Adam Manley

Adam John Manley is currently Assistant Professor of Furniture Design and Woodworking at San Diego State University, and has taught full time at Maine College of Art and UMass Dartmouth, and as adjunct at University of New Hampshire. He has also taught extensively at Haystack Mountain School of Craft and in the summer of 2019 at Penland School of Craft. Adam has done residencies at UW Madison, where he was the Windgate Artist in Residence, the Haystack Open studio Residency, and the Lanesboro residency in Southern Minnesota. He is looking forward to an upcoming residency at the Center For Art in Wood as a summer 2021 ITE fellow. Adam was born and raised in the Adirondack mountains of New York State, and attended the SUNY New Paltz, receiving a degree in Political science and International relations. During this time, Adam fell in love with woodworking, founding a cooperative studio and gallery with a group of friends in Kingston, in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley. Having been Raised by a weaver and a boat builder/carpenter, working with one’s hands came naturally to Adam. After working for several years as a furniture maker, and hoping to deepen his connections between making and ideas, Adam moved to San Diego California, where he received his MFA in Furniture Design and Woodworking. In graduate school, Adam developed a unique voice that blended functional construction methodologies, material exploration, and a focus on the conceptual potential embodied within craft, furniture, and functional familiar objects. Since graduate school, Adam has taught at numerous institutions, from colleges to craft schools, and continued to develop his ideas and work in an ever-evolving way. Adam’s work has addressed issues relating to our unique sense of place and how familiar functional objects link us to that sense, humor, individual and universal relationships to furniture, and, more recently, the relationship between furniture and the historical objects used to inflict violence on others throughout time. This work is currently Adam’s focus and is expanding from an initial small solo exhibition at the Indianapolis Art Center. Adam is the co-founder, along with colleague Kerianne Quick, of the contemporary craft zine/journal, CRAFT DESERT.