LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY

Aaron Tabor, an artist who grew up Chokoloskee, began creating art with metal about 10 years ago. Tabor now resides in Fort Lauderdale with a style that has evolved into work that includes bonsai trees and candeliers.

LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY

Aaron Tabor, originally from Chokoloskee, began his career bending metal 10 years ago, selling his first metal tree for $30. Tabor now resides in Fort Lauderdale with a style that has evolved into work like this intertwined copper bonsai tree that was purchased by a Naples couple. Tabor's work also include candeliers, a chandelier that is made of intricately hand-manipulated metal.

LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY

An intertwined aluminum bonsai tree decorates the backyard of a Naples home. The tree is a smaller piece of art created by Aaron Tabor.

LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY

Aaron Tabor, an artist who grew up in Chokoloskee but now lives in Fort Lauderdale, lights candles in to place in the first candelier he ever created that resides in the home of a Naples couple who bought it from him several years ago. This incarnation of the candelier is wireless and holds candles to light an area, his work has evolved to use both electricity or candles.

LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY

Aaron Tabor's original candelier hangs in the back yard of a Naples home. The piece is wireless and holds candles in strands of twisted metal. Tabor's work has evolved into more intricate and electric pieces of art.

LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY

Light refracts through twisted pieces of metal in a candelier chandelier created by artist Aaron Tabor. Each piece took Tabor about one month to complete.

LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY

Light refracts through twisted pieces of metal in a candelier chandelier created by artist Aaron Tabor. Each piece took Tabor about one month to complete.

LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY

Light refracts through twisted pieces of metal in a candelier chandelier created by artist Aaron Tabor. Each piece took Tabor about one month to complete.

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There are many words to describe Aaron Tabor’s work, but the best term is probably “twisted.”

If that sentence suggests Tabor’s work is strange, unseemly or obscene, it isn’t. His tree sculptures are serene and his lamps are luminous. A Tabor chandelier — more rightly called a candelier, because of the votives it uses to cast its gentle glow — can be riotously colorful or coolly neutral, depending on the materials. But with wire metal being Tabor’s main artistic medium, the resulting work is also a twisting, turning creation of countless ripples, ridges and curves.

Neapolitans Walter Willey and Ed Miller have one of Tabor’s first candeliers in their home, a copper metal and black river stone piece that hangs on their lanai. The wire wraps around the glossy stones and glass votive holders, radiating down in a waterfall-style spray. In a light breeze or heavy thunderstorm, the vibrations cause individual wires of the piece to shudder slightly, showing exactly what Tabor means by “the candles make the art dance.” There is a lively, full light spreading to the walls and ceiling, much more than would be cast by simply placing candles on tabletops.

A candelier “takes the area. It fills up the area,” Tabor said. “It creates a setting.”

“The wire makes it so contemporary, so industrial,” Willey said, “but then with the shape of the stones and the candles it makes it feel natural.”

Mangrove memories

That natural impression isn’t accidental. Although he now maintains a home studio in Fort Lauderdale, Tabor was raised in Chokoloskee. He cites the area’s environmental features, especially the dense and knotty mangroves of the Ten Thousand Islands, as the main inspiration for his work.

With his candeliers, the echo of a mangrove tree is loud: Like the tangling roots of those trees, Tabor’s candeliers hold marbles, pieces of sea glass, quartz crystals, stones or even shells. Woven throughout are glass votive holders and, recently, Tabor has begun to add small light bulbs for clients who want the convenience of electricity.

The combination of light, thin wire and glass or marbles creates a dazzling piece that generates a fluid, restless shadow on ceilings and walls.

With so many hard materials, Tabor’s art might seem to be the sort to be only admired from afar. A few moments with the artist proves that’s impossible, certainly for Tabor. He constantly rearranges his pieces, touching and tweaking them in minuscule ways, amending and improving until finally, his partner, Robert Tinoco, tells him, with a laugh, to stop playing.

“The obsession,” Tinoco said of Tabor, “is the twist.”

It’s like this when he works in his studio, too: He creates almost absently, he explains, pinching and kneading the wires into place, stopping and resuming, almost in “a kind of mediation.” But if the method is fractured, the result is measured, with little variation from one wire to the next and even, graceful lines.

‘Reclaimed’ sculpture

To begin, Tabor strips the aluminum wire with a box knife — it’s almost always reclaimed wire, bought or donated from a construction job site. Depending on the size of the piece he is projecting to make, he guesses at how much wire he will need, or the piece could be much smaller than intended. Then, he dons a pair of gloves and begins to twist and weave what is basically a long, ropey strand of fanning wire. If it is a tree, he shapes it into that form; if a candelier, he adds the tiers, votives, lights and other adornments. Finally, he threads his artist’s signature — his initials, AMT — into the wire too.

Tabor makes it sound simple, but the crosshatch scratches on his wrists and arms suggest otherwise. The wire, he said, “It’s got a mind of its own.”

Ultimately, his pieces retail from anywhere between $400 for a small tree to $4,500 for a large candelier. To date, Tabor’s largest was a 6-foot candelier, but he hopes to do a 10-foot piece soon. Tabor’s work is available locally at the Garden District stores on Third Street South and U.S. 41 North.

Function to fantasy

And he hopes to make his art his full-time profession. His work is on display in galleries and art boutiques throughout South Florida. Still, Tabor continues to work as a professional plumber. It was in that trade, 10 years ago, that he found his inspiration for his work. While on a job site at lunch, he found a piece of discarded wire and began to twist it.

That particular twist resulted in something like a palm tree, with a wrapped trunk and a pop of wire fronds. Tabor made some others like it, but the significant part was that those early attempts led to an evolution of his trees and, eventually, to the candeliers, which were born out of a need to make something with purpose.

“I needed to make them functional,” Tabor said, “a functional art piece.”

Now he is ready to try anything, any commissioned piece, such as a recent wall installation he completed at Estero day spa Sonu, which was designed to combine the elements of earth, wind and fire.

If it’s only a matter of putting his hands to something, Robert Tinoco knows Tabor will have success. When wire is waiting, Tabor will twist.

“He can’t help but throw his hands in there,” Tinoco said, laughing.