Chris Schanck

Chris Schanck is an American artist whose furniture explores function, ornamentation, and structure. To Schanck, furniture is one of the few art forms that must satisfy both the eye and the body. His work develops through an ongoing process of drawing, sculpting, building, and responding to material.

In 2026, after more than a decade in Detroit, Michigan, Schanck established a studio in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The move marked an expansion of his work with traditions of craftsmanship, new materials, and new collaborators have become part of an ongoing body of work shaped as much by place as by the artist himself.

For Schanck, ornament is never decoration alone. It is structure, labor, history, and imagination made visible. His work reflects a continuing search for forms that are useful, expressive, and deeply human.

Schanck's work has been exhibited internationally and is included in public and private collections.