Press kit for Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking

For Immediate Release
Summer 2019
Media Contact: Katie Sorenson, Community Engagement Manager
[email protected]

Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking
October 4, 2019 – January 25, 2020
Curator: Laura Mays and Deirdre Visser

Philadelphia PA: The Center for Art in Wood is pleased to present Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking. In the first exhibition of its scope, the curators present the breadth of perspectives and practices that North American women and women-identifying woodworkers in the furniture tradition are employing. Making a Seat at the Table—held on the centenary of women’s suffrage in the United States—showcases the profound skill, innovation, and creative vision of these makers. While acknowledging that woodworking has been and remains male-dominated, the exhibition focuses on the many ways these makers are both expanding the edges of the field and holding down the center. An exhibition of objects as well as process, and including long-established as well as emerging craftspeople, Making a Seat at the Table explores both the exquisitely crafted object and the community that is built around it. These makers are deploying their work to change models of education, production, entrepreneurship, distribution, and community-building, positioning craft as a tool to imagine and create a more sustainable, equitable, inclusive future.

The exhibition, which precedes a comprehensive book by the same title to be released in 2020, is the initiative of co-authors and co-curators Laura Mays and Deirdre Visser. Mays is a woodworker, designer, educator, and writer. She is the Director of the Fine Woodworking Program at The Krenov School, Mendocino College in Fort Bragg, CA (formerly the College of the Redwoods). Her work is represented in the National Museum of Ireland, and in private and public collections in the US and Ireland. She has written for Fine Woodworking and Furniture and Cabinetmaking magazines and is profiled in Nick Offerman’s woodworking book Good Clean Fun. Mays is also the founding president of The Krenov Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports the craft of woodworking. Visser is a curator, writer, community-based artist, and woodworker. As Curator of The Arts at CIIS in San Francisco and publisher of CHROMA books, she strives to promote pluralism in the arts, to support artists in the creation of new and experimental work, and to foster dynamic and critical dialogues within and across communities that propose integrative approaches to the urgent questions of our time.

Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking will present works by 43 artists and makers from throughout North America:

Jennifer Anderson Melanie Hamilton Yvonne Mouser
Teresa Audet BA Harrington Christy Oates
Connie Chisholm Katie Hudnall Jodie Prud’homme
Vivian Chiu Erin Irber SIOSI
Emma Chorostecki Laura Kishimoto Rosanne Somerson
Alex Clarke Yuri Kobayashi Michaela Crie Stone
Kate Davidson Chris Lee Tiny WPA
Leigh Dotey RH Lee and Would Works Katrina Tompkins
Heidi Earnshaw Bowen Liu Briana Trujillo
Ashley Eriksmoen Kristina Madsen Hannah Vaughan
Bec Evans Sarah Marriage and Sarah Watlington
Annie Evelyn A Workshop of Our Own Leslie Webb
Mollie Ferguson and Heide Martin Folayemi Wilson
Heather Trosdahl Sarah Martin Kimberly Winkle
Gail Fredell Wendy Maruyama Kat Wong

A committee of professionals in the art, design, woodworking, and furniture fields was responsible for jurying the selection of works for the exhibition: Co-curators and publication co-authors Laura Mays and Deirdre Visser;
Tom Loeser, artist and professor of art and woodworking at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Jennifer-Navva Milliken, Artistic Director for the Center for Art in Wood; and renowned New York-based artist, art promoter, and designer Cheryl R. Riley.

The Center invites the press for a preview of Making a Seat at the Table with curators Laura Mays and Deirdre Visser and the Center’s Artistic Director on Friday, October 4, 2019, 10:00 am – 12 pm. A reception will be held 5–9 pm that evening; a gallery talk with Mays, Visser, and several participating artists will be held 6–7 pm. Several programs are planned in conjunction with the exhibition, including a Young Artists Speakers Series lecture given by Emily Bunker on October 23 at 6 pm and a closing makers mixer on January 25, 2020.

For more information please contact Katie Sorenson, at 215-923-8000 or [email protected].

Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking is made possible with generous assistance from
The Krenov Foundation and a grant from The Furniture Society through its EFASO program. A Craft Research Fund grant from the Center for Craft facilitated the research for Making a Seat at the Table publication and exhibition projects.

The exhibition program at the Center is generously supported by the Cambium Giving Society of The Center for Art in Wood, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and Windgate Charitable Foundation. Corporate support is provided by Boomerang, Inc., Penn State Industries, Signarama Center City, and Sun-lite Corporation.

Pictured: Making a Seat at the Table logo, courtesy of Laura Mays

Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking October 4, 2019 – January 25, 2020 Curator: Laura Mays and Deirdre Visser

Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking
October 4, 2019 – January 25, 2020
Curator: Laura Mays and Deirdre Visser