Q: When is a cabinet not just a cabinet?
A: When it's a work of art!

For those interested in something beyond a uniform rank of mass-produced cabinets ordered out of a catalog in a big box home improvement center, Michael Lalicki's line of one-of-a-kind cabinetry provides a refreshingly different alternative. A sculptor who has also worked as set designer at suny New Paltz, Lalicki brings his object-making aesthetic to a utilitarian end by designing and painstakingly handcrafting what are essentially relief sculptures to serve as the doors for his cabinets. (He custom-builds the "box" - the business end of the cabinet - as well.)

Using recycled materials that include various found objects, old barn board, rusted scrap metal, rough remnants of lath, and salvaged wainscoting (still colored with its original paint), Lalicki works out compositions that reflect many of the same aesthetic concerns that he addresses in his "non-functional" sculpture - abstract designs in rough geometric shapes that locate a careful balance between the real presence of the materials and the ideal concept of their overall design. Working in a range of standard shapes - trapezoids, rough rectangles, and gently arched panels - Lalicki improvises like a jazz musician with the individual textures and colors of his varied materials to create compositions based on arcs, grids, and mitered spirals.

The artistic character of these cabinets is so strong that Lalicki has taken to displaying them at craft shows with the doors ajar - filling them with cds, towels, and so on - because without these clues, people mistake them for pieces of sculpture (which in fact they are). Part of this confusion is intentional - the artist doesn't want you to see the cabinet, but rather the piece, and he notes that in fact his cabinetmaking over the years has grown more and more congruent with the concerns of his sculpture making. Artfully dodging the line between art and craft, Lalicki has here rendered such arguments moot.