about

About Chris

Bio Chris Shea designs and creates furniture and architectural metalwork at his studio in southern Maryland, outside Washington, DC. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery and in numerous private collections around the country. Shea's work has been shown at Fuller Craft Museum, Woodson Art Museum, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the National Ornamental Metals Museum, The Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, Wexler Gallery in Philadelphia, and at SOFA Chicago with Maurine Littleton Gallery. A native of Marblehead, MA, Shea studied metalsmithing at the Appalachian Center for Craft in Tennessee and at Penland School. He holds a BA in English Literature from Cornell University and, before embarking on his current path, worked for five years in Educational Programs at The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC. Chris Shea's glasswork is created in association with the talented artists of the Washington Glass Studio. Video: Pedestal Table Video: Railings Inquiries about the works shown on this site or about commissions for new work are welcomed. For postings about current news and works in progress, please visit the Facebook page for Chris Shea - Art Furniture and Architectural Metalwork.

chris shea - portrait

Statement: Some Words About Things Growing up in a historic town on the coast of Massachusetts, I received an early education in the eloquence of even simple things. Objects were saturated with history. Colonial-era homes and household things -- a chair, a cooking spoon, an artisan's tool -- held traces of the people who had made them and used them. Some objects were spare and utilitarian, others were grand and beautifully crafted. All of them had the capacity to evoke a sense of wonder and connectedness. To those objects I can trace my beginnings as a blacksmith and a furniture maker, though it took me 30 years and a detour through literary aspirations to find my path. From the woods and shorelines of my childhood I developed an admiration for insects, crustaceans, and other creatures that has never left me. And since I first began to explore my chosen materials of iron, bronze, and copper an affinity between the weird exoskeletal beauties that I wondered at as a child and the languages of forged metalwork has been inescapable. The material and technical vocabulary that metalsmiths have developed over time to address challenges of form and function seem to me to have intriguing echoes in the ways that evolution has, for certain creatures, worked to solve the practical problems of living on Earth. In both cases, strange and elegant solutions have arisen. The visceral sense of wonder I feel in contemplating the long workings of evolution and its spectacular, varied results is echoed in my own work with fire, hammer and anvil. In my studio, traditional forms of furniture and functional metalwork evolve into new anatomies, drawn from the world around me, both natural and man-made, and expressed in the language of the blacksmith.

Resumé

Education Cornell University, Bachelor of Arts, 1987 Appalachian Center for Crafts/Tennessee Technological University, Smithville, TN Certificate in Metals, 1997 Selected Collections/Commissions Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, Permanent Collection. Cafe Chairs and Arthropod Side Table. Bresler Collection, North Bethesda, MD. Commissioned suite of furniture for private collection. Powell House, Embassy Row, Washington, DC. Commissioned exterior and interior ironwork for renovated former embassy. Glen Hurst, Washington DC. Commissioned railings, gates, fence for historic home. Numerous private collections Selected Exhibitions Nü Iron Age, Juried pop-up exhibition at SNAG conference, New Orleans, LA, 2017 Interiors, Strathmore Arts Center, North Bethesda, MD, 2017 Iron 2010, Touring exhibition: Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA; National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, TN; Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI; Southern Illinois University Museum, Carbondale, IL, 2010 Iron: Forged, Tempered, Quenched, Houston Contemporary Craft Center, 2010 Wild Things, Montpelier Arts Center, Laurel, MD, 2007 Artist-Made Furniture, Eleven Eleven Sculpture Space, Washington DC, 2005 Illuminating 20 Years of American Craft, Sansar Gallery, Bethesda, MD, 2002 Crafts National 33, Zoller Gallery, Penn State University, 1999 Contemporary Metalsmiths 1999, Young & Constantin Gallery, Shelburne Falls, MA, 1999 American Mokume Invitational, National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis TN, 1998 Emerging Artists - Metals, The Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, MA 1997 Selected Publications Washington Post Magazine, September 25, 2016 Architecture DC Magazine, Fall 2016 Ironwork Today: Inside and Out, Schiffer Publishing, 2011 DC Magazine, October 2011 500 Tables, Lark Books, 2009 Chairs, Lark Books, 2009 500 Chairs, Lark Books, 2008 Chesapeake Home, November 2007 The Washington Post, November 24, 2005 Metalsmith Magazine, Exhibition in Print, 1998 Anvil's Ring Magazine, Winter 2010, Winter 2009, Winter 1997 WETA Magazine, April 1998

Links & Press

Personal essay, Metalsmith magazine, Fall 2018 Washington Post Sunday Magazine, September 2016 Architecture DC Magazine, Fall 2016 Cornell Magazine February 2012 | Cover | Online Extras American Craft Council Interview, October 2012 DC Magazine October 2011 Washington Glass School James Renwick Alliance Photographer, Pete Duvall Society of North American Goldsmiths Artist Blacksmith Association of North America American Craft Council

Video: Pedestal Table

Video: Railings