Phoebe Kuo (b. 1983, Lompoc, CA)
Pronunciation: “quo”
she/her
Phoebe is a queer Taiwanese-American woodworker based in Oakland, CA. She uses traditional furniture joinery to propose alternative relationships between the crafted object and the context in which it sits. Working with the age-old technique of coopering which originates in barrel making, her design-forward sculptures defy expectations of solid wood as they bend around architectural elements that are often overlooked. Specialized handplanes allow her to seamlessly join straight stock into luminous curves.
Her work has been shown at Chautauqua Institute in New York, FLXST Contemporary in Chicago, Wasserman Projects in Detroit, and ICFF in New York, among others. She has been awarded residencies through ACRE Projects, Field/Work at Chicago Artists Coalition, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. As a craft researcher, she jointly received an Exhibition Research Grant from the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC, for a collaborative book project on women in woodworking.
For a decade she consulted as a design ethnographer for Fortune 500 companies, and has conducted research in China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey, the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and the United States. She has taught design thinking at Stanford University and Northwestern University, and woodworking across the country.
She received her BS in Product Design from Stanford University, a certificate in Fine Woodworking from The Krenov School, and her MFA in Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She lives with her wife, toddler, and two house rabbits.
Get in touch for collaborations, questions, or just to say hello!