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For Immediate Release
March 31, 2004

Contact:
Peter Korn
(207) 594-5611
E-mail: peter@woodschool.org

Jason Wolfe
(207) 883-6083

Web Site: http://www.woodschool.org/

Maine Furniture School Breaks Ground on Nation’s First Year-round Artists’ Community for Woodworkers

Expansion at Center for Furniture Craftsmanship result of recently completed $2.4 million capital campaign

ROCKPORT, Maine - The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, an innovative arts school on the coast of Maine, has successfully completed a $2.4 million capital campaign to expand facilities and create an opportunity for more people in Maine and across the country to learn and hone the art of furniture making.

The Center recently broke ground on a 4,600-square-foot workshop to house its Studio Fellowship Program, the nation’s first year-round artist-in-residence program for emerging and established woodworkers.

Already, the fundraising effort has resulted in the addition of a new 5,600-square-foot workshop, called the Main Building, as well as a new Gallery Building that features an exhibition gallery and a fine woodworking library. The school’s web site is www.woodschool.org, or call (207) 594-5611.

The capital campaign, begun in June 2001, included gifts and pledges from 391 donors in Maine and around the world, including a $250,000 challenge grant from the prestigious Kresge Foundation.

“We are both delighted and humbled that the school has earned such broad and widespread support,” said Craig Satterlee, president of the Center’s Board of Directors. “It’s not easy to fundraise in an adverse economy and halfway through we were having second thoughts. But the Kresge Foundation grant was a shot in the arm to our campaign volunteers and it helped tremendously with prospective donors.”

Founded in 1992 and established as a non-profit educational organization in 1999, the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship currently enrolls more than 270 students a year in a variety of intensive classes taught by nationally known instructors, including some of the nation’s finest woodworkers. The campus is situated on 12 acres of meadow and woods along the Oyster River in Rockport.

Students come from around the world and are both avocational and professional woodworkers. Courses range from introductory to advanced. The Center’s mission is to provide the best possible education for people who want to design and build functional, beautiful, expressive furniture out of wood to the highest standard of craftsmanship.

“We’ve built the school from the ground up, physically and philosophically, and it’s exciting to have engaged the enthusiasm of so many people,” said Peter Korn, the Center’s founder and executive director and author of the widely read Working With Wood: The Basics of Craftsmanship.

The capital campaign became necessary as demand for the school’s courses, then consisting of 25 one- and two-week workshops and two 12-week “intensives,” grew so high that hundreds of applicants were turned away each year. Classes are limited to 12 participants, who have round-the-clock access to fully equipped workshops and daily instruction by two or more full-time instructors.

With the expansion, Korn said, the Center is now able to offer “an unparalleled curriculum,” including additional workshop sessions as well as a new in-depth Nine-Month Comprehensive program and, by fall, the Studio Fellowship program. Studio Fellows will have the benefits of free shop space and access to lectures and demonstrations throughout the year by the school’s extensive faculty, which numbers more than 25 permanent and visiting instructors.

“People engage in fine woodworking because they find it so immensely satisfying,” Korn said. “So much of modern life takes place at a keyboard or in an office, with intangible results. But in woodworking the measure of your effort is right there in front of you. That’s why I am so pleased that so many more people will now have the opportunity.”

Richard Kellogg, a Houston businessman, said his passion for woodworking drew him and his son, Clarke, to Rockport in 1998 for a two-week Basic Woodworking course.

Kellogg, who now chairs of the Center’s Capital Campaign committee, said he was overwhelmed by what he saw and decided to stay involved with the school’s vision. “The instructors are some of the best woodworkers in the world, the classes are intimate, the atmosphere is encouraging, and there is a contagious commitment to excellence among staff, faculty and students,” he said. “The whole experience was so positive that I wanted to do what I could to ensure that others have the same opportunity. That’s what this campaign was all about.”

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