Rising Talent Awards USA

ALEX BROKAMP

You are the only American Rising Talent who is not based in New York. How do you feel about that?

Growing up in the Midwest, I think I work better when I’m a little bit away from the hot spots. Los Angeles has a great design and art scene; I feel like it’s not as much in your face as New York is, and I think the slower pace of L.A. fits my personality. Definitely the weather does.

What made you decide to return to school for a graduate degree in furniture and lighting design?

The main reason is that I’m interested in teaching some time in the future. Both at the University of Cincinnati and now Art Center, my professors have had a huge impact on my career. I’m just as passionate about giving back that way and helping other people achieve their goals in design as I am about creating physical things.

How did you land on the idea of using a CNC machine to create the decorative surface of your Collate Table?

In one of my earlier pieces I did some machining on aluminum for a lighting fixture. I had created a pocket where the LEDs would fit and since it was going to be covered with a diffuser, the grooves from the milling were not entirely clean. Later on I found a process photo of the light and thought it would be super cool if I recreated that same unfinished look on an exposed surface and just let the piece celebrate how it was made.

BAILEY FONTAINE

What set you on your current course of making design that is collectible art?

I thought it might be hard to be artistic and make money, but while I was in school at the Art Institute of Chicago studying design, I found this wonderful niche world of sculptural furniture. I decided to pursue it as heavily and intensively as I could. Material investigation has taken this chokehold on my process. I guess that’s a bad word for it. Let’s just say it’s very enlightening.

You do supple, unexpected things with harsh urban materials like rusted metal and cement; in the end, they feel organic. Where does that impulse come from?

Looking at William Morris and loving his philosophy of not trying to mimic nature because nature’s going to do that better than you will. He advised taking the patterns that inspired you and making them your own thing.

How has working for Fernando Mastrangelo influenced your design?

I fabricate all my own work myself, and a lot what I do is pushing that, trying to make something a little harder than usual for me. At my day job I’m making things that are crazy, so doing a cement dining table after hours? Why not?

GREEN RIVER PROJECT
Ben Bloomstein and Aaron Aujla

You both began your careers in the art world: Ben, you were the assistant of Robert Gober, and Aaron, you of Nate Lowman. What made you cross over to the design side?

Aaron Aujla: It was funny; I was thinking about domestic interiors and Ben was making sculpture that relates to the body. I guess we were flirting with making actual, usable works. The other thing was that we just wanted to quit our jobs.

How do you go about creating your annual themes?

Aaron Aujla: We basically have a research-based approach to design. Ben and I usually sit down at the start of the year and lay out the four collections. For Bamboo, we were really researching my family history in India, and the crafts and techniques used in the ’60s, when Jeanneret and Corbusier were there. I have an uncle who lives in Chandigarh still. We went to India and found pictures and replicated the way they were making the bamboo furniture without screws or nails.

What can we expect from you next?

Aaron Aujla: We’re thinking about making a collection about the Shakers and Ben’s experience growing up in upstate New York.
Ben Bloomstein: In my early childhood my family was part of a Sufi community in upstate New York based in an old Shaker compound. We’re looking at making collections based on this crossover environment that they built.

HAROLD
Reed Hansuld and Joel Seigle

You’ve been in business for four years, which is a pretty long stretch in this high-speed age. What’s changed since you began?

Joel Seigle: Our understanding of what it is to run a design business in the modern age and what that encompasses has changed. There’s a lot to it, especially for a small team. You think it’s going to be all fun and games, drawing and making. If you do that, you have a pile of designs and no one to view those designs.

What are the most popular objects on your website?

One of our most intriguing is the marble-and-leather tray. You see those materials used a lot, but not in that combination. We also do really well with our planters, which are a collaboration with Light + Ladder.

What can we look forward to from Harold?

Right now there is a wine opener I’m really excited about. It’s a single cast-brass part, roughly based on a midcentury modern principle. I see this trend of natural wines becoming more and more of a thing. We’ve also been trying to do lights for a while and are finishing an Art Deco-inspired sconce.

I think Art Deco is ready for a comeback, don’t you?

Art Deco is rich, luxurious, over the top. With lighting, you can do a lot of layering and curves and use luscious materials like brass. And of course there’s a lot of architecture in New York that you can reference.

KIN & COMPANY
Joseph Vidich and Kira de Paola

Your work might be described as having a neo-postmodern millennial aesthetic typical of designs championed by Sight Unseen, the influential media and trade show platform that has displayed you and many other Brooklyn artists. Do you feel you’re part of a larger movement?

Kira de Paola: I definitely think so, though we’re not millennials. I would describe what we do as contemporary work that’s a little more avant-garde than what’s generally available in showrooms aimed at decorators.
Joseph Vidich: I think there’s a true sense of craft, especially with a lot of the smaller brands and companies where people are actively involved in the making of their work.

You designed together for some time before launching Kin & Company in 2017. How did your practice evolve?
Joseph Vidich: We have a full shop. That’s how we started the company originally, getting the shop space and a few machines and playing with materials and taking on more interior projects that were featuring metal. It was a material I had a lot of experience with, but we saw a void in the market because there were not that many people doing high-end metal design finishes and detailing. We’ve grown ever since. The shop is a valuable resource, a way to prototype and design in full scale with real material. It’s big enough where we can do the majority of fabrication.

How many people do you work with who are not related to you?

There are six, not counting us. As we grow and have more staff, it changes how you navigate this familial setup. There’s more structure than you would have with just family.

ROSIE LI

Your floral fixtures are very much of this decorative moment, but will you be okay when the pendulum swings back to minimalism?

I have no problem with minimalism, and just to think of our Blossom series as purely decorative is selling it a little bit short. For me, it’s about the gesture of growth: How do you communicate the way that plants grow and move because this is something that they do naturally; this is encoded in their cells? For us it’s so hard to build these things because they are so organic; they require building a prototype, then tweaking the prototype, then moving to the final metalwork, then tweaking that as well, all in the effort to do something nature does on its own accord. I have to take notes from nature and reverse-engineer what I am seeing.

How do you envision the growth of your business?

I foresee the business expanding and me not having to touch every single piece of what goes on in production, but I do think as a maker you have to be pretty intimately connected.

So you find it important to continue to combine your design practice and workshop.

With ever project, the first thing we ask ourselves is: Can we make this ourselves or do we have to outsource to an expert? If we find the best solution is to outsource to a machinist or fabricator, at least trying to do it ourselves is the best way to learn or communicate what we want.

By Julie Lasky

ALEX BROKAMP / BAILEY FONTAINE / GREEN RIVER PROJECT / HAROLD / KIN & COMPANY / ROSIE LI