Mark Sfirri: The Flower Show

In this exciting and stunning book, you'll see photos from Mark Sfirri's The Flower Show, depicting the range of personalities in all different flowers, turned to whimsy. This book depicts "an exuberant garden in wood."

Mark's flowers display the artist's characteristic sense of humor, whimsy, and experimentation evident in his previous work. Throughout his career, he has continually pushed the boundaries of the round and radially symmetrical forms that one expects from woodturning, through multi-axis turning, a combination of turning and carving, or both. He considers objects and shapes that should be straightforward - bats, rolling pins, bottles, and table legs - and reimagines them as playful, strange, and unexpected. With his flowers, Mark again set out to upend the familiar. His turned and carved blossoms are not realistic botanical imitations. He tried to forget what real flowers looked like, creating stylized representations of floral shapes. The results are symbols of flowers, sometimes graceful and elegant, sometimes bulbous and cartoonish.

About the Artist:

Mark Sfirri is an esteemed figure in the world of woodturning and woodworking. Born with an innate passion for craftsmanship, creativity, and artistic collaboration, he is renowned for his innovations in art in wood.

Sfirri earned a BFA and MFA in Furniture Design at Rhode Island School of Design, where he began to explore ways to incorporate lathe-turned parts into furniture and turned some double-rimmed platters, one of which was his first off-center turning. As an MFA student, he made a set of six dining chairs constructed of off-center turned elements, which planted the seeds for his future experimentations in multi-axis spindle turning.

Sfirri’s work has been exhibited in prestigious galleries and museums worldwide and is held in numerous public collections including the Museum of Arts & Design (NY), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA), the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MN), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA), Yale University Art Gallery, the James A. Michener Art Museum (Doylestown, PA), and the Museum of Art in Wood (Philadelphia, PA). As a maker, researcher, and writer, he has conducted demonstrations and lectures throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

In addition to his role as an artist, Sfirri is professor emeritus at Bucks County Community College (Newtown, PA), where he taught full-time for nearly 40 years. He has received three national awards: the “Distinguished Educator Award” in 2010 from the Renwick Alliance and, in 2012, the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Collectors of Wood Art, and this year received the prestigious “2024 AAW POP Merit Award” from the American Association of Woodturners.