2018 Exhibitors
Robert Bliss, Bliss & Campbell Architects
Bob Bliss has a life’s work that has touched thousands through his teaching and academic leadership, his mentoring, and through his community activism and its impact upon our built environment. Bob has a demonstrated conviction and integrity, for architecture takes an ethical position manifest in bricks and mortar. A Seattle native, he left town to attend the famous Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He studied under Joseph Albers, Lawrence Kocher, and Howard Dearstyne. While there, he designed and built his first pieces of furniture. He studied at the MIT School of Architecture. He received the Rotch Traveling Fellowship and traveled Europe, South America, and Asia with another architecture student studying architecture up the road at the Graduate School of Design, one Anna Campbell. She later became his wife and lifelong collaborator. Bob taught at MIT and worked for several firms in the Boston area before taking a faculty position at the University of Minnesota, recruited by Ralph Rapson. He attained the level of Associate Professor. He and Anna formed the firm of Bliss Campbell in 1955 that continues to this day. They designed exhibits for the Minnesota Institute, the Walker Art Center, and a U.S. Information Services art exhibit in San Paulo, Brazil. In 1963, Bob accepted the position as head of the Architecture Department at the University of Utah, taking over for Roger Bailey, the school’s founder. Bob elevated the school to graduate school status in 1974. In the 1960s, he participated in the Second Century Plan and was a founding board member of Utah Heritage Foundation where he served as Board Chair from 1968-1970. He participated in the original Snowbird Ski Resort Masterplan (1970), and investigated the use of the Union Pacific Depot as an Intermodal Hub. Bob Bliss has set an incredibly high standard of conduct for the design community. He is truly an architect’s architect.
Chris Gochnour, The Joiners Bench
Chris Gochnour is an experienced artisan, writer, teacher, and hand-tool expert who specializes in traditional woodworking techniques and design. He sells his pieces and shares his craft at The Joiners Bench, a fine furniture company that produces bench-made furniture from his studio in Salt Lake City. Chris built commissioned furniture for the Utah governor’s formal office in the Utah State Capitol and has built hundreds of commissioned works for customers over the past 30 years.
Chris is a contributing editor for Fine Woodworking magazine and has been published in the magazine over 35 times during the past two decades. Chris has authored numerous hand tool reviews and is recognized around the country as an expert on traditional building techniques. In 1998, Chris was Taunton Press’s featured guest at the Woodworking Fair in Atlanta, Georgia.
He teaches furniture making at Salt Lake Community College, the Traditional Building Skill Institute at Snow College, and the Marc Adams School of Woodworking.
Chad Parkinson, The Furniture Joint
Machines work for the masses with indifference, manufacturing generic goods for ordinary needs. The Furniture Joint's hand crafted wooden furniture represents the peculiarity of people and their homes. Chad aspires to bring nice things back into the home by showcasing the natural beauty of wood through custom design, thus shifting the modern focal point of admiration from the mechanical.
Currently, there is a disturbing tendency to buy cheap boxed furniture that we assemble ourselves knowing it will not last a single generation. Furniture is not meant to be replaced with other trends, but cherished.
Ben Manheimer, NorthNorth
NorthNorth is an independent Salt Lake City based design/build studio specializing in high-end residential furniture and environmental design solutions for a wide array of commercial environments. Founded by Ben Manheimer in 2016, NorthNorth is the unique product of an extensive background in retail design, lifestyle marketing, general contracting and formal woodworking training at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, ME
Amy Costello, Salt Lake Community College
Amy Costello is known for her delicate chip carving on turnings and small joinery projects. While she has built furniture in several industrial sized shops since she started woodworking in 2014, she currently does everything on a 6’ by 10’ platform in her bedroom, with a long curtain splitting the room. When she’s not in the shop, Amy enjoys writing, tending her cut flower garden, and enjoying her husband’s homemade artisan bread. Find her on Instagram @amy.makes.everything .
Gus Mitchener, Woodworker
Gus is a woodworker specializing in fine furniture and custom cabinetry. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, when he’s not in the woods or with his family, he’s most likely in his shop. In 2015, after more than 17 years in the field as a framer, finish carpenter, superintendent and eventually contractor, he completed an Associates Degree in Construction Management with an emphasis on Furniture and Cabinet Making at SLCC under the instruction of Chris Gochnour (The Joiner’s Bench).
With a great respect for the entire building process, he appreciates traditional and durable construction methods, values efficient use of materials and resources, and enjoys working with clients to build one-of-a-kind furniture and custom cabinetry that will last for generations to come.
Keith Findling, Keith Findling Design
Keith started his first design related business in college and now has over 20 years experience as a product designer. This ranges from developing one-off, self-fabricated projects to designing mass-produced products selling in the hundreds of thousands. One of these projects, developed with Espiritu Design, led to winning the Red Dot Award in product design in 2010. His goal is to create products that generate emotional connection with the user, have longevity, and are sustainable, with the overall intent of preventing their transition to the waste stream and reducing their environmental impact. In addition to working as a designer, he also taught in the design program at the University of Utah, as well as mentoring students at Lassonde Entrepreneurial Center. His struggle to become a successful designer without the help of a mentor has made him want to empower and assist others on their own paths to become designers, innovators, and entrepreneurs.
Eric Jacoby, Eric Jacoby Design
Eric Jacoby Design is a spin-off from Jacoby Architects in Salt Lake City, where Eric was a principal and technical director for 13 years. Prior to his tenure at Jacoby Architects, Eric worked as an architect in London, Amsterdam, and San Francisco. Eric has a Master of Architecture degree from UC Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Utah.
Eric Jacoby’s architectural furniture is intended to be diagrammatic of the way it is built – which results in a deconstructed, pulled-apart aesthetic where each system, each connection, and each detail is deliberately exaggerated, and exposed.
All of Eric’s products are intended to have an exciting, elegant, and modern aesthetic; but more importantly, they are researched, tested and resolved so that they are durable, functional, and long-lasting.
Anjeanette Jacobs, Salt Lake Community College
Anjeanette Jacobs of Salt Lake City is a graduate from the University of Utah with degrees in both Psychology and Fine Art, including an emphasis in sculpture. She has enjoyed working in many different mediums including wood, metal, found object, photography and laser. Anjeanette has discovered a true passion working and creating with wood. She has interned and studied extensively under the direction of Chris Gochnour (the Joiners Bench). Anjeanette is currently enrolled at Salt Lake Community College, where she has studied furniture making and the craft of fine woodworking for the past 5 years.
Justin Brown, Justin Brown Designs
Justin has been building custom furniture for almost two decades. Justin first started building houses and then became a finish carpenter. His attention to detail and desire for more challenging projects brought him into building fine staircases. He started a staircase company that built complex, free-standing circular staircases and stair handrail systems. Due to the unlimited design possibilities, Justin became captivated by furniture and design. After building furniture for several years, honing his skills and knowledge, he started Justin Brown Designs.
Justin Brown Designs is dedicated to building furniture that inspires through great design. Coupled with fine craftsmanship and careful material selection, utilizing time tested furniture joinery ensures that his pieces will last for generations. Justin maintains that furniture is not primarily a sterile utilitarian object we place in our homes and rather are elegant pieces of art unique as we are.
Chantel Cook, Salt Lake Community College
Chantel started woodworking in 2015, based on a hunch that it might be fun. Since then she has spent more of her free time either in the shop or reading about woodworking, and has found it to be much more than just fun. She is currently enrolled as a student at Salt Lake Community College in the school of Cabinetmaking and Furniture Construction, taking advantage of their amazing shop and instructors, and works for J Thompson Workshop, learning everything she can from the talented Joey Thompson.
Colin Eichinger, Salt Lake Community College
Colin moved to Salt Lake City from New York in the summer of 2009 to pursue a graduate degree in Biomedical Engineering. Soon after arriving, he began taking woodworking classes at Salt Lake Community College under the instruction of Chris Gochnour (The Joiners Bench) and has been building furniture ever since. Colin is currently working as an R&D engineer at Bend Labs, making stretch and flex sensors for wearable technology.