Hasta La Ideas

Photo by Alex Welsh

This article was originally published in the C77 Design Daily, Vol. 1, Issue 2, on Saturday, May 17.

By Ali Morris

“There’s really something deeply personal about them,” says LA-based arts writer-cum-curator Su Wu looking at her carefully curated selection of weird and wonderful ceramics. Twenty-two designers from across the globe have each sent her anything between two and 40 pieces of their work to sell at her pop-up shop at Sight Unseen OFFSITE last week. Varying in shape and style, each design tells a story about its origin as well as the makers themselves. “With ceramics you have to make something, throw it into the fire and hope that it comes out as something good, and I think that’s reflected in the personalities of people who make pottery,” she muses. “They’re used to a certain amount of accidents and unplanned outcomes. I may be a total crunchy Californian but that’s a really appealing thing to me.”

Wu uncovered many of the participating designers while researching for her inspirational art, fashion and design blog, ‘I’m Revolting,’ as well as through writing stories for online design magazine Sight Unseen. Noticing that a lot of Wu’s contributions to the site were ceramics-focused—which Wu says was totally unintentional—it was Sight Unseen founders, Jill Singer and Monica Khemsurov, who first broached the idea of Wu running a pop-up ceramics shop at their show during NYCxDesign.

Photo by Alex Welsh

(more…)