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06.03.22

Q+A

Gabrielle Teschner on Why Being an Artist Is a Job You Can’t Lose

Gabrielle Teschner’s signature “Sculptures-That-Are-Flat” are made of individually painted planes of muslin that are stitched together, then ironed. Their scale ranges from hand-held (called ‘Minutes’ and measuring around 7x10 inches) to environmental, monolithic (up to 16x14 feet). Employing the symbolic and physical language of architectural forms, spatial relationships, and, often, weather patterns, Teschner explores dichotomies, concepts of strength and softness, force and flow, and phenomena of perception, among other impulses and ‘attractions,’ as she calls them. All of these are a way of understanding and questioning what it is to be in the world.
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05.13.22

Q+A

A New Lighting Brand, With Deep Roots in New Orleans and France, Putting a Modern Spin on Traditional Techniques

Swadoh — an anagram of shadow that founder Valerie Legras devised after reading the Japanese writer Junichiro Tanizaki’s “In Praise of Shadows” — works exclusively with small artisans who do intricate and often time-consuming hand work at their workshops in France. That, and the idea that each artist should be working in a wonderfully unique way with their chosen material, is the strict guiding principle behind Swadoh.
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Aaron Poritz sculptural wood furniture
04.12.22

Q+A

Aaron Poritz’s Henry Moore–Inspired Sculptural Wood Furniture is Next Level

Aaron Poritz's latest furniture collection — Big Woods, currently on show at Cristina Grajales Gallery in New York City — is both a fond look back at his childhood spent in the forests of Massachusetts, and an evolution of years spent working with, learning about, and appreciating the material for its visual, tactile, and workable qualities. His odyssey began in Nicaragua in 2012, where a chance encounter with an exporter of hurricane-felled trees resulted in the creation of his first range of wooden furniture. Focused on joinery techniques and traditional Danish shapes, and informed by his background in architecture, however, the designer’s initial work is miles apart the Henry Moore-influenced soft curves, organic shapes, and bulbous protrusions of the sculptural designs he’s currently exhibiting. 
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04.07.22

Q+A

This Housewares Brand Thinks the Future of Design Lies in Uniting 3D Printing With Contemporary Talents — and Traditional Artisans

In recent years, 3D printing technology has finally started to come into its own, making the dream of an on-demand manufacturing industry — one that yields products people might actually want — feel closer at hand than ever. That's the realization that inspired cousins Ismail and Adnane Tazi, who founded the Parisian housewares brand Trame in early 2020, to rethink their entire approach to production just two years later, culminating in the launch of their new Alhambra.gcode collection.
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11.09.21

Q+A

Meet the Swedish Brand Championing “Bold Minimalism” With Rugs That Are Stylish, but Subtle

When Liza Laserow-Berglund, her husband Fabian Berglund, and his brother Felix Berglund decided to start a business together, the biggest thing they had in common was Sweden, and their desire to share some part of their native country’s vibe with the rest of the world. When they realized that rugs played a huge part in every Swede’s life, they founded Nordic Knots, a rug brand aimed at spreading the Scandinavian design gospel. Their goal? A highly curated brand offering mid-range rugs with a distinct point of view — but not one loud enough to overwhelm a room.
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10.28.21

Q+A

Lighting Designer Lukas Peet on Balancing the Sculptural and the Saleable

Lukas Peet's first commercially successful lighting design — and the one that brought him to our attention way back in 2011 — looked like diamond wedding band that had been stretched into a three-foot-long oval tube. An arch of shiny gold at the top, flowing into a glowing strip of LEDs nestled inside the contoured glass, his Rudi light was inspired by his father, a jeweler. That light's success was enough to convince Peet that lighting might be the most interesting path for him to follow in design, and with his fellow Vancouver-based creatives, Caine Heintzman and Matt Davis, Peet co-founded the commercial and residential lighting manufacturer and studio ANDlight.
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06.10.21

Q+A

Dirk van der Kooij On Creating a Truly Circular Design Process — And On Using Your Old Nirvana CDs to Make Furniture

To ensure true circularity, Van der Kooij and his team of carpenters, welders, colorists, and finishers make use of proprietary technology including house-developed presses, robots, and extruders to transform waste materials such as discarded CDs, leather sofas, kitchen appliances, chocolate molds, and diseased wood into singular pieces made to stand the test of time and trends.
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05.18.21

Q+A

In Her Paintings, Becky Suss Creates Real or Imagined Interiors From Memory

Because we don't cover art as our primary discipline here at Sight Unseen, we typically discover artists a bit more slowly than we do designers, and usually by way of gallery shows, art fairs, or Instagram wormholes. But I discovered Philadelphia-born painter Becky Suss in perhaps the most Sight Unseen — or at least the most me — way possible: Her 2016 painting, August (above), adorns the cover of LA harpist Mary Lattimore's Hundreds of Days, one of the many albums that helped propel me through the emotional black hole that was 2020.
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05.10.21

Q+A

Caroline Denervaud’s Paintings Are a Dialogue Between Art and Dance

It was French artist Yves Klein who, in 1960, first used women’s bodies as canvases, covering them in blue paint to study the impressions they made on paper, while an orchestra played on. Swiss-born multi-disciplinary artist Caroline Denervaud’s vibrant, abstract artworks recall Klein's pioneering performative work, and also comprise the emotionally raw, humanistic approach to movement as seen in the works of visionary German dance choreographer Pina Bausch. “She was the first person who inspired me,” recalls Denervaud.
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04.28.21

Q+A

Marco Campardo and the Marta Gallery Founders On Obsessive YouTubing, Failed Projects, and the Importance of Craftsmanship in Design

Considering the Italian designer Marco Campardo’s long friendship with Marta Gallery founders Benjamin Critton and Heidi Korsavong — as well as the trio’s shared interest in a multidisciplinary approach — we decided to go Interview Magazine–style with this Q&A and allow the three room to riff on ideas about collaboration, identity, and digital representation in design.
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Emily Mullin Jack Hanley
04.14.21

Q+A

Emily Mullin’s 3D Reliefs Are Like Morandi Still-Lifes On Acid

The new sculptures that make up Brooklyn-based artist Emily Mullin’s just-opened show at Jack Hanley Gallery are, to put it lightly, a riot: fringed or seemingly filigreed ceramic vessels scrawled on with what looks like crayon or painted in imprecise patterns, sitting atop blobby, brightly colored plinths. At first glance, you wouldn’t associate the boisterous reliefs with the quiet, muted tones found in still lifes by 20th-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, but upon further inspection, the comparison makes a lot of sense.
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