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03.26.14

Eye Candy

Brooklyn Artist Esther Ruiz On Her “Miniature Landscapes From a Distant Future”

Brooklyn artist Esther Ruiz refers to her sculptures as "settings," "little parties," and "miniature landscapes from a distant future," but whatever you call them, they're meant to act as colorful, abstracted symbols of imaginary places she's conjured in her mind, and the objects that reside within them. Ruiz, who was born in Houston and graduated from the art program at Rhodes College in Memphis in 2011, showed the series in her first New York solo show this past October, at the Bushwick artist's space Wayfarers. According to her artist's statement, she's inspired "mostly by space operas, pop culture, geometry and the setting sun."
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03.21.14

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Cassie Griffin, Ceramicist

Cassie Griffin is a Brooklyn-based ceramicist who was introduced to us by our friend (and sometime model) Lulu Wolf. However, when we went to search the Internet for more information about Griffin’s dreamy ceramics — and their goofy everyday object–styled photos — we came up empty, save for a post on Design Sponge. So we reached out to Griffin herself, who gave us the scoop.
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03.14.14

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Francesca Capone, textile designer

Francesca Capone creates work that experiments with textile processes and language. The RISD-trained designer employs traditional textile processes such as hand-weaving, jacquard, machine knitting, marble printing, screen-printing and various dyeing methods such as shibori. But an MFA in "cross-disciplinary writing" at Brown has also led her to explore what happens when she distorts words and meaning through photo-manipulation, scanning, and digitally layering books. Combined, these methods result in unique and striking geometric patterns on fabric and painterly compositions of abstracted textual fields.
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03.13.14

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Totokaelo Art—Objects’s Spring Campaigns

The cult Seattle boutique Totokaelo already carries clothing and objects so beautiful that each new season wreaks havoc on the wallets of aesthetes around the country. The only way the store could possibly improve on that game? By shooting those new collections in scenarios designed to make said aesthetes even crazier. To promote its spring Art—Object catalog, the store's creative director Ashley Helvey masterminded two such campaigns: a photo shoot shot by Robin Stein and styled by Margaret Macmillan Jones in the technicolor plaza of Seattle's King County Correctional Center (designed in the '80s by Martha Schwartz and Benson Shaw), and a video, also in collaboration with Stein, that features Cameron Mesirow of Glasser along with music from her latest album, Interiors.
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03.07.14

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Mel Nguyen’s Desktop Deposits Series

Earlier today we posted a studio visit with the young Minneapolis artist Mel Nguyen, shot by photographer Debbie Carlos. But it only featured a small selection of Nguyen's work, in which each project is typically disassembled and morphed into three more. "If you look at a single project of mine and only associate me with that project, it will be not a complete representation of my practice," Nguyen says. We figured it was worth showing you one more example from her portfolio: her recent clay Desktop Deposits series, made for the Kansas City, Missouri, project Objet Boutique curated by Dean Roper.
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03.06.14

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The Fruit Shop by Hsian Jung

Taiwan-born, London-based Hsian Jung works as a curator and interior stylist, but in his spare time, he recently started a hand-formed ceramics line called The Fruit Shop, through whose website he releases collections inspired by individual fruits and vegetables. "Friends were describing my pottery as reminiscent of sweet melons and pumpkins, an insight that inspired this project," explains Jung. To launch his first series, based around the cantaloupe, he styled a series of photographs using "cheap objects from daily life that have similar color tones as the ceramics but totally different textures," he says.
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02.28.14

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Equilibrio Frágil y Simétrico by Cristian Montesinos

For his ongoing series of miniature totems, Barcelona-based graphic and furniture designer Cristian Montesinos collects and paints scraps of found wood, which he keeps on hand for the assembly and photographing of each piece. "Biking or walking in Barcelona I always find what I need," he says. "I keep the pieces, classified by size, and use them when I need them. When I work with these woods, I feel I'm returning to them a part of the dignity that was lost when they were thrown away. When I paint them I try not to completely cover the material, as part of the idea is to show and appreciate the tangible past of the object."
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02.25.14

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Otto Knits

Despite a BFA from Parsons, Roula Nassar sees her grandfather as the biggest influence in her design education. "He was an engineer by trade, but he was also a self taught sculptor and photographer. If something interested him he would take it upon himself to figure out how to do it, in his own way. I really identify with that approach — working outside of a system or industry to conceive things in a singular way." You can certainly see his legacy in Nassar's multi-disciplinary studio Otto. Based in Brooklyn, Otto has an output ranging from photography, through books and film, to the three dimensional: knitwear and a currently-in-progress resin bowl.
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02.20.14

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Fort Standard’s Home Goods

Today, a trifecta of awesomeness: The entire home goods line from Brooklyn designers and Sight Unseen favorites Fort Standard, photographed by talented SU contributor Brian Ferry, and styled by Monica Nelson — a new name to us, but you can bet we've been perusing her portfolio of great work for brands like Urban Outfitters and Wilder Quarterly. Greg and Ian of Fort Standard have been majorly expanding the scope of their work lately — designing interiors for clients like Steven Alan Home and Harry's, furniture for Matter and Roll & Hill, and, you know, creating a massive beer luge for our Bowery Hotel party last year — but it's their growing collection of beautifully considered home goods that's making them a household name. Pretty, minty sand-cast aluminum bowls, hanging wood-plank cutting boards, geometric stone trivets — and they've never looked better than they do here.
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02.11.14

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Eskayel’s Watercolor-Like New Wallpaper Collection

You know those Instagram feeds where it seems like the person is always off on some fantastic holiday in a remote locale? In our feed, that person is Shanan Campanaro, the multitalented artist and designer behind Eskayel. The San Diego native calls Brooklyn home, but in the past year, she's been to Bali, Belize, Nicaragua, Vail... the list goes on. But in Campanaro's case, all that travel isn't necessarily just for fun — it provides inspiration as well for the watercolors that will eventually become bleached, beautiful patterns for her wallpapers and fabrics. Eskayel's newest collection, which we're featuring today, is called “Jangala” which means jungle in Sanskrit. The new collection is a bit of a departure from her signature aesthetic, in that some of the colorways are more highly saturated than in the past, but the effect is the same. We love these styled shots Campanaro shared with us, with their overflowing greenery and little totems picked up on travel — not to mention their cute product loans from Rich Brilliant Willing! See more of our favorites after the jum, and then go to Eskayel's site to view the full collection.
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02.07.14

Eye Candy

Slag Glas Bookends From Bazazas

Thanks to the power of e-commerce, quite a few creatives have felt inspired lately to open small, tightly curated shops featuring weird and wonderful small-batch objects by young makers (see also: Handjob Gallery Store). The newest is Bazazas, founded by the designers Scarlett Boulting of opus and Mary Voorhees Meehan. They've assembled a quirky yet sophisticated selection of objects by folks like Études Studio, ceramicist Giselle Hicks, and jewelry designer Sandra Russell, but our favorite offering is no doubt this in-house series of Slag Glas Bookends.
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01.29.14

Eye Candy

Celine SS14 Shoes & Accessories

Okay, so maybe we're not the first place you go for news about the ready-to-wear collections, but when we saw the new Spring/Summer line from Céline, with its brash painterly strokes and squiggles, we were knocked out. Then we saw the shoes — and had to share. There's something almost '90s-architect about them — like if we'd heard the one with the tubular gold heel was designed by Zaha Hadid, we might not have batted an eye — but they somehow go beyond that into something incredibly cool. We've included the season's amazing cuffs for your perusal as well, in crumpled painted copper or Mondrian-inspired enameled brass, but for a look at the full collection, get on over to the Céline website. You won't be sorry.
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