Bio

Carolyn grew up 20 minutes from Sam Beauford and studied Creative Writing at The University of Michigan.  After college, she moved to California and spent the next 11 years doing stand up and sketch comedy, writing for shows at UCB and The Pack Theater, and managing a very busy restaurant in Los Angeles. Sometime after the pandemic she found herself pretty burnt out and took a few woodworking classes for fun at Allied Woodshop. She immediately fell in love with the environment of the woodshop and making things by hand. Carolyn's mom told her about SBWI's diploma program and, after touring the school, she was eager to pack up her Honda Fit, drive back home and be a student of the trade while living close to family. As the year-long program comes to an end, Carolyn is not sure she will ever make the drive back to the West Coast. After graduation, Carolyn will be teaching a few woodworking classes at Sam Beauford.  She will also begin an upholstery apprenticeship with Kymm Clark of Lullco Studio in Ann Arbor and taking on freelance upholstery work. 

Artist Statement

I am a poet turned comedian turned woodworker. I make customizable furniture with upholstered accents. I am inspired by turn of the century upholstered sofas, vintage tablecloths, embroidered handkerchiefs, stained glass, and antique needlework. I let the color of the wood and its grain patterns influence and inform the fabric used on the piece. 

I discovered woodworking through my own means while living in California. However, when I came back home to Michigan to attend woodworking school, I was reminded that I come from generations of expert builders, craftspeople and seamstresses. One night my mom and I dug through a box of linens she inherited from her mother, grandmother and great grandmother. I am now most inspired by these vintage and antique fabrics, along with stories of the family parties they adorned; adults drinking cocktails, playing cards and chatting while kids bounce around the basement; women in fur coats and bouffants posing for photographs with family friends who later became legends and punchlines, admired and missed. Through my work I want to carry on my family traditions. Not only the tradition of building and making, but also gathering, laughing and generosity. I believe in finding joy in everyday life, in the quiet importance objects have in turning spaces into stories. I aim to create furniture that rests in the background of other people’s treasured memories and travels with them through their life.