Once Kristina Madsen is ensconced in her workshop for the day, she’s often working in absolute silence, focusing on the fine marks that make up her one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture.
The Southampton furniture maker uses a freehand technique called intaglio carving, which brings greater detail to patterns in images and creates a more three-dimensional appearance. With a 90-degree parting tool, Madsen slowly puts the point into a piece of wood and pulls it down to make a series of repetitive shapes that become intricate patterns.
Many of the decisions she makes are made in process.
“When I’m doing a pattern where I am always making decisions, I have to just focus. I don’t want the distraction of listening to something because I’m always thinking,” she said.
Her labor-intensive, masterful style is a signature of her work, inspired by her study of European cabinet-making and traditional Fijian wood carving. It’s led to her being recognized as a steward of cultural tradition and innovation with a one-time, unrestricted $100,000 award from the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation. The San Francisco foundation’s mission is to support innovative people working in field-based science, arts and crafts, teaching, and protection of the natural world.
Madsen is one of five craftspeople who are recipients of the Awards in Craft, which is administered by United States Artists. This year’s award winners were chosen by a committee of panelists for their “unique and visionary approach to material-based practice, their potential to make significant contributions to their craft in the future, and the potential for this award to provide momentum at a critical juncture in their career,” according to the foundation.
The awards, which were unsolicited, were launched this year and aim to support the work of artists and craftspeople and give them an opportunity to advance their exploration, as the foundation recognizes that arts funding is lacking in the U.S.
Madsen entered the world of woodworking on what she describes as a “hunch.”
Growing up, her hands were never idle as her mother kept her busy with knitting and various forms of needlework. After a single semester at the University of Maine working toward an undergraduate degree, Madsen said her path shifted at 19 years old and she became a student of British-born master craftsman David Powell in 1975.
“Here I am, some 47 years later, still at it,” she said. “I love coming out to work. I still do. I’m quite lucky.”
Two years later, she joined Powell at Leed Design Workshop in Easthampton, where she studied for two more years and then taught part time for four years.
She was first introduced to intaglio carvings, characteristic of Oceania, in the early 1980s after a neighbor lent her a copy of the Field Museum catalog, “The Fuller Collection of Pacific Artifacts,” by R&M Force.
“I was immediately captivated by the intricate, faceted patterns that covered these traditional objects,” she said.
In 1988, she was an artist-in-residence at the University of Tasmania and took the opportunity to travel to New Zealand and Fiji to see the carvings firsthand. While in Fiji, she met master Fijian woodcarver Makiti Koto. In 1991, she traveled back to Fiji under a Fulbright scholarship grant to study with him for nine months.
When she returned home and began to carve patterns into furniture, she found that the fine marks that were so brilliant on the handheld Fijian objects were less visible on larger-scale furniture.
In considering some of the artifacts that she had seen in museums that had been emboldened with the application of lime, she tried scrubbing tinted gesso into the facets of the naturally finished and painted surfaces to create contrast.
Over time in using this freehand carving technique, she developed a style that includes inscribing vibrant patterns onto the surfaces of three-dimensional furniture forms.
She likens the rhythmic style of her carving to that of knitting.
“You get going and it’s methodical and it takes many hours to do so you kind of get lost in it,” she said. “I always put much more time into a piece than I am compensated for. …The form on the furniture and pattern I have on it are designed, not necessarily simultaneously, but I have one in mind while I’m doing the other. The development of one usually precedes the full development of the other. But always, it’s kind of a unified process.”
The time it takes to complete Madsen’s furniture pieces can vary from months to years. Her furniture is held by art museums and in private collections throughout the country.
In addition to the award from the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, Madsen has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is also the 2020-2021 recipient of the Furniture Society Award of Distinction, and a 2022 Fellow in the American Craft Council College of Fellows.
For Madsen, who creates furniture through speculation and commissioned work, the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation award will allow her to carry on building speculative pieces. She has a goal of having several major pieces accumulated to showcase in a future exhibition.
“It’s a surprise and just a marvelous honor,” she said. “It is an acknowledgement — it enables the work I do to be carried on … This will allow me a couple of years to pursue that.”
Emily Thurlow can be reached at ethurlow@gazettenet.com.