Emerging Artist Competition - Furniture Society

[Brigitte Martin]

In a joint effort to encourage the makers of tomorrow, the Furniture Society and the Philadelphia Furniture Show (PFS) are joining forces to present the Emerging Artist Competition at the Philadelphia Furniture Show in April 8-10, 2016. Exhibiting at the Philadelphia Furniture Show is a great opportunity to get instant feedback from the buying public, network with established artisans, secure commissions, and quite possibly sell your pieces at the show. 

 

Competition entrants must be current students, apprentices or recent graduates (graduation within the past 3 years). The winner of the competition will receive a free booth at PFS in April 2016, including the necessary electricity and lighting, and booth surround. In addition, the winner will also receive national exposure and media attention, as well as a mentoring session with Laura Mays, Program Director of the Fine Woodworking Program at the College of the Redwoods.

The only cost to the winner is getting yourself and your works to the show.

To enter the competition,  click here. Entries will be juried by 3 Furniture Society special guests: Emily Zilber, Laura Mays, and Sarah Marriage. Skill, craftsmanship, design, innovation, beauty, and presentation will all be taken into consideration during the jury process.

Competition deadline is February 14, 2016.  The winner will be notified by February 22, 2016.

the jurors

Emily Zilber is the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's first Ronald L. and Anita C. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts. Since 2010, Zilber has been responsible for the MFA's vibrant program of contemporary decorative arts, including guiding acquisitions and developing a presence for craft and design in the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art and throughout the museum.  Zilber oversees the Daphne and Peter Farago Gallery, a dedicated space for modern and contemporary craft, design, and decorative arts.  This gallery opened in September 2011 with "Crafting Contemporary: Selections from the Daphne Farago Collection."  Recent projects include the exhibition "New Blue-and-White", which focused on contemporary interpretations of blue-and-white traditions by artists across media (2013) and the reinstallation of the Farago Gallery with works from the MFA's permanent collection. Current projects include the exhibitions "Nature, Sculpture, Abstraction and Clay: 100 Years of American Ceramics" (opened January 2015) and "Crafted: Objects in Flux," (opened August 2015), which is accompanied by a full-length publication.   
Prior to joining the MFA, Zilber was Assistant Curator at Cranbrook Art Museum at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.  She has edited and written for numerous publications, speaks regularly on topics related to 20th and 21st-century decorative arts, craft, and design, and is a founding member of the Boston-based consortium The Commonwealth of Craft.  Zilber holds a BA in art history from The University of Chicago and an MA from the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture.

Laura Mays is an Irish furniture designer and maker, now living in Caspar CA. Since 2011 she has been the Program Director of the Fine Woodworking program at the College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg CA. She makes furniture with her partner Rebecca Yaffe, under the name Yaffe Mays.

Laura has a degree in Architecture from University College Dublin and studied Furniture Design and Manufacture at GMIT Letterfrack in Co Galway Ireland. She followed that with two years on the Fine Woodworking program in College of the Redwoods in California, and an MA in Design at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 2010. She was a lecturer in Furniture Design and Manufacture at GMIT Letterfrack from 2004 to 2011.

Sarah Marriage is a maker of fine furniture and other wooden objects. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Sarah studied architecture at Princeton University and fine woodworking at The College of the Redwoods. She is the 2015 recipient of the John D. Mineck Furniture Fellowship, through The Society of Arts and Crafts and the Mineck Foundation in Boston, and will use her Mineck funding to support the creation of "A Workshop of Their Own," a space where women furniture makers can come together in a supportive environment.  She is a co-founder and co-editor of Works & Days Quarterly, an online quarterly of arts, letters, and no small amount of craft. Sarah is currently making work as a studio fellow at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine.