Sylvie Rosenthal

Sylvie Rosenthal started building as a six-year-old at the Eli Whitney Museum, where she made circuses, catapults, rockets, and robots. She received her BFA from The Rochester Institute of Technology, Woodworking and Furniture Design Program in the School for American Crafts, building two houses from the ground up with her mentor, Doug Sigler. She went on to receive her MFA in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rosenthal has been routinely invited as a visiting artist, teacher, and researcher to many schools including San Diego State University (CA), University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Madison, Penland School of Crafts (NC), Haystack Mountain School (ME), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (CO), Australia National University (Canberra, Australia) and Tainan National University of the Arts (Tainan, Taiwan R.O.C.). She has shown nationally at galleries and museums such as The Fuller Craft Museum (MA), The Mint Museum (NC), and the Museum of Art and Design (NYC). Currently, Rosenthal maintains a studio practice making furniture on commission, production work for sale online, and sculpture dealing with the intersecting flight patterns of the histories of trade, the intentional and unintentional transplantations that come with it, hybridity, materiality, queer theory, and the natural world. Rosenthal teaches woodworking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Fundamentals of Construction at Madison College’s Construction and Remodeling Program. She is also on the board of trustees of CERF+, the Artist’s Safety Net. When Rosenthal isn’t doing the above, you might find her on her bike, teaching woodworking to kids, or traveling somewhere. www.sylvierosenthal.com 

“My works are propositions. I churn my collection of seemingly disparate fields of knowledge such as history of science, craft, the natural world, queer theory, constructions of landscape, and ideas of wilderness. My works come together as an ensemble, carefully considered in size and scale to activate both the concept and materiality of the objects. The pieces are complete within themselves while connections constellate across them: working the work in the work, forming combinations that do not settle into taxonomic classification.”

-Sylvie Rosenthal