Abby Mechanic is a passion­ate leader, admin­is­tra­tor, educa­tor + maker within the craft field. Mechanic received her BFA from the Maine College of Art with a concen­tra­tion in Wood­work­ing and Furni­ture Design. After grad­u­at­ing, she worked in various design studios, such as Luur Design, Nate Berkus, and Matter Prac­tice. Mechanic then spent seven years working at Parsons School of Design, where she began as a Part-Time Tech­ni­cian and later became the Asso­ciate Direc­tor of the Making Center. Her port­fo­lio covered over­see­ing all analog-making facil­i­ties on campus, includ­ing wood­work­ing, metal­work­ing, ceram­ics, sewing, textiles, light lab, and more. Other respon­si­bil­i­ties included employee hiring, onboard­ing, manage­ment, health & safety, and system devel­op­ment. After Parsons, Mechanic worked at Peters Valley School of Craft as the Educa­tion Direc­tor, over­see­ing the school’s program­ming, studio spaces, and artis­tic team. Mechanic managed a wide range of shops, includ­ing black­smithing, ceram­ics, fibers, fine metals, glass, print­mak­ing, photog­ra­phy, and wood­work­ing. She curated, planned, and executed 160+ work­shops a year with the help of a seasonal team. Mechanic currently serves as the Board Pres­i­dent of The Furni­ture Society, where she is leading the orga­ni­za­tion through a new 5‑year strate­gic plan merging her skills in admin­is­tra­tion and furni­ture making. In addi­tion, she travels around the country teach­ing and expand­ing the field of wood­work­ing at orga­ni­za­tions like North Bennet Street School, Arrow­mont School of Craft, Charleston School of Wood­work­ing, Wendell Castle Work­shop and more!

https://​www​.abbyme​chanic​.com/

@abbymechanic

Sophie Glenn is a metal­worker and furni­ture maker currently based in Reading, PA. She makes classic furni­ture designs recre­ated out of steel to give voice to women in both the wood­work­ing and metal fields, and she utilizes steel in the making of her work to explic­itly expand upon the mate­ri­als that are consid­ered to be part of the fine furni­ture making field.

Sophie received her MFA in Furni­ture Design and Wood­work­ing from San Diego State Univer­sity, and BFA in Sculp­ture and Drawing from SUNY Purchase College. She has exhib­ited her work across the country, includ­ing Blue Spiral 1 Gallery (NC), the Center for Art in Wood (PA), and the Metal Museum (TN), and has been fortu­nate to receive several grants, fellow­ships, and resi­den­cies to help advance her career, includ­ing the John D. Mineck Fellow­ship in 2022. Sophie currently teaches at Kutz­town Univer­sity, and taught work­shops at A Work­shop of Our Own (MD), Arrow­mont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), the Appalachian Center for Craft (TN), and Haystack Moun­tain School of Crafts (ME).

https://​sophieglenn​.com/

Peter Scheidt’s (he/​him/​his) work is concept-driven yet firmly grounded in the craft of furni­ture. Peter has an MFA from San Diego State Univer­sity and a BA from Brown Univer­sity. He builds and teaches in Ames, Iowa where he is Assis­tant Profes­sor of Wood + Mate­r­ial Studies at Iowa State Univer­sity. Peter previ­ously served as Windgate Assis­tant Profes­sor of Wood­work­ing at the Univer­sity of Arkansas Little Rock.

Learn more about Peter and his work here

http://​peter​scheidt​.com/

Urvi Sharma is the co-founder of INDO‑, a Rhode Island-based furni­ture and light­ing design studio serving luxury resi­den­tial and hospi­tal­ity projects glob­ally. As a designer, she uses a layered design process, incor­po­rat­ing personal narra­tive, tradi­tional craft tech­niques and modern ways of making into her work. Mirror­ing her expe­ri­ences growing up in New Delhi, India, going to RISD and working for inter­na­tion­ally renowned design­ers, Urvi’s pieces seam­lessly blend her Indian roots with an Amer­i­can design ethos, and her made-to-order product line offers contem­po­rary objects that cele­brate the hand­made. INDO- has been featured in numer­ous publi­ca­tions and is an honoree of the Forbes 30 Under 30, Class of 2023.

Lani Adeoye is an award-winning designer and the founder of Studio-Lani, a multi­dis­ci­pli­nary prac­tice span­ning sculp­ture, light­ing, and furni­ture. Her work is guided by the belief that design has the power to unite people and foster mean­ing­ful human connection.

Blend­ing the rhyth­mic warmth of her Niger­ian heritage with time-honored craft tradi­tions and a forward-think­ing design approach, Lani’s prac­tice is rooted in a hybrid mindset, merging thought­ful studies with an intu­itive sensi­tiv­ity to form and mate­r­ial. The result is a body of work that radi­ates an enig­matic elegance while cele­brat­ing the human touch, trans­form­ing deeply held values into objects that resonate both emotion­ally and tactilely.

Her work has been acquired by leading museums and cultural insti­tu­tions, includ­ing The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Studio Museum, Vitra Design Museum, The Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, and Die Neue Samm­lung. In 2022, she received first prize at Salone­Satel­lite: Design­ing for Our Future Selves for RemX, an asym­met­ric walker praised for merging ​“elegance and dignity in a useful object for all.”

Lani also serves as a Visit­ing Profes­sor at Parsons The New School of Design in New York.

Website

Insta­gram

Alicia Dietz is a furni­ture maker and artist with a focus on solid wood and ultra-high-perfor­mance concrete. She blends the two mate­ri­als, creat­ing a harmony that’s reflec­tive of her process and collab­o­ra­tive style. With their contrast­ing strengths and imper­fec­tions, they embody resilience and adaptability.

As an officer and Black­hawk Heli­copter Main­te­nance Test Pilot for over a decade in the U.S. Army, Alicia served all over the world. While seem­ingly two differ­ent areas of exper­tise, her career in the Army unex­pect­edly prepared her to design and build. She received a BSJ in Advertising/​Journalism from Ohio Univer­sity and two Wood­work­ing and Furni­ture Making Certifi­cates from Vermont Wood­work­ing School. She interned with Wendy Maruyama before receiv­ing an MFA in Wood from Virginia Commonwealth University.

She stared Alicia Dietz Studios in 2016 and has been running a success­ful one-woman busi­ness since. Her studio prac­tice includes private and public commis­sions for furni­ture, wood, and concrete. She lives and works in Rich­mond, Virginia with her partner of 22 years.

N. Shalon Edwards is a furni­ture designer, maker, educa­tor and creative insti­ga­tor who thrives at the inter­sec­tion of craft, design, and collec­tive care. With a back­ground that spans wood­work­ing, inte­rior plan­ning, arts educa­tion, and neuro­science research (ask her about it some­time), she brings a curious mind and a collab­o­ra­tive spirit to every­thing she does.

She served as Vice Pres­i­dent of the Board at A Work­shop of Our Own — a nonprofit wood­shop and educa­tional space dedi­cated to women and nonbi­nary makers in Balti­more. In that role, she also chaired the Facil­i­ties Commit­tee, where she helped guide strate­gic improve­ments, orga­nize volun­teer efforts, and support the ongoing evolu­tion of WOO’s phys­i­cal and digital spaces. Her work there focused on creat­ing systems that foster access, sustain­abil­ity, and commu­nity care within a creative environment.

In the wood­shop, she enjoys pulling whimsy out of wood through bends and curves. When she’s not in the shop or the studio, she enjoys spend­ing time with her minia­ture schnau­zer, Chloe, start­ing DIY projects, watch­ing her plants grow and geeking out about archi­tec­ture and inte­rior design. She’s worked across nonprof­its, acad­e­mic insti­tu­tions, and the commer­cial design world, giving her a wide-angle lens on what it takes to build sustain­able, welcom­ing creative spaces.

She’s also connected to a lively network of artists and educa­tors through places like Penland School of Craft, the Station North Tool Library, and Craft­ing the Future — rela­tion­ships she’s excited to bring into dialogue with the Furni­ture Society’s mission.Above all, she’s passion­ate about making the craft world more acces­si­ble, more equi­table, and more fun.She believes in the power of thought­ful design, shared work, and is always looking for a good company — good food situation.

@design.nse

Joshua Enck is a sculp­tor who teaches and main­tains an active studio prac­tice in Rochester, New York. He trained as an archi­tect and a furni­ture designer, receiv­ing his MFA in furni­ture design from the Rhode Island School of Design and his BSAS from the School of Archi­tec­ture at the Univer­sity of Illi­nois. He taught for ten years at RISD: drawing, three-dimen­sional design, tech­ni­cal drawing, wood­work­ing, and metal­work­ing. He has also taught wood­work­ing at the Ander­son Ranch Arts Center and drawing at the Univer­sity of Illi­nois, Williams College, and the Univer­sity of Rochester. Joshua has exhib­ited his work in solo shows at Space Gallery, the RIT City Art Space, Simon Gallery, and the Univer­sity of Maine Museum of Art. The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, the Haystack School of Crafts, and the Center for Art in Wood in Philadel­phia have honored his work. Joshua spent five months in India as a Fulbright Nehru Scholar, research­ing tradi­tional metal­smithing and teach­ing at the Sushant School of Design. He most recently was the Anna Ballar­ian Visit­ing Artist at the Rochester Insti­tute of Technology.

https://​www​.joshuaenck​.com/

Joy, laugh­ter, and the unex­pected are at the heart of Annie Evelyn’s work. Employ­ing a range of mate­ri­als and processes, Evelyn uses furniture’s inher­ent inter­ac­tive qual­i­ties and rela­tion­ships with the human body to create new and surpris­ing expe­ri­ences. From 2014 – 2017 Evelyn was a resi­dent artist at the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina and in 2016 was awarded The John D. Mineck Furni­ture Fellow­ship. She received both her BFA and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Evelyn is an Assis­tant profes­sor of Furni­ture in the Craft and Mate­r­ial Studies depart­ment at Virginia Common­wealth Univer­sity. She has also taught at RISD, Cali­for­nia College of the Arts, Parsons — The New School, Haystack Moun­tain School, Penland School of Craft, and others. Evelyn has been working to create commu­nity through­out her artis­tic prac­tice, mentor­ing teens, teach­ing art and uphol­stery in commu­nity and youth centers, as well as putting on arts-based events across the country. In 2019 she co-founded Craft­ing the Future with a dedi­cated group of artists from the Penland School of Craft to address the glaring lack of racial and ethnic diver­sity in art, craft, and design.

http://​annieeve​lyn​.com/

Aspen Golann is an artist & furni­ture maker blend­ing furni­ture forms with sculp­ture and social practice.

Trained as a 17th-19th century wood­worker, Aspen explores gender and power through the manip­u­la­tion of iconic Amer­i­can furni­ture forms. She teaches furni­ture design at The Rhode Island School of Design, holds a degree from The North Bennet Street School, and teaches craft workshops internationally.

Her work has been featured on NPR and PBS and published in The New York Times, Archi­tec­tural Digest, Remod­elista, Hyper­al­leric, This is Colos­sal, Elle, Luxe, Fine Wood­work­ing, and Amer­i­can Craft.

She has received support for her work from The Windgate Foun­da­tion, The United Artists Foun­da­tion, Winterthur Museum, The Center for Furni­ture Crafts­man­ship and others. She is the recip­i­ent of the 2023 Award in Craft from The Maxwell Hanra­han Foun­da­tion and the Mineck Furni­ture Fellow­ship from The Society of Arts & Crafts.

In 2020, Aspen founded The Chairmaker’s Toolbox — a project foster­ing access and equity in the field of chair­mak­ing. In support of the project, she has part­nered with museums, schools, and chair­mak­ers around the world.

Born and raised outside of Boston, she now lives and works in New Hampshire.

Aspen serves on the boards ofThe Chairmaker’s Toolbox, A Work­shop of Our Own, The Furni­ture Society, and The Society of Arts + Crafts.

Zeke Leonard is the Asso­ciate Direc­tor of the Syra­cuse Univer­sity School of Design, as well as being the coor­di­na­tor of the School of Design’s First Year Expe­ri­ence. His research involves the role of social respon­si­bil­ity and envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship in contex­tu­ally-rele­vant design and fabri­ca­tion prac­tices. Central to his work is the re-purpos­ing of discarded mate­ri­als and objects in ways that inspire conver­sa­tion and call commu­ni­ties to action. Zeke regu­larly part­ners with commu­nity groups and orga­ni­za­tions to find ways to put local resources to better use. 

He has written about his research-based design prac­tices in ​‘The Inte­rior Archi­tec­ture Theory Reader’ (Rout­ledge, Gregory Marinic, Ed.), and has published in jour­nals as varied as Int/​AR: Inter­ven­tion and Adap­tive Reuse and Anthro­pol­ogy News. He previ­ously taught at RISD and NYU, and is a regular visit­ing instruc­tor at insti­tu­tions includ­ing the Haystack Moun­tain School of Craft and the Arrow­mont School of Arts and Crafts. Exam­ples of his wood work are in the collec­tions of the Worker’s Arts and Heritage Society in Hamil­ton, Ontario, The Mystic Seaport Museum, and the Maine Culi­nary Archive. Zeke holds an MFA in Furni­ture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA in Set Design from the Univer­sity of North Carolina School of the Arts.

https://​zekeleonard​.com/​h​ome.h…

Joyce Lin is an artist and designer who utilizes a variety of mediums in her work includ­ing wood, plas­tics, and found objects, often decon­struct­ing furni­ture forms, mate­ri­als, and arche­types in response to a rapidly chang­ing envi­ron­ment. Her cross-disci­pli­nary inter­ests led her to the Brown/​RISD Dual Degree Program, where she studied Furni­ture Design at the Rhode Island School of Design and Geology-Biology at Brown Univer­sity. She has since exhib­ited in several cities, includ­ing R & Company in New York City and the Houston Center for Contem­po­rary Craft, and has work included in collec­tions around the world, includ­ing the RISD Museum. Joyce is currently based in Houston, TX where she also teaches and manages the wood­shop at the non-profit maker­space TXRX Labs.

www​.joyce​-lin​.com

Insta­gram: @jolime

James Nelson is a furni­ture designer and wood­worker from Seattle Wash­ing­ton. He attended San Diego State Univer­sity, receiv­ing a BA in Furni­ture Design & Wood­work­ing, with a special­iza­tion in Inte­rior and Archi­tec­tural Design, as well as a minor in Sales and Market­ing. During his time in the School of Art + Design at SDSU, he worked as the wood studio manager and acting shop tech. James has been working with wood and design­ing furni­ture for over 8 years, and his work has been included in multi­ple juried exhi­bi­tions around Cali­for­nia. He was the recip­i­ent of the Berk­shire Wood­work­ers Guild Educa­tional Schol­ar­ship in 2024, and currently, James is a nominee for the Windgate-Lamarr Fellow­ship for 2025, as well as an invitee for the Inter­na­tional Young Adult Furni­ture Making Invi­ta­tional in Tokyo, Japan. At the end of 2025, he will be creat­ing furni­ture at the Center for Furni­ture Crafts­man­ship in Maine, funded by the orga­ni­za­tions’ endowed fellowship program.

James’s furni­ture is char­ac­ter­ized by the combi­na­tion of differ­ent styles, mediums, and tech­niques. The inter­ac­tion of light and shadow play an impor­tant role in the expe­ri­ence of his art; his work is further influ­enced by his frequent time spent in nature, as well as his architectural studies.

@omniwoodco

Mark Tan is a first-gener­a­tion Cana­dian born and raised in Toronto by Filipino immi­grants. He produces inter­ac­tive sculp­tures made from reclaimed solid wood, found mate­ri­als, and domes­tic construc­tion build­ing mate­ri­als at an archi­tec­tural scale. His work expresses the emotional value of precon­ceived notions, longing, and discon­nect­ed­ness in seeking accep­tance within a community.

He received his MFA in Furni­ture Design & Wood­work­ing in the Craft/​Material Studies program at Virginia Common­wealth Univer­sity in Rich­mond, VA. His work has been exhib­ited inter­na­tion­ally at exhi­bi­tions such as the Mesa Contem­po­rary Arts Museum in Mesa, AZ, Hillyer Contem­po­rary in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Messler Gallery in Rock­port, ME., Patter­son-Apple­ton Gallery in Denton, TX., Fuller Craft Museum in Brock­ton, MA., Wharton Esher­ick Museum in Malvern, PA., Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, CO., and the DeLeon White Gallery at the Glad­stone in Toronto, ON. He has partic­i­pated in resi­den­cies at Arrow­mont School of Arts & Crafts and the Windgate Artist in Resi­dence at San Diego State Univer­sity. He is currently an Assis­tant Profes­sor of Sculpture/​Wood at Arizona State University.

https://​www​.insta​gram​.com/nint…

For more than two decades, Deirdre Visser — queer writer, artist, and curator based in San Fran­cisco — has pursued oppor­tu­ni­ties to make visible unheard or too-long buried stories with the goals of nour­ish­ing discourse across differ­ence, build­ing commu­nity, and advanc­ing civic partic­i­pa­tion. As Curator of the Arts at CIIS, she devel­oped an exhi­bi­tion and publi­ca­tion program ampli­fy­ing the work of emerg­ing and mid-career artists, focused partic­u­larly on under­rep­re­sented voices. Then in 2019 Deirdre co-curated with Laura Mays the largest ever exhi­bi­tion of women wood­work­ers, Making a Seat at the Table, which opened at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadel­phia that fall. Rooted in the same research, in 2022 she published the first ever history of women and gender non-conform­ing makers in wood, Joinery, Joists and Gender: A History of Wood­work­ing for the 21st Century. Today she is Curator of Applied Tech­nol­ogy at the Randall Museum in San Fran­cisco and she contin­ues to write at the inter­sec­tion of labor history and wood.

www​.deirdrevisser​.net/

www​.artsatciis​.org

Joinery, Joists and Gender: A History of Wood­work­ing for the 21st Century

Chelsea Witt is an artist and educa­tor working in both wood and ink. Currently based in New Jersey, Chelsea has a sculp­ture degree from the Univer­sity of South Florida and is a grad­u­ate of the Furni­ture Inten­sive at the Center for Furni­ture Crafts­man­ship. Chelsea has worked for and studied with artist/​makers such as Alexis Dold, Tyler Hays, Christina Boy, Aaron Fedarko, Tim Rousseau, and David Upfill-Brown. Chelsea has taught at Penland School of Craft, Haystack Moun­tain School of Craft, Peters Valley School of Craft and the Center for Furni­ture Crafts­man­ship. Chelsea currently teaches 3D design and wood­work­ing at Moorestown Friends School, is the Educa­tion Chair for the Chair­Mak­ers Toolbox, and works for both the Furni­ture Society and A Work­shop of Our Own.

“My prior­ity when teach­ing is to include the excluded and push the bound­aries of​“the norm” in a wood­shop. My prior­ity as an artist is to explore and push the bound­aries of emotional and mental health.”

@littleforestswontdo

https://​furnsoc​.org/​d​i​r​e​c​tory/…

https://​www​.chelseacari​nawitt​.com/

Taylor Landers (she/​her) is a dedi­cated cabinet and furni­ture-making student at the North Bennet Street School, build­ing on a strong family legacy in wood­work­ing. With a degree in Physics and Math­e­mat­ics from Saint Michael’s College, she enjoys blend­ing analyt­i­cal think­ing with creative crafts­man­ship. Her previ­ous expe­ri­ence as a girls’ lacrosse direc­tor and head coach has instilled in her a passion for mentor­ship and growth, which she now brings to The Furni­ture Society as a student representative.

Anneke McDon­ald is a wood­worker, ceram­i­cist, and metal­smith. She is located in Rich­mond, Virginia, currently finish­ing a BFA in Craft and Mate­r­ial Studies at Virginia Common­wealth Univer­sity. Outside of school she has partic­i­pated in work­shops on schol­ar­ship at Arrow­mont School of Arts and Crafts, Pocosin Arts School of Fine Craft, and an intern­ship with Burg­er­Built in Albu­querque, New Mexico. She has had work selected for shows in VCU Qatar Saffron Art Hall, The Murray N. Depil­lars Hawthorne gallery, and in the Anderson gallery. 

Anneke is orig­i­nally from the Shenan­doah valley which is reflected in the folk and natural themes of her work. Her inter­est as a craftsper­son is to make objects that can be loved and inter­acted with in daily life. She works primar­ily with wood and ceram­ics that incor­po­rate alter­na­tive multi­me­dia explo­ration through her other­wise recog­niz­ably util­i­tar­ian pieces. She hopes any viewer of her work can be prompted to consider how we have gone from hand making house­hold objects to the current indus­try of mass produc­tion through her careful incor­po­ra­tion of ornamentation.