Jason Green was in his fifth year of studying towards an economics doctoral degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder when he hit a wall. “I realized I needed to be making things with my hands,” he explains. Although he’d never worked with wood, he was naturally attracted to it, and found a local furniture maker who offered classes in 2003. That led to an intensive 12-week course at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine. At that point, he says, “I knew I could do this for the rest of my life.”

In 2006, he set up shop in Boone, N.C., and started working on commissions until he launched Curviture Studio Furniture in 2009.

Green enjoys the challenge of adding curves to every piece he makes. “I never really did traditional work,” he says. Although he started off with “boxier” commissions with straighter lines and corners, he was never fully happy with them. “Making curves out of wood, which is inherently straight, takes more learning and knowledge,” he says. And he finds the challenge rewarding.

Green lives and works to capture the organic movement in wood. “It’s nature expressing itself through its grain and growth pattern,” he says. To honor it, he works by steadfast rules: he only uses solid hardwoods, won’t work with plywood or veneer, and never adds stains, dyes or paint. Most important, each piece has to be functional. “I almost think of my work in terms of what I don’t do as opposed to what I do,” he laughs.

Green’s favorite part of the process, though, is adapting a silhouette he sees in his head to a prototype. “I love giving shape to something only I can see,” he says. He largely uses bent lamination and string inlay techniques in his current body of work, but hopes to combine natural-edge slabs with elegant curves in future pieces. But don’t expect him to stick strictly to furniture, either. “New work will be smaller,” Green says. “Smaller home furnishing items—possibly for the kitchen.”

Ed Edwards’ life can be described as a series of evolutions. He grew up surrounded by   art—his father was a high school art teacher who introduced silk-screening and mosaic projects to the family—but there wasn’t a strong message to pursue it professionally.

That didn’t stop Edwards from enrolling in art classes while studying as an undergraduate or taking his first stained glass workshop in 1977.

Along the way, he worked as a bank loan officer and an accountant. He dreamt that when he retired, he’d leave New York City and move to California to work at a winery.

Luckily he didn’t have to wait. In 1986, Edwards went to work at the Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville, Calif. There, he was also awarded a major commission—to complete a large stained glass window. At the urging of his wife Becky Jo Peterson, he’d taken up stained glass more seriously in 1996, and in 2002 he left the winery to launch his own stained glass studio.

When Peterson’s job forced the couple to move to Mobile, Ala., in 2005, Edwards didn’t want to compete with two existing stained glass studios in the area, so he dove headfirst into fused glass.

Edwards is largely self-taught. “I had taken workshops,” he explains. “But with everything I do, the most important thing is to get home and apply what I learn.”

Although he quickly conquered standard shapes with commercial molds, his interests led to more unconventional forms. He solved the problem by cutting his own soft fiberboard molds, creating any size or shape he can imagine.

His series have evolved from “Stepping Stone” pieces with legs to hold them off the table to food-inspired sculpture—skillets replete with bacon and eggs, plates full of tacos, and pizza on a cutting board. “I guess you could say I’m making low-cal versions of my favorite foods,” he laughs.

For Edwards, the possibilities are endless. “The great thing about glass is that as my interest in one form wanes, there are so many other ways to work with it,” he notes. “How can I not be passionate about it?”

Find more of his designs at http://edwardsartglass.com.