[3][4] In the exhibition catalog for a 1995 retrospective of Lindquist's works at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, his contributions to woodturning and wood sculpture are described as "so profound and far-reaching that they have reconstituted the field".
[5][6] Lindquist's work is characterized by an empathy with the natural aesthetics of wood, technical innovation, and art historical connections.
[1][9][10] In the early 1980s, he applied techniques he had developed for large-scale woodturning to create his massive, textured "Totemic Series Sculptures,"[11][12] in the Modernist tradition of Brâncuși.
[17] Lindquist's "Ichiboku" sculptures distinguished themselves from others in the exhibition, and from the work of most wood artists of the time, by their identification with the spirit of the tree, a concept he adopted from the Japanese.
[6] Rather than imposing an external idea upon the wood, he "was engaged in a dialogue with trees";[16] This approach was antithetical to the mainstream of 20th-century art, which was intellectually removed from the appreciation of nature.