About Me

My name is Andrew Johanningsmeier, and I have a BA in Fine Arts from Haverford College, where I focused primarily on sculpture and furniture design.

I enjoy making furniture items that are inspired by often-overlooked urban industrial design fixtures such as pipes, streetlamps, and traffic cones. Most of these items are made of metal or plastic and are usually quite weathered and dirty. I use wood to recraft these design fixtures in order to transform a usually mass-produced object into a hand-crafted, heirloom quality piece. On a personal level, these urban design reimaginations are my way of coping with and seeing the beauty in our industrial world. Mass production, unsustainable materials, and the global supply chain are causing irreparable harm to our planet. I am afraid of these things, and yet, due to how our society is structured, my survival is tied to them. I find myself relying on that which I fear. I do not intend to glorify these systems through my art but rather find a way of seeing the beauty in them.

Beauty is important to me, but function is equally so. I choose to see beauty and function not as separate ideas but instead deeply intertwined with one another. I believe beauty has a function—when I am surrounded by beautiful objects and ideas, I feel beautiful myself. I do not think of beauty as something that can be given up for functionality—instead I think that beauty is functional for the way it inspires us. Likewise, I believe that functionality is beautiful. I can think of nothing more beautiful than an object that functions in a way that leaves the user feeling more complete after using it. With these thoughts in mind, I combine decorative art and functional design into useful and beautiful objects. 

Please feel free to contact me at [email protected]