Kristen Wheatley

Kristen Wheat­ley (she/​her) is an artist and designer working primar­ily with wood, fiber, and clay. She makes func­tional furni­ture, play objects and inter­ac­tive sculp­ture. She uses tradi­tional wood­work­ing joinery, bent lami­na­tion, and wood­turn­ing tech­niques to actu­al­ize her work. Kristen grew up in rural South­west Virginia along with her five siblings. She recently returned to Appalachia to complete an intern­ship in the Wood Studio at Chest­nut Creek School of the Arts. She is currently pursu­ing a Bach­e­lors of Fine Arts at Virginia Common­wealth Univer­sity with a concen­tra­tion in Craft and Mate­r­ial Studies. In 2022, She received the Windgate Univer­sity Fellow­ship at Arrow­mont School of Arts and Craft, the Cynthia Bringle and Edwina Bringle Schol­ar­ship at Penland School of Crafts, and the Schooner Foun­da­tion Schol­ar­ship at the Furni­ture Society 2022: Working Together Confer­ence. She has recently exhib­ited work in Vitamin C at the Murray N. Depil­lars Gallery and Fake News at the Ander­son in Rich­mond, VA.