About the Artist

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan/Springfield, Ohio

Joey Quiñones is a sculptor working primarily with fiber and ceramics. They were selected as an Emerging Artist of 2020 by Ceramics Monthly and a Manifest Gallery Annual Prize Finalist, and they received an Honorable Mention for the James Renwick Alliance Chrysalis Award. Their work has been shown at venues such as the Akron Art Museum, the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. They have a master of fine arts degree in Studio Art from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa. They are currently the Artist-in-Residence, Head of Fiber at Cranbrook Academy of Art.  

Website: JoeyQuinones.com
Social Media: @JQuinones_Art

Artist Statement

As an artist, I study decorative domestic items from the era of Enlightenment. I came to Winterthur because of its large collection of ceramics, textiles, paintings, and furniture. The collection of decorative objects tells us as a society who and what we value, and who and what we don’t. When thinking about the United States, we often leave out the history of Spain’s colonization in the New World, and how this presence impacted the African and indigenous populations that all came together in this place. For my project, I created items that would have never existed in the early founding of the U.S. and the Americas (Caribbean included) but more accurately depict the racial and gender dynamics of the period. It influences us still today. With this exhibit, I aim to inspire a dialogue on race, colonization, and the transatlantic slave trade. 

Winterthur’s collection of furniture and tools from noted shops like that of the Dominy family from East Hampton, New York, and Alexander Forbes of Cleveland, Ohio, provides inspiration and an extensive study collection for contemporary furniture and tool makers, like the women and nonbinary makers featured here. This new work also prompts us to ask questions about makers of the past who may have gone unrecognized due to their identity or circumstances. To learn more about the Dominy family and to see their wood and watch shops, visit the Dominy Gallery, also on the second floor of the Galleries.  

The new tools shown here are made by makers associated with The Chairmaker’s Toolbox.  

“Our mission is to address the barriers to education and community to build the future of green woodworking. Following three hundred years of restricted access, we believe that the continued relevance of hand tool woodworking relies on the authentic participation of historically excluded makers. The Chairmaker’s Toolbox provides free tools, education, and mentorship for BIPOC, GNC, and female students hoping to build chairs and established toolmakers seeking to build sustainable businesses. In support of the project, we have partnered with Winterthur, The Furniture Society, and chairmakers across the country. We have offered classes as Lost Art Press, A Workshop of Our Own, The School of Woodwork, Port Townsend School of Woodworking, Austin School of Furniture and Design, and Fireweed Woodshop.”

Baskerville, North Carolina
Website: Ellie-Richards.com
Social Media: @EllieInTheWoods

About the Artist

Ellie Richards is a furniture designer and sculptor interested in the role furniture and domestic objects play in creating opportunities for a deeper connection between people and their sense of place. Ellie looks to the tradition of both woodworking and the readymade to create eclectic assemblage, installation, and objects exploring intersections of labor, leisure, community, and culture. She has traveled extensively to investigate the roles play and improvisation have on the artistic process. Her work, both furniture and sculpture, has been included in exhibitions at the Mint Museum; Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design; SOFA Chicago; and the Society of Contemporary Craft. 

Artist Statement

Laurel, as a material, connects my work to a specific region, while the twisted design of the wood recalls rustic furniture designs popular in the nineteenth century. Making work within the fields of sculpture and furniture has expanded my perspective on how a person’s interaction with both natural and built spaces can be a potent indicator of societal and cultural identities. Craft can be a powerful vehicle for sharing culture and accessing otherwise tacit values. Absorbing these characteristics allows sculptural objects to extend a common language that paves the way for a shared experience. I believe shared experiences lead to strong connections and greater empathy among us, and I hope to activate inquiry in the individual that leads to a more meaningful relationship with their environment and its extensions. 

Dallas, Texas
Website: KathrynSullivanRestoration.com
Social Media: @KSullivanRestoration

About the Artist 

Kathryn is a woodworker focused on restoration and conservation. Informed as a cultural and legal anthropologist, Kathryn treats the trade with a blend of artistic academia and practical woodworking. Their creative focus is to challenge tradition in both word and practice, and they bring intersectional approaches to the study and creation of wooden decorative art. Kathryn is a guest instructor at the American School of French Marquetry, a contributing writer for Fine Woodworking, and an enthusiastic member of the Furniture History Society. 

Artist Statement

To challenge the consumption of fashion, colonization, and material culture in general, these chairs were built of scrap lumber. They re-articulate regularly tossed out “waste” from custom home construction and counter reproductions that further a muddy global supply chain of imported trees and devalued labor.   

About the Artist

Newton, Massachusetts

Aspen Golann is a furniture maker, artist and educator whose work explores gender and power through the manipulation of iconic American furniture forms. Trained as seventeenth- to nineteenth-century woodworker, she mines the intersections of sexuality, identity, decorative arts and contemporary craft in a range of works including fine furniture and sculpture. 
 

In 2020 Aspen founded The Chairmakers Toolbox—a project intending to increase access and equity in the field of chairmaking. She is published in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Fine Woodworking, and American Craft, and exhibits internationally. She teaches at Rhode Island School of Design and holds a degree from The North Bennet Street School. 

Websites:

• AspenGolann.com
• TheChairmakersToolbox.com

Social Media:

• @Aspen_Golann
• @The_Chairmakers_Toolbox

Artist Statement

Aspen co-built In the Garden Settee with Greg Pennington at his shop in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Her bench references a style of furniture associated with nineteenth-century Connecticut maker Lambert Hitchcock, who often used interchangeable parts and stenciled gold designs on painted backgrounds. Aspen’s fresh take on this style incorporates personal elements like images of her own hands.  

About the Artist

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Rebecca Gilbert is a Philadelphia-based artist whose work exemplifies a dedication to traditional printmaking processes. Influenced by her years of experience in book arts and rare book conservation, her innovation in executing these processes in combination with cut paper and assemblage, push the boundaries of what a print can be. 

Rebecca’s prints can be found in numerous public collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Ashmolean Museum, Zuckerman Museum of Art, St. Bride Foundation, and Princeton University Library’s Graphic Arts Collection. She maintains an active exhibition record, and has extensively exhibited her work regionally, nationally, and internationally, including in galleries and museums in New York, California, Spain, Canada, Korea, Estonia, and England. 

Among Rebecca’s most recent awards are a Victor Hammer Fellowship from Wells College in Aurora, New York; an Illuminate the Arts Grant to support her current project, A Dance of Death in Two Parts; a Creative Research and Innovation Grant; an Independence Foundation Fellowship; and a Winterthur Artist/Maker Fellowship. 

Rebecca holds a master of fine arts degree in printmaking and book arts, has extensive experience teaching fine art at numerous institutions, is an active member of The Wood Engravers’ Network, and is represented by The Print Center in Philadelphia. 

Website: RebeccaPrint.com
Social Media: @Rebecca_Print

Artist Statement 

Representations of portals, longing, mystery, and communication between the realms of the living and the dead are embedded throughout much of Rebecca Gilbert’s work. She interprets these ideas in woodcut, wood engraving, etching, and letterpress as those processes allow the integration of a high level of detail and meticulously refined craftsmanship. 

The pieces in this exhibition are part of a recent body of work titled Visions of Plenty: Observation, Perception, Illusion, and Reverie. Inspired by historic moveable book structures and optical devices, the work invites viewers to explore optics, perception, and the act of seeing by transforming intricately detailed prints into dimensional works on paper. The dimensional elements of the imagery and the constructions allude to different planes of existence.