Dakota Pratt is an award winning artist who most recently won the Lincoln Innovation Award. He began creating art at age seven. His artistic focus is on functional sculptures & contemporary furniture. After graduating from the Columbus College of Art & Design with a BA, Dakota began exhibiting his work in art galleries & shows across the country. His work is now collected and exhibited throughout the United States. Dakota’s art has been influenced by the works of Henry Spencer Moore, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. Dakota comes from an artistic family. His parents, Rick and Denise Pratt, owners of Round the Bend Willow Furniture, are known as two of America's leading makers of traditional and contemporary twig furnishings. Dakota has developed a keen sense of design and construction from this family tradition. Claes Oldenburg, a primary influence on Dakota, is an iconic American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects. Falling easily into this Pop genre, Dakota starts each piece by using wooden or metal bases. He then fastens vintage bottle caps, flattened with a sledge hammer onto his forms. Each piece is then covered with an epoxy resin to create a polished finish. Accompanying his parents from show to show, he grew up on the road. This nomadic lifestyle allowed Dakota to engage in the American scene, particularly that perceived from the artists’ eyes, and eventually develop his own language by perfectly fusing consumer driven Pop ideas with another American movement, American Craft Art.