Born in Altadena, California, John Cederquist is a woodworker and furniture maker whose trompe l’oeil artworks masterfully invert dimension. Cederquist received both his BFA (1969) and MA (1971) from California State University, Long Beach. After completing his studies, he maintained a studio practice for several years before accepting a position at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo, California, in 1979. He became fascinated with perspective and dimension while teaching a design class and decided to meld trompe l’oeil illustration with furniture making. Cederquist creates his technically functional – yet primarily visual – works by overlaying wooden forms with a variety of puzzle-like inlays, often using the natural grain of different woods to confuse perspective. References to comics, pop culture, and Japanese printmaking permeate his three-dimensional, yet visually flat, works. Cederquist retired from Saddleback as professor emeritus in 2008. He continues to maintain a studio and has mounted solo exhibitions at museums and galleries around the country. His work has been collected by many prominent museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. He won the 2010 Award of Distinction from the Furniture Society and received several fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1975, 1986). John Cederquist was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council in 2002.