Sofia Karakatsanis is a fuctional artist and maker and working in wood, based in the West Midlands, UK. Her work navigates the intersection of furniture and sculpture, exploring the tension between beauty and the grotesque, life and decay, questioning value, form, and perception. 

 

Raised in the industrial heart of the Black Country, Sofia grew up surrounded by craft and making, which deeply shaped her creative path.  She studied design at university before training in fine furniture making at Williams & Cleal furniture school in Somerset.

 

Sofia’s approach to wood is deeply intuitive and material-led: she works in real time with the living qualities of timber, carving with both power tools and traditional hand tools, allowing the wood’s grain guide her form.  Her surface treatments expose the wood to extreme conditions. She chemically bleaches sycamore for a bone-white tone, and scorches ash for a textured, blackened finish.

 

In 2022, she was awarded craftsmanship the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust Jasper Weldon Scholarship, enabling her to return to Williams & Cleal for advanced study and to produce a body of work, exploring new processes and deepening her skill set.

 

Sofia finds solace and purpose in woodworking, believing it calms chaos and fosters a meaningful dialogue between maker and material.  Her work has been exhibited in both the UK and USA.

 

Sofia lives and works in the West Midlands, and is represented by Wexler Gallery.