About the Author

Francis Cape has presented his work internationally in solo shows and group exhibitions. For his project "The Other End of the Line", at the High Line, New York (2010), Cape sited a vintage 1972 mobile home under the High Line on Gansevoort Plaza in which he invited Ian Berry, curator of the Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, to house a group exhibition. A graduate with an MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London (1991), Cape is the recipient of a 2001 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and a Pollock Krasner Grant (2010), among others.

Reviews

"[A]rtist Jonathan Cape set out to start a conversation "about communalism as both a historic and a contemporary alternative to individualism" through reconstructing and installing together in a gallery setting reproductions of twenty benches used at twelve American communal societies. We Sit Together encapsulates what he learned from that project The book lacks any extended reflections on the bench form over time and in different spaces. Yet it makes up for that with the refreshing perspective of a contemporary artist/furniture maker who has a strong sense of the power objects have to inspire change." - Chipstone---
"A fascinating book." - The Daily Beast---
"An engaging tour of craft, technology, and community." - New York Times---
"Francis Cape may be the first person to physically investigate how different designs facilitated different social practices." - Forbes.com---
"Furniture lovers will be intrigued, as I was, with an exquisite group of reconstructed benches appearing in We Sit Together: Utopian Benches From the Shakers to the Separatists of Zoar, by famed artist Francis Cape. I can't explain it, but staring at these spartan designs -- indeed, they are sculptures -- brought me a sense of the serenity undoubtedly embodied in the communities that inspired these works." - San Jose Mercury News---
"Highly entertaining." - New York Observer---