A very successful artist working in a less common medium is classmate Martha Collins, who has made her name creating extremely intricate one-of-a-kind works of art, including jewelry, ceremonial bowls, and tableware, in exotic and domestic hardwoods. She constructs them using the natural grains, colors and textures of the wood, with as many as 1200 to 1500 pieces in a single item, accentuated with veneers using colors she hand-dyes. She likens this to “weaving wood”.
She exhibited some of her award-winning work at a past Ann Arbor Art Fair and this year has been accepted to two major national craft shows, the Smithsonian Craft Fair October 23-31, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s 45th annual contemporary craft show November 5-7. Both shows have been moved online and that’s actually good news for those of us around the country who would not have been able to attend to see Martha’s work in Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia. You can find all the details about the Smithsonian show here and for the PMA’s at this link.
Martha’s start in woodworking began in 1973 when she became a carpenter’s apprentice at the Treehouse Cabinet Shop in Ann Arbor and discovered the satisfaction that lay in making a tangible, useful thing that was also beautiful. Leaving behind a degree program in the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources, she was able to take advantage of Title IX to spend 2½ years in a state-supported cabinetmaking course. She built on that start and, more than four decades later, her long expertise in design and precision woodworking have led to the national recognition she has now.
Martha’s home base and studio is in Sequim, a tiny town on Washington State’s beautiful Olympic Peninsula, next to the Olympic National Park and Olympic National Forest. As well as creating and selling her own work, Martha continues to teach her craft to others through lectures and workshops.
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