John Eric Byers creates geometrically inspired pieces that are minimal, emotional, and modernly refined. Producing his uniquely original works for over three decades, each individually hand-made design is guided by purity in form, surface texture, structure, and respect for use of materials.
Heralded as a leading American artist working in wood, permanent collections include the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC. Numerous awards include a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, New York Foundation of the Arts Awards, and inclusion in the Smithsonian's Oral Archives of American Arts.
"Like any master, Byers' hides his painstaking labor, and his finished work appears to have been accomplished easily..."
- Museum of Arts and Design
“The carved, patterned surfaces add considerable interest to his simplified forms, as does his exquisite attention to detail”.
- New York Times
“Byers has over his 30-year-long career developed a reputation for minimalist yet richly detailed furniture and objects made by hand”.
- Design Miami
"He marries a painters attention to surface with a craftsman's devotion...art that references history and modernism".
- Boston Globe
"...his magnificent building blocks of design, the sphere and ellipse, circle, square, cylinder and rectangle.
- American Craft Magazine