Wharton Esherick Museum 31st Annual Juried Woodworking Exhibition Wharton Esher­ick

Across his career, Esher­ick took renewal seri­ously. After train­ing as a painter he renewed his artis­tic iden­tity time and again, finding inspi­ra­tion enough to make every­thing from illus­trated books to stage sets and costumes. He believed in renewed approaches to form, as seen in his refusal to make furni­ture that looked like anything previ­ously on the market, instead creat­ing objects that existed between func­tion and sculp­ture. He believed in renew­ing mate­ri­als, giving second lives to wooden objects like hammer handles and wagon wheels. Where others saw cast-off scraps, only useful for fire­wood, Esher­ick envi­sioned a renewal: the now-iconic floor of the Studio’s Dining Room, a sensual and organic mosaic. For the Wharton Esher­ick Museum’s 31st Annual Juried Wood­work­ing Exhi­bi­tion we invite you to think about renewal, and how it exists in your artistic life.

Have you made an artwork that repre­sents a moment of personal, profes­sional, or ideo­log­i­cal renewal? When have you trans­formed a mate­r­ial, giving it new life in the process? What objects facil­i­tate moments of renewal, restora­tion, or care­tak­ing? Is there a way to renew meaning from the past through artwork that’s wholly contemporary?

With these initial prompts, we encour­age appli­cants to think about this idea broadly and hope that you’ll submit entries across the spec­trum of thematic approaches (so long as they contain wood in some way). We look forward to seeing it all.

https://whartonesherickmuseum.…