Furni­ture maker, educa­tor, and author Mark Sfirri received the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Wood­turn­ers 2024 Profes­sional Outreach Program (POP) Merit Award. Merit Award recip­i­ents are indi­vid­u­als selected by the Commit­tee who have shown excep­tional devel­op­ment in their careers as artists and whose artworks have directly influ­enced or had a signif­i­cant impact on other artists within the field of woodturning.

Decem­ber 2, 2023 – January 20, 2024

Mark Sfirri, the 2008 curator of Across the Grain — A Regional Wood Exhi­bi­tion, returns to WAC to curate InGrained – An Exhi­bi­tion of Penn­syl­va­nia Furni­ture, Sculp­ture and Wood­turn­ing, the 2023 Craft­Forms’ compan­ion show. In addi­tion to being a furni­ture maker and sculp­tor working in wood, Sfirri is also a teacher, researcher, writer, collab­o­ra­tor, photog­ra­pher, and printmaker.

“The lines and shaping of the parts were very specific but how we got there was not.”

John Sheri­dan’s Broken on the Rock of War has been selected for the nation­ally juried exhibit, Our True Heroes, at the Gilroy, CA, Center for the Arts

The Windgate Arts Resi­dency Program in Wood is a colle­gial expe­ri­ence in which the resi­dent Fellows explore new work through research, explo­ration, and collab­o­ra­tion. The Museum for Art in Wood awards pres­ti­gious fellow­ships for the annual resi­dency program, select­ing from an inter­na­tional pool of applicants.

Alphonse Mattia
1947 – 2023
Artist, Educa­tor, Furni­ture Maker, Mentor, Friend, Storyteller 

The National Base­ball Hall of Fame and Museum in Coop­er­stown, New York, has acquired a set of unusual base­ball bats titled ​“Rejects from the Bat Factory,” created by Mark Sfirri of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

The Inter­na­tional Society of Furni­ture Design­ers (ISFD) is an orga­ni­za­tion dedi­cated to excel­lence, inno­va­tion, educa­tion, and orig­i­nal­ity in the prac­tice of furni­ture design and serves as the unified voice of the furni­ture design commu­nity.

Each year the ISFD spon­sors the INNO­VA­TION + DESIGN Compe­ti­tion, a juried compe­ti­tion designed to cele­brate inge­nu­ity among profes­sional design­ers and emerg­ing students who antic­i­pate a career in the custom wood and related home furnishings industries.

Boston’s Society of Arts + Crafts announced that Sophie Glenn is the 2022 recip­i­ent of the John D. Mineck Fellow­ship, a high-profile award with an unre­stricted $25,000 prize given annu­ally to an early-career furniture artist.

A new book by Norman Pirollo Design on the dichotomy of hand tool wood­work­ing in a modern world.

Every two years, artists from around the world come together in North­ern Saskatchewan, Canada to share ideas, tech­niques, and collab­o­rate on projects. Artists at all levels in their career are encour­aged to get creative, think outside of their tradi­tional prac­tice, and exper­i­ment with a variety of other mediums — metal­work­ing, wood­work­ing, and glass, to name a few.