At 83, Vasa — and His Famed Acrylic Sculptures — Are Still On Top of the LA Art World

When our friend and sometime contributor Robin Stein emailed us to reveal that Los Angeles artist — and longtime SU obsession — Vasa Mihich was an old family friend, and ask if we might be interested in shooting his Los Angeles studio and archives, we jumped at the chance. What Stein's photos reveal is something that we, who often focus on design's newest and youngest practitioners, rarely have access to: a portrait of an octogenarian artist, still producing at a rapid clip, at the height of his career and his potential; a maker clearly in love with both his materials and his process.
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This Copenhagen Design Duo Uses 3D Software to Create Interiors — And Art

When we first encountered Swedish-born Anny Wang’s furniture and 3D illustrations via Instagram, she was fresh out of design school, where she had studied interior architecture. At the time she was moving to Copenhagen and launching her first project with Tim Söderström, her partner and a fellow 3D whiz with a background in architecture. Recently, however, the two decided to make their business partnership official, opening a Copenhagen-based studio called Wang & Söderström, where they create illustrations and animations for clients such as Nike, Refinery29, The New York Times, Apartamento and more.
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Inside the Downtown Los Angeles Loft Where Five Creatives Collaborate

Somebody knew somebody. That’s the short answer, according to Claire Cottrell, to the question of how five creatives — Cottrell, Michael Felix, David Rager, Cheri Messerli, and Saul Germaine, each distinguished in their respective fields — found themselves working out of a shared studio in LA’s Arts District, and occupying its airy second floor. “There are two degrees of separation between all of us,” she says.
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Bower American Design

Bower On Becoming One of the Hottest Studios in American Design

Bower's products and furniture always feel just right for the moment in which they're made, somehow ahead of what's current but not so trendy that they'll soon fall out of fashion. That these sophisticated harbingers are made from an enormous Brooklyn woodshop with no A/C seems about right when you meet them.
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When Is a Hairy Mirror Not Just a Hairy Mirror? Talking Materiality and Minimalism with Ben & Aja Blanc

Wood, bronze, marble, and minerals are some of the raw, elemental materials Providence-based design duo Ben and Aja Blanc use to craft their minimal objects for the home. The couple, who graduated from RISD and were the unexpected darlings of last year's Sight Unseen OFFSITE, have only been collaborating for a little more than a year and a half. But their fledgling partnership has already yielded more than a few instant classics.
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Eric Trine Wants to Bring Powder-Coated Joy to the Masses

In the three years since we met Eric Trine — who, at the time, was a grad student skipping his art-school graduation to show with Sight Unseen during New York Design Week — the Long Beach, California–furniture designer has emerged as a true talent. And though his powder-coated pieces — geometric, clean, bright, and fun — have wowed us from the start, over time he’s honed his approach and philosophy, shifting from a DIY mentality to a full-fledged operation with a driving vision behind it: to make great-looking, high-quality products that are actually affordable.
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For Brooklyn Artist Landon Metz, Painting Takes on a New Dimension

Surprising elements — from a Duchamp readymade and postmodern tables to avant-garde music and architecture — are the seedlings with which 30-year-old Landon Metz sows his artistic philosophy. For Metz, whose studio resides in Bushwick, these are all materials that belong to the same creative ecosystem. They also provide fertile ground for his spare, lighter-than-air paintings, which tend toward the biomorphic and richly hued repeating patterns. His latest exhibition, open now through April 9th at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, centers around Metz’s affinity for the work of Color Field painter Morris Louis, one of the movement’s central figures.
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A New Brooklyn Talent Turning Paint, Cement, and Scraps Into Of-the-Moment Objects

Cooper Union grad Nick Parker has been working steadily since 2009 to refine a materials-driven, process-based approach to making. His vases are composed of cement that he pigments, layers, and sands until it starts to resemble some hyperactive version of linoleum. His "paintings" are made from layers of paint and paint-like materials embedded with scraps. We visited his home studio in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to learn more about his craft.
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Beautiful, Textured Wall Hangings By the Los Angeles Studio All Roads Design

Janelle Pietrzak has made a name for herself as a Los Angeles-based textile artist and one half of All Roads Design, the creative studio she runs with boyfriend Robert Dougherty. It’s fair to say her thickly textured woven wall hangings helped usher in the trend; in Pietrzak's distinctive work, abstract fields of color and looping yarns meet shaggy, silky fringe in pieces that are warm and fuzzy yet elegant.
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