.

“We all work really well together,” he said.

Kenneth Fry said sometimes unfortunate circumstances, like the economic downturn, can offer opportunities, he said.

“It gave my dad a chance to pursue art,” he said.