As an artist, your choice of materials reveals something true about your nature. That’s what New Hampshire woodworker Jeffrey Cooper believes.
Artists who work with stone, for instance, might radiate an inner calm, an essential solidity at their core. Artists who work with clay might have an air of quickness and joy, trying to make something real before the wheel stops.
And artists like Cooper who work with wood? It’s layers. The story is about layers.
Just look at a tree branch lying on a forest floor. At first glance, the surface tells the story of an ending. Now, consider the branch as a woodworker, and what you see is sheer potential. That’s the thrill of working with wood: there is always a new layer waiting to be discovered.
Cooper is a member of the Furniture Masters, a pioneering group of New England artists and artisans who come together to elevate one another’s work and raise the profile of fine furniture making. They were among the first to shape a collaborative way of working oriented around shared standards of excellence. Even today, there are few groups like them out there. Their members are recognized as some of the most talented fine furniture makers in the world. They are also supportive, generous, and welcoming.
That doesn’t mean that all Furniture Masters are the same. Far from it. This is a group with layers.
There are Furniture Masters who grew up steeped in the region’s heritage of fine furniture making, who smell wood shavings and immediately think, home. There are Furniture Masters who kept coming back to wood after exploring every other medium out there. There are artisans who developed skills as woodworkers as part of the Furniture Masters prison outreach program.
Their work also runs the gamut. There is classic furniture demonstrating craft in a league of its own. There is whimsical furniture telling a story. There are sculptural works full of movement, redefining what furniture can be.
That’s how traditions of craft persist and adapt – in layers. This year, the Furniture Masters turned 30. A major fall exhibition at the Currier Museum of Art celebrates this milestone anniversary. It’s called Joined Together: 30 Years of the Furniture Masters, and it features mostly new work by 17 Furniture Masters on public view for the first time.
Joined Together invites you to see the many layers of a great creative tradition. Step into the Currier this fall and breathe in the rich, unmistakable smell of wood. Be inspired by an artistic heritage embracing new possibilities.
This is not the story of furniture you already know. There are no inscrutable instructions or missing screws. Instead, there is beauty. Legacy. Excellence. Collaboration.
This is a story with layers, which means there’s always something new to discover.
Joined Together: 30 Years of the Furniture Masters opens at the Currier on October 9. For more information, visit Currier.Org or follow @CurrierMuseum on Instagram for behind-the-scenes videos with the Furniture Masters.
The show is made possible with support from Banks Chevrolet-Cadillac-Buick-GMC, Jameson French/Northland Forest Products, Inc, Betsy & Ralph Holmes, and Susan & John Lynch.
Ali Goldstein is a writer who first fell in love with art museums on a French class field trip to see a Degas exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Today, she is the Director of Marketing and Communications at the Currier Museum of Art, where she helps others take their first step into the arts. She can be reached at agoldstein@currier.org.