NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio:
John Dunnigan is a designer, maker, author and educator. His studio work has been shown in more than one hundred exhibitions, including ten solo exhibitions, and is included in private and public collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the RISD Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Dunnigan’s furniture has been featured in dozens of publications, such as The New York Times, Newsweek and The Boston Globe, in catalogues and in books, including Edward S. Cooke’s New American Furniture (1989) and Witold Rybczynski’s Now I Sit Me Down (2016). In addition to maintaining his own studio practice since 1975, he was a partner in DEZCO Furniture Design LLC (2004-2010) and Windels Dunnigan (2018-2019), collaborations dedicated to sustainable practices in design for affordable production.
A dedicated teacher, Dunnigan has been a member of the faculty at RISD for over forty years serving first in the Departments of Industrial Design and Interior Architecture. In 1995, he was a co-founder of the Department of Furniture Design eventually serving as Department Head for many years (2005- 08 and 2010-17) and he served as Interim Dean of the Division of Architecture + Design in 2008-09. He is a former Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the RISD Museum (2015-18) and the recipient of several awards including the URI Alumni award for Excellence in the Arts (1998). He was a RI Networks Artist in 2014. Dunnigan currently holds the Schiller Family Endowed Chair in Furniture Design at RISD since 2016.
Original NetWorks Catalogue Bio:
John Dunnigan is a designer, maker, and educator. A native of Providence, Dunnigan is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island, with an MFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work involves a range of contexts, materials, and processes, but it is driven by a consistent interest in things as an expression of the interdependent relationships among culture, technology, and identity. In his more recent work, he is motivated by the pursuit of what he calls “Practical Solutions to Oblique Problems.” Dunnigan’s furniture has been shown in over one hundred exhibitions, including ten solo exhibitions, and is included in collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the National Museum of American Art. He is a partner in DEZCO furniture design llc, a company dedicated to sustainable practices in design for mass production. Dunnigan is a professor and Chair of the Department of Furniture Design at RISD.
Source: NetWorks 2013 – 2014 Catalogue
Reclaimed Padouk, brass, 72 x 38 x 14 in.
Credits:
Video: Richard Goulis
Music:
Mandocello Exercises – John Dunnigan
Dovetail Blues, National Blues – Mark Sherman
Still Photography:
Roger Birn
Ric Murray
Erik Gould
Additional photography: Robert Frost, Library of Congress
Executive Producer: Joseph A. Chazan, M.D.
Additional Resources:
Highlighting the work of selected artists who have played vital roles in shaping the contemporary visual arts community in Rhode Island. This collection of brief video portraits provides a window into the lives, practices, and cultural contributions of professional artists.
