Hasta La Ideas

Matt W. Moore’s Op Art takes on new forms in his most functional venture yet

From what we’ve seen from Matt W. Moore, the Portland, Maine-based artist behind MWM Graphics, he leaves no question that he’s rabidly productive. And now, he’s taking his signature “Vectorfunk” optical artwork one step further into a new dimension (literally) with the debut of a four-piece collection of design objects called Core Deco. Created with the help of friends skilled in different disciplines—from manufacturing to silkscreening—the inventive ceramic tile coaster set, shelves and jacquard afghans are all made in the U.S with function as their goal. We talked to Moore about the story behind his designs and the unusual approach he took to the brand’s site.

How long did it take to develop the collection?

Core Deco has been years in the making. I’ve always had a desire to design and produce functional design, furniture and home goods. This past winter I decided to go full speed ahead with it.

What challenges did you encounter when transforming your designs into three dimensions?

I am pretty good at imagining how a graphic or mural will look in an environment before it is created. But for the three-dimensional products I have been making cardboard mockups… Learning the benefits and limitations of a manufacturing process is the best way to push it as far as it can go.

The presentation of your products on the site, especially the videos, is refreshing.

Doing the videos is a great way to show the dimensionality of the 3D items. Seeing how products exist in their environment is crucial and photos simply cannot tell the whole story. Especially the Diamond Corner Shelf. The shadows and geometry of it are awesome as you walk past it. With the Ceramic Tile video we are hinting at how awesome a bathroom or kitchen backsplash would look with a full-on mosaic of the tiles.

What influenced your designs?

My travels have really informed my design sensibility and the aesthetics that I gravitate toward. The tile mosaics of Spain and Brazil. The modern architecture of Moscow and Seattle. The beauty of nature and the juxtaposition of organic forms with man-made geometry. Coming into this realm of product design as an outsider has proven to be exponentially educational and exciting.

What are your plans with the range?

I plan to launch a new collection of goods each quarter, always focused on unique functional design.

In 2012, we’re planning some pop-up shop experiences around the Northeast. That will be a lot of fun, to go into an empty environment and trick it out with Core Deco goods — to really show how it all works together. We’re definitely open to building retail relationships with boutiques that share our vision.

Six artisans showing the creative side of elegant craftsmanship

Parts one and two of our Maison & Objet coverage looked to the fully materialized innovations in furniture and sustainable design, but one of most inspiring sections of the expo is the area dedicated to arts and craft. In this sector creativity reigns, and each artist’s distinct know-how turns raw materials into unique collectibles, sophisticated jewelry, intriguing lamps and more. Each object tells a story, many of the hands that made them.

Observing the world through ancient and forgotten optics, Dominic Stora’s kaleidoscopes, optical games and early animation devices like the phenakistoscope are as much an objet d’art as they are an entertaining toy. His range of unearthed spy devices and more can be purchased by contacting Stora at apreslapluie[at]orange[dot]fr.

Based in Brittany, French artist Pauline Bétin creates beautifully fragile glass sculptures. Imprisoned in the blocks are dreamlike images that seemingly float within the glass, half erased and half embedded within the material. Featuring landscapes or urban industrial environments, the artist works with both mediums to explore the mysteries of opacity and illumination. Bétin sells her decorative objects under the moniker La Fabrique du Verre.

Poetic stories to get kids to sleep is what the paper lampshades and other enlighten paper figures created by Papier à êtres tell. The couple behind the company is both paper craftsmen and artists and most of their creations are made out of their own homemade cotton or linen paper production.

The graceful white figures and handblown lighting sculptures borrow their soft charm from the folded paper they are made from. Inspired by fairy tails, the mini tree-hut lamps and moon-like suspension lamps featuring tiny swinging figures are known to enchant a child’s room or the Parisian Opera House.

Parisian Aude Tahon tells stories of princesses with her refined ultra-feminine floral jewlery. Handmade using the traditional Korean technique of knotting twisted silk yarns or by braiding cotton threads, the artist makes airy rings, bracelets and other creative body accessories.

A trained architect, ceramist Beatrice Bruneteau creates contrasting sandstone and porcelain housewares under the name Brune.

Inspired by rock, cliffs and tree bark, her smooth tea sets and attractive flower pots reflect her talent for pottery, while the willowy tree branches simply allow anyone to elegantly bring a bit of nature indoors.

Marseille-based Jean-Pierre Giusiano turns everyday objects into functional works of art. Kitchen utensils, bicycle pieces or gear boxes are given new life as desk lamps, coffee tables or stools.

Show RCA 2011: Royal College of Art graduate Malene Hartmann Rasmussen created this ceramic installation evoking a surreal forest hut from a Brothers Grimm fairytale for her graduation show earlier this summer.

Entitled If I Had A Heart I Could Love You, the installation features a stove at its centre that’s filled with burning logs, which on closer inspection are shaped like human hearts.

The wooden boards of the hut are nailed down but continue to grow, and a spiky kettle overflows with smoke on top of the stove.

See all our stories about this year’s Royal College of Art graduate show here and all our stories about ceramics here.

The information below is from Malene Hartmann Rasmussen:

In this project I work with how we perceive the world, twisting and changing the perception of the space to create an eerie surreal and otherworldly feeling. The setting is a wooden hut as we know it from the folk tales of Brothers Grimm. The viewer is intruding this reality-shifting dark place. It is a fake wooden hut, a piece of theater-like scenery made from drawn wood planks, the “Flintstones” aesthetic and Technicolor quality of the ceramics underlines the hyper real dreamlike feeling.

In the hut there is a fireplace, the burning logs look like hearts, but the hearts look like real hearts and the branches sticking out of them resembles blood filled arteries and veins. The hut is in a forest or maybe the hut is the forest; the wooden planks are sprouting and coming to life, or maybe they were alive and someone is cutting them down? This uncanny and dark fairytale is fragmented, like in a crime story the clues are scattered around, the viewer is the detective trying to make sense of it all.

I am working with mixed media sculpture, making and arranging multiple components into complex narrative sceneries, the dialogue between components and the way one’s unconscious can direct the composition interests me. The intention is to impose personal feelings and stories onto container objects that traditionally have no feelings. Initially the viewer may, mistakenly, be drawn to my figures thinking them to be toys; however closer examination reveals their rather darker narrative. They invite you into an absurd and surreal world where things are not what they seem…

I want my work to look like a very skilled child could have made it, clumsy and elaborate at the same time. My intention is to create compositions that have an underlying story and mood. I hope the interpretation of my work isn’t too fixed; my intent is to make it open for the viewer to filter their own references through, to make sense and contribute to the story themselves. My aim is to create a visual poetry based on my own personal story.

Size: height: 200 cm. width: 200 cm. depth: 130 cm.
Materials: ceramics, MDF, polyester fiber, pins, print, found object

See also:

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The Skullmate by Luke Twigger	After the Party by Makiko Nakamura	Chicle objects by Hella Jongerius