David Franklin

Born in Denver in 1972, David Franklin moved to the Northwest in 1992 with his Airplane Mechanics in hand.  He hoped to get a job with Boeing, however the week he moved here Boeing laid off approximately 20,000 people.  At the time his wife, then girlfriend, was attending the Art Institute of Seattle and brought home books on Northwest Coast Art as a reference for a school project.  These books, especially Barbeau’s Totem Poles, inspired David to attempt to copy one of the great old Totems he found in the book with an x-acto knife and scrap piece of 2×4.

David’s only artistic background was with a Denver graffiti crew known as the Syndicate Spray Kings with whom he mostly did stencils.  Once in Seattle, David had some luck selling his crude carvings at the Pike Place Market, but it was Stonington Gallery who would send David to meet Master Carver Duane Pasco, for guidance with his carving.  David began a ten year apprenticeship with Duane which would build the skills in carving drawing and painting that would enable to help him to go on to complete several public and private commissions of his own and to show at the Stonington Gallery who had started him on his way.

David Franklin has completed commissions for the Poulsbo Library, Battle Point Park Bainbridge Island, The Kitsap County Administration Building in Port Orchard and is currently working on a commission for Grays Harbor Community College.  His work has been featured in gallery exhibitions from Juneau to New York City and has works in the collection of the Burke Museum at the University of Washington.

He recently was awarded the prestigious Kohler Artist Residency at Kohler Factory in the Midwest. Franklin produced a large body of work through this three month residency and showed it at Stonington Gallery in 2013.