Breaking Ground
In 1994, the Annual Juried Woodworking Exhibition at the Wharton Esherick Museum began as an opportunity to encourage new, creative and imaginative works in wood. Encouraged to think like Esherick, over the years professional woodworkers, artists, designers, hobbyists, and craftspeople have submitted hundreds of pieces reflecting each year’s theme.
For the 32nd year of the exhibition, WEM sought to celebrate the 100th anniversary of a literal and symbolic groundbreaking: the completion of the first phase of Esherick’s iconic Studio. In honor of this moment, we invited applicants to take inspiration from what they consider groundbreaking, defined by any of the term’s multiple meanings. How does Wharton Esherick’s life and work seem groundbreaking in 2026? Whether public or personal, what ideas or shifts feel groundbreaking in this complex moment in history? What groundbreaking tools, moments, or ideas have shaped the artist’s practice? After the initial excitement and ceremony of a groundbreaking, how do we build?
For Breaking Ground, WEM’s Thirty-Second Annual Juried Woodworking Exhibition, we invited contemporary artists to take inspiration from what they consider groundbreaking, defined by any of the term’s multiple meanings. Together, these 26 artists remind us that groundbreaking moments rarely end with the ceremonial turning of soil. Instead, they mark the beginning of a longer process in which imagination, skill, and persistence come together to build something enduring.
This virtual exhibition features the works of all 26 included artists. These works are also viewable in a publication which is available as a digital download or in hard copy. The artworks selected for First, Second, and Third place and Honorable Mention will also be on display in the Visitor Center through September 20th.
Our Visitor Center is open during our current tour hours (Wed – Sun 10am – 3pm). Please note, guests wishing to enter the Studio must make advance reservations for a tour.
Many of the works showcased in Breaking Ground are available for purchase. The WEM Store also features new jewelry and home-goods made by artists.
After scrolling through all of the wonderful pieces that comprise this year’s juried exhibition, be sure to vote for your three favorite works to help us select the Viewer’s Choice prizewinner. Voting will be open for the duration of the exhibition. You can submit your choices here.
2026 Guest Jurors: Tom Loeser and Joyce Lin
The finalists for Breaking Ground were selected by jurors Tom Loeser, a nationally renowned furniture maker and educator, and Joyce Lin, artist and sculptural furniture designer, along with Emily Zilber, WEM’s Director of Curatorial Affairs and Strategic Partnerships.
First Place: Christian Burchard
Never Again II
2024
Madrone, 23 x 23 x 27 inches
I have been making madrone books for many years, presenting them mostly as individual bleached white books, often with burn patterns. Sometimes, I’ve presented them in family groups called Yet Another Literary Dynasty. I kept hoping that I could do more with books, as they are such powerful symbols of our cultural evolution and history. My books often come out warped and tattered, with their own history visible. I had created all kinds of weird constructions when I finally saw the powerful image of a pile of books. A plain pile. We see this—a pile of books—in history all over, when one people wants to take the culture of another people away by burning their culture, their teachings, their history. By burning their books. Never Again II wants to be a reminder, and it’s a highly relevant one; book banning is already happening again today.
Christian Burchard is a German-trained woodworker and sculptor active in the U.S. for the last 40 years and is currently a studio artist working in Southern Oregon. Burchard started out his career with furniture and timber framing, then moved to wood turning and sculpture. He has taught extensively at various organizations across the country for the last 20 years. His work has been collected by over twenty-five museums and is in many private collections. His work is marked by a continuing search for the unexpected, the unpredictable, while using mostly green wood in a variety of ways. In 2021, Burchard was awarded the second-place prize in Wood And…, WEM’s 27th Annual Juried Woodworking Exhibition.
burchardstudio.com | @chburchard
Photography by Kristy Kun
Second Place: Haniel Wides
I made Creep using the construction methods of a Windsor chair, and set out to make it look like a perversion of its origins. There’s a sense of the familiar and the past in that way, but the chair’s proportions are distorted. It is too low to sit with company at a dining table, with arms that extend out like stirrups and a crestrail that looms and droops at the sitter’s shoulders. These disruptions in the expectations of how a chair should look or function provoke nihilism, playfulness, and subversion.
While I don’t think of my work as groundbreaking, Creep is probably the most unusual and technically defying piece I have made. I wanted to break a lot of the rules of aesthetics, proportions, dimensions, and Windsor chair making generally. I wanted to make something that wasn’t necessarily beautiful, or universal, or even useful in the way a chair typically would be.
I think of Wharton Esherick’s work as “groundbreaking” in that he was capable of creating, masterfully, in a wide variety of styles and media. But when it came down to it, Esherick built with integrity while often choosing to throw all the rules and socially accepted ideas of beauty and “correct construction” out the window. I relate to that impulse. I think that’s why his work today still feels so modern and inspiring. His pieces look alive and free.
Haniel Wides is an artist, furniture maker, fabricator, and educator who blends furniture and sculpture in an exploration of craft history, ecology, and societal notions of beauty. Their approach to woodcraft is through a socially and historically conscious lens, fusing both contemporary and ancient aesthetics and philosophies, and primarily utilizes techniques of pre-industrial furniture making. Wides has extensive work history and formal training in both historic and modern carpentry, furniture making, repair and restoration, and uses a wide variety of chairmaking and cabinetry techniques including green woodworking, post-and-rung construction, staked furniture construction, carving, steambending, and pre-modern joinery. They incorporate a wide range of philosophical and cultural influences of their lived experience into their methodology, including labor history, Anarchism, Queer theory, Jewish mysticism, Balkan mythology, leather culture, and pop culture, to approach woodcraft with a socially and historically conscious lens.
manibus.studio | @totally.literally
Photography by Akeakamai Ishikawa
Third Place: Terry Evans
2025
Bog oak, black mangrove, hackberry, birdseye maple, poplar, katalox, white limbs, beli, Peruvian walnut, ebony, mora, royal palm, and natural and dyed veneers
6 x 10 1/4 x 5 inches
Purchase
2025
Quilted maple, curly maple, ebony, English sycamore veneer, black dyed veneer
12 x 11 x 5 1/2 inches
Purchase
In its basic form, band saw box making is a simple process. It does, however, leave open the possibility to invent, create, and innovate. I embraced this form decades ago and have broken new ground using abrasive sculpting. Triple Handle Box is distinctive in its use of ebony handles and legs. Developing this “stacking box” technique was an original process, requiring new inspirations for which I had no pre- existing examples for guidance.
My ultimate goal has been to create new visual expressions or, simply put, to break new ground in the form of wood vessels. The artist’s world is often driven by obsessions. Two such obsessions motivate me: the desire to create objects of distinction, and the ongoing search for wood species that are visually engaging, whether they are incredibly rare varieties or common local hardwoods that have somehow been overlooked. Inventing processes and creating new forms have been the focus of my creative life for over 35 years.
For decades, Kansas-born wood artist Terry Evans has created laminated wood art and sculptures unique in form to anything else in the field. His exceptional boxes and sculptures appear fluid, with his skillful layering of the different color lumber and veneers highlighting the surface curves. To create these wood masterworks, Evans laminates exotic hardwood lumber and veneers together before carving, cutting, sanding, and reassembling each piece into a unique creation. Evans’s work has been shown in significant wood art exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design, University of Michigan Art Museum, Detroit Institute of Art, and the Peabody Essex Museum. His work is also included in the Montalto Bohlen Collection of fine wood art.
Photography by George Post
Honorable Mention: Robert Aiosa
These works conceptually center on how the natural landscape witnesses the changes of the built environment and its encroachment on natural spaces. I find inspiration for my work within the built environment and all its complexities; political, social, and environmental. Architecture is a tangible testimony of the history of our society; our culture, and way of life, with the ability to trigger our personal and societal memories. I am interested in what happens when we start to peel back the layers of elaborate pageantry of urban design movements to expose the underlying ulterior motives. In our current state of constant urban renewal, neighborhood identities are continuously being forced to change and adapt as buildings are renovated or re-purposed for new pursuits. My work is inspired by this transitional state that can often bring feelings of instability and uncertainty.
Robert Aiosa is an assistant professor and multimedia artist. After graduate school, Aiosa joined the renowned experimental atelier Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida, Tampa, as the head of sculpture production, where he worked collaboratively with leading and emerging artists to produce limited editions and unique works of art. His current research is based in investigating the built environment and the constantly changing urban landscape. Aiosa has been awarded many artist grants and fellowships, most recently at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia and at the Studios of Key West, Florida. Aiosa is currently an assistant professor of studio arts and the sculpture program coordinator at The University of Central Florida.
Photography by Emily Mayo
Juried Selections
Scroll through the juried selection of works included in the exhibition below. Click to enlarge each image and to view more information about the pieces and artists.
Learn More
Rick Cannon, Reconstruction and Recovered
Left: Rick Cannon, Recovered, 2025.
Unknown wood, persimmon, maple, acrylic paints, 7 1/2 x 6 x 7 1/4 inchesRight: Rick Cannon, Reconstruction, 2025.
Cherry, persimmon, oak, acrylic paints, 17 x 16 x 30 inchesReconstruction breaks ground in two ways, from my perspective. First, it is a culmination of thoughts and practice works from over several years, breaking new ground in my work. Secondly, I imagine a bowl broken and lost at sea, then found by a strange new life. The old and the new working together to reconstruct something similar, but different. Recovered is also groundbreaking work for me. The thoughts have been there, just not enough courage until now. The vessel is broken and rests only to be recovered and evolve. Such is life.
Carving and coloring wood that was first turned on the lathe is a process. This process is my meditation and feeds my need to create. It has helped me relax after long hours at work at a “real” job, and has now become my full-time work. This makes me smile. Learning that others liked the end results enough to buy the work made me proud. Being raised by a SeaBee do-it-yourselfer, I learned to respect the tools and materials. As an adult, I found teachers who helped the work evolve. I’m captured by the textures that are found everywhere, above and below the waters, ancient and new, even surfaces of planets and moons.
About the Artist:
Rick Cannon is an accomplished woodturner who has lived in Memphis, Tennessee since 1968. He works with local or imported woods and sometimes bone or antler. After spending time with notable woodturners such as Michael Mode, Malcolm Tibbetts, Ray Key, David Marks and others, most of his works involve time at the lathe, but he also uses any of the tools associated with a carpenter’s shop. He has been a maker, learner, and teacher of fine craft and art for the last 20 years. His work is in the permanent collection of the Tennessee State Museum and he is a member of Tennessee Craft—Southwest, the Memphis Arts Collective, the Mid-South Woodturners Guild and the American Association of Woodturners.
Fred Chase, Outer/Inner and Order/Disorder
Left: Fred Chase, Order/Disorder, 2025
Holly wood, Prismacolor artist markers, archival ink, 13 x 11 x 13 inches.Right: Fred Chase, Outer/Inner, 2025
Wood of unknown origin, Prismacolor artist markers, archival ink, 14 x 9 1/2 x 14 inches.Besides the unusual structural form of Outer/Inner, the surface design consists of two distinct ideas. The bottom and the top portions depict a series of repeat designs that reflect organic forms that are readily known to the eye. The middle space was an unplanned and relatively spontaneous expression, using no pencil to prepare the flow of ideas. The idea of telling a story as you rotate around the piece, while anchored to the repeats of the top and bottom feels like a visual form unusual to wood turned objects. In Order/Disorder, creating two very distinctive designs occurring on one surface and having them work with each other was a distinct challenge for me. This attempts to break new ground, at least for me.By integrating unusual forms with surface designs that are rather intense, detailed, and colorful, I have found a vast trove of possibilities that continue to inspire me to go further with both the wood and the designs. The liberating part of this process seems to be that I have not found other artists trying to do this kind of work. Often surreal, sometimes obsessive, I feel free to make up my own rules as I go along. I feel graced to have this freedom of expression. Ultimately, creating something unusual, interesting, or unexpected seem to be the guiding principles underlying my work.About the Artist
Fred Chase has been a licensed psychologist for 41 years. It is a skill set that requires patience, grounding, experience, and a genuine interest in people and the human condition. Over the past 15 years, he has found a deep passion for woodturning. Following a two-week intensive experience with David Ellsworth, that passion has continued to grow as he has advanced in his practice. He gathers all of his wood locally, and works with both green and twice-turned vessels.Chase participates in several craft shows annually, including the Rittenhouse Fine Craft Show, the Philadelphia Furniture Show, and Artrider’s shows that include Lyndhurst and Morristown. He exhibited in the 2019 Columbus Art Festival, and won first prize at New Hope’s Works in Wood show in 2018 for best small turned vessel. Increasingly, Chase has expanded his interest in making unique and unexpected shapes and forms that emphasize the aesthetic experience over the functional. He has also opened up an area of exploration into painting unique designs onto the surfaces of his turned vessels that represent a vital progression in his development.Lewis Colburn, Architectural Study 1 (Diagram for Solitude)
Lewis Colburn, Architectural Study 1 (Diagram for Solitude), 2025.
Salvaged alley gate, HO scale model loading dock, pewter pitcher, copper, brass, aluminum, steel, cherry, salvaged pine, acrylic, hardware, 86 x 60 x 37 inchesArchitectural Study 1 (Diagram for Solitude) comes from a period of deep personal upheaval, which demanded major changes in my life (and if not physical groundbreaking, then substantial reconstruction of my then-studio building, now home and studio). Moreover, it is built mostly from materials salvaged from construction and demolition in Kensington, Philadelphia, where I live (the alley gate and salvaged pine). In that sense, these materials physically embody the history of demolition, redevelopment, and gentrification which is rapidly reshaping Kensington.
I consider this work a kind of survival device: a staff, augmented with a filtration system, perhaps for purifying rainwater amidst the ruptures of climate change. In that sense, it relates to groundbreaking in a similar manner to the previous work— offering comfort and reassurance amidst change. Similarly, the work is made from materials scavenged from my neighborhood as it undergoes redevelopment—broken concrete, a cast glass hand found on the street, elements of an abandoned 3D printer, and copper salvaged from my studio building and spun into funnel forms on a wood lathe. As such, the work both meditates on change and upheaval, and is made from materials whose histories are embedded in the groundbreaking that accompanies a rapidly changing neighborhood.
About the Artist
Lewis Colburn holds a BA in studio art and Russian language from St. Olaf College, and a MFA in sculpture from Syracuse University. Colburn has participated in numerous artist- in-residence programs including Franconia Sculpture Park, SculptureSpace, and RAIR in Philadelphia. Colburn’s work has been shown internationally and throughout the United States, at venues including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, Locust Projects in Miami, and the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan. His works have been featured in Sculpture magazine as well as The Philadelphia Inquirer. He teaches sculpture and 3D design at Drexel University, where he is an associate professor.
Marcus DiMaggio, Flower Box
Marcus DiMaggio, Flower Box, 2025.
Walnut, madrone, desert ironwood, brass, 9 1/4 x 5 1/4 x 4 inchesAs with breaking ground for construction, everything that is built is supported by something beneath. The Earth is the ultimate support for all that is made, and recognition of this literal foundation is central to my studio practice. But the ground that we break each time a novel object is brought into the world is figurative as well. Cumulative knowledge, historical context and design precedent must be simultaneously recognized and challenged in order for groundbreaking work to exist.
My objective with Flower Box was to find this equilibrium, building from a historical foundation and also breaking that ground with innovation. As a furniture maker, an element of function is imperative in my work. Combining a somewhat recognizable form (a Krenovian box) with an unassumed function (a flower press) proved an exciting bit of fresh ground to break in a world packed full of fascinating objects. In this piece, the small brass feet thread out, allowing the base and box to separate, and flowers or leaves to be pressed between. My goal was for the box to visually stand on its own, and for its special function to come as a surprise when discovered by the user.About the Artist
Raised on the central coast of California, Marcus DiMaggio grew up surrounded by natural beauty and open space. A five-month trek on the Pacific Crest Trail and a comparable journey in New Zealand deepened his appreciation for wild spaces and exposed DiMaggio to the elegance of a life boiled down to its core components. With a desire to combat throw-away culture, DiMaggio spent two years of intensive study at The Krenov School of Fine Woodworking. Building on his own woodworking experience, DiMaggio honed his skill and gained the knowledge necessary to make truly singular pieces of handmade furniture, built to last generations. In each piece, DiMaggio seeks to honor the wood and the trees from which it came through thoughtful composition, considered details, and enduring functionality.
Mia Donalson, Nothing to Prove
Mia Donalson, Nothing to Prove, 2025.
22.5 oz rock, linen, cable, cherry, ash wood 5 x 7 1/2 x 16 inchesPhotography by Paloma Soto and Mia Donalson
Nothing To Prove is an elongated cabinet that lifts and releases a rock when used. Hung at the height of my sternum, viewers have the option to participate by opening the drawer. In doing so, they help carry an average of the weight of grief I carry daily. The rock is a collection of fabricated evidence from past events and the slow damage of the shelf below highlights the satirical nature of my need for proof. In the irony of this object breaking itself, I am asking for assistance through participation from the community to help me re-frame and re-learn a sense of self removed from this grief.
Beyond literally breaking a portion of itself, the cabinet addresses an issue that I have personally struggled with: durational loneliness. While this is an individual struggle, I don’t believe that I am unique for experiencing this sense of alone-ness. Unfortunately, it coincides with the trend of rising isolation. American society consistently pushes the values of the individual over community wellness, leading to a lack of support for group structures and lack of visibility around asking for help as a viable option for problem solving. Working within craft has offered a different approach where community knowledge is centered. Using familiar forms, such as furniture or structures that people tend to interact with daily, more readily invites interaction. I believe that engaging the body can act as a blueprint for the mind to reformat and more readily consider asking for support to be an acceptable option for problem solving.
Nothing to Prove is a model for attempted healing, following the hypothesis that community participation can be an antidote for disconnection.
About the Artist
Mia Donalson is an artist from Charlottesville, VA. Donalson graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) with their BFA in craft and material studies in May, 2023. Their work has been shown at the Anderson and Hawthorne galleries in Richmond, VA and CityClay in Charlottesville, VA. Donalson functions within the artistic canon of contemporary craft and confessional art. They received a craft apprenticeship program (CAP) award in 2023 to facilitate apprenticing under Caroline Woolard. Donalson was a core fellow at Penland School of Craft from 2023-2025.
Joshua Enck, Meld and Nudge
Left: Joshua Enck, Meld, 2025.
Cherry, burnt texture, gesso, wax, 6 x 6 x 6 inchesRight: Joshua Enck, Nudge, 2025.
Cherry, burnt texture, gesso, wax, 6 x 6 x 6 inchesMeld and Nudge are part of a body of work called Dwellings: highly detailed sculptures that explore relationships between natural and technological forces. In each sculpture, an anthropomorphic form interacts with a more planar, architectonic plinth, as I experiment with the possibilities of dwelling as a verb. In each sculpture, the organic form dominates, inverting the theme of groundbreaking as in a technological breakthrough. Rather than groundbreaking as a celebration of progress and artifice, these sculptures emphasize the body and the natural world.
This inversion is inspired by Esherick’s human-centered designs and organic forms. Small details at his house resonated with me long after I visited: for example, Esherick extended the center post of a three-step stool to make a handle, shaping it into a subtle palm-shaped knob. These ergonomic considerations are reflected in the organic shapes of my sculptures and their intimate scale. Each sculpture fits within a six-inch cube and conforms to a simple material palette of textured cherry wood and gesso. These constraints inspire creativity: each sculpture is unique, conjuring a different gesture of organic/inorganic relating. One nudges, another slumps, a third melds. While the two figures in each piece are visually separate, they are shaped, rather than carved, and joined using tenons. The finish unites the disparate forms and provides a rich surface that hints at human histories and invites engagement. I painstakingly burn each individual mark, leaving negative spaces that I fill with gesso. The burnished gesso creates a mysterious tactile quality to match the sensuous forms— are they plaster, bone, stone? Like the furniture at Esherick’s house, I mean for them to be touched as well as viewed.
About the Artist
Joshua Enck meticulously crafts playful abstract sculptures. Through more than twenty years of independent studio practice, he has mastered labor-intensive metal and woodworking techniques that allow him to bring his quirky ideas to life. At the University of Illinois School of Architecture (BSAS, ’99), Enck honed his spatial thinking and developed strong design and drafting skills. He began translating his sketches into complex finished objects while at graduate school at the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, ’03). Enck has been awarded residencies at the Haystack School of Crafts, Penland School of Craft, and the Museum for Art in Wood. As an educator for the past twenty years, Joshua Enck encourages his students to take risks and develop their own artistic voices. He has taught design, drawing, woodworking, metalworking, and architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Illinois, Williams College, the University of Rochester, and the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. In addition to regularly serving as a visiting critic, he was the Anna Ballarian Visiting Artist at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2021-2022.
Russ Fogle, Screenshot 2017-01-02 at 1.35.00 PM
Russ Fogle, Screenshot 2017-01-02 at 1.35.00 PM, 2025.
Maple, black-dyed maple veneer, 16 x18 x 36 1/2 inchesThe wireframe is a classic means of representing three-dimensional objects on the two-dimensional plane of a computer screen or piece of paper, and has existed as a drawing technique since the Italian Renaissance. A typical wireframe connects the ends and midpoints of an object’s bounding volumes with a network of lines and curves, easing the computational workload of displaying a complex model. If you spend enough of your life looking at them, you develop a sense of what might make a “good” or “beautiful” wireframe: unbroken curves, clean intersections, tasteful line weights, a balance of the ornate and the minimal.
In search of a background on which to apply this texture, I looked to a society regarded as close to unambiguously good as possible. Founded on gender equality, pacifism, education, and high standards of craft, the Shakers built a reputation as some of the best chairmakers in the history of American furniture. The Shakers embraced technology, breaking ground in agriculture and manufacturing with pioneering advances in seed storage, saw blades, farm architecture, food storage, broom manufacturing, and, of course, the chair. The typical Shaker chair is a post-and-rung ladderback chair, slightly varying in number of slats and rungs depending on the size, most often with a seat of woven cotton tape. At their peak in the mid-19th century, approximately 3,000 Shakers were living in 18 communities. On January 2, 2017 at 1:35pm, one of the few remaining Shakers, Sister Frances Carr, passed away. At the time of her death, only two surviving Shakers remained.
In Screenshot 2017-01-02 at 1.35.00 PM, a combination of wireframe ornamentation and Shaker construction transforms the chair into the digital representation of itself. The chair is constructed entirely of solid maple and dyed-black maple veneer, using the traditional decorative techniques of string inlay and lamination to create the wireframe effect. The seat, woven with the customary cotton tape, calls back to the transparent background of a PNG image, or the missing texture of a rendering. The intent is to show reverence through reference in form and ornament. With this treatment, the chair transcends both the screen and the physical world, becoming as much an image as a chair.
About the Artist
Russ Fogle is an artist and studio furniture maker working at the intersection of traditional craft and industrial technology. Influenced by an early career in engineering (BS Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University, 2013), and many months spent sleeping on the ground (Pacific Crest Trail, 2016), his current efforts work toward situating the vast, messy web of technological achievement underpinning human culture as an emergent natural phenomenon not dissimilar to the texture of a rock. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
David Gootnick, Meander
David Gootnick, Meander, 2024.
Alaskan cedar, Douglas fir on cloth, 41 x 17 inchesGroundbreaking means introducing new ideas or methods that are innovative and inventive. Kumiko patterns are uniquely Japanese in origin. Greek continuous line drawings are found in many variations on ancient Greek pottery and ceramics. Meander is an original and innovative fusion of traditional Japanese kumiko and ancient Greek motifs. The kumiko pattern is a “Rindo,” or Gentian flower, and the Greek motifs are two different ‘key’ or ‘meander’ graphics. This traditional Japanese pattern here can suggest a Greek vase and its mirror image, while the Greek motifs frame the piece.
About the Artist
David Gootnick is trained as a luthier and cabinetmaker, but his recent work explores kumiko, a Japanese woodworking technique that was developed roughly 1400 years ago as Buddhist-influenced architecture was brought from mainland Asia to Japan. His works are contemporary interpretations of this technique and are at the interface of art and design. Gootnick respects traditional Japanese patterns while creating works with both modern and ancient motifs. His work has been exhibited at the Wharton Esherick Museum, the Parthenon Museum in Nashville, TN, the Trenton City Museum, and the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, among other places.
Sonja Hackenmueller, Tea on the Lawn
Sonja Hackenmueller, Tea on the Lawn, 2025.
Poplar, milk paint, 11 x 7 x 37 1/2 inchesTea on the Lawn is a conceptual, whimsical take on a croquet mallet. Meant to imitate a stacked tea set, the mallet is accompanied by a “ball” in the form of an oversized sugar cube. In the most literal sense, the piece engages with the theme that a game of croquet must break the ground in order to place the wickets and make scoring possible.
Beyond this interpretation, the piece is also “groundbreaking” on a personal level for me as the artist. In order to build it, I had to learn a number of new woodworking techniques and learn how to utilize a variety of tools I’d never used before. For example, the intricate splashing handle of the mallet was carved freehand using only an electric pencil grinder. Up until the moment I sat down with the plank of wood I planned to use for the handle and picked up the tool, I had never touched a pencil grinder before. I had to experiment with different tips and methods of carving in order to achieve the look I wanted. I went on to use that newly developed skill to shape and texture the sugar cube “ball,” as well as to shape and define the cup handles and the spout for the teapot. This was also my first attempt at using a dowel joint, and the first time I’d touched a lathe in roughly seven years. The project is groundbreaking not only because it acts as a unique take on the instruments of a centuries-old lawn game, but because it pushed the boundaries of my capabilities as a woodworker beyond anything I’d previously accomplished.
About the Artist
Sonja Hackenmueller is a multimedia artist from central Minnesota. She recently graduated from Lehigh University in the fall of 2025 with a BA in Product Design and a double minor in Theater and Apparel Design. Hackenmueller works with a variety of mediums including, but not limited to, woodworking, metalworking, ceramics, sculpture, drawing, and painting. Her most recent collection of work has been focused on producing three-dimensional objects that play with both form and function in exciting ways. She particularly enjoys adding high levels of detail to her art and pushing the boundaries of her skills to do so. Outside of her personal artistic practice, Hackenmueller leverages her talents as a freelance 3D modeler and graphic designer alongside designing for the theater and working in various technical fields of theatrical production.
Josh Johnson, New Tooth
Josh Johnson, New Tooth, 2023-2026.
Honey locust, 63 x 17 x 9 inchesNew Tooth represents the merger of my artistic practice and my vocation as a woodworker: a personal groundbreaking, a new direction. Through this shift, wood becomes a conceptual vehicle and a connection with nature. My current body of work, Hedge Speak, translates everyday encounters through the preternatural language of folklore. Materials collected from my surroundings and the wood of tree species growing in the creases of my neighborhood are transformed into recognizable subjects observed from nature and lived domestic interiors. I carve, join, and construct forms that are repeated again and again, blurring the line between production and ritual.
About the Artist
Sculptor Josh Johnson makes connections between two environments—one at hand and the other remembered. He earned a BFA at the University of North Dakota, and an MFA at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Johnson was awarded a 2016 Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, a Kimmel Harding Nelson Residency, and was twice selected as a finalist for the William and Dorothy Yeck Young Sculptor’s Competition at Miami University in Oxford, OH. He has exhibited nationally, including shows at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, the Soo Visual Art Center in Minneapolis, Colorado State University, and Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati. Johnson was the Residency Arts Technician at the Bemis Center from 2016-19. He has taught art courses at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Nebraska Wesleyan University, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and the College of Visual Arts (St. Paul, MN). Johnson currently teaches sculpture and 3D foundations at Missouri State University and is employed as a craftsman at OP Hardwoods (Springfield, MO).
Danny Kamerath, Blossom
While building a fence on my property, the fence man cut down a mesquite tree on the property line, excavated the root ball, and pushed it aside. I found the root ball intriguing and kept returning to look at it. Eventually, I enlisted the help of a friend and we loaded it in my truck and brought it to my shop.
The chunk of wood was a little over two feet in every dimension and weighed over 200 pounds. I wasn’t sure what to do with it but eventually stripped off the bark, ground away the sapwood and dislodged some embedded rocks to see what was there. I needed to lighten it to make it manageable so, with power tools, I started to cut away sap pockets, rot, and borer bug trails. Shapes and forms began to be revealed. And the wood was beautiful!
It was a groundbreaking encounter for me and has changed the course of my work. I now mostly make sculptures from parts of trees killed by drought, freeze, or bugs, giving the tree a second life.
About the Artist
Danny Kamerath is a woodworker living in Llano County, Texas. He graduated from East Texas State University with a double major in Drawing/Painting and Advertising Design. Kamerath spent 20 years as an Art Director, Designer, and Illustrator in Dallas and taught Advertising Design and Illustration as an adjunct instructor at ETSU for four and a half years before becoming a full-time woodworker in 2001. He has worked with wood for more than 50 years. His work has appeared in more than 200 magazines and books including Fine Woodworking, Wood Planet, 500 Chairs, 500 Cabinets, and 500 Tables (Lark Publishing). Kamerath’s work has appeared in many juried shows including: CraftForms, the Wharton Esherick Museum Annual Juried Woodworking Competition, Crafts National 2012, Texas Furniture Makers Show, American Craft Today (The Baskam Art Center), Craft Texas (Houston Center for Contemporary Craft), Chair Show Three (Southern Highlands Craft Museum) and others. His work has also appeared in invitational exhibits including: Westward Ho (Wayne Art Center), Dining and Discourse (Houston Center for Contemporary Craft), Formica Formatted: Artists using Formica (Dallas Center for Contemporary Art), LOL: Handmade and Hilarious (Grovewood Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina), and others.
Mark Kobasz, The Gathering
Mark Kobasz, The Gathering, 2025.
Pine, poplar, cherry, chestnut, birch plywood, 18 x 18 x 90 inches
Lately, an iconic image of the ladder has emerged in my work. Reaching, seeking, connecting, ladders are what we use to reach the unreachable. A few years ago, I suffered a bad fall from a ladder on the first day of working in my new studio. The recuperation was a time of reflection—did the ladder begin to obsess me then? I have focused on the ladder image in prints, in glass, and now in wood, combining it with the also iconic chair. Recently, I synthesized my passion and long history of making ladders with a functional motif of a chair, which I call “Chairladders.”
The Gathering is an experimental piece, a gathering of 21 individual “Chairladders” of different sizes, heights, and wood species. I installed each one to evoke a conversation with its neighbors and also between them all as an overall group. Although silent, there is a dialogue within the negative space that is created amongst them.
About the Artist
Mark Kobasz is an artist/educator who creates beauty and engages with the community. Throughout 40 years of art-making, he has worked with wood, metal, printmaking, and glass in all forms. His work is inspired by minimalism and object sentimentality, as well as the animism of folk art and architecture. Cities and buildings have appeared in many ways: as pedestals for futuristic animals, cast icons of another world, and layered urbanscapes. Architectural imagery remains an important catalyst, reflecting his continued passion for urbanism, architecture, and ladders.
In his long career as an artist and arts educator, Kobasz has received three fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, an Artist As Catalyst 2000 grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and more. His work is in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the Arco Chemical Company, Deloitte Touche Corporation, Merck Corporation, The Wustum Museum of Fine Art, and many private collections. He has taught at the Tyler School of Art, Pilchuck Glass School, Tulane University, Sheridan College of Applied Art in Ontario, Hands on Glass in Corning, and, for over 20 years, at Springfield Township High School in Erdenheim, PA, where he was the K-12 supervisor for 10 years. His BFA is from the Tyler School of Art and his MAT from the University of the Arts.
Cole Messinger, New Analog Typing Machine
Cole Messinger, New Analog Typing Machine, 2025.
Baltic birch, maple, 32 x 18 x 1 1/2 inchesNew Analog Typing Machine challenges the conventional connotation of “groundbreaking” by appropriating the QWERTY keyboard and transforming it into a system of movable type printing. A series of groundbreaking inventions dating to the printing press have made the keyboards we use to type and text each day possible. New Analog Typing Machine anachronistically returns to older methods of text-based communication, questioning the progression of technology itself.
About the Artist
Through a mixed media practice, Cole Messinger is an artist, designer, and writer responding to a life split between the digital and physical worlds, engaging themes such as absurdity, technology, and craft. His work draws inspiration from the built environment, attempting to understand how and why the world looks and works as it does. Often, Messinger works between disciplines, making functional objects, systems of production, or simply sculptural forms. Messinger holds a BFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Ana Neifeld, Computer Girl
Ana Neifeld, Computer Girl, 2025.
Painted and constructed found objects 17 1/2 x 10 x 21 inches
Photography by Jeremy MeyerComputer Girl is assembled from found wood and a discarded keyboard, her face illuminated blue as if perpetually caught in the glow of a screen. Her handprints, permanently pressed into the keys, suggest an imprint— a moment of engagement that leaves a trace. She embodies the tension of our contemporary condition: being present yet “checked out,” navigating the interface between the digital and physical. The piece considers what progress means when new ground has been broken, while also breaking ground conceptually by transforming everyday detritus into a contemplative figure. Through her, I explore the intersections of personal and technological landscapes, and the spaces where meaning emerges from unexpected materials.
About the Artist
Ana Grace Neifeld studied painting at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, graduating in 2022. She has received the Estelle Rubens Travel Scholarship, Janet Fleisher Prize, and the Louis S. Fine Purchase Prize. She also was a recent recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant for emerging artists. Neifeld paints moments of life that feel familiar but almost forgotten. By drawing from life and imagination in tandem, Neifeld uses painting as an alchemical process to unveil a deeply mysterious but familiar world.
Anders Nienstaedt, Anxiety (Possibility Of) and Sabots for Sabotage
Left: Anders Nienstaedt, Anxiety (Possibility Of), 2024.
Burnt and shellacked poplar, steel, 60 x 16 x 80 inchesRight: Anders Nienstaedt, Sabots for Sabotage, 2021.
Screen-printed bent-laminated plywood, 11 x 6 x 8 inchesThe text in Anxiety (Possibility Of) is a two- word excerpt from The Concept of Anxiety by the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard links the “possibility of possibility” to both freedom and anxiety, and the sculpture reacts to this dual sensibility. Groundbreaking is a liberating, precarious, and terrifying part of being human, and we do it every day.
Sabots for Sabotage was inspired by the technical challenge of combining screen-printing and woodworking to create playful and identical 3D multiples in a new way. The word “sabotage” is tied to the wooden shoes (or sabots) which legend says weavers used to hamper the Jacquard mills that were automating their craft.
About the Artist
Anders Nienstaedt is an artist working at the intersection of craft, narrative, and design. He creates sculptures and installations that repurpose the visual languages of design and functionality to speculative ends. His artistic research investigates the ways in which wood can illustrate the complexities and contradictions of material culture. He is particularly inspired by wood objects of the twentieth century which exist at the complicated historical intersection between handcrafts and mass production.
George Sawyer, Too much is never enough (foundations of my craft practice)
George Sawyer, Too much is never enough (foundations of my craft practice), 2026.
Wood (maple, ash, oak, cherry), Woodbury granite, 18 x 21 x 26 inchesI grew up in the small town of Woodbury, Vermont. When I was growing up, there were two things that Woodbury was known for: the first was the granite quarry and the second was a folk artist named Bessie Drennan, who sold several of her paintings to Alfred Hitchcock when he was filming nearby. Bessie’s family ran a boarding house known as the Drennan Hotel, which was torn down in the 2010s. The granite in this piece was reclaimed from that building and feels deeply connected to this place and its artistic spirit.
Too much is never enough (foundations of my craft practice) explores the work and repetition that an artist goes through to “break ground” and build a foundation in any craft practice. It was built using a collection of baluster-style legs that I’ve hand turned and found to be imperfect in a variety of ways; these turnings support the granite slab that was quarried in Woodbury. Skills gained through trial and error, repetition, and learning by doing create a strong, resilient foundation. The mistakes we make along the way deserve recognition and even celebration.
Catalogue of leg imperfections:
- too short, small flat on bulb
- bulb too small, ugly turnip
- bird’s mouth diameter too small
- bulb too small
- bulb too small
- bulb too small, warped while drying
- knot
- grain run out
- bark
- so much bark
- split—too big to glue
- skew slipped while turning
- skew slipped, nice ochre yellow paint sample
- pretty good turning, glued onto the wrong stretcher while someone was telling me a story… could not remove without splitting
- nice turning, drilled stretcher mortise at the wrong angle
About the Artist
George Sawyer grew up amidst the wood shavings in his father’s Windsor chair shop in Woodbury, Vermont. He left home to study Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and worked for several years in product design, architecture, and building steam engines. After realizing that his father had the right idea all along, George returned to Vermont to train at his father’s side, and formally launched Sawyer Made in 2012. George brings together traditional green woodworking techniques while re-envisioning a future for fine craftsmanship and traditional joinery in modern seating. His work has been on display at MARCH (San Francisco, CA), FAIR (New York, NY), The Kent Museum (Calais, VT), the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center (Brattleboro, VT), Field Projects (New York, NY), ArtYard (Frenchtown, NJ) and the Vermont State House.
Wyatt Severs, Swing for the Fences
Wyatt Severs, Swing for the Fences, 2025.
Ash Louisville Slugger bat, maple, waxed linen, USPS mailbag canvas, milk paint, and poly-oil, 40 5/8 x 9 1/2 x 8 1/2 inchesPhotography by Loam, LLC
Swing for the Fences is a new direction for me as I work to allow myself to loosen up from my often hard-machined edges. I enjoy the freedom of getting lost in thought as I carve green wood, and I’m working towards making work that gives the viewer more freedom to create their own narrative as they interact with the piece. Though I make work with my own thoughts in mind, I love the truth that I have no control over the thoughts and meanings others will derive from their interaction with the work.
About the Artist
Wyatt Severs studied visual art at Murray State University and various craft schools across the country. He has taught at Penland School of Craft, John C. Campbell Folk School, Appalachian Center for Craft, and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and in publications include 500 Cabinets, Making Good, Maker Moxie and Woodwork magazine. In 2022 and 2023, Wyatt taught carpentry and woodworking for the Kentucky Department of Education at the Paducah Area Technology Center.
Mark Sfirri, On Solid Ground
This past fall I built a low dry-laid stone wall at my house, my first foray into using stone as a building material. I dug a footing, put down crushed stone, tamped it, laid out the stones in a single layer so that no piece rocked, then laid a second and third course. I built, and then rebuilt, several parts of the top courses of the wall until I was pleased with the result. The wall was backfilled with clean crushed stone. Then the top soil that I saved from my initial digging was put down and some ground cover was planted on top. I calculated that I had moved a total of about forty tons of rock, crushed stone, and soil in order to complete this modest wall! It gave me a whole new appreciation for stone work.
I thought about the boulder walls at the Wharton Esherick Museum and realized a new respect for that mammoth task. Humbling. As I was carting the remaining rocks uphill to the back of my property, I came across one piece that I thought would be an interesting base for something down the line. I didn’t know if I would actually use it but the idea appealed to me enough to set it aside. The theme of this show was just the spark that I needed and I came up with this result. It was breaking new ground (literally) that took me in this direction and it is groundbreaking for me to think about the medium of stone as a material to include in my work as a woodworker.
In my early years of woodworking, I carved samples of bas relief traditional forms that included acanthus leafage, a motif that was used in Greek architecture at the top of Corinthian columns as a way of paying tribute to nature by capturing the form in carved marble. My motivation, at the time, was to learn how to replicate those forms through carving. All these many decades later, I’ve come up with my own, more abstract, vocabulary of floral forms that combine wood turning and carving. Using hammered brass for the stems makes this visual connection for most people. The vase, in this case, is a block of stone, an unlikely but an apt choice for this piece, On Solid Ground.
About the Artist
Mark Sfirri received his BFA and MFA in furniture design at the Rhode Island School of Design. He is primarily a furniture maker and sculptor working in wood but is also a teacher, researcher, writer, collaborator, photographer, and printmaker. His specialty is multi-axis spindle turning, an area that he has been exploring since the early 1990s. He has lectured and demonstrated his techniques throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. His work is included in the permanent collection of twenty-eight public institutions including the Renwick Gallery, Yale Art Gallery, Museum of Art and Design, Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the James A. Michener Art Museum, among others. He had two solo museum exhibitions in 2024-2025. La Famiglia was held at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and The Flower Show was held at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
Sfirri is professor emeritus at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania where he ran the Fine Woodworking Program from 1981 to 2017. He has received three national awards: the Distinguished Educator Award in 2010 from the Renwick Alliance, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Collectors of Wood Art in 2012, and the prestigious American Association of Woodturners Professional Outreach Program (POP) Merit Award, in 2024.
Sfirri has been researching Wharton Esherick since 2006 and has authored or co-authored eight articles about Esherick. He served on the curatorial team for Wharton Esherick and the Birth of the American Modern, an exhibition and symposium held at the University of Pennsylvania in 2011. He was co-curator of Daring Design: The Impact of Three Women on Wharton Esherick’s Craft at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA in 2021.
Janice Smith, “Juliet” Chair
Janice Smith, “Juliet” Chair, 2004.
Baltic birch plywood, cherry 23 x 16 x 36 inchesIn my “Juliet” Chair, I use and adapt new techniques like torsion box construction to achieve the form and strength that I envision.
I began working with straight lines as a scheme to avoid complexity and reduce the level of difficulty required to create curvaceous pieces of furniture. However, straight lines quickly evolved into acute angles and folds. So my work remains functional and labor intensive, but a labor of love.
About the Artist
For more than 20 years, Janice Smith has been designing and building unique wood furniture. Her interest in furniture began when “shop for girls” was offered for the first time at her high school. She loved learning woodworking, and soon after discovered contemporary furniture after seeing a show at the Renwick Gallery (Woodenworks: Furniture Objects by Five Contemporary Craftsmen, 1972) with work by Sam Maloof, Wendell Castle, Wharton Esherick, and others. Smith studied with Alphonse Mattia at Virginia Commonwealth University (1975) and completed graduate work in 1981 at the Rhode Island School of Design, studying under Tage Frid. After teaching in the industrial and interior design areas full-time at the University of Kansas, where she pursued a more individual style with her work, Smith relocated to Philadelphia in the late 90s. She taught at numerous area institutions, including over two decades at Bucks County Community College. She has also taught carpentry to young people on probation with Mural Arts’ Restorative Justice program and was a Windgate ITE Resident at the Museum for Art in Wood in 2022.
Bill Stewart, Articles of Geometric Progression and Articles of Geometric Progression Sun Seed Pod
These sculptures are rooted in seed forms and in the threshold between seen and unseen geometry. A seed carries ancient, encoded intelligence within a resilient shell, gathering its force in darkness before breaking through the earth into light. That moment of emergence, the literal breaking of ground, is a point of transformation, where the essential character of a living thing is altered through its passage between two worlds. It is this interface, this charged boundary, that gives rise to this work.
The work also resonates with the groundbreaking vision of Wharton Esherick, whose radical reimagining of furniture, architecture, and sculpture dissolved the boundaries between them. The goal of my work is to enter into this lineage and extend it through a contemporary sculptural language. Our response to a beautiful geometric form is not unlike our response to music: a resonance that seems infinite, that references the order of nature, from galaxies to seashells. I am continually inspired by the natural world and its hidden mathematical order, and by the way universal patterns reveal themselves through shape, line, and space.
About the Artist
Bill Stewart is a sculptor whose work emerges from a lifelong engagement with form, material, and the hidden geometries of the natural world. He received his BFA in Sculpture from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 1990. After graduating, he worked in New York fabricating large-scale projects for Broadway productions and for prominent contemporary artists, most notably Jeff Koons. At Jeff Koons Productions, Stewart served as Technical Supervisor, contributing to the realization of several large-scale sculptures from Koons’ Celebration series. In 2003, Stewart relocated to Springs, in East Hampton, New York, where the environment of the East End became a vital source of inspiration. Alongside his studio practice, he is the founder of Sculpture City, Inc., an art fabrication company that produces work for artists, galleries, and museums worldwide. His work has been exhibited at Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY; Ma’s House Art Center in Southampton, NY; Katherine Markel Fine Arts in Bridgehampton, NY; and The Leiber Museum in East Hampton, NY. Stewart’s work is also in the permanent collection of The Leiber Collection Sculpture Garden in East Hampton, NY.
Christina Vincent, Chickadee
Christina Vincent, Chickadee, 2024.
Yellow flame birch stool, paper birch nest, maple eggs, acrylic paints, O.B. Shine Juice, wax, 19 x 23 1/2 x 24 inchesAs the world continues to expand technologically, it also continues to physically expand into natural habitats, literally breaking the ground with little regard for the natural ecosystem. Chickadee has many deep underlying messages; it speaks of tradition and skilled trades, of evolution, of being present and aware of the rhythms of the natural world, the indisputable connection humans share with nature, and how detached humans are becoming from nature and the physical world.
The Chickadee stool was crafted while attending the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship’s Turning Intensive. It was inspired by the tough-as-nails, non-migratory Maine state songbird, and the native birch, betula papyrifera, historically used by the Wabanaki people for canoes and medicine. Aside from being a furniture maker, I am a landscape designer. As such, I am fully engrossed in the natural world and view this piece as a new and groundbreaking approach to how I can craft a connection between humans and the natural world.
About the Artist
Christina Vincent is a fine woodworker and garden designer. Her studio and home are in North Haven, an un-bridged island in Penobscot Bay, Maine. Her background includes a B.S. in Textiles, Fashion Merchandising, and Design with an Art minor from the University of Rhode Island along with both a Furniture Intensive and Wood Turning Intensive from the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. Her work identifies with the key elements of the studio furniture movement; original designs, handcrafted and studio made, with the intention of individual artistic expression, paired with functionality. She notes that “There is something intangible about how much the art of fine woodworking has become a part of my identity. I derive deep satisfaction being able to take a concept and create it in the physical world. The inspiration for my work comes from the vast beauty of nature and the natural world.”
Christina has exhibited her work at the Farnsworth Art Museum 365 Gallery, Messler Gallery, Smithsonian Craft Show, Philadelphia Museum of Art Show, and The Gallery at Somes Sound, along with several publications including Maine Homes by DownEast, Decor Maine, American Woodturner, and Green and Healthy Maine Homes.
Janine Wang, Manuporter’s Door Stop: Owl’s Head to Germantown
Janine Wang, Manuporter’s Door Stop: Owl’s Head to Germantown, 2025.
19th C Germantown floor joist, Mid-Coast Maine igneous rock, brass rod, 6 x 4 x 26 inchesMy work with geology asks what it means to displace objects from the space they come from. If rocks in place are history, what is a rock displaced? When geologists look at striations in rock, like say, the layers that cut across the Grand Canyon, they read back in time far beyond the human. A mountain pushed up here, a glacier depositing stones there, a new deposit formed when the weather and sea level shifted…
A manuport is an object that has been carried from one place to another. The earliest ever found were stones, seashells, fossils, and bits of coral. This recognition of an object’s aesthetic character suggests that, as many anthropologists believe, manuports represent some of the earliest human examples of art. This is the rationale behind the way we humans scramble all the contents of the earth, at least artistically. In restarting my life on the other side of the country, I have chosen to bring boxes of rocks, whole old-house beams, and split logs across the continent. If our choices make us who we are, then these things have started to resemble a reflection of their manuporter. I am 3,283 miles away from a summer where daily, I gathered stones from a secret beach. 2,959 miles from the neighborhood where my dear woodshop was, and where I latched on to several old beams with square holes and plaster stains that I can’t let go of.
About the Artist
Janine Wang is an artist and educator based out of Albany, OR. She is originally from Queens, NY, and until recently called Philadelphia home. She discovered woodworking while studying to become an architect, and worked for years in the home goods and furniture design industry, where she remembered to keep one foot firmly rooted in the woodturning and hand- crafted world. Today she teaches woodworking and woodturning full time, helping to spread the joy and empowerment of building the environment we live in, one object at a time. Janine received a BArch from Cooper Union, a MA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a working education from the city of Philadelphia, as well as many residencies across the U.S. She is a member of the American Association of Woodturners, and an Assistant Professor of Teaching within the Wood Science and Engineering department of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.
Help Choose the Viewer’s Choice Prizewinner!
The 26 incredible artists you see included in this exhibition have been selected by our jurors. The jurors chose the First Place, Second Place, Third Place, and Honorable Mention prizewinners but we need your help to award the Viewer’s Choice prizewinner.
How it works: To vote, simply click the button below, select your top three favorite pieces, and submit your vote. The piece with the most votes by September 20, 2026 will be named the Viewer’s Choice prizewinner for the Breaking Ground Exhibition!