By Beth Beasley

She wonders how many secrets can be stored in how many little dresser drawers or, perhaps, if her creations could fly higher simply by attaching more wings.

For Sylvie Rosenthal, a 28-year-old furniture maker who moved to Western North Carolina from upstate New York five years ago, the world can be a very abstract place. In her artist statement, she says she’s inspired by “passing cars, hard times, good feelings, tight-rope walkers, dish washers and other angels—and feelings that are so deep down that you are not sure if they are yours or if you are supposed to have them all.” Though she has had several part-time jobs since her 2003 graduation from the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School for American Crafts, she spends most of her waking hours thinking about art—which means she gets lost for long periods in her studio, just south of downtown Asheville, pondering ideas like what people must have thought about flight during Renaissance times.

Rosenthal’s artful furniture, sculptures and other recent work will be on display at Blue Spiral 1 (38 Biltmore Avenue, Asheville, 828-251-0202, www.bluespiral1.com) from May 1 to June 28. Her creations range from minimalist, futuristic-looking (but usable) wooden chairs and benches to vanity sets with a Victorian feel and cabinets with tiny drawers and perches for delicate steel birds. One of her whiskey cabinets comes complete with niches for glasses and a whiskey bottle. It also has a crank in the side that causes an animal skull to nod in seeming agreement at the possibility of another drink. (You might need one, too—an average piece usually ranges in price from $2,000 to $6,000.)

Some of her creations are hardly usable as furniture, but the sculptures do function, in a sense, because of their elaborate moving parts. Perfectio Complimentil, which seems reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of a flying machine, involves a large, black bird flapping its edge-stitched rawhide wings, powered by a primitive-looking gear attached to a crank. A little wooden ladder ascends the rear of the tall mahogany base, which could be a flying platform. “I like birds as a metaphor for life,” Rosenthal says. “The hunt and the struggle of life—because that is what birds do.”

Rosenthal says her work blends traditions of European woodworking, folk art and pulp fiction, and she frequently works with found objects like animal skulls and bits of industrial material from roads and railroad tracks. Her “cabinet of curiosities” includes a gory “flat animal collection”: newts, snakes, frogs and other unfortunate creatures that got hit or smashed and then dried flat. Rosenthal has long been fascinated by animal anatomy, something her friends now know—they’ve started bringing her dead creatures that they come across. “If a bird flies into my window, I will pin up its wings and dissect the parts,” Rosenthal says.

Creepy to some, but her colleagues in the art world say Rosenthal is a young artist on the way up. “Watching the evolution of Sylvie’s work has been like looking forward to the next episode of a good TV series,” says Kathryn Gremley, manager of Penland Gallery at the Penland School of Crafts, where Rosenthal has been an exhibiting artist since 2005. “She has an infectious enthusiasm for invention and lack of convention,” Gremley says. Jordan Ahlers, gallery director of Blue Spiral 1, says, “I like how she combines conceptual ideas with a good dose of humor.”

Rosenthal’s affinity for witty contraptions started in childhood when she took classes at the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop, a teaching center for design and invention in New Haven, Connecticut. She credits Bill Brown, the Whitney’s director, as a major influence on her work.

“Bill encouraged me and many other kids to work with our hands to make things that involved simple mechanics and electricity, combined with history,” says Rosenthal. “I made many of my own toys.” She counts the famous mobile maker, Alexander Calder, among her artistic heroes, and, like Calder, she builds kinetic, or movable, mechanical sculptures. For a show last September at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, Rosenthal created Birdie Suite, a fully functional vanity set of mahogany, poplar, white oak and, naturally, an articulated steel bird, perched at the mirror. She says she wanted to make a dressing table because it’s an intimate object used by only one person, who fills the drawers with whatever they like. “You get to be kind to yourself,” she says. As for the bird, it answers questions by moving its head and wings at the turn of a crank.

Last year, she was inspired by Taiwanese artists during a month-long residency at the Material Arts and Design Department at the Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan. A current work in progress, entitled Abode of Still Thought, features a tiny temple building on a tall platform. “There will be a lot of little ladders,” Rosenthal says. “I like the idea of a basic but precious building.” A self-described workaholic, Rosenthal says she’d like to start devoting even more time to her work this year, though she does enjoy the woodworking class she teaches at Asheville Hardware. Not intimidated in the least by tough-guy woodworkers and welders, Rosenthal says her love of working with steel blossomed in welding classes at Austin Community College. “I was basically the only woman in the program—I was with a bunch of cowboys,” she says with a laugh.

While some of her heavy-duty welding, sanding and staining can feel like work, the idea-generating aspect of her art is often quite therapeutic. “I’m constantly working through ideas and always working on myself via my work,” she says. “I feel like I’m affected by a lot of things. My strength is not getting over them, but tossing them around in my head and making them into art, which is a lens and how I view life.”

See Sylvie Rosenthal’s work at Blue Spiral 1 from May 1 to June 28. 38 Biltmore Avenue, Asheville, 828-251-0202.