Hasta La Ideas

Shanan Campanaro reflects on her “Poolside” collection and the art of designing patterns

Using little more than Muji gel ink pens Shanan Campanaro creates highly detailed drawings then degrades them with a dash of water to reveal unexpected patterns for her line of wallpaper, pillows and scarves, Eskayel. Her simple set of tools provides the foundation for an extensive process that involves painting and then digital manipulating her analog work. We recently caught up with the self-proclaimed neat freak at her Williamsburg studio to learn more about her latest collection, and the surprising way in which she creates such whimsically structured motifs.

Campanaro starts by drawing, usually working small. She uses the water-soluble Muji pens (or sometimes Higgins inks) to paint primarily pictures of animals, and then distorts the lines by flicking water onto the paper to make the ink bleed. “I like to work on a couple pieces of paper on top of each other so that it sinks through, and then I’ll draw the same thing a couple of times,” she explains. While she prefers pens over brushes for cleaner lines, she then counteracts that precision with a loose application of water. Campanaro demonstrated her method for us on a painting of a rooster she is doing for an upcoming exhibition called “Rare Birds”. Although “everything comes from a painting”, at the end of the day “everything has to be done on the computer”.

While she says she always paints stuff “not for wallpaper”, this medium is often at the back of her mind. While painting, Campanaro tends to notice an element that might look good as wallpaper so she’ll stop and photograph the work at that point because, she explains, “for the painting to have more contrast and depth and look good as a painting, you kind of have to ruin the part that was good as wallpaper.”

The creation of the pattern marks the beginning of the digital aspect of the process. After scanning in a photograph of her painting, she begins to inspect it in Photoshop, looking for interesting areas where the ink has bled. This begins a lengthy trial-and-error process where Campanaro zooms in on and crops a fraction of the painting, copies it, multiplies it and decides if it makes a harmonious pattern. As we saw on our visit, this part of the operation relies heavily on Campanaro’s trained artistic eye and experience as a designer.

The Central St. Martins grad is mostly inspired by travel, and she enjoys bohemian settings in places like Indonesia, Mexico or Capri. These destinations tend to show up as the themes for her collections, although her latest, “Poolside“, draws from time spent back home at her parents’ house in San Diego. The collection includes eight different patterns, and spans bold geometric designs in “Solitaire” to the abstract motif of “Splash”.

Campanaro—who’s also an unexpected sneaker freak—likes working in the commercial realm of art. After receiving her degree in fine art, she began looking for jobs at streetwear labels and ended up making T-shirts in London with two friends from school. This actually marked the beginning of Eskayel, whose name is a phonetic combination of their initials, S, K and L. The company is now a solo act with a different purpose, but Campanaro still collaborates frequently, and she co-founded the charitable arts organization FOOLSGOLD with her friend Maria Kozak, where many of her wildlife paintings end up on display.

The industrious designer never stops thinking of ways to expand her talents. Whether experimenting with different types of paper, creating custom textiles for furniture upholstery or adding new products to her shop—last year she threw woven baskets into the mix of wares comprising her online shop—Campanaro continues to successfully combine fine art with commercial sensibility. Keep an eye out for her at the Javits Center during the upcoming ICFF in NYC, and for her next collection, “Akimbo”, debuting July 2012.

Images by Karen Day. See more in the slideshow below.

A collaborative ensemble of musicians brings the symphony to NYC parks

The String Orchestra of Brooklyn (SOB) is committed to an inclusive approach to music-making, opening up their expert ensemble to a range of site-specific musical experiments and collaborations with musicians from around the greater New York area. Due to the orchestra’s smaller size and rotating cast of volunteer musicians, they are able to explore a more obscure repertoire and adapt to different venues. “What sets us apart from other orchestras is our versatility and willingness to try anything that’s out there,” explains executive director and founder Eli Spindel. “We have the flexibility to take risks and follow our musical curiosity wherever it might lead.”

In late 2011, the SOB collaborated with American Opera Projects, presenting Philip Glass’ Kafka-based opera “In the Penal Colony”. Many music lovers are familiar with Glass’ magnificent “Satyagraha”, but the SOB opted to bring the more obscure “Penal Colony” story to life instead, gaining the orchestra a spot on The New York Times’ Best of 2011 list.

The SOB will again team up with The Fort Greene Park Conservancy for the annual Parks Concert Series where city-dwellers may escape to enjoy a free evening of music in Fort Greene Park. The 2012 lineup will feature works by Fela Sowande, Noel Pointer, and Beethoven, taking place on 21 July 2012 at 6 p.m. in Fort Greene Park.

The SOB will also be collaborating with ISSUE Project Room on String Theories 2012. String Theories has commissioned four composers—Anthony Coleman, Eric Wubbels, Spencer Yeh, and MV Carbon—to create performances on a scale larger than what is typically possible. The composers push the boundaries of the string repertoire through extended techniques, innovations in notation and improvisation, and new approaches to writing for large ensembles. Specifically, each of the performances focuses on a playful awareness of the orchestra’s physicality. “It will definitely get a bit rowdy,” Spindel says. “The resulting musical textures will be new to much of our audience.” String Theories 2012 will happen this Saturday, 17 March 2012 at 8pm in St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn.

Keep up with the orchestra’s ever-changing repertoire and performance schedule on their blog.

Maximize the meat experience with this DIY guide

To true pork connoisseurs, store-bought bacon is an affront to the culinary arts. Ramp up your cured meat game by embracing the tastiest of DIY projects: homemade bacon. “The Better Bacon Book” marks the latest iPad-exclusive how-to publication in Open Air Publishing‘s digital instructional series. This edition takes you through adventures in everyone’s favorite breakfast meat, covering everything from setup and curing to slicing and frying. Hailed by chefs around the world for its seemingly limitless potential, bacon and its counterparts are carefully detailed in this indispensable guide.

Tom Mylan, executive butcher at The Meat Hook in Brooklyn, guides users through 20 instructional videos. The book contains tutorials for making slab, face and Canadian bacon, in addition to guanciale and pancetta. Mylan shows you how to butcher the meat, build your own smoker from a trash can and cook the perfect slice. For those not ready to dive fully into homemade bacon, the app also lists the top suppliers of mail-order bacon, curated by the author of “Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon“, Ari Weinzweigeg.

The Better Bacon Book also includes recipes from top restaurants and bars, so whether you’re spreading on some bacon jam or slurping down a plate of clams with rye whisky and bacon, there are endless options to get your pork belly fix. Open Air has upped its game in this app, including a feature to allow users to zoom into pig parts at various moments in the instruction videos called “image hotspots”. The book’s completely original content is now available for purchase from the iTunes App Store.

Ground up bones and porcelain dust in a series of biological sculptures

In advance of his first solo exhibition “I stand and look at them long and long” at RH Gallery, we stopped by John O’Reilly‘s Brooklyn studio to see what the young artist had on tap. The warehouse space is shared between four sculptural artists working with communal equipment and unparalleled resourcefulness. O’Reilly, for his part, mixes porcelain with bone powder and polyrethane resin to cast realistic biological altarpieces from silicone molds.

The artist let us in on the process behind his creations, which all start off as clay models. Silicone is applied by brush to the clay forms until the film reaches a 1/4-inch thickness. The mold is cut along a set of seams and reattached in a plaster mastermold for rigidity. The bone powder comes from his dog’s leftovers, pulverized in the studio and added to the resin and porcelain mixture to create a translucent, off-white coloration.

To create the forms, O’Reilly pulls from his experience with silverpoint drawing. “I’ve only been doing sculpture for the last two or three years,” he explains. “I look at these things as drawings in space—just a line that connects to another line. And you keep configurating a matrix of lines to create the form.” Standing in front of a wire approximation of his subject, the artist uses dabs of clay on a stick to apply and modify the shapes. When he finds a line he likes, he builds the entire piece around it.

The artist chose porcelain for its likeness to skin. “It’s got that ghost-like, transcendental quality,” says O’Reilly. For the works in black, he added graphite to the resin mixture and finished the surface with another graphite application. The centerpiece work “Welle” is a graphite sculpture of a dead pup. When asked about the high-contrast, emaciated quality of his subjects, the artists explains, “It feels like the more I can dig in, the more I can release energy from the piece. And that’s basically what you’re trying to do—to create a circulatory system of lines, a matrix of feelings and emotions.”

While he enjoys sculpture, O’Reilly sees the laborious process as an ultimate hindrance to creativity. “Origins” is a wall piece that shows the cavity of a pig and is inspired by Andy Warhol’s series of Rorschach paintings. While he was working on the piece—which can take months—the artist developed a method of molding paint inside a folded, translucent sheet. O’Reilly sees potential in the series of inkblot-style X-rays, though the work won’t be featured in the upcoming exhibition.

Many of the pieces bear the mark of the artist’s Christian upbringing. The off-white color is reminiscent of the Italian marbles from renaissance masters, and the artist freely refers to his works as altarpieces. The anguished expressiveness of the occasionally mutilated forms is balanced by the calm placidity of others, both attributes recalling biblical moments and emotions.

“I stand and look at them long and long” opens 6 March, 2012 at the RH Gallery in New York. See more images of O’Reilly’s studio in our slideshow.

RH Gallery

137 Duane Street

New York, NY 10013

Modern leather goods inspired by ancient techniques

A self-taught woodworker, Jason Ross‘ foray into leather goods happened by chance. While working on a furniture project in a friend’s woodshop, Ross noticed a band saw running on a leather belt and was so impressed it still worked that he “immediately contacted the company and bought scraps by the pound,” he says. The natural artisan taught himself how to manipulate his newfound medium and began integrating leather into his woodworking.

Today Ross peddles his expertly crafted leather accessories under the moniker Artemas Quibble, a name that suggests his continued interest in ancient objects and techniques. Working out of his studio in Brooklyn, Ross and his team create each belt, bag and jewelry item by hand for his own label as well as for his collaboration with Donna Karan.

“I enjoy reading how archaeologists think through the purpose of things and materials,” Ross explains. Gleaning insight from his favorite archaeology website, Ross learns from the methods of thinking and draws conclusions from fragmented evidence. These informed interpretations provide a foundation of authenticity for a mien blending the primitive with the modern. “I generally look for an aesthetically pleasing decorative or functional element that can’t be traced to one culture or another,” he notes.

Ross’ understanding of material also stems from his father—the inventor of the first plastic push-pin for Moore Push-Pin—who taught him about memory in materials. This guidance helped Ross develop one of his ingenious techniques, based on a “rivet-less” closure system in which a piece of leather is looped around itself or a piece of hardware and strung through a hole to hold it firmly in place without any give, even as the hide wears over time.

The idea really clicked when Ross began deconstructing an African hunting bag given to him by Graham Cassie, on which, he says, “leather thongs were stitched through holes to hold the various panels of the bag together.” He explains, “I could not, in most cases pull the old straps through the holes. The holes had been stretched and seemed to lock around the leather. I was forced to cut the straps in order to deconstruct the leather.” Ross uses the ancient concept to lock leather to leather as a way of holding hardware, which he also forges in his workshop.

A former Calvin Klein model, Ross’ interest in accessories seems like a natural progression, but his obsession with his craft goes beyond a connection to fashion. “I think that I appreciate beauty in discarded objects and remake those things, perhaps there is a connection to reading about excavations and discovery,” he says. The pieces he creates truly reflect his thoughtful nature and talent for combining the past with the future.

Select Artemas Quibble items sells online, as well as at Urban Zen and ABC Carpet & Home in NYC. See more images in the slideshow below.

Photos by Ruediger Glatz.