Renewal
31st Annual Juried Woodworking Exhibition
June 12, 2025 – September 7, 2025
For many, art serves as a central gateway to renewal. Engaging with art can help us reimagine possibilities, offering glimpses of futures that may seem unattainable in our current reality. Renewal is also at the core of what it means to be an artist. For as long as people have made creative work, they have explored themes of renewal using a range of symbolic and narrative approaches to express core human experiences of growth, transformation, and the potential for reinvention.
Across his career, Wharton Esherick took renewal seriously. After training as a painter he renewed his artistic identity time and again, finding enough inspiration to make everything from illustrated books to stage sets and costumes. He believed in renewed approaches to form, refusing to make furniture that conformed to expectation and instead crafted objects that straddled the line between function and sculpture. He also embraced material renewal, repurposing ready-made wooden objects into new creations like his Hammer Handle Chair and Wagon Wheel Chair.
The enthusiastic response to WEM’s call for entries for its 31st Annual Juried Woodworking Exhibition, themed around renewal, underscores the ongoing relevance of this idea for contemporary makers. The twenty-five artists featured in this exhibition each approach renewal from a unique perspective, yet they share an interest in exploring its many manifestations through wood, whether focusing on its material properties, historical resonance, inherent narratives, or metaphorical potential.
This virtual exhibition features the works of all 25 included artists. These works are also available for viewing 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 7th. 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 Renewal are available for purchase and the WEM store also features new jewelry and home-goods made by artists.
2025 Guest Jurors: Rosanne Somerson and Jennifer Scanlan
We were honored and delighted to have Rosanne Somerson and Jennifer Scanlan serve as our guest jurors this year. Somerson is President Emerita and Professor of Furniture Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, and Scanlan is the Executive Director of the James Renwick Alliance for Craft.
First Place: Cameron Lasson
Taxidermy Tree
2023
Birch bark, birch heartwood, birch plywood
18 x 18 x 35 inches
Bow Back Windsor Chair
2024
Oak, rubber cast in oak
18 x 18 x 35 inches
Replica of an 18th Century Folk Chair in Stone
2024
Pine, vinyl stone flooring tiles, nails, stones
15 x 15 x 30 inches
I call this chair a Taxidermy Tree because the natural skin of the tree is reapplied to industrially processed plywood, reanimating the corpse of the tree. It is the same tree in three forms: the first is foraged bark, second is harvested and milled lumber, and third is industrially processed plywood. While the Taxidermy Tree renewed the Birch tree in a new form, it also brought renewal to my art by bringing in the traditional practice of foraging and applying bark to the surfaces of furniture.
Bow Back Windsor Chair renews the tradition of the Windsor chair through the material of urethane rubber. The spindles are carved entirely by hand with a spoke-shave, and the feet are modeled, printed, and cast entirely by machine. The rubber seat and backrest are cast in a hand-carved oak mold, replicating the surface texture of the oak. In this chair, all the components are held together in tension – as all Windsor chairs are – and there is additional tension between the industrial and the traditional.
In Replica of an 18th Century Folk Chair in Stone, my interventions to this 18th century pine folk chair are minimal: just the addition of the stone-graphic vinyl, nails, and stones inside. This gives renewed meaning to the riddle “What weighs more; 100 pounds of feathers or 100 pounds of stone?” This chair is meant to play with our perceptions of the abstract and the concrete. Upon first glance, it is a traditional folk chair, then the faux granite deceives the eye. Finally, as you pick the chair up, it weighs as if it were made of solid stone.
Cameron Lasson is an artist and furniture maker. His work draws from American Folk craft traditions and contemporary industrial vernacular. He studied furniture design at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he graduated in June of 2024. He has exhibited in galleries in Providence, Rhode Island, as well as various furniture fairs, including ICFF in Manhattan (2023, 2024) and Salone del Mobile in Milan (2024). His work was featured in the New York Times, Sight Unseen, E-flux Education, and the For Scale Substack. Additionally, he interned for the artist Lucas Cantù in Mexico City in the summer of 2023. He currently is living and working in Brooklyn, NY.
Second Place: Ellen Sigunik
Bistro Trestle Table, 2024. Ebonized oak, goatskin parchment, aged brass inlay, raw sand-cast brass, 24 5/8 x 24 5/8 x 30 1/4 inches.
My work as an artist is grounded in a deep respect for craftsmanship and the timeless quality of the materials I work with: shagreen, parchment, wood, clay, and bronze. These materials, and the techniques I use to shape them, connect me to some of humanity’s earliest creative expressions. I am inspired by the archaeological essence of my materials and processes, and I see it as a privilege to highlight the histories and stories preserved within their fibers. In a world that moves faster every day, I find meaning in processes that are deliberate, meticulous, and deeply rooted in tradition.
The top of Bistro Trestle Table is the result of a technique I developed to be able repurpose an accumulation of parchment remnants I have saved over my 20-year career working with parchment for clients. The oak frame of the table top was crafted from leftover flooring materials from a house renovation, while the sand-cast brass keys were made using damaged brass fittings I have collected or were gifted to me to use for castings.
All of my current work reflects my commitment to minimizing waste and giving new life to materials that might otherwise be discarded, particularly in luxury design. I crafted a series of these table tops developed for a restaurant, each with its own unique character, along with a 20-foot bar using a similar technique. My goal is to honor every part of the animal skins I work with, and to ensure re-use of all of my material remnants whenever possible.
Ellen Sigunik is the founder and artisan at Sigunik Studio where, over the past 15 years, she has worked with architecture and interior design firms to create heirloom quality pieces of furniture, decorative objects, lighting and interior wall panels for their luxury client base. She works to educate her clients on the unique qualities of parchment and welcomes the opportunity to inspire a closer look at the preserved stories every surface can reveal about its history.
The Ass, 2024. Carved wood, 24 x 6 x 30 inches.
D-g Days, 2023. Carved wood, relief printing on fabric, 24 x 5 x 12 inches.
Photography by Paul Takeuchi
Third Place: Eva Sturm-Gross
The Ass is based on the medieval German palmesels, a wooden statue of Jesus riding a donkey that is part of a Palm Sunday processional. The origin of this tradition is from a text from Zechariah 9:9 which describes the coming Messiah as “humble, riding on a donkey.” My version of the palmesel removes it from the traditional christological context (this is, after all, a text whose meaning was and still is part of the Jewish canon). There is nothing more tied to renewal than the arrival of a messianic world, a time when there is enduring peace. While symbols of Jewish revelation have been appropriated to fuel nationalist violence, it is my hope that I can counter these narratives by portraying them in a new light.
One staple of Talmudic discourse, and the tradition of Jewish exegesis more broadly, is word play. In line with the generations before me, D-g Days is rife with symbolism, some of it a bit tongue-in-cheek and more than a little subversive. “G-d,” which is often spelled with a dash instead of an O, is switched to “D-g.” Coming out of its belly is a scroll with seven circles which parallel the mystical interpretations of the creation narrative. Each one contains symbolism for each day as it is created with specific attention to a gendered duality as understood by the medieval authors of the Zohar. The subversion of this piece is that the days are unspooling from the belly of a dog. Creation not an act of male artistry, but a primal birthing. I am viewing this foundational story in its connection to the natural world and its cycles. And birth is, at its core, an act of renewal.
Eva Sturm-Gross is a Brooklyn based artist and woodworker originally from Vermont. Her prints and sculptures have been exhibited nationally – recently at the Ohio Museum of Craft and the Kent Museum – and she has received work opportunities and fellowships from Haystack Mountain School, Penland School of Craft, and Vermont Studio Center, among others. She thinks of her work as a form of creative exegesis based in the processes of traditional materials. She is interested in theological frameworks and how they can be applied to an immediate reality. Wood carving is the technical foundation of her work; she carves both sculptures and matrices for printmaking.
Honorable Mention: Sara Tabbert
Intersection (pictured top), 2024. Wood veneer, printmaking ink on cradled panel, 12 x 12 inches.
Passing Through (pictured bottom), 2024. Wood veneer, printmaking ink, wood filler on carved cradled panel, 12 x 12 inches.
My work is born of compulsion, curiosity, and my love of process. It is deliberate, rich in texture and often in color, and requires time and attention. Training as a printmaker has taught me a love of careful craft, a desire to create interesting surfaces, and a sculptor’s commitment to materials. I love wood for its dynamic qualities and I am in constant negotiation with its unique challenges.
Both Intersection and Passing Through work towards renewing and refreshing the decorative technique of marquetry. As an artist, I am slowly moving towards woodworking from relief printmaking. Perhaps because of my experience with print work, my instinct with marquetry is to layer, sand, obscure and reveal, incorporate other media, and break some of the “rules” while still holding my cutting and piecing to a high technical standard.
Passing Through is also about the personal renewal brought by exploring a new place and finding great beauty in unexpected places (a chain link fence, electrical insulators, my own wanderings as represented by the moving dots): the challenge, renewal, and productive discomfort of the new.
Sara Tabbert is a printmaker and mixed media artist from Fairbanks, Alaska. With an MFA in printmaking from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, her love of woodblock printing has led to the creation of carved, painted wooden panels. In addition to smaller work, Tabbert’s large-scale public art commissions can be found throughout Alaska. Her work is housed in public collections through the state and far beyond. In early 2020, the Alaska State Museum presented a solo exhibit of her recent work.
Tabbert has been awarded grants from the Rasmuson Foundation and the Alaska State Council on the Arts. In addition to residencies in the US, Canada, Argentina, and Italy, Tabbert has been an artist in residence through the National Park Service in Denali, Zion, Isle Royale, the Chilkoot Trail, and Acadia National Park. In 2024, she was a Windgate fellow in the WARP residency program through the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia.
Sharing art with other people is one of Tabbert’s priorities. She has worked actively as a teaching artist with schools throughout Alaska, and also leads workshops for adults. When not in the studio she enjoys skiing and hiking with her dogs.
saratabbert.com | @saratabbert
Photography by John Carlano/Museum for Art in Wood
Photography by Daniel Allen Photography
Viewer’s Choice: Keren Oertly
Wrapped Table, 2024. Aotearoa New Zealand red oak, low iron toughened glass, floor linoleum, birch ply, 22 x 22 x 22 inches.
Wrapped Table is a sculptural table that follows a throughline from the tradition of the Stammtisch, or meeting table, which is a regular feature in community settings in eastern Switzerland. A Stammtisch offers a place for people to assemble and discuss politics, philosophy and local matters, often debating and organising around important issues.
Conflating object and ritual, a Stammtisch offers a space and opportunity for the airing of views to build consensus and renew community spirit through shared action. Likewise, this table seeks to offer a welcome space for gathering and connection, around which new traditions might accumulate and develop. Like a small piece of architecture, this work seeks to cross different spatial thresholds, bringing different materials into conversation, and proposing a kind of reorienting object. Sourcing all materials from local suppliers in Whakatū Nelson, Aotearoa New Zealand, the production of the work celebrates community cooperation. The corrugated exterior, achieved through labour intensive hand routing, provides both a texture detail alluding to the process of wrapping, and a meditation on the preservation of the things we value in times of flux and transience.
Keren acknowledges the support provided by Arts Council Nelson, the Centre for Fine Woodworking, David Haig, Lou Fuller, Make Furniture, Kelvin Atkinson, Alison Oertly and Michael Ryan in the production of this work.
Keren Oertly was born in Huiterangi, Switzerland, and grew up between Switzerland and Aotearoa New Zealand. Her love of wood began at an early age when her parents refurbished the Geigenmühle Neerach, a sixteenth century flour mill in north Switzerland, which operated as a living museum and family home in the years that followed. In her object production, Keren seeks to structure her ideas of place, heritage, memory, and identity as a way of negotiating between different senses and experiences of home.
Keren’s training is in the visual arts, where she received a BFA (Hons) from Central St Martins (2011) in London, UK, followed by an MFA in Sculpture from Ilam School of Fine Arts in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand (2018). Through a social enterprise, Rekindle, which teaches heritage craft practices in community settings, Keren reconnected with wood working. She graduated from the Furniture Makers Programme at the Centre for Fine Woodworking in Whakatū Nelson, Aotearoa New Zealand in 2023. Keren went on to undertake an endowed fellowship at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, ME in 2024.
Juried Selections
Learn More
Click on the tabs below to learn more about each artist featured in the 31st Annual Juried Woodworking Exhibition.
Dotan Appelbaum, Chairs, 2023. African mahogany, wood veneers, cane, 17 x 16 x 30 inches.
Dotan Appelbaum, Abulafia Lectern (pictured right), 2021. Walnut, maple, maple veneer, brass, 20 x 20 x 40 inches.
Through my work I reject the conventional goal of newness in art and design. History is constructed out of the narratives by which we organize the substance of all that has ever happened. Our understanding of the contemporary moment is determined by how we shape our history. The future is a promise that emerges from how we contextualize our place in time. From this understanding, my work takes the form of critical reproduction. I reinterpret historical forms and styles with an understanding of the social, cultural, political, economic, and technological contexts of their original production in service of better understanding the present moment.
Chairs is an exercise in generative pastiche. This chair is almost entirely a reproduction of a Regency Era chair from 1830s England. I inferred form, scale, dimensions, material, and methods as best I could from a listing on the auction website 1stDibs. The appealing feature of this period chair, and why I found it useful, was the extensive marquetry decoration that adorned its faces. Early in the 20th century, form superseded depiction or decoration. Meditating on this shift, I substituted the depictions of conventional ornament with depictions of the most iconic forms of the 20th century: mid-century chairs. The illustration and organization of the marquetry takes further inspiration from Alexander Girard, one of the most iconic design illustrators of that period, and his pattern Fruit Trees. The original scrollwork now takes the form of branches, with chairs as the colorful fruits of that tree. This chair, then, is a meditation on what it means to renew ornamentation after Modernism.
Abulafia Lectern draws from Mudejar Style, an artistic and architectural tradition that captured my attention during an art history course on Medieval Iberia. Rooted in the complex interplay of cultures under Christian rule in recently reconquered territories from Islamic Iberia, Mudejar art and architecture grapples with the compelling question of how diverse religions can coexist within shared societies. As a designer of Jewish Moroccan heritage, I found immense inspiration in exploring these styles and delving into their historical narratives. This lectern imagines contemporary ritual furniture for the Samuel Halevi Abulafia Synagogue in Toledo, Spain—one of two remaining medieval synagogues in the country.
Abulafia, a prominent Jew in the court of Catholic King Pedro I of Castille, constructed a synagogue within his residence, mirroring the opulence of contemporary palaces. Crafted by artisans who had also contributed to the Alhambra, the sanctuary featured intricate carvings reminiscent of Islamic aesthetics, as well as multilingual inscriptions—including praise for both King Pedro I and Abulafia himself. In the centuries following the expulsion of Jews from Spain, the building was repurposed many times. The vast and ornately walled sanctuary room now sits empty. We have no record of how the room was furnished and how those furnishings may have looked. By making this lectern, I sought to breathe new life into a destroyed history of Jewish life. Visually, the design is meant to create balance between a rich fullness of intricate detail, with a striking emptiness—just as the covered walls of the synagogue form the resounding quietness of the cavernous room. The pieces are filled with thoughtful patterns and inscriptions (one inscription is the same text from Song of Songs that Abulafia inscribed above the spot where a lectern would have stood). As a tribute to Samuel Halevi Abulafia, I aimed to make an object that is regal without pretense. This piece disregards questions of who’s spaces are deserving of elaborate designs and furnishings, choosing instead to embrace aesthetics that speak both of elegance and cultural acceptance.
About the Artist:
Dotan Appelbaum is a furniture designer, artist and writer currently based in Providence, Rhode Island. Dotan holds an MFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as a BA from Wesleyan University having majored in sociology and studio art, with a focus in painting. Prior to his final year at Wesleyan, he studied woodworking at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. These four areas of study combine in his work to produce unique outcomes that push the limits of the various fields and ways of working.
Appelbaum brings a theory-oriented sociological approach to furniture design. Mining histories of design, as well as contemporary trends and precedents, he seeks to question and undermine how we understand our social relationship to furniture and craft. His work takes the form of both writing and furniture objects. Appelbaum’s work has been shown in NYC Design Week, the Zilka Gallery in Middletown, CT, the Woods-Gerry Gallery, and the Sol-Koffler Gallery in Providence, RI, various craft schools, and Design Week RI. He has won numerous awards, including ‘Best in Show’ in the Innovation + Design Awards from the International Society of Furniture Designers and first place in the ‘Open Category’ in the Fresh Woods competition.
Teresa Audet, Circumference VI, 2023. Cherry, dyed reed, flax and abaca paper pulp, 32 x 32 x 4 inches.
I create sculptural objects using a combination of wood and rattan reed. Through color, texture, and functionality, I explore the concepts of play and resilience. My work is process-driven; the acts of twining reed and carving wood serve as a practice of mindfulness.
My rattan work is made by twisting dyed reeds between my fingertips hundreds of times over to create hollow structures. These forms are an attempt to visualize emotions, the squiggles and twists of the interior self against the solid supports that keep us resilient. My work invites the viewer to consider the act of art-making as an integral and visible element in the final object.
The repetitive act of weaving this piece cultivates mindfulness, and the repetition in constructing the brick lay components adds to this meditative act. The theme of renewal relates to this sense of peace, letting go, and new ways of being that I have found come from repetitive craft actions that end in large-scale works. The circular shape, in combination with craft-as-ritual, particularly relates this piece to renewal.
About the Artist
Teresa Audet is an artist and educator based in Pittsburgh, PA, and originally from Minneapolis, MN. Audet holds a BFA in Furniture Design from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and has studied at the Mount Fuji School of Fine Woodworking in Yamanashi, Japan. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2023. Audet teaches furniture making and art nationwide, including at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, the North House Folk School, and Arrowmont School of Crafts.
Ashoke Chhabra, Chaos Hourglass Table Lamp, 2024. Baltic birch plywood, acrylic, 11 x 11 x 25 inches.
Photography by Ron Luxemberg
Chaos Hourglass Table Lamp can trace its lineage from a new line of work I undertook in 2018. It is representative of the evolution of the concept I came up with, and have since pursued. This new line of work is the Chaos Series, so named for the fragmented manner of their construction. There is, however, order at play, a pattern that rights itself before repeating again and again. Each form is fashioned from a building block of the same design. Only the scale is allowed to vary. These are stacked up, twisted, and reversed in many cases, all depending on the form I’m after. The one begets the creation of the next. The concept is deceptively simple and goes to show what can be achieved when a simple motif is exploited with artistic intent.
For me, the creative process is non-linear. It is marked by a series of failures, happy accidents, and modest victories. Occasionally, the endless plodding is punctuated by the spark of an idea, one that by its very nature alters the course of all future efforts. The work with which I am presently engaged is the result of one such shift, the likes of which has embolden me with a fresh enthusiasm to the point of reinvention.
About the Artist
Ashoke Chhabra currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has over 20 years of experience as an artist, designer, and craftsman. His formal arts education was in music, having earned a BA in Music from the University of California, Santa Barbara. During his time there, he studied under British post-war composer Peter Racine Fricker. As a fine artist, however, Chhabra is self-taught. By forgoing formal apprenticeship in the visual arts, he allowed himself the freedom to explore new concepts and ideas without the constraints of traditional teachings.
Wednesday Childs, Remnants of Impalement, 2023. Reclaimed hemlock and white oak and scraps of walnut, poplar, maple, ash, cherry, and ebony, finished with linseed oil, 57 1/2 x 19 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches.
Photography by Lin Elkins
Remnants of Impalement engages with the theme of renewal through the materials used in this table, all of which are either scraps or reclaimed wood. I took this collection of mismatched wood and stitched it together to create a table that also tackles themes of renewal through what it is meant to represent: the aftermath of and healing from a traumatic incident. I draw a parallel between the way the human body processes its history and the way that wood does the same. Both the human and the wooden body hold onto their physical history; whether it be a scar on skin or a knot in a board where a branch once grew, these bodies remember. The centerpiece of this table, a piece of walnut with a hole in it, had been discarded by other woodworkers for being too small and inconsistent. However, its beauty, the beauty of healing, resilience, and renewal, is put on display in this piece for all to see as it is suspended in the middle of the table.
Furniture making is not merely the creation of an object that interacts with the body. It is the birth of a completely new body through the labor of my own. In this process, I act as both mother and stitcher, frankensteining different species of scrap and reclaimed wood together to birth/create a new entity that will be judged, picked apart, and dissected by all that view its mismatched patchwork of a body. Whether it be a nail hole or a knot, a change made by external or internal forces, these events are laid bare in front of onlookers and make up the somatic memory of the wood.
In my work I explore vulnerability through displaying the wooden body and its somatic memory. In doing this, I complicate the relationship between viewer and object, calling into question what it means to look at and interact with a piece of furniture and another body. It is in the act of viewing my wooden newborn that its vulnerability is highlighted in relation to the viewer.
By carving the variety of woods that make up each piece of furniture into bodily and organic forms, I humanize them and question how a viewer/user should interact with each piece. These pieces become proxies for my own body, holding the burden of being on display in every joint as I am judged, picked apart, and dissected through them. It is at this moment that I am most vulnerable. And, it is at this moment that I ask the viewer how they feel now that I am the subject of their gaze.
About the Artist
Wednesday Childs is an artist and furniture maker living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2023, Wednesday graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) with a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture. Since then she has gone on to be an endowed studio fellow at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine. Although wooden furniture is currently her primary medium, she has a history of working in other media, including painting and weaving. Most recently though, within woodworking, she has experimented with power carving as a means of creating playful organic forms. Wednesday is always taking commissions and loves to help bring people’s furniture dreams to life.
Bruce Colburn, Plastic Cherry Blossoms, 2023. Sycamore branches, milk top pull rings, 75 x 38 x 27 inches.
This sculptural work was made in response to environmental concerns. It’s clear that humanity’s facing a mighty challenge; withering biodiversity, climate change, pollution, the list is long.
Plastic Cherry Blossoms is made from green sycamore branches blown down by violent storms, so converting branches that would rot on the ground into art is an act of renewal. Renewal – in this case, the lifecycle of growth, death, and decay of living things – is threatened by the overproduction of plastics, the sheer mass of it.
My aim with this work is to convince. Because I run on optimism and the firm conviction that we can do this, I mount art shows on the theme of climate control and sustainable development. The idea is to acknowledge the urgency and cherish the beauty. Finding this delicate balance was the artistic purpose of this body of work. Walk the line between shrill urgency and spotlighting the natural world’s sheer grace, and you may just convince. That meant a couple of things. First, making sustainable sculpture (walking the walk). The wood I use is exclusively sycamore branches picked up after storms or trash. Second, there must be beauty: I went for the branches’ graceful lines, debarked and sanded, but otherwise as is. And in the graceful arabesques of those bare branches I found the beauty that I hope tempers despair with joy. Lace a grim message with beauty and your message may hit home.
About the Artist
After studying Fine Arts at Haverford College, Bruce Colburn attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. In 1986, he was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for painting. Following a three-year stint working for the painter Nell Blaine, Colburn spent three years painting and teaching in the US Virgin Islands. In 1993 he moved to Paris, where he lived, painted, and exhibited for 12 years. In 2006, Colburn went to Pakistan and spent two years traveling and creating on-site watercolors in the streets, markets, and even mosques. Following the devastating attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad and the emboldened Taliban offensive, he returned to the USA, settling in Washington DC, where he lives and paints.
Talia Drury, Sycamore I: Achenes, 2024. Sycamore, 7 x 4 1/8 x 2 1/2 inches.
Photography by Elizabeth Lamark
Sycamore I: Achenes is an exploration of the textures and natural beauty found in the sycamore seed, inspired by my walks through nature and the seeds I collect along the way. This piece serves as both a documentation of the unique, intricate details found within the natural world and a vessel for holding the seeds themselves—preserving and honoring their quiet potential for renewal. The form of Sycamore I: Achenes also reflects the organic structure of the sycamore seed, emphasizing the way nature’s smallest elements carry immense significance in the cycle of life. By highlighting the texture and structure of the seed, I invite viewers to contemplate the quiet but profound transformations that take place within these natural forms, as well as their role in the larger ecosystem.
In crafting this piece, I aim to create a moment of connection between the viewer and the natural world, encouraging reflection on the hidden details that sustain life and the quiet growth that can emerge from even the smallest of beginnings. The piece embodies a renewal of both material and meaning—transforming a simple seed into a work of art that captures its quiet, ongoing potential for life and transformation.
About the Artist
Talia Drury grew up in the midwest. She received her Bachelor’s in Industrial Design from Iowa State University and recently finished her MFA in Furniture Design from The School of American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). She has focused her interests in art and mark-making around her memories outside as a child and her continuing curiosity to learn about what exists outside as she wanders different wooded paths. She currently resides in Rochester, New York where she is the resident artist at RIT and continues to make work inspired by seeds and other small objects that she finds on her walks.
Matthew Giossi and Ronald Kuhn, Tripod Stools, 2024. Painted poplar, blister maple, Dimensions Variable.
The tripod stool marked an incredible turning point for us. Before this, we had never ventured into designing seating, though we had toyed with the idea for years—specifically a turned Windsor-style stool with a heavily hand-shaped seat. This stool, our third iteration, has profoundly influenced our work. We’ve crafted around a dozen of them and expanded the concept into four additional pieces built around the same tapered, turned aesthetic. It’s thrilling to see how exploring this new avenue has redirected our trajectory.
Life has a way of twisting and contorting, and there are days when we’re driven to create, pouring ourselves into the design and making of furniture in our woodshop. Other days, the spark seems elusive, and we step away to explore other avenues of creativity—sculpture, painting, or music—to reignite our passion and reconnect with the reasons we chose this path in the first place. This balance between structured craft and artistic exploration keeps us thinking outside the box we’ve worked in for decades. The open-ended nature of exhibitions like WEM’s annual juried show mirrors our own approach: moments of rigorous training in furniture history, traditional joinery, and wood identification are complemented by spontaneous forays into sculpture and painting, reminding us why we fell in love with woodcraft in the first place.
About the Artists
Giossi & Kuhn is a design/build shop founded in 2015 specializing in custom furniture and interior work. We create functional stand-alone pieces and installations designed to be an integral part of your day-to-day life.
Matt Giossi is a native Rhode Islander that cut his teeth working in the trades. As luck would have it, he found his way to the doorstep of furniture designer and maker, Hank Gilpin in Lincoln, Rhode Island. Matt worked alongside Hank for over 12 years, honing his ability to cut joinery and learning the craft of building and designing hardwood furniture. Over this time, Matt gained a deep understanding of wood, aesthetic scaling, and craftsmanship. From how to read the grain of rough sawn lumber to allowing the wood to dictate the shapes of each piece to the various reactions that can result from the way a log was cut and dried, there is always some new detail to learn.
Providence based furniture maker Ron Kuhn has been working to refine his craft since 2013. After completing a year-long apprenticeship under Hank Gilpin, he stayed on as a full-timer. This experience fostered Ron’s reverence for our domestic forests as well as the pragmatic joinery
that can endure the test of time. Ron engages with wood in a variety of forms, from tree identification and dendrology to his appreciation for the traditional elements of Danish and Japanese design. His furniture and sculptural works highlight the unique characteristics of a wide variety of hard and softwood species, accenting the curiosities and growth patterns that appear within each. His creative and constructive techniques are informed by fine cabinet making and historical methods of furniture composition and reductive shaping.
Miles Gracey, Al Dente, 2023. Euro white oak, plywood, brass, 102 x 9 x 50 inches.
Miles Gracey, Snail Shelf, 2024. Pine, 6 x 9 x 24 inches.
Through the use of decoration, ornamentation, and craftsmanship, my work explores how domestic spaces can be activated through narrative. Building on ideas found in the Arts and Crafts movement, drawing influence from comparative literature, with a nod to postmodern architecture theory, and an unpacking of the label of the decorative arts – I’m examining modes of expression and shared knowledge.
After a long break from furniture making, in my own little “eat, pray, love” moment after personal tragedy, Al Dente is some fresh air. In some regards a simplification of my previous work, Al Dente is a condensation of values, concentration of form, confabulation of use. A half baked, intuitive process gesturing to a complete circle— a return.
Snail Shelf represents a departure from my previous furniture, but in another sense a personal homecoming. A shift from expressive, abstract volume and a renewal of premodern traditions of storytelling, narrative building, and allusions, which are more closely aligned to my art practice before my furniture career. This is a sea snail, a periwinkle. A memory from my childhood, a life lived in constant relation to the ocean.
About the Artist
Miles Gracey uses the vocabulary of furniture to translate sculptural forms by activating a once-passive relationship with the participant. Functionally, his furniture attempts to refocus attention on craftsmanship within sculpture, while conceptually undermining the art form’s functional and practical concerns. Gracey describes his work as playful and curious, prompting a participant to suspend their beliefs as it reveals or obfuscates their perspective or relationship with it. One of the artist’s driving forces is his weariness of standing behind ribbons to view art, not being able to touch or taste what he is viewing. Informed by this feeling, his work is concerned with all the senses: touch, smell, sound, and even taste are at the forefront of his practice.
Gracey grew up in California, where he received an MFA in Sculpture/New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design. He fell into the cabinet-making trade and eventually attended The Krenov School of Fine Woodworking. He has attended residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and was a fellow at The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine and a resident at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. He is currently pursuing an MFA in 3D Design at Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Elias Griffin, Engine No. 4, 2024. Reclaimed redwood glulam, copper carbonate, black iron oxide, marble dust, hard-wax oil, 16 x 9 x 61 inches.
Engine No. 4 is a lamination of half inch redwood scraps, rejects from an industrial woodshop where I was working. These pieces were used for large batch furniture production for a high-end brand with high material grading standards. The material itself was reclaimed from water towers that lived atop the New York City skyline for years. As the production went on, the offcuts and rejects piled up in the dumpster. These water towers had stood proudly in the sky throughout my childhood and those of countless others like me, who grew up scampering through the winding streets of New York, and the material felt like it deserved the effort of preservation. I began to frantically glue pieces together with no greater vision than to see them not discarded. It was a flailing effort, and I had to often justify myself to my colleagues as to why I was gluing together so many miscellaneous pieces without a clear plan.
This was my approach to the sculpture, so only in hindsight do I see it as an act of renewal. The material spans decades: back to the forests of California, then shipped to New York as a water tower, finally entering its third life as a by-product of an industrial workshop. However, the sculpture was not an act of renewal based on my desire to create a new life or to reshape what is existing, but instead reflects the other cause for renewal: the desire to preserve past lives and not see them forgotten.
About the Artist
Elias Griffin was born and raised in New York City, and received a BA in Art and Computer Science from Hamilton College in 2020. For two and a half years after college, he worked and trained as a professional ultimate frisbee player, dedicating almost all of his free time to competing nationally and internationally. During this time, Griffin began working in an industrial woodshop, wanting to learn some basic woodcraft. Very quickly, he found that something internal began to tick. Griffin found sports to be strained, emotionally intense, and ephemeral. Woodcraft and furniture offered a steadiness and certainty, where his pride was rooted in an object that could be shared, not a feeling that was fleeting and internal.
Griffin currently lives and works in Brooklyn, including with the urban salvage wood program of the New York City Parks Department, which mills trees into lumber and connects that supply with architects and designers. Drawing from a love of craft and history, he makes work that is occasionally functional and often functionless, and is happiest when he is experimenting with new materials and techniques.
Richard Haining, Jr., Tall STACKED Asymmetrical Vessel, 2024. Salvaged walnut, 9 x 5 x 26 1/4 inches.
Richard Haining, Jr. Short STACKED Asymmetrical Vessel, 2024. Salvaged walnut, 6 1/2 x 4 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches.
Photography by Joe Kramm
These STACKED vessels are meant to be more than just objects—they’re vessels of legacy, carrying stories of the materials, the hands that shaped them, and the lives they touch. By encouraging a shift in mindset, I hope to inspire a deeper appreciation for quality over quantity, longevity over convenience, and sustainability over waste. This act of transformation, giving discarded materials new life and value and challenging the disposable culture that often surrounds us, reflects a deep respect for materials, embracing their imperfections and potential. To honor the material I discover, to see the value in every scrap, means my relationship with the medium has evolved into something intimate and profound. Through this process of renewal, I’ve come to understand that creating with purpose can inspire a culture that values sustainability, craftsmanship, and the enduring beauty of transformed materials.
About the Artist
Richard Haining is an artist and studio furniture maker focused on the intersection of sustainable design and fine craftsmanship. Raised in Atlanta, GA and educated at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), he now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Haining’s work is driven by the idea of renewal—transforming salvaged materials into functional art that embodies beauty, craftsmanship, and environmental mindfulness. By reimagining wood destined for the landfill, he gives these materials a second life, creating bespoke sculptures, lighting, and furniture that challenge traditional ideas of value and permanence. Through his practice, Richard explores how society assigns worth to objects based on scarcity, function, and cultural significance. Working with reclaimed wood from around New York City, he seeks to disrupt these value structures, using what others discard to create pieces that carry new meaning. Inspired by a range of historical periods, he juxtaposes “low-value” materials with “high-art” forms, asking viewers to reconsider what is truly valuable.
Aydan Hüseynli, Come Back Home for Christmas, 2024. Optical fiber, LED string lights, aluminum pipe, my Christmas tree from 2023 (pine), 14 x 14 x 60 inches.
Aydan Hüseynli, Pine Replica Hook, 2025. PETG, aluminum leaf, 3 x 1 3/4 x 3 inches.
Using the logic of familiar, domestic objects, my work finds resonance between symbolic origins and contemporary simulacra. In collapsing the ‘real’ and ‘simulated’, I open a third space for viewing the mediation of reality, memory, and heritage within the contemporary Western landscape–where they exist as apparitions rather than fixed origins.
Come Back Home for Christmas explores how the rituals of the holiday intersect with a culture of artificiality, including how nostalgia reproduces within that state of artificiality. It speculates on the nature of mass distributed coziness, something that emanates from the simulacra of artificial Christmas trees, following the progression of their production in aluminum in the 1950s to plastic more recently. For this piece, I reproduced the spine of my dead Christmas tree from 2023, collapsing the personal and the mass produced. All of the artificial Christmas trees get to relive every year, so I wanted to make mine immortal too. I 3D-scanned the pine tree, remodeled it in segments with joinery, and then printed more than 400 segments in PETG plastic to create a hollow object with the texture of the original bark. I then gilded it in aluminum and wired LED lit fiber optics through the ends of the branches. The rebirthed artificial tree is mounted on a base made from the wood of the original tree. Pine Replica Hook is also a replicated segment of a tree branch from my Christmas Tree of 2023. Originally a place for hanging ornaments, the branch is renewed as a year-round wall hook.
In our contemporary Western reality of mass mediation and distant origins, nostalgia now emanates not from the warmth of an ancestral hearth, but from the flicker of an electric fireplace or artificial Christmas tree. I explore this absurd reemergence of nostalgia through material dynamics in my work and the traditions they invoke, creating sculptural pieces that are conceptually fulfilled by their function, associations, and analog vitality.
About the Artist
Aydan Hüseynli (b. 2002) is an Azeri-Canadian artist and designer based in New York. She received a BFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2024 with a concentration in Theory and History of Art and Design, receiving honors and the Samuel
Gragg Award for Innovation. She has shown work at ICFF + WantedDesign 2022 & 2023, Jonald Dudd NYC 2024, Pretty Secrets NYC 2024, Blue Shop Gallery in London, Woods Gerry and Gelman Gallery in Providence, RI, and co-curated a 2025 exhibition of surreal objects in NYC titled Songs of a Decoy.
Danny Kamerath, Burst, 2024. Post oak, 9 x 9 x 9 inches.
My woodworking practice is changing. Instead of focusing on making furniture from lumber, I’m now making objects from wood I harvest from dead trees in my community. I live in Central Texas and the cycle of drought and freeze brought on by climate change has weakened many of the old oak and mesquite trees, making them susceptible to wilt and blight and other terminal afflictions. It’s sad to see a grove of oaks, some more than 300 years old, standing dead in a pasture. Landowners around here call me when they have a beloved old tree die to see if I can use the wood. Many of those trees have large burls or other interesting features, and I have been gathering those parts, turning them into objects and giving those trees a second life.
About the Artist
Danny Kamerath makes objects from wood. “Furniture, sculpture, vessels and all sorts of small whimsical things. I try to make beautiful stuff. Interesting, elegant, sturdy, strong, smart stuff. I do my own design. I don’t follow trends, but I don’t ignore tradition either. I use the best materials. I learn every day. I work hard to make good stuff.”
Kamerath graduated from East Texas State University (now known as Texas A&M-University-Commerce) with double majors in drawing/painting and advertising design. He went to college to major in sculpture, but the advertising design department had the greatest teacher he had ever known, and encouraged him to become a designer. Kamerath worked for more than 20 years as a designer, art director and illustrator. He began making furniture in 1990 and decided in 2005 to pursue it full time.
(left) Mizuki Kojima, KAMI, 2024. Kozo plant, cotton rag, rattan, ash, 25 x 24 x 24 inches.
Photography by Amy Lee
(right) Mizuki Kojima, Stool, 2021. Ash, 16 x 16 x 18 inches.
The KAMI chair engages with the theme of renewal by celebrating the transformative potential of Japanese handmade paper, or washi. Through the craftsmanship of different artisans, the paper evolves, gaining distinct textures and characteristics that reflect its origins and makers. Washi embodies a unique duality – soft yet strong – and the chair leverages this quality to offer a sensory experience that invites users to explore its tactile depth. By fostering a profound connection with the material and the intricate processes behind its creation, the KAMI chair honors the tradition of washi-making while reimagining it in a contemporary context, demonstrating the renewal of an ancient craft in modern design.
Stool engages with the theme of renewal by reinterpreting traditional woodworking techniques through a modern lens, breathing new life into time-honored craftsmanship. Inspired by Danish Modernism, the piece elevates joinery from a purely functional element to a focal point of aesthetic and structural significance. The stool’s minimalist form and natural curves emphasize the beauty of its intricate joints, showcasing how traditional methods can be adapted to contemporary design. Furthermore, the organic nature of wood – its tendency to expand, shrink, and evolve over time – reflects the dynamic and ever-changing relationship between material and environment, underscoring the concept of renewal as a continuous process of adaptation and reinvention.
About the Artist
Mizuki Kojima’s practice focuses on the interconnectedness between a designer, craftsman and artist, and delves into themes such as material transformation, cultural hybridity, and the joy of discovery. She aims to create work that fosters meaningful interactions, whether through the tactile exploration of handmade paper or the cultural resonance of a soy sauce bottle inspired by traditional Japanese barrel-making techniques. These themes are deeply personal, rooted in her multicultural upbringing and passion for bridging historical and modern design practices. Growing up at the confluence of Chinese and Japanese cultures, and later studying and working in the United States, has shaped her perspective on design as a global and inclusive practice.
Kojima’s designs are rooted in material exploration and storytelling. She works with natural and traditional materials, such as handmade paper, wood, and ceramics, combining them with modern manufacturing techniques. This approach allows her to preserve the soul of craftsmanship while pushing the boundaries of material innovation. Her process begins with in-depth research, followed by iterative prototyping to achieve a balance between form, function, and narrative.
Janos Korodi, Transfer 06, 2020. Sheathing plywood, 31 1/2 × 43 × 1/4 inches.
As part of my Motion Pictures painting and printing cycle, I began a project in 2020 that renewed discarded plywood sheets by transforming their natural patterns into dynamic backdrops for distorted Google Street View images. Using dye sublimation, this process upcycled industrial waste while blending virtual motion with physical reality. The result is a fresh, conceptual synergy between substance and content, fostering connection with my new society and its evolving culture, and engaging with the spirit of place.
I rent my studio in Harrowgate, Philadelphia, in an old warehouse surrounded by small family-run firms, including a sewing shop next door. Fabric rolls arrive at their shop on pallets, separated by raw plywood sheets that would otherwise be discarded. I asked them to save the sheets for me, drawn to their natural beauty despite not knowing their purpose at the time. Later, I realized their potential for upcycling, using them as the base for dye sublimation prints that preserve and integrate their patterns into the artwork. This process not only renews the wood but also fosters a meaningful connection between the neighborhood’s working-class industry and art, creating a shared, organic interaction through creative reuse.
About the Artist
Janos Korodi was born in Budapest, Hungary, where he completed a PhD at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. He has been awarded numerous artist residencies in the United States and has exhibited internationally. In 2015, Korodi relocated permanently to Philadelphia, where he now resides with his family. In his recent painting series Motion Pictures, he explores the notion of place, non-place, and transition, as mediated through technology.
Lisa Max, Tsuru, 2024. Cherry, maple, brass, fabric, and resin, 6 x 6 x 6 inches.
Tsuru is a renewal of memory, craft, and joy. The origami crane and the Sonobe unit ball which my box is modeled after, were some of the first origami folds my grandmother taught me. The speed and dexterity she wielded while folding was extraordinary, and I wanted nothing more than to fold a paper crane neater and faster than she could. When I revisited her as a teenager, she had joined a bird-carving club and taught me how to use all her traditional Japanese carving tools, even gifting me a set of my own.
My box is a tribute to what she shared with me, the joy it brought, and the love for craft it continues to inspire. It is a reimagining and renewal of what she taught me, along with the sensibilities and skills I have learned while away from her. Tsuru is my way of sharing with her a little bit of the magic and awe she shared with me.
About the Artist
Lisa Max is a multimedia artist working at Anderson Ranch Art Center as a Studio assistant in the Wood Shop and Digital Fabrication Lab. She graduated with a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied many mediums including animation, ceramics, woodworking, and metalworking. She enjoys making kinetic objects and sculptural instruments that share an element of unexpected excitement and awe. Her artwork draws heavy inspiration from her Japanese heritage and often references memories from living in Tokyo during her early childhood.
Seth Rolland, Castanea spiralis, 2024. Pruned Chestnut, 18 x 17 x 2 inches.
Seth Rolland, Acer articulo, 2024. Pruned maple, 22 x 7 x 84 inches.
Photography by Myron Gauger
Last spring, I assisted a friend in pruning her large orchard of sweet chestnut trees (castanea mollissima). The orchard had been neglected for a few years and most of the work was removing suckers – fast, straight growing, vertical stems that come straight out of the roots. These don’t produce chestnuts and crowd the light from the parts of the tree that are more productive. We were renewing the orchard, bringing it back to productivity, and meanwhile creating a large pile of straight limbs with interesting branch intersections. I took many of these back to my workshop, dried them and grafted them back together into a renewed form, a spiral that pays homage to their origin with its beautiful branching, but completely changes the form of the straight suckers. This new species I have named castanea spiralis (spiral chestnut).
On a property that had been clear cut 15 years ago, some of the bigleaf maple (acer macrophyllum) stumps were crowded, with too many suckers growing. To aid in the renewal of the forest, I helped thin out the weaker ones, ending up with some straight sticks. I dried these, then renewed them, giving the sticks back their flexibility through numerous joints, while also acknowledging that it can no longer stand up on its own. This piece can be draped or coiled in endless ways each time with a new form and life. This new species, acer articulo (flexible maple) is the result.
About the Artist
Seth Rolland is a custom furniture maker in Port Townsend, WA, with 30 years experience. His work is represented in galleries across the US and Canada, and was featured in a 2016 solo show at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington. Seth’s furniture has been published in American Craft, The New York Times, the back cover of Fine Woodworking (2010), and books such as 500 Cabinets (Lark Books, 2010), 400 Wood Boxes (Lark Books, 2004), and 500 Chairs (Lark Books, 2008).
Emma Senft, checking iii, 2023. Ash and basswood, Dimensions variable.
Photography by Jim Escalante
checking iii is part of a series of work exploring my experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The piece engages with the theme of renewal both within the creative process, and in what it asks from the viewer.
I use the making of an object as a mediation between myself and the object; a way of redefining my relationship to it, or understanding something new about it. By mixing the familiar with the unfamiliar, I aim to draw into question our perception of the world around us. By making a viewer aware of this act, I am asking us to reconsider our relationship to the built environment both within the gallery and beyond. My distorted objects are a prompt at reframing for the viewer – a renewal in perspective. If perception is inherently reductive, how can we push a reset button on the way we see certain things? I hope the work acts as a kind of observational priming for when they leave the gallery and go back into the built spaces they occupy every day.
About the Artist
Emma Senft is an artist and woodworker based in Montreal, QC, and Madison, WI. Senft holds an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They create furniture and sculpture using wood, textile and decontextualized construction materials. The interaction between our bodies and the built environment inspires their research. Using sculpture and installation, Emma works to use scale and spatial arrangement to prompt the viewer’s awareness of their own body in relation to the work. They are the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, a Center for Furniture Craftsmanship fellowship and have been a resident at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. They are currently an Artist-in-Residence at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in South Korea.
Steve Sinner, Untitled, 2024. Maple, Watco Oil, 2 5/8 x 1 1/8 x 1 1/8 inches.
My translucent pierced goblets graced the cover of del Mano Gallery’s 2005 Small Treasures catalog. Nearly twenty years later, I felt the urge to revisit creating thin goblets and this considerably different style emerged: tapered cups, vertically aligned piercing, thinner stems, and additional decorative elements on the stems.
As far back as I can remember, the process of making has fascinated me. All sorts of objects, from scooters to chessmen, came out of the basement workshop prior to high school. An appreciation of fine art and classical music began in high school, but I never dreamed of making art. A degree from Iowa State in Industrial Education and work in manufacturing followed. The presence of order, repetition, efficiency, simplicity, and quality in my work are a reflection of my fascination with manufacturing processes.
About the Artist
Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1942, Steve Sinner’s early interest in woodworking led to a degree in Industrial Education from Iowa State University, followed by a 33-year career in industry and social services facilities management. Woodworking was a hobby, concentrating on furniture and clocks. In 1975, he read Dale Nish’s Creative Woodturning, which sparked what has become a passionate interest in artistic woodturning. By 1998 he was turning full time, and in 2001 he added a studio to his Bettendorf, Iowa home.
Sinner concentrates on developing intricate surface decoration using silver leaf, acrylics and ink on deep hollow vessels turned primarily of maple, walnut or cherry. His works are found in museums, galleries and collections from New York to California and have been featured in art and craft publications in the United States, England and Australia. The Cheongju International Craft Biennale in South Korea has exhibited his work three times and, in 2003, awarded him a special citation. His work is in the permanent collections of four midwestern museums plus the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. In 2018, the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, IA hosted a solo exhibition of his work titled Steve Sinner: Master Woodturner.
(left) Rosalind Sutkowski, Simulated Bark #3, 2019. Wooden photograph, birch, 14 x 11 x 2 inches.
(right) Rosalind Sutkowski, Simulated Bark #10, 2019. Wooden photograph, basswood, 15 x 10 x 2 inches.
Rosalind Sutkowski, Simulated Bark, Plank, 2019. Panoramic Wooden Photograph, poplar, 84 x 12 x 2 inches.
These pieces are from a series called Simulated Tree Bark that were created as wooden photographs. Traditional photographic images are digitally converted to three dimensions. By using a CNC router or laser cutter as a printer, the once flat photographic images become tactile bas-reliefs on wood. The idea is to take a piece of lumber which is made from a tree that was cut down, and then re-process the lumber so it reverts back to the original form of the tree. It is meant to document and reproduce the environment as it is now and that might not exist in the near future.
About the Artist
Rosalind Sutkowski is a fine art photographer whose artwork and research includes sensory investigations that utilize design theories to explore the intersections between photography and fabrication technologies. She has had one person exhibitions at Tyler School of Art at Temple University, The University of the Arts, and Drexel University, and has exhibited her work in group exhibitions throughout the United States. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as private collections.
Wu Hanyen, Pon Side Table, 2024. Elm, cork, 12 1/2 x 12 1/2 x 15 inches.
Wu Hanyen, Callahan Light, 2024. Elm, linen shade, brass hardware, 11 x 11 x 16 inches.
Photography by Rob Chron
Six years ago, Dutch elm disease devastated neighborhoods across Providence, necessitating the removal of majestic elm trees that had long defined the city’s landscape. One of these trees, preserved by a friend who foresaw its potential, was set aside in 2018. Years later, this elm wood found its way to me as a gift, carrying both memory and promise. Through thoughtful craftsmanship, the elm has been transformed into a functional light, extending its legacy and giving it a renewed purpose. The Callahan Light also serves as a metaphor for renewal, with light itself symbolizing clarity, restoration, and new beginnings. As the elm wood transitions from a once-standing tree to a finely crafted lamp, the light it now emits brings warmth and life to spaces, creating a connection between its past and its future. This process underscores the transformative power of design to honor materials and the stories they hold, breathing new life into what once seemed lost.
Incorporating cork from Portugal alongside the elm, the Pon Side Table explores renewal not only through material but also through practice. Working with cork allowed me to revisit and expand my skills, offering a renewed perspective on the interplay between materials and process. This combination of traditional craftsmanship and diverse materials highlights the transformative power of design to honor the past while evolving through creative exploration. The Pon Side Table bridges local history and global material culture, symbolizing renewal in both practice and purpose.
About the Artist
Wu Hanyen worked as a furniture maker for five years in New York City prior to receiving their MFA in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). An injury in the woodshop, hours of reflection, and a passion for both movement and making is what crafted the creation of their company, Work in Use. Wu has been a practitioner studying movement as inspired by calisthenics, Ido Portal Method, and the Fighting Monkey. As a craftsperson, they believe we should take care of our body the way we maintain and sharpen our tools. Wu is reframing the way we understand studio practice by reconnecting with our movement potential and improving physical intelligence. Wu is currently an Associate Professor in the Sculpture Department at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and has offered virtual movement classes specifically intended for glass makers and artists through the Glass Education Exchange (GEEX).
Upcoming and Related Events
Renewal Catalog
This 80-page, full-color catalog is a comprehensive look at Renewal, the Wharton Esherick Museum’s 31st Annual Juried Woodworking Exhibition. This publication captures the innovative works of art, craft, and design by twenty-five artists whose work explores how renewal exists in their creative lives and practices. Each artwork in this year’s show is represented through imagery alongside artist statements and biographical information. The catalog also includes a welcome from WEM Executive Director Julie Siglin and an introduction from Emily Zilber, WEM Director of Curatorial Affairs and Strategic Partnerships.
