The Furniture Society is pleased to congratulate Fred Rose, the winner of our inaugural Award of Distinction Trophy Design Contest. Rose was chosen to create the Trophy to be presented to the Award of Distinction honorees for the next 3 years. Our winner was selected by esteemed jurors Wendy Maruyama and Monica Obniski from a competitive pool of talented applicants. The jurors would like to thank all who applied and applaud their creativity.
Fred Rose grew up along the river in Carmel Valley, CA. He received his BFA in ceramics from California State University, Long Beach and his MFA in sculpture from California State University, Fullerton. He taught Woodworking at California State University, Long Beach for 7 years and is currently a self-employed artist living in Costa Mesa. Most of his wood is collected from locally found logs from the urban forests of Long Beach and Costa Mesa. Often combining found natural organic forms with his own man-made objects, he collects evidence of how we deal with living trees by pruning them or how trees as living things respond to adversity as a source of poetic and conceptual inquiry. He has a growing fondness for things he calls wood anomalies.
The trophy was first presented to the 2019 Honoree, Tom Loeser, at the Award of Distinction luncheon taking place on Saturday, June 22 at the 2019 Conference FS19: Groundwork: Inspiration, Intersections, and Experimentation of Furniture Practice (June 19 – 22, 2019 in Milwaukee, WI).
This trophy honors the spirit of the Award of Distinction program and reflects our gratitude to the honorees for their service to the greater Furniture-making community. The Award of Distinction program was instituted in 2001 and is presented during The Furniture Society’s annual conference to honor individuals and institutions who have had a profound impact on the field and whose lives, work and efforts have strengthened the fabric of the Furniture Society’s community.