New York, nicholasdevlin.com
There have been certain words tossed around the design world in recent years — gloopy, surreal, whimsical, weird — and while Nicholas Devlin’s work has, at times, embodied each of these terms, there’s simply nothing market-driven about his impulses. Devlin makes tender, authentic work that elicits a kind of spasmodic joy, from the frothy white plaster gazebo he debuted at Collectible this fall, meant to resemble a “giant inhabitable strawberry,” to the slick black vanity above, which sprouts tiny houses, Sarah Sherman meatball–style, and harnesses a memory of sitting on the edge of his mother’s bed watching her get ready for work. Devlin’s work challenges us to rethink our ideas about domesticity, art, nostalgia, and queerness; the fact that his work challenges us at all would be reason enough to be on this list. 

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?

If I’m being honest, I do my best to spend as much time as I can in the rich interior world of my mind. Not in a bad way, though — in an embodied and present sort of way. There’s a caffeinated, commercially considered, and somewhat lobotomized quality to a lot of what I see, so I try to keep that noise out. In a way, American design, to me, is exactly what I’m doing. Could it be that… I am American design?

Maybe it’s the palpably mundane experience of growing up in a generic variety of suburban sameness in Canada — yearning, dreaming, and wishing that every single thing around me didn’t look like that. I’d peer over the fence at the American municipality of New York City and think, “Hey, maybe I should be there. Maybe I could be doing that.” Then I moved here, praying that I, too, might hawk my wares via Instagram and gallery shows, only to be 10k+ in debt within the first three months (not including my student loans).

I have this cinematic memory of standing in my kitchen at 2 AM — yellow-beige Formica countertops, orange-brown wood cabinets, a jarring overhead flush mount above me (now that is American design!) — with a tear rolling down my cheek as I asked myself, “What have I done?” But when I’m not crying and in debt, I really do think it’s amazing that I, and so many others, can come here, pursue this work, and have it be a viable path.

Now, nearly four years later, some things have changed. For example, instead of looking at this incredible list of talent in admiration and, yes, I’ll admit it, covetousness, I get to be on it! That’s so exciting and validating. I dreamed a dream of times gone by… 

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? 

I don’t like to speak about things before they’re finished, BUT I’m working on some projects I’m very excited about, and there may or may not be a show or two coming up. I really want to spend the year refining my work and the day-to-day parts of my practice. I will also say I am always open to having even more plans and highlights in my life if people would like to give them to me.

What inspires or informs your work in general?

Lately, I’ve found that physically working through one piece often inspires the next. For example, the back of a bench I made was inspired by a surrealist painting of torn paper and fabric. After making that bench, it led to an idea for a mirror I just finished — and I’m quite happy with it. I’ll see something new in the work and try to explore it further. How might I give it more movement? Or make the structure even thinner, so it feels like it’s floating or more delicate than it is? Things like that.

A lot of what I’m drawn to is a particular feeling. I don’t want things to feel too rigid, sterile, or cold. Seeing the hand and an aliveness in the pieces is extremely important to me.

I also tend to think of my work as a sort of covert operation where I get to sneak things I love into places they might not normally go. I imagine all my pieces existing in the same sort of fantasy world, and they usually tie into some aspect of a story or folklore. I get really interested in a specific part of a video game, movie, painting, or book that I love, and I want to draw that thing out and graft it onto a sculpture or functional piece. I don’t think about any of it as design, really, because I’m not interested in finding solutions or solving problems. Instead, they’re art objects that happen to have a function. In my head, they’ve left their world and are here now with us, acting as a sort of poorly disguised mythological house spirit — like a domovoy, hob, or brownie — doing their best to be useful. I like the idea of the work letting someone secretly indulge these nerdier, domestic, kitschy, or romantic concepts in a gallery or exhibition setting. On the outside, hopefully, they look and feel elevated, but there’s also a softness to all of them.