Eric Adjetey Anang

The Thurber Park residency developed in 2019 to invite artists to work in a studio environment that promotes community interaction and longer-term projects. Eric Adjetey Anang was the inaugural Thurber Artist-in-Residence, selected by a jury in 2019. Eric is a woodworker, sculptor and fantasy coffin carpenter.

Born in Teshie, Ghana, Anang grew up around his family’s business, the Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop. At eight years old, he began helping around the workshop, learning the tools of the trade that supported his family’s life-long work of fantasy coffin making. After graduating high school he chose to join the family business officially by working as an apprentice. After his grandfather, Seth Kane Kwei, passed away, Anang decided to pour his heart into the shop, working to maintain his family’s legacy and eventually becoming the head carpenter and manager. He continues to be motivated by the ambition to “rise the name of his grandfather and see the world.”

Anang first came to Madison in 2015 as a visiting artist-lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, not knowing that years later he would see Madison as his community. After putting down roots and starting a family here, he has continued to stretch the boundaries of his craft. In the last several years Eric has exhibited his work throughout the United States and completed multiple residencies nationally, internationally, and right here in the Madison with the Bubbler at Madison Public Library!

Learn more about the Thurber Park residency.

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