The Wharton Esherick Museum (WEM) is pleased to announce the opening of Breaking Ground: WEMs 32nd Annual Juried Woodworking Exhibition. The year 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of a moment for Wharton Esherick that required both literal and symbolic groundbreaking. In 1926, Esherick completed the first phase of construction on his studio, the space that introduced his distinctive architectural and artistic vision to the built environment. This first phase of the studio showcased Eshericks deep interest in vernacular architecture, as well as his desire to bring the natural world into the built landscape, commitment to a larger workspace that would accommodate his growing creative efforts in wood, and investment in himself as not only a painter, but as a builder of worlds. To mark this centennial year, WEM invited contemporary artists to take inspiration from what they consider groundbreaking, defined by any of the terms multiple meanings. We asked them to consider: Whether public or personal, what ideas or shifts feel groundbreaking in this complex moment in history? What groundbreaking tools or moments have shaped your practice? Is there a groundbreaking idea that has inspired your work? What do you consider groundbreaking about your own contributions to the expanded field of art and design in wood? After the initial excitement and ceremony of a groundbreaking, how do we build? Together, the 26 artists featured in Breaking Ground remind us that groundbreaking moments rarely end with the ceremonial turning of soil, reflects Emily Zilber, WEMs director of curatorial affairs and strategic partnerships. Instead, they mark the beginning of a longer process in which imagination, skill, and persistence come together to build something enduring, finished Zilber. The prize winners for Breaking Ground are Christian Burchard (Ashland, Ore.), Haniel Wides (Somerville, Mass.), Terry Evans (Overland Park, Kan.), and Robert Aiosa (Orlando, Fla). Works by these four talented artists will be on view in WEMs Visitor Center during the run of the exhibition. Christian Burchard may be a familiar face in the field of wood art, but the work with which he has won the first-place prize in this years competition represents a new direction for this talented artist. While Burchard is well-known for his years of sculptural work in madrone, and particularly for his book forms, his new work Never Again II represents the artist breaking new ground within familiar territory. Burchard believed he had not yet fully tapped the power that books hold as symbols of what our culture can achieve and how we document our history. In assembling these books in an artfully composed pile, he alludes to the pivotal and troubling image of a book burning and directs our gaze towards what is threatened. In turn, we are left to consider what we are called to do in response. Second-place winner Haniel Wides calls back to historical form in order to break new ground. Creep both speaks to Wides extensive training in traditional forms of furniture making, carpentry, and restoration, while pushing the Windsor chair in directions that feel unsettling and unfamiliar, and in Wides own words, a perversion of its origins. The low-slung arms and sloping form of the piece suggest that the constraints shaping our assumptions about what a chair can be are dissolving before our eyes. In this way, Wides approach echoes a groundbreaking question that Esherick also asked through his practice: How can refusing to adhere to the correct way of doing things beget objects that feel powerful and real? Third-place winner Terry Evans is represented in this exhibition through immaculately crafted and thoughtfully composed boxes that speak to the rich possibilities that can come from breaking ground without eschewing technical skill, lavish materiality, and immaculate construction. Both Triple Handle Box and Triple Stacking Box use an original stacking process that allows each piece to have multiple sculptural permutations because of their modular construction. Evans boxes offer an intimate experience for the user that both activates our brains and invites us into a moment of play. Honorable Mention winner Robert Aiosas work breaks ground in how it implores us to consider a changed perspective. Instead of positioning humanity as the primary witness to and consumer of nature, Aiosa asks us to consider how nature bears witness to humanitys ever-growing incursions into its territory. Aiosas leaves are just as unassuming, and immaculately crafted, as those found in the natural world, yet they become impossible to overlook when isolated on a gallery wall or printed page. By centering an ephemeral part of nature rather than the buildings we construct as monuments to our own ingenuity and needs, Aiosa speaks both to the literal groundbreaking that precedes such activity and to how groundbreaking it would be to prioritize natures perspective over our own. The artworks in this exhibition encourage us to consider what becomes possible when we embrace acts of breaking ground in our own lives. How might we loosen what feels settled, disrupt familiar patterns, act boldly in a world that seems to have seen everything, or imagine what might take shape once the soil has been turned? Both Wharton Esherick and the artists featured here remind us that knowing when and how to break ground requires attentiveness to the world around us, as well as to the internal impulses that signal it is time to begin building something new. The Wharton Esherick Museum (WEM) in Malvern, Pa., is the home and studio of Wharton Esherick (1887-1970), an artistic polymath and foundational figure in 20th-century contemporary craft and American Modern design. Wharton Esherick is widely credited as the founder of the studio furniture movement and was present at many of the landmark events which shaped the field of contemporary craft on an international level. Details about visiting can be found at www.whartonesherickmuseum.org.