Exhibition, workshop, and lecture events featuring visiting artists and distinguished scholars are a major component of The Center for Turning and Furniture Design. Support for these events have come from a variety of University sources, alumni, and agencies such as the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, and the Collectors of Wood Art.

Our Turn Now: Artists Speak Out in Wood
In the Spring of 2006, the Department of Art sponsored "Our Turn Now: Artists Speak Out in Wood" (May 4 to June 11, 2006). Like the other major craft media, contemporary wood/turning has its origins in the decades following World War II. However, wood/turning as a field was a late bloomer, not really beginning to be recognized until the early 1980s. It is a field that is very much, but not totally, about wood as a media, and one that applies the lathe in a variety of ways as a tool of imagination. Our Turn Now offered 50 pieces of recent work by some of the most visible and capable artists of this field. Steve Loar and Christopher Weiland were Co-Curators for the IUP/Kipp Gallery venue, with the exhibition having originated at the Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus, Ohio (January 22 to March 19, 2006) and having been initially curated by Judith Nestel.

Concurrent to the opening of Our Turn Now, the Department of Art sponsored Walk Through 2006, a department-wide open-studio celebration of student work that also showcased the new facilities of The Center for Turning and Furniture Design, as well as those of Sculpture and Ceramics. Walk Through 2007 is scheduled for the afternoon of May 3, 2007.

Adirondack Chair: Transformation/Reinvention
Funding was recently awarded to begin developing the third Adirondack Chair exhibition to revisit, explore, and redesign the century old Adirondack chair. "Adirondack 3" will also introduce the "Allegheny Chair," a regional adaptation of the classic Adirondack, to be designed and produced by the students and staff of The Center for Turning and Furniture Design. Watch for this exhibition and book in the spring of 2008!

About Adirondack 2005...