Ashley Eriksmoen

Ashley Eriksmoen is a California-born, Australia-based furniture maker, woodworker, artist, and educator whose practice connects studio furniture, sculpture, environmental concerns, and teaching. Rather than operating as a conventional mass-market furniture label, Eriksmoen is best understood as an individual creative practice centered on the design and construction of one-off or limited artistic furniture objects, public-facing exhibitions, and education in craft and design. Her work frequently begins with salvaged or discarded material, including broken chairs, tables, and urban timber. She reworks these materials through cutting, joining, layering, and interweaving, producing objects that retain traces of their previous use while taking on new sculptural identities. This approach places reuse at the center of both her material process and her artistic subject matter. Her Feral: Rewilding Furniture series personifies found furniture and imagines built objects as if they were capable of returning to a living, untamed environment. The series links domestic furniture to ecological ideas about growth, decay, adaptation, and rewilding. Eriksmoen's education combines science, fine art, and advanced woodworking. She earned a Bachelor of Science in geology from Boston College in 1992, with a year of art study at the Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence. She later completed a Certificate of Fine Woodworking at the College of the Redwoods, now associated with the Krenov School, and received a Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2000. Her scientific background and craft training inform a practice attentive to material behavior, environmental change, structure, and the relationship between natural and constructed forms. Her work has appeared in exhibitions and publications focused on contemporary craft, furniture, women in woodworking, and the environment. In 2014 she received a Fuji Xerox Sustainable Art Award. In 2019 she participated in the Craft ACT group exhibition I Thought I Heard a Bird, which examined relationships between humans and the environment. Her work has also been included in discussions of gender and woodworking, including the publication Joinery, Joists and Gender: A History of Woodworking for the 21st Century. The work Criogriff was shown in Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking at the Center for Art in Wood in 2019. Eriksmoen's profile grew through a series of Australian awards and selections. She won Tasmania's Clarence Prize in 2021 with the furniture work Following years of steady decline we are witnessing a period of unprecedented growth. Meares Island Nurse Log was selected for the 2022 Melbourne Design Fair, presented by the National Gallery of Victoria with the Melbourne Art Foundation. Her chaise The Dream or: the view from here is both bleak and resplendent won the 2022 Australian Furniture Design Award, presented by Stylecraft and the National Gallery of Victoria. Alongside her studio practice, Eriksmoen is an academic and workshop leader. She serves as Head of Furniture Workshop, Convenor of Craft and Design, and Senior Lecturer in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University. She has also undertaken an artist residency at San Diego State University and is associated with the Furniture Society and the Studio Furniture movement. Her positioning is therefore defined by experimental craft, material reuse, sculptural furniture, and the transmission of woodworking knowledge rather than by conventional consumer branding.

Ashley Eriksmoen was born and raised in Southern California. Her initial university training was in geology: she completed a Bachelor of Science at Boston College in 1992. During her undergraduate years she took time away from the degree to study art at the Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, Italy. This combination of scientific study and artistic training later became relevant to a practice concerned with material processes, environmental change, and the relationship between natural and built forms. Eriksmoen subsequently pursued specialized woodworking education at the College of the Redwoods, now associated with the Krenov School. She received a Certificate of Fine Woodworking after studying there from 1997 to 1998. She then completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 2000. Her training placed her within the tradition of studio furniture while also giving her a broader contemporary-art framework for treating furniture as sculpture and cultural commentary. A defining feature of Eriksmoen's work is the reuse of discarded and salvaged material. She has worked with broken chairs, tables, found timber, and other urban waste, converting them into complex interwoven sculptures and furniture objects. The material is not simply recycled into anonymous new stock; its prior life remains part of the meaning of the finished work. Her Feral: Rewilding Furniture series, for example, animates and personifies damaged furniture, presenting it as though it might escape the built environment and return to a feral ecological state. The work addresses consumption, abandonment, resilience, and the boundary between organic life and manufactured objects. Eriksmoen has participated in exhibitions and professional conversations about contemporary craft, sustainability, and the status of women in woodworking. In 2014 she received a Fuji Xerox Sustainable Art Award. In 2019 she was part of I Thought I Heard a Bird at Craft ACT in Canberra, a curated group exhibition focused on human relationships with the environment. Her work Criogriff appeared in Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking at the Center for Art in Wood, an exhibition curated by Dierdre Visser and Laura Mays. She was also interviewed for Joinery, Joists and Gender: A History of Woodworking for the 21st Century. Her work has been published or discussed in 500 Tables, American Woodworker Magazine, and With Wakened Hands, a volume concerning students of James Krenov. Her Australian career includes significant recognition in furniture and design competitions. In 2021 she won Tasmania's Clarence Prize with Following years of steady decline we are witnessing a period of unprecedented growth. In 2022 Meares Island Nurse Log was selected for the Melbourne Design Fair, presented by the National Gallery of Victoria with the Melbourne Art Foundation. The same year, her chaise The Dream or: the view from here is both bleak and resplendent won the Australian Furniture Design Award, presented by Stylecraft and the National Gallery of Victoria. Teaching and institutional work form an important part of her professional identity. Eriksmoen has been an artist in residence at San Diego State University and is associated with the Furniture Society and the Studio Furniture movement. At the Australian National University she serves as Head of Furniture Workshop, Convenor of Craft and Design, and Senior Lecturer in the College of Arts and Social Sciences. Her practice consequently operates across several connected fields: individual furniture making, contemporary sculpture, sustainable material use, exhibition, and the education of future craft and design practitioners.

1. 2022Receives major Australian furniture recognition

   Meares Island Nurse Log was selected for Melbourne Design Fair, while The Dream won the Australian Furniture Design Award.

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2. 2021Wins Tasmania's Clarence Prize

   She won the Clarence Prize with Following years of steady decline we are witnessing a period of unprecedented growth.

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3. 2019Participates in environmental and woodworking exhibitions

   Eriksmoen was included in Craft ACT's I Thought I Heard a Bird and showed Criogriff in Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking.

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4. 2014Receives Fuji Xerox Sustainable Art Award

   She was awarded the Fuji Xerox Sustainable Art Award in recognition of her sustainability-oriented artistic practice.

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5. 2000Completes MFA at Rhode Island School of Design

   Eriksmoen graduated with a Master of Fine Arts, adding advanced contemporary-art training to her woodworking background.

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6. 1997Begins formal fine-woodworking training

   She studied at the College of the Redwoods, now associated with the Krenov School, from 1997 to 1998 and earned a Certificate of Fine Woodworking.

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7. 1992Earns a geology degree from Boston College

   Eriksmoen completed a Bachelor of Science in geology at Boston College, establishing an early scientific foundation for her later material- and environment-focused practice.

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Experimental studio furniture and contemporary craft practice focused on reclaimed materials, environmental narratives, sculptural construction, and woodworking education.

• Feral: Rewilding FurnitureSculptural furniture series

  A series using found and broken furniture to imagine domestic objects as animated or rewilded forms. The work combines salvage, sculptural transformation, and ecological metaphor, treating discarded tables and chairs as material evidence of a built environment that can be reclaimed by nature.

• CriogriffSculptural furniture

  A furniture-related artwork by Eriksmoen that was presented in Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking at the Center for Art in Wood in 2019. The work forms part of her broader exploration of woodworking, gender, material reuse, and the boundary between functional furniture and sculpture.

• Meares Island Nurse LogArt furniture2022

  A furniture work selected for the 2022 Melbourne Design Fair. Its title invokes the ecological role of a nurse log, connecting the object to Eriksmoen's recurring interest in decomposition, regeneration, and relationships between natural systems and constructed materials.

• The Dream or: the view from here is both bleak and resplendentChaise2022

  A chaise that won the 2022 Australian Furniture Design Award. The work demonstrates Eriksmoen's treatment of furniture as both usable object and expressive art, while its title frames the piece through contrasting ideas of bleakness and beauty.

• 2022Meares Island Nurse Log selected for Melbourne Design Fair

  The work Meares Island Nurse Log was selected for the Melbourne Design Fair, presented by the National Gallery of Victoria with the Melbourne Art Foundation.

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• 2022The Dream wins Australian Furniture Design Award

  Her chaise The Dream or: the view from here is both bleak and resplendent won the Australian Furniture Design Award.

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• 2021Eriksmoen wins Tasmania's Clarence Prize

  She won the Clarence Prize with the furniture work Following years of steady decline we are witnessing a period of unprecedented growth.

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• 2019Criogriff included in Making a Seat at the Table

  Eriksmoen's work Criogriff was featured in Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking at the Center for Art in Wood.

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• 2019Participation in I Thought I Heard a Bird

  Eriksmoen was included in a curated Craft ACT exhibition examining connections between people and the environment.

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• 2014Eriksmoen receives the Fuji Xerox Sustainable Art Award

  Ashley Eriksmoen was recognized with the Fuji Xerox Sustainable Art Award for work associated with sustainable artistic practice.

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1. Ashley Eriksmoen
2. Ashley Eriksmoen official website