In an industry that has been known to label its constituents with simply one ability or another, the enigmatically artistic Kate Moross is genuinely defining a term that is so often gratuitously applied: Creative. The shift toward owning a diverse skill set is…
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Forget Barbie and her Pepto-Bismol pink Dreamhouse, Jen Furman (better known as Jen Spectacular) creates stories by making and modifying dollhouses. Growing up in Romeo, MI (about an hour north of Detroit) she hung…
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In the industrial business zone of East Williamsburg, Elin Johansson and Philip Antonelli (with the help of their college student assistant, Claire) squeeze into a space of 400 square feet—and that’s not including the childrenswear designer who shares the other half. The couple…
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We first came across Upstate back in 2010 and were intrigued by their intricate tie-dyed run of flowing garments. Recently, we had the chance to revisit the duo behind the dye at their studio…
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When entering the Araks studio, you’re first greeted by their color library; a rainbow of fabric swatches and thread samples packed into an assortment of overflowing jars. It’s a display reminiscent of a technicolor candy store,…
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Montreal-based Raymond Biesinger is a self-taught illustrator. His work has featured in publications including the New Yorker, Monocle, the Guardian, Time, GQ, Dwell, the Globe & Mail. With such immense…
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Through the large industrial windows of his studio in Brooklyn, designer Daniel Michalik looks out at a small harbor of the East River’s Maspeth Creek and the repurposed ferries that inhabit its quiet docks. It is…
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Alternative approaches to the letterpress arts
Based out Detroit’s “Ponyride” studios, Brian Christopher Baker and his company, Stukenborg Press, are at the forefront of the ongoing letterpress resurgence. His prints embrace non-traditional materials—specifically, geometrical arrangements of dice that he uses to create intricate patterns. As a contract for The New York Times Magazine, Baker blanketed the publication’s iconic gothic “T” with a layer of red 5s and 2s. We recently toured Baker’s studio courtesy of the Re:View Gallery and Buick to learn about Stukenborg and the world of letterpress design.
Baker’s penchant for unexpected type materials doesn’t stop at dice. He admits that students of his “Alternatives to Type” class have pressed everything from bunion cushions to foodstuffs. “If you can get it stuck down and type high, you can make a small edition of anything,” explains Baker. This open-ended approach gives his creations new level of complexity that goes beyond typical letterpress prints.
The result of years collecting type from various resources, the designer’s collection of type wraps around his studio in trays upon trays of metal and woodblock sets. His main machine was salvaged from the basement of Manhattan’s National Academy of Art. “The janitor said it had been down there for 25 years,” explains Baker. “It’s a champ machine. It took me about three months to get it up and running because it was caked with all kinds of weird stuff.”
For unavailable materials, Baker also sources type from a nearby foundry, and he admits that CNC machining and laser etching have created entirely new opportunities for letterpress designers. The fusion of materials and know-how becomes apparent when Baker pulls a print—the thunderous roll and cracking of colliding pieces demonstrating the nostalgic appeal of the letterpress process.
Contemplating on the state of contemporary letterpress, Baker says, “It’s definitely a defunct form of production, but there are a lot of folks doing it—although it’s small enough that everyone knows each other.” While most letterpress production in recent years has stuck to simple stationery, Baker’s multi-layered poster prints show the true potential of the genre.
Prints by Stukenborg Press can be found at their Etsy shop. See more images of the studio in our slideshow
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Images by James Thorne
Steel kimonos, diamond-plated skateboards and hand-anodized aluminum paintings
The anodization of aluminum—a process common in everything from carabiners to satellites to medical equipment—is yet another factory method to fall under the provenance of fine art. Miya Ando‘s work, created through a process of dip-dying aluminum blocks in electrically-charged vats, are nothing short of industrial watercolors. “I like this ability for a plate of metal to evoke soft imagery and ephemerality,” says Ando. The process hardens supple aluminum, adding to the rigid surface the artist’s own subtly colored gradients. Ando explained this process and more during a recent stop at her Brooklyn studio.
The descendent of swordsmiths-turned-priests, the half-Japanese Ando brings her family’s unconventional origins into her art. “Furisode Kimono” is a 180lbs sculpture made of steel squares that have been soldered together with sterling silver rings. The process for this work is different from the aluminum pieces, using heat rather than anodization to achieve the gradient. In both, the effect is permanent and established within the properties of the metal. “It’s embedded; you can touch it and it won’t come off,” explains Ando.
When tasked with describing her anodized work, Ando says, “They’re paintings that use sculptural materials.” The planar works have a texture and visual weight that communicates heft in spite of the light and airy gradients. While the highly finished pieces indicate a degree of precision, Ando’s process is largely self-taught. After gaining access to an industrial facility, the artist began to hand-dye plates in anodizing baths—a process that made quite a sight for on-site workers.
Past work from Ando has included skateboard decks cut from diamond-plated steel as well as bioluminescent leaves. She also gained praise for a monumental piece honoring the World Trade Center that was made of steel salvaged from the towers’ supporting structure. Her fascination for materials bred the recent release of the “Iron and Silk Scarf“, a chiffon scarf printed with the image of one of her metal works. Ando is currently working on a new series will feature buddhist prayers scratched on aluminum with a tungsten carbine pencil.
Miya Ando’s work can currently be seen at New York’s Sundaram Tagore as well as Madison Galleries in La Jolla, CA. See more images of the studio in our slideshow
We visit the NYC fashion designer to talk about the process behind lace collaging
Designer Samantha Sleeper brings a fresh perspective to the art and fashion world with her eco-conscious technique of lace collaging, in which she uses remnants of the intricate fabric to create one-of-a-kind handmade pieces. On a recent visit to Sleeper’s studio we got a firsthand look at her design process and talked to the designer about the inspiration for her Fall/Winter 2012 collection, which is comprised of elegant downtown wares like motorcycle jackets, lace pockets for toting small bottles of whiskey and exquisitely crafted cocktail dresses.
For Fall/Winter 2012 we looked at different types of fairytales—a lot of the more traditional with darker undertones, and this idea that in all of these there’s a turning point of a girl lost in the woods. So we picked our linings to be a wolf print and a flannel, and that idea of playing on the hunter and the hunted—which one are you? Since all those stories end up getting super dark and twisted—these girls are getting poisoned or eaten by animals—we asked how she protect herself in modern day. So, we reinvented some of our favorite motorcycle jackets with boxier versions, and used things that were really heavy and thick, just trying to pick fabrics that have a lot of texture and tooth to them. Also, picking pieces that are reversible was really important to me, too, because they always have a duality in character.
When I was at Parsons my senior year there’s a competition and it’s called Solstiss. So, basically, they sponsor two senior thesis collections, they provide all the fabrics and lace for them and the winning student receives the scholarship. I ended up winning the award, so they took me to France and I went to Lyon and Caudry to visit the mills. That summer when I went to France, I began to understand just how detailed lace was, it was made on lever looms the same way since the 1800s in a family-owned mill in Caudry, a super-small town where everyone basically works in lace. When you see the “Welcome to Caudry” sign it’s this stone hedge that has lace laser-cut into it.
The lace was more about this technique and this way of creating a fabric that’s different than a brocade or a cotton loom— the method of making it was so beautiful and the pattern of it can be modernized and that’s sort of what I thought when I was leaving. It was clearly such a dying art. I had never seen—besides hand-woven carpets—fabrics that were still made in the traditional techniques on a mass-market scale. So, I knew that I wanted to do what I could to incorporate it into as many of my collections, even just to keep it around.
Also, the lace is crazy-expensive because it’s so labor-intensive, so I would get all these headers, which are these small pieces that you get when you’re ordering yardage, when you’re thinking about ordering it. You can’t make these 8.5 x 11″ pieces of fabric into a dress, but because they all have their own organic shapes and their own language of what’s going on I started to cut them up and collage them together to create yardage. Then it was like an oil painting, which is what I studied at Art Institute of Chicago before I went to Parsons. I realized because lace is so thin and there’s opacity in random areas you can start to layer them to create depth—it was beautiful, you were literally painting on the dress form and I had never seen another fabric that would allow me to do that in that way.
What I love so much about fashion is the opportunity to transform someone into the type of narrative they want to create for that day and so I try to create pieces that are really special and transformative. We try and keep our silhouettes really clean and understandable and it’s about what’s happening in the fabric, and so we definitely do it by hand and a lot of it has to do with not wanting to waste anything. Lace is the only fabric that I could collage seamlessly, everything else needed another use, so we started to incorporate that because I really hate being wasteful. Every little thing we put in the bin we can find a use for. Some people call it being a pack rat.
For fall my girl is very edgy and pretty downtown. We made this pocket for a little take-away bottle of Jameson, one of those personal bottles, thinking about what a girl at a concert might need. Sorry, Mom! And again, I love having special detailing on the inside, just finding ways to make every seam special. We have a reversible dress—you unzip it all the way down and it’s very clean and then inside all the seams are bound in leather. So it’s a nice rocker downtown vibe.
Samantha’s is currently working on her Spring/Summer 2013 collection, and her Spring/Summer 2012 line is available for purchase on her website.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
