Ashley Eriksmoen | |
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Education | Boston College (BFS 1992), College of the Redwoods (Certificate, 1998), Rhode Island School of Design (MFA 2000) |
Known for | Furniture maker and educator |
Website | https://ashleyeriksmoen.com/home.html |
Ashley Eriksmoen is a California-born Australia-based furniture maker, woodworker, artist, and educator.
Eriksmoen was born in raised in southern California. [1] Eriksmoen attended Boston College, receiving a BS in geology in 1992. She took a year off during undergraduate to study art at the Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, Italy. [2] Eriksmoen studied at the College of the Redwoods (now the Krenov School) from 1997 to 1998, receiving a Certificate of Fine Woodworking. [3] She went on to receive a master's degree in Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 2000. [4]
Eriksmoen uses salvaged urban waste such as tables and chairs to create complex interwoven sculptures. [5] She was included in a curated group exhibition in 2019 about humans and the environment titled I Thought I Heard a Bird at Craft ACT in Canberra, Australia. [5] [6] Her series Feral: Rewilding Furniture, made with found broken timber, personifies and animates found furniture, comparing the living and built world. [2] She was an artist-in-residence artist at San Diego State University [7] and is a member of the Furniture Society and part of the Studio Furniture movement. [8]
Her artwork has been published in 500 Tables , American Woodworker Magazine, and With Wakened Hands, a book on the students of James Krenov. [9] [10] She was awarded a Fuji Xerox Sustainable Art Award in 2014 [11] Eriksmoen's piece Criogriff was featured in the exhibition Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking at the Center for Art in Wood in 2019 curated by Dierdre Visser and Laura Mays. [12] [13] She was also interviewed for the book Joinery, Joists and Gender: A History of Woodworking for the 21st Century, by Visser.
In 2021 Eriksomen won Tasmania's Clarence Prize with her furniture piece "Following years of steady decline we are witnessing a period of unprecedented growth". [14] [15] Her "Meares Island Nurse Log" furniture piece was selected for the 2022 Melbourne Design Fair, presented by the National Gallery of Victoria with the Melbourne Art Foundation. [16] [17] Her chaise, "The Dream or: the view from here is both bleak and resplendent" won the 2022 Australian Furniture Design Award, awarded by Stylecraft and the National Gallery of Victoria. [18] [19] [20] [15]
Eriksmoen is the Head of Furniture Workshop, Convenor of Craft and Design and Senior Lecturer in the College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University. [21]