Outside the Box

Standing in the woodworking studio nestled behind his San Fernando Valley home, artist Po Shun Leong explains heaven and hell. “Hell could be like a discotheque, fun but gaudy,” he offers, gazing at a giant white board with three columns of drawings labeled “Heaven,” “Hell” and “Las Vegas.” “I think hell is probably not what we envision. It’s probably a sense of going around in circles and not knowing what to do with your life.”

Under the hell header, Leong has scribbled, “Blake” and “Bosch.” I mention “Paradise Lost.” “Oh, yes,” the woodworker says excitedly, reaching for a dry marker.

Leong is crafting two of his trademark boxes--not boxes, really, but that’s what he calls the complicated, beguiling pieces--made of cherry, walnut, mahogany and eucalyptus, which beg to be touched. Born and educated in England, Leong studied architecture in France under Le Corbusier. In 1966, he moved to Mexico to volunteer in a remote Indian village, building bridges and constructing wells. He and his wife, Poh Suan, moved to Los Angeles in 1981, and Leong began woodwork. His art resides in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Smithsonian.

A German couple commissioned Leong, 58, to create the “Heaven and Hell” troika for their private collection. It’s their 14th commission. “I keep telling them that perhaps they should buy other kinds of art,” he says with a soft British accent.

Using fast-drying glue, Leong spends anywhere from a day to complete a small box, which might sell for $200, to a few months to finish a desk, for $25,000. (Locally he sells at the del Mano Gallery in Brentwood and Primavera in Ojai.) Steve Martin received a 24-inch-high Leong “Tower Box” at a wrap party, and Robin Williams owns some of his miniature carvings.

Greek architecture, Mayan art and modern skyscrapers inspire the artist’s intricate work, filled with stairways, columns and hidden compartments. “Cities are very layered,” he says, “which builds a richness.

“I tell people a box should not be functional,” Leong says as he opens a secret drawer. “People ask what they should put in it. But it’s not what you put in a box; it’s what you get out of it. Please touch.”

“Las Vegas” is already completed--a fanciful table bursting with nooks and filled with dice and gorgeous inlaid wood sections that look like chessboards and falling decks of cards.

As for heaven and hell, he’s working on it.