Vintage Design And Contemporary Market LA 1/17
I’m super excited to be showing/selling at this market in DTLA on Saturday, January 17th.
I’ll have samples of my production furniture, plus one-offs of my own making, and different high quality vintage and contemporary furniture and objects from my own collections!
Stuff! Things!
Hope to see you.
Holiday Events 2025
NY Design Week 2025
I am excited to be participating in NY Design Week this year!
This year I am showing my work at a new show called Shelter!
The rad thing about this show is that I can sell directly out of the booth all weekend! In addition to bringing some of my furniture models to test and sit in, I also made a bunch of fun small pieces for the show too!
Hope to see you there!
Poppy Post
The Piano Room is The Studio
My grandpa was an artist, but we called him a musician.
I think I’ve mentioned him before, his name was Paul Moer
We tend to give people titles according to what they get paid to do.
This is an odd practice, but often serves as a social nicety rather than just internalized capitalism.
My thought this morning wasn’t so much about work you get paid for versus work you don’t get paid for, except to point out - that for artists, it seems, that wrapped up in the whole tradition of making art is essentially this: You do work that you get paid for, and you do work that you don’t get paid for. It’s all work. And you can use all of it in your work.
My grandpa was a studio artist. He played piano. He worked on his own music in his studio. Then he would go out and perform it. He had a piano room in their house. He didn’t perform in the house.
The really odd thing about being a parent is the relationship your kids have to your work as an artist.
Because when you are a professional artist, it is actually your job. It’s not a hobby. It’s work.
But I never saw my Grandpa work. Not only becuase he was mostly retired by the time I came along, but also because he played at night clubs. My Mom and her siblings barely saw him play live.
It was his job.
And honestly, it’s a weird thing to say - but kids really really really don’t give a shit about what their parents do for work. My kids don’t. So maybe that’s an anecdote. But most kids I talk to, have no idea what their parents do all day when they are at work.
We might know what they contribute to some larger project, or make specific things, or work at a specific place -but what they actually do all day - we don’t see. We don’t know.
I’ve been listening to my Grandpa’s music for years. I have his recordings on my Ipods - that I loaded up 20 years ago. I still listen all the time in my studio. But I didn’t live with him. I only had a relationship to him as my grandpa, not as an artist.
When I was a kid, on Sunday’s we’d often go to my grandparents house. I remember my Grandpa ALWAYS going into the piano room after dinner to “warm up” or “practice his scales.” It was confusing to me as an 8 year old. Why does my 80 year old grandpa need to “practice his scales?” Of course, if he were an athlete it would make sense.
Grandpa has a game tonight, he’s stretching. Same thing.
What prompted my thoughts about my Grandpa this week, was meeting with artist Daniel Callis, in his studio. His studio is a converted garage - something I’ve done before, and will do again!
Dan has grandchildren - and when they come to visit, they are aware that there is a “studio” in the house. Just like for me growing up - “That is Grandpa’s Piano Room.” And this isn’t to say it was off limits. But just that, this is like a home office. It is not a playroom (for kids). Serious work is being done.
I never heard my Grandpa play any of his own music live. I wasn’t alive. And when I was alive, I was too young.
We did see him play at suburban mall in the early 1990’s though.
Now when I listen to his music, I imagine what was going on at home - how old was he? Were the kids (my mom and her siblings) born? Toddlers? Teenagers?
In 1962, there was a documentary series on TV called “Profile Of” - in 1962 they did “Profile of a Jazz Musician” featuring Paul Horn.
My Grandpa, Paul Moer, played in Paul Horn’s quintet. And he is in this documentary playing piano.
He would’ve been about 45/46 years old here. My mom would’ve been in Kindergarten.
Paul Horn is the main subject of the story - he would’ve been in his early 30’s here.
There are some gems in here. But the main thing I like is that they really tried to capture a “day in the life” of a working artist.
A Good Chair is Like a Ripe Tomato
That’s it.
Or any ripe piece of fruit.
Or an avocado!
A Good chair is like a ripe avocado.
Any chair is like any piece of fruit.
You have a variety of each type. There are a bunch of styles of apples. There are a bunch of styles of chairs.
You can have a dining chair, side chair, lounge chair, chaise lounge chair, barstool, lab stool, milking stool.
I have 2 points here with this metaphor:
One. Identification of the object/image. Identifying a tomato, or apple, or any piece of fruit, is just like identifying any piece of furniture. Identity is irreducible. Image is irreducible. A tomato is a tomato whether you have eaten it or not. A chair is a chair, whether you have sat in it or not. We call it a chair because it contains all the qualities we have agreed that comprise a chair. We encounter the image of the object - the visual of the tomato.
Two. A good chair is like a ripe tomato BECAUSE everyone knows what a ripe tomato tastes like. Or any ripe piece of fruit. What moves any tomato to a good tomato is your direct sensorial experience - not a rhetorical experience.
How do you know what a good tomato tastes like? You taste a lot of tomatos.
How do you know what good chair feels like? You sit in a lot of chairs.
How do you know when the avocado is good for slicing for a sandwich today, but will be good for guacamole in 2 days? Experience.
A good chair is like a ripe tomato because the instant you experience it, you know if it works or not.
I like making chairs because when I make a good chair, it’s like I’ve grown a ripe tomato.
It’s hard to do. It takes time, care, attention.
But the reason I like it IS because the quality is knowable. It’s not abstract. It is experiencable.
You can taste when a tomato is'n’t ripe.
You can feel when a chair isn’t ripe.
You know what a good tomato tastes like because you’ve tasted one.
You know what a good chair feels like because you’ve felt one.
A good chair is like a ripe tomato.
-E.
Thinking With Things - Chapter 6
This is an excerpt from Peter Korn’s book - Why We Make and Why it Matters.
He is writing from a writing desk that he made decades prior.
As he reflects on this, he shares that though his stated goal was “to create furniture that manifested simplicity, integrity, and grace. As I have come to understand it since, however, my underlying brief was actually to arrive at a vision of how life could and should be lived.”
I love that.
He continues:
There were three critical aspects to this effort: Discovery, Embodiment, and Communication. They seem to define the essential structure of all forms of creative practice. Discovery is the process of coming up with new ideas and implementing them, decision by decision. Embodiment is the way in which the constructed desk cast my decisions in concrete - became what the painter Chuck Close referred to as the frozen detritus of the artist’s experience. Communication is what happens happens when the desk registers on the consciousness of a respondent.”
I love that last part.
Communication is what happens happens when the desk registers on the consciousness of a respondent.
I like that part because it reminds me that communication is the result of a connection between the artist and the audience via the physical expression of the work as medium.
Inventing Christmas and Eventing Christmas
I Re-watched The Man Who Invented Christmas this year, twice.
It’s a great Christmas movie - and in the great tradition of dramatic retellings of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, it is another dramatic retelling of Charles Dickens as he is writing A Christmas Carol in 1843.
I love how the movie characterizes Dickens, and I particularly like the choice of the word “invented.”
About 20 years ago I was handed the book The Art of Possibility - the opening chapter - It’s all invented. As I reflect on that now, I realize that was likely the first big leap/connection in my ‘art’ brain to my ‘religion’ brain. The context of receiving this book was in my role as “creative director-ish-dude” at the church that my family attended. It was basically a part time job while I was in school, in addition to the 4-5 other part time jobs I was doing while in school.
Is it ALL invented?
It is ALL invented.
I think so.
The connection of the art brain and religion brain, gave me permission to lean into that opportunity and INVENT and EVENT ideas that might connect with the congregation on a weekly basis.
In one of my other jobs, I was on the masthead of an indy art magazine, listed as “Events Coordinator.”
An event is the other side of the same coin of invent.
I don’t like 2 options. I don’t like binaries, or dualism.
It’s more about the feeling - invent and event share the same essence.
So we invent (which is a personal event), and then we bring to everyone else.
The event is outward. We can see it. We can all experience it.
There is communal activity, engagement.
We are all there.
The invent, is unseen. invisible. In the heart of the artist.
In the mind of the artist.
In the writers room.
In the studio.
The invent is doing the work to become an event for others.
This portrayal of Dickens illustrates his writer’s mind in dialog with his characters as the story comes together.
What I see is that the “invent” is communal too. The invent is social.
It is a communal activity.
The muse. The source. The soul.
Rarely do artists take full credit for their own work.
Someone else is always in the room, mystically.
It is bringing the shared space of invention into the shared space of evention.
The book, document, artifact, object, chair, lamp, boot, hat, pot, pan, candle, etc… is the result of the invention.
Mediums and Media.
Sometimes I forget that a real person wrote that story at a real time in history.
Sometimes I forget that other artists have partners and kids and parents and siblings and bills and groceries and regular life stuff - and yet they still make the work.
The work is how a lot of life gets worked out.
Events inform inventions, as much as inventions inform events.
That life/work paradox of disconnecting from the people you love to do work that you love so that you can support the people you love, and connect with them (when you are not working).
Invention and the events of everyday are in constant tension.
Tention?
At my grandparents house growing up, we’d do Family dinners on Sundays.
I remember my Grandpa going into his “piano room” to “practice” his scales right after dinner. Wait those don’t need quotes. He was a professional pianist. It was his piano room, and he would go in there and practice his scales. Always. Consistently. I was born in ‘83, by the time we reach these memories of mine he was 80 years old.
I was always so confused when he said “practice.”
Now I get it.
In Object Oriented Ontology, there is a category for a story as an object, precisely because of how it functions in our psyche.
A Christmas Carol is an object as real as table, and in someways even more real.
More real, as in, more “portable.”
Because you can use a character such as “Scrooge’ to describe any number of things.
Scrooge has an aesthetic.
Srcooge has a feeling.
Scrooge has a smell.
Scrooge has greasy matted grey hair draped across his scalp.
Christopher Plummer is a great Scrooge.
A great writer invents a great character.
We encounter that character through the event of reading or hearing or watching the story, and something connects.
175 years later, in a very different time and place, the events around Christmas continue, because an artist decided to invent it.
This is the gift of art.
Peace, Love, Cactus.
E
Decorative Finishes are for Decorative Objects
I discontinued my bestselling chair finishes at the height of their popularity.
Rod+Weave Chair. Copper plating over polished steel frame, veg tan leather. 2014
In 2014, when I re-settled in Long Beach, I made a few versions of the Rod+Weave Chair to show in the Architectural Digest Home Design Show in NYC.
I decided to get a frame plated in copper. The photo above is the very first version.
I made the frames myself, using the same solid hex rod steel that I drove down from Portland - where I found the stock originally.
Pause - The hex rod that I use to make these frames was originally found at a salvage yard in Portland, Or.
The sticks are 12 feet long, and were $5 each.
Each chair frame cost me $10 in material.
The first official purchase order I received from Anthropologie, 10 chairs - all from that original stock.
$10 a frame in material.
Unpause -
The Copper Frames! Back in LA.
You can make anything in LA in any finish.
I found a plater, I dropped off the frames. The plater polished the frames and then plated them.
And then lacquered over the freshly plated finish.
Because all these metal finishes tarnish, corrode, change color, and (don’t say it) patina over time.
So almost all decorative finishes - finishes on the surface - need a clear coat/protective layer so that the finish doesn’t tarnish.
Copper tarnishes fast.
Brass tarnishes fast.
Polished copper looks like Rose Gold.
And Rose Gold sounds luxury AF.
We went on to make a lot of these chairs over the next 2-3 years.
Our fabrication partners came up with production methods to streamline the process.
They pre-cut the hex rod to each component, then placed the rod on a sled to go through a wide belt sander.
The sled would cradle the hex rod - get sent through the sander, then rod would get rotated to the next face, and it would get sent through the sander again.
This essentially smoothed out any pits, or tooling marks in the steel to prepare for polish.
180 grit or something.
Then each component would go a couple miles down the road to a polishing vendor who would polish each component to a mirror finish.
Then the components would go back to the metal fabricators and into the tooling and jigs to form the precut lengths into parts.
The matching arm rest pieces would enter the bending machine - 2 bends each, then done.
Those parts would then only need minor touch-ups from tooling marks.
Then the seating portion - 2 bent components - the sides of the seat and back.
2 cross bars.
All the components would get placed into a jig for the welder.
Tig welded.
Then final clean up of those welded areas.
Then wrapping the frame so it stays perfect in transit 10 miles to the platers.
THEN the frames are ready to the electro-plate.
Brass Plated frames
The metallic finishes looked so good with every leather.
We literally could not go wrong.
Polished brass, antique brass, polished copper AKA rose gold.
We even had a few customers who order unfinished brass.
Which meant - they wanted the brass plating with no clear coat. They wanted the finish to patina.
They wanted a ‘Living Finish.’
The problem is - plated brass is not the same as solid brass, or bronze, or copper.
It’s sooooooooooooooooo thin.
And it has lacquer on top.
Lacquer is not a great finish for furniture.
It doesn’t jive well with our body oils.
It’s down at the bottom of the list of good finishes for a high touch area - like the armrest of a chair.
Gold Leaf + Lacquer does not equal DURABLE.
Satin Brass plated finish over steel.
To clarify what I mean by Gold Leaf.
Electro Plating is basically electro chemically bonding THE THINNESS of Gold Leaf to another metal surface.
That’s the visual.
When you see “PLATED” you need to think “GOLD LEAF.”
Which is why plated jewelry needs to get “re-dipped” every few years.
That dip is electro-plating.
So if your jewelry needs to get re-dipped - then your chair frame needs to get re-dipped too.
If you enjoy using the chair, you are going to touch it a lot.
And what happens to things that get touched a lot?
Well, let’s just say, they don’t stay the same.
And they don’t stay the same faster in areas of high-touch.
And you can’t polish a plated finish, because it is as thin as gold leaf - you’ll polish it right off!
The lacquer starts to get gummy, and then the plating starts to flake off.
Flake. Peel.
The fidgety kind. The kind that makes you want to peel a bit more when you sit in it.
There isn’t really anything charming about it - it just looks bad.
If there are any pin holes in the lacquer finish, air will get underneath and start to tarnish the frame too.
I had to “liquidate” a lot of inventory for tiny little freckles all over the frames.
The really unfortunate thing, is that the lacquer finish really complicates the process of refinishing the frame. Because the lacquer needs to be fully chemically stripped and cleaned (ew) - and it’s never quite as good as the first run, so a layer of impurities get embedded into another layer of plating, and another round of heavy chemical waste management that needs to go somewhere..,
I discontinued plated finishes after 3 years.
It was just long enough to see how the finishes held up in the real world - where people touch and use things.
BECAUSE - say it together now - Decorative Finishes are for Decorative Objects!
E
Rancho Re-Wraps
In 2012, I was contacted by the new owners of Ojai Rancho Inn to make some chairs for their patios.
Actually, looking back through the email threads - I was contacted to make ALL the furniture around the Rancho. I just saw a quote I put together with drawings for the pool area, and some bedside tables, and patio tables, etc…
What we ended up deciding on was re-wrappinng these vintage lawn chairs in leather.
I found an invoice - and it looks like I charged $150 per chair to re-wrap in leather.
But then each chair that I found had a varying price.
My invoice indicates that the chairs in photo one were found at garage sales, thrift stores, estate sales, and the average price was around $10.
So that group was $165 per chair.
The second group had an average price of $35, I indicated, those I invoiced at $185 a piece.
The total invoice was for $4385.
But here’s the twist, I was living up in Portland, Or, about to hit my last semester of graduate school.
Good thing they were folding chairs! I drove all of these down to Ojai, then went down to stay with my parents.
Then drove back up to Portland, stopping to DJ a wedding on my way back up.
Wild times!
E
Cognitive Bypassing of Cognitive Behavior in Product Design
I’m not a big fan of everyday products becoming art projects to then become better products.
Perhaps, I should start by defining an “everyday product’ first.
An everyday product/object are the type of object that you learn the name of when you are learning a new language - like in a textbook or flashcard.
These cards are often called “picture cards.”
Common objects. Normal objects. Everyday objects.
The stuff that is not negotiable.
Things that look and do the same thing for everyone, in any language.
Chairs are chairs, toothbrushes are toothbrushes, etc…
Things that either work or don’t. And the degree of the objects workability is measurable.
There are hammers that are better at hammering than others.
An everyday object shares many of the qualities of a tool.
That is, these things don’t exist on their own. These things were created to extend our human abilities in millions of different ways.
These tools provide solutions to old problems that we’ve been solving forever - technological iteration.
Tools, and specialty tools, have a very narrow set of uses - and when they are not being used, what the heck are they supposed to do?
We store a lot of stuff that we only use for minutes a day.
Apparel and clothing are tools for keep us safe and protected from the elements.
I live in Southern California.
I have 2 “big” jackets that are almost 20 years old that I will have for the rest of my life, because I only wear them a few times a year.
This would not be the case if I lived in Minnesota.
What prompted this thought train this morning, is a video of a chair that is going around on Instagram.
I’m familiar with this artist’s work, but this piece struck me as odd - but also telling.
It’s a chair, that has a swiveling component that acts as a clothes hanger.
Because - we all know what it is like to be picking out an outfit, and then we just throw the options on a chair.
The artist/designer, in this case, has made a product that solves a problem that “we all experience.”
She created a “lazy susan” mechanism with a railing - so you can drape your clothes, and rotate it around the back of the chair, so you can sit in the chair as well.
But, what is the actual problem? I’m not totally clear on that to start.
The problem is that I have a half dirty clothes in my room?
Because it seems like the problem is connected to something like - not having enough time to put clothes away in a given moment/context.
Or as the artist mentions in the video above - what do you do with all your half-dirty clothes that aren’t hamper ready, but you don’t want to put on your rack?
So it’s about space?
If we reduce it all the way down - it’s either a problem of time or space.
There is either not enough space for the thing you need to do, or not enough time.
The problem then is a “deficit of time” or a “deficit of space.”
The cardinal error, it seems, is when one misidentifies the problem one needs to solve by conflating space and time within the solution.
How does this chair create more time for the user?
It doesn’t.
And in this case, it actually takes up space, and increases another set of actions to use it.
Thus, the same amount of space being used as a normal chair, but then this new chair requires more time to use it properly.
Not to mention that the chair, cannot be used in other spaces in the house.
Well, it can, but it doesn’t look like other chairs.
Does this solve the problem, or create more of the same problem?
Does the chair/clothes rack help you make decisions about your half-dirty clothes?
Or does it just create another space to hold them, hoping you might get to them when you have time?
Do half dirty clothes become less dirty over time?
Is the overall goal to reduce wash cycles, reducing water and detergent use?
I’m struck by how often we think that the solution to our problems requires either buying more/new things, or adopting new processes, procedures, techniques, rather than just doing wayyyyyyyyy less.
I’m not a psychologist, and I’ve never read anything specific on cognitive behavioral therapy.
But! I do encounter this type of thinking with interiors often.
So I will put this into a personal anecdote to end.
If I had a client who said, “hey Eric, I’d like you to design a chair that I can hang my half dirty clothes on,”
I would respond - Why do you need a chair to hang your half dirty clothes on? You either need a chair, or a clothes rack, both of which you can get in any style, shape, color, country of origin, etc… and if you change your habits, you actually don’t need either one.
I talk myself out of a lot of potential work, but my job is to not cognitively bypass the cognitive apparatus that we engage to identify problems and solutions.
A novel problem may require a novel solution, but when that solution is a product we get novelty.
Novelty wears almost instantly.
Because novelty is privileging the emotional impact of a product, not what the product produces in your life.
If the product creates a set of procedures that are cumbersome, and don’t actually address the real problem, then the product isn’t going to relieve our mental load, it will only compound it.
Peace, love, cactus.
E
Inventing Shapes That Already Exist
Connecting Lines to Make Space.
I invented this shape in 2011.
In the metal shop, I cut 4 inch lenths of 1/4” steel wire.
I welded those short sticks into a hexagon shape.
I made 3 hexagons, and then I stood them up and leaned them on each other.
I thought it might be a good shape for a pendant light frame - that’s the scale I was working on.
That’s how it started.
I cut some sticks, welded them together, looked at them, and then had a conscious thought: I wonder what this would look like bigger?
So I decided to make it bigger.
Hex Volume 2011
I had a mentor at the time who told me I could draw it up on the computer to get a sense of the scale. He didn’t use those exact words - but that is an odd phrase that I want to pick apart.
Yes, you can see a visual representation of what the scale might look like on a 2D interface - but “sensing the scale” is something that can only happen at scale.
I spent 30 minutes on the computer before I called it quits, walked into the wood shop and metal shop and just made the thing.
That was the last time I made a serious attempt at trying to draw something on the computer - Fall 2011.
Rather than spending hours drawing a thing to look at, I just went out and made it.
1 1/2” square tubing. 2”x2” stakes.
A miter saw, some quick welding and sanding, and I had the form up!
Looking through my files for these photos I typed in “tetrahedron” or “truncated” or “truncated tetrahedron” or “tetra” - and I couldn’t find it.
The reason is because I did not know this shape was called a Truncated Tetrahedron until Jonathan Nesci commented that on Instagram an entire year later when I made a new version of it.
Because i thought I invented a shape.
I thought I invented a new form.
If I knew the name of the form I would have just typed it into a search bar and looked at all the precedents.
And there are plenty. I had no idea.
I think the reason I didn’t “know” is because I approached the shape from connecting lines, rather than connecting planes.
I was not a planar thinker at the time - I was still in my LINES phase of development.
Everything was lines. I’m in a different phase now.
This morning I thought how different it would have been if I drew it in the computer - if it was a little tiny widget form that I could move around with a flick of my finer. Scale up, scale down.
Duplicate 100 times. Group together new forms.
The tools we use to explore our forms will inform our forms.
What prompted my memory of this form today was a post on my Instagram memories:
Dec 7 2012 Version of the form with round tubing, and wood closet rods.
Dec 7 - Deck The Halls, Ojai Rancho Inn
I still have these brackets!
And next week I’m going to set up something very similar to this at the Ojai Rancho Inn for Deck The Halls!
California Roundover
I went to school in Oregon to become a California Artist.
Bar of Soap Table, detail. 2013
I sat down to write about these tables that I started making in grad school.
At the time, the Live Edge Slab table craze was going bonkers in North America.
Everyone was making tables out of walnut with a live edge.
The difference in price was dependent on how well you finished the wood, and how you constructed the base.
BDDW was making some cast bronze bases, and all the wannabees were making copies.
For the context of this post it was 2010/11-13ish.
I had a client who ordered a live edge coffee table in oak. They wanted the bark intact.
And all I could think of was how that was going to flake off in their house.
And how uncomfortable the edge was going to feel.
How do they use it?
When I got up to Portland for school, I decided to make a coffee table.
Actually, I went to a local lumber yard, and saw a small slab, 5/4”, or Oregon Black Walnut, and thought - I”m going to make a coffee table out of you.
I keep having this recurring realization that I “happen upon” my designs. My ideas feel very linked to a very direct response with a material. Especially with wood
When I started doing these tables, I called them ‘Bar of Soap” tables.
The bladed out lines and overall silhouette looked like a bar of soap on it’s last few uses..
I am pretty sure this is the first table from that series. Dec 2011.
I made quite a few of these tables while in school. Some of them were really bad. The proportions we wonky.
And I hate almost all the bases.
But that was the vibe. Folks wanted a novel alternative to the hairpin leg.
Bar of Soap Coffee Table, 2012
2012
Some are better than others.
Recently, I picked up a slab - and the same thought occurred - I’m going to make something with you.
It’s been in my studio now for almost 2 months. And I keep looking at it, wondering what it wants to be.
I was familiar with the term “California Roundover,” a term that emerged to describe a trend or style of shaping wood organically, and rounding over the edges.
I honestly did not know this until this week.
I don’t look at much wood furniture - and I thought thee term might’ve applied to an exagerrated bullnose style treatment. Like using a really large roundover bit on a router.
But actually, the ‘California Roundover’ is exactly what I was doing with the Bar of Soap tables.
I followed the line and grain and patterns emerging within the wood and tried to work with it.
Rather than prescribing my form over the wood - I am looking to see what the wood wants to do, what it wants to be for a while.
Bar of Soap Table - 2013
New Slab of Walnut to shape
I think I’m going to start doing tables like this again.
I’m only using wood from Sub/Urban reclaimed - via local suppliers.
And I think I should call them California Roundover Tables - and then start numbering them…
Mining the Object or Mining Your Mind
Yesterday afternoon, I took my younger daughter to Knott’s Berry Farm.
It’s a 15-20 min drive from our house. We made it in 17 minutes yesterday!
We walked through the gates at 4:05pm and did a blitz of rides and snacks in 2 hours! btw, we have annual passes - so we do this often.
It’s great. Highly recommend! Knott’s is chill.
But here’s why I am starting with Knott’s - it’s because of the Calico Mine train ride.
My daughter asked, “Dad, where does this train go, in a mind?”
I reply sincerely, “Yes honey, in an old mine.”
“Like an old man’s brain?”
“Wait, what?’
She says in a frustrated tone - “Dad. His brain, his mind?” [pointing to her head].
“Ohhhhhhhhh! Oh this ride is going into a “mine” not a “mind.”
Lol. It was a great parenting moment.
We then went on a to have a conversation about what a mine is, the history, etc…
But then we were also able to circle back and imagine what it would be like to train through your brain!
Brain Train!
The thought I want to connect this brain train to is connected to the post yesterday about meaningful objects.
I was reading this morning in God, Human, Animal, Machine, by Meghan O’Gieblyn, looking for a reference for another quote - and stumbled upon some Object Oriented Ontology related content.
One of the main tenets of OOO is to not over or undermine objects.
“Mining” is a very popular term in contemporary art - I heard it a lot in graduate school.
A sentence like, “the idea that ________ …. there is just something to mine there….”
I dislike these statements, as they use too many words.
Can it be okay to say “I am having a thought, and I’m going to think about it for a while.”???
We go out of our way to tell other people essentially: I am thinking about it.
I am going to continue thinking thoughts for a little while.
My thought this morning, tied to yesterday’s post, is how we go mining for meaning.
I have a difficult time with Art that anthropomorphizes objects. I mean professional art.
Because anthropomorphizing anything is hardwired to our biology.
In God Human Animal Machine, O’Gieblyn sites work from Anthropologist, Steward Guthrie, that “our tendency to anthropomorphize is an evolutionary strategy. All perceptual guesses come with payoffs in terms of survival.”
Essentially, it is in our interest, on a biological level, to perceive things this way.
“All of us have inherited this perceptual schema, and our tendency to overimbue objects with personhood is it’s unfortunate side effect. We are constantly, obsessively, enchanting the world with life it does not possess.”
In the world of sculpture - there is a tendency to take random things and put them together to make a figure. Often times, artists will take random things and make a human face - the shapes of which puzzle together to look like exactly what our brains learned to decode when we were infants.
Our facial expressions our the foundation of our communication to each other.
If you can’t speak the language you point to stuff and make a happy or sad face to the person you are talking to.
Basic biological stuff.
We see faces and forms in everything because when we were in little bodies we had to be able to decode very quickly which large bodies were safe or not.
Back to art, and objects, and meaning.
In mining my own mind in regards to meaning - I think the place I get hung up is the space betweenn information and meaning.
The reason I get hung up there is because that IS the realm of the artist. I take information and arrange it in different ways to create meaning for others.
My frustration in life, in general, is simply that I just linger longer in that space between, and then I play with it. I dance with it. I surf it.
When we use words to describe objects, I like to linger in that space too. Like a switchboard operator.
Let’s try this word. Let’s plug it into this connection here.
For example. It can be said that the difference between “patina” and “corrosion” is not about information, it is about meaning.
Information stated neutrally is like a dictionary definition. Both patina, scale, corrosion, crust, etc, are terms that convey similar information. However, depending onn how they are framed in a sentence, can take on different meaning.
TO TIE IT ALL TOGETHER.
What is intersting to me, is how and when people choose to use certain words over others to describe physical things. Because the rad thing about a physical thing is that is right there/here/now.
We are both observing it.
We are both perceiving it in our own ways.
But rather than connecting with our own deep personal connection, and articulating it, we throw in a conversational shorthand like “I love the patina on this thing,” as if that is the connective tissue that makes a thing interesting.
And maybe it is interesting. But we don’t know yet because we have to go mine that thought…
The next thought on that brain train should be - why do you love the patina on that thing?
Is patina important to you?
Why is patina important to you?
The person might say - patina infers wear, and use over time. This thing is old, this thing has lived a life.
Are those ideas important to you?
Why are those ideas important to you?
Where did those ideas come from?
___
We can continue on that thought and find out where that thought wants to go, what it reveals to ourself about ourself.
But that interesting thing is, you can do this with any object, because the power to do this is already within us.
We do it all the time.
And when we connect with what is within, and articulate that to the group - then we can connect with each other.
The conversation is what gives form to what is important to us.
Objects are always standing by.
Peace, love, cactus.
E
Less Than Full Meaning Objects
Quarter Sheet Pan - In my Kitchen
Extra Ordinary.
I was thinking about that phrase yesterday as I cruised through the In N Out Drive thru.
I wasn’t thinking about their approach to being extra ordinary.
I was actually thinking about the word ExtraTerrestrial - and if we could do the same word play with that term?
Because with the term Extraterrertrial we use the extra like outside/beyond.
An extra terrestrial being is some thing from outside this planet.
But with our compount word “extradordinary” we don’t use it to imply something outside of ordinary. Well, we do. But then we bring it back. We double down on the word - and exhalt a noun/verb?
This is taking longer than I hoped, I will use an example.
If you are good at surfing, it may be said that you are “extraordinary at surfing.”
Or “extradorniary craftsmanship”
Or “extradordinary performance”
Rather than saying, “It was really really really really good x 10 amazing,” we say “extraordinary!”
I mean, I don’t think people use the term often, it’s just more about the term, and how we talk about:
ORDINARY THINGS.
That’s what I want to talk about.
Just ordinary stuff.
Just very regular.
Just very middle of the bell curve normal stuff.
Just the things and stuff that we don’t think twice about.
The stuff that means less.
The less than full meaning objects.
This year I was asked by Ravenhill Studio to share an Everyday Object for their yearly roundup of everyday objects.
I love stuff (content) like this, because I love thinkinng about things like this.
Here is what I wrote in the email:
Given the prompt - it's the first thing that popped in my mind.
"We’re interested in the everyday objects that occupy our daily lives and last for years or even decades because they’re best in class at doing their simple daily tasks."
And my first thought was "like a quarter sheet pan."
I didn't give it a second thought.
That is precisely the point, I believe, in a good everyday object - you don't think twice about it.
It’s an extra ordinary thing.
But is it an extraordinary thing?
LET US NOW EXAMINE THESE TWO PHOTOS DEEPER.
Here is the information.
Photo 1 contains, 1 Quarter Sheet Pan purchased at Smart N Final, which is where I get all my kitchen stuff because it’s local. A fancy cutting board by Fredericks and Mae. Which I didn’t buy. A remnant piece of orange HDPE from a project in 2019. A Hay cutting board that I got at the DWR outlet for $8.
Photo 2 contains, the same quarter sheet pan, A cotton towel from All Roads, a silicone trivet by Molly Baz for crate and barrel, and tile by Fireclay Tile, oh, and take and bake cookie dough cookies from Lazy Acres.
Does all that information add up to something?
Did the objects acquire meaning somehow?
They are the effects of my choices, and we may infer a set of values or means that may encourage a person to select these objects over and above others. But without much more context and information, it’s just 2 photos of stuff - and we know where that stuff came from.
How about the objects themselves?
Are these extraordinary objects?
If we gave an extraordinary object a sign, would it be “Extra+”???
Over, or above, or beyond ordinary = E+
But what about super super super ordinary?
The extraordinary object that is just a magnified ordinariness = O+ = Ordinary+.
There was a great exhibition and book called ‘Super Normal’ that tackled this idea.
However, that project was from the 90s, and really needs an update after the DTC revolution.
Back to the PAN!
The pan, the pan, this is why we began!
Here’s the thing about things - is that they all do mostly the same thing (in each category).
This quarter sheet pan that I use, and cost a few dollars, does EXACTLY the same thing as a cobalt blue sheet pan from Great Jones.
This object above is not extraordinary nor is it extra ordinary, it is ORDINARY + EXTRA!
Which, we will have to denote in our symbology differently.
Perhaps O>E+ ?
The extra is eating the ordinariness of the object?
Because the extra in this case, is only on the surface.
It’s not a super object - it’s not an extraordinary object.
It’s a surface object - an ordinary plus extra.
Most of the time I write a title for my blog post then I just start writing and see what comes out. And more often than not, I go back and change the title.
Today, I’m going to leave it.
Because, I’m not that interested in talking about meaningful objects, or if objects can have meaning. I think I’m much more interested in the things themselves.
I will leave on this note - which is about interpretation.
I saw a video on Instagram where a guy was talking about an old man’s things, and he used the word “patina,” to describe the stuff.
Patina is an interesting word, because in today’s marketing parlance, something that has patina connotes higher value to certain people.
Patina is just a word to describe something that happens on the surface of a thing.
Patina is charming. Crust is not.
Outside the world of pastries, crust is not a well-regarded trait.
What is the difference between a “crusty old pair of leather boots” and “these boots have an amazing patina?”
The words.
The words are different.
The object is the same.
Lastly.
I remember having a meeting with a very famous interior design team at our studio in Long Beach. Very very famous. Like, big missed opportunity on my part, but we really weren’t aligned, so probably for the best.
Anyway, during the course of the meeting they kept referring to different materials having a “living finish,” which was something I needed to clarify with them twice BECAUSE:
When they said “Living Finish,” what they meant was that they wanted the material to be actually UNFINISHED so that the material could wear-in and patina, on it’s own.
So I said, wait, so you want this with “no finish, correct?”
“Yes, we call it a Living Finish.”
That’s Ordinary Extra with Sprinkles on Top.
Do you remember in Fight Club how they make their very expensive soap by rendering fat from the liposuction clinic? The line is, “We were essentially selling rich ladies their own asses back to them.”
A living finish reminds me of that.
I love extra ordinary things.
This has been an episode of Thinking About Things.
Good morning.
Peace, Love, Cactus.
"Sensing a Dwelling" - Papanek is my new St Francis
I am working on my research outline for my curatorial project “LA Chair.”
I applied for a research grant with the Center for Craft to pay for my time to work on this project - but the project will move forward whether it is funded or not.
A large aim of this project with regards to research, is creating a system that is replicable, so that others can use that system in their research.
So anyone can pick a
Geography: Los Angeles
Object: Chair
Timeline: Now
LA, Studio Pottery, 1980-2000
North Carolina, Wood Casegoods, 1940-1960
East Long Beach, Suburban Track Home Builders, 1954
Etc…
3 Elements.
Always be Trining.
What is nice about craft objects is that we can gain a certain amount of qualitative data because they are designed for use.
With art objects, we typically just get to look at them.
In my reading this year, I’ve been interested in writers from the 80s and 90s in Architecture and Design who were trying to articulate this space between late modernism to postmodernism to the digital age…
I didn’t receive any of these reading assignments when I was going through school.
A lot of folks have read Victor Papanek’s work - but I went to art school, I truly never head his name until recently. Architecture and Design school students are more familiar - especially the millenialls and older.
The point is, the stuff I’ve been thinking and writing about have lead me to authors who have articulated the very same things - just in a different time and place, and about different things. Time, Place, Thing.
Chapter 4 in The Green Imperative Natural Design for the Real World is titled '‘Sensing a Dwelling.”
Opening quote, “Think with the whole body.” - Deshimaru
Yes!
One of the the exercises that we’ll be doing for the next LA Chair event is a blindfold sitting event.
Because of this question:
When was the last time you experienced something for the first time with your eyes closed?
Papanek opens chapter 4 with this anecdote:
The other day a friend visited me at my office. While waiting to see me, he picked up a magazine and looked at some pictures and floor plans of a recently completed building in Portland, and then said, ‘What a beautiful building!” I replied, ‘How can you possibly know?”
I love that energy.
It’s very Kip, “Napolean, how could anyone possibly ever know that?”
A few months ago I was asked to write a paid piece for an online publication - which was an honor to be asked.
The piece requested was largely open ended, but needed to be about mid-century modernism, and needed to a critical/think/provocative, etc…
When I got down to the process, I realized that there isn’t really anything I wanted to say except, can we please stop talking about mid-century stuff? And then I wrote a piece on that, and trashed it. Because that’s a waste of pixels.
And then I started drafting something that was junk for publishing, but on the road to a bigger idea.
So nothing got published, but it got me thinking about where I want to go with my writing and curating…
And the bigger idea is also the bigger idea I am interested in with LA Chair…
And so it seems that the work I’ve been doing in my writing, reading, making, thinking, is all coming together.
In the piece I drafted, which I haven’t re-read in 2 months, I was pointing to the fact that I’ve lived in mid-century homes my whole life, but I’ve never lived in ‘Mid-Century Modern” homes my whole life.
I live in a mid-century modern home now.
It’s not a “good one.”
Very few of them are.
And that IS precisely my point.
Most architecture is just built.
Most architecture just IS.
My piece centered on that issue, and the questions of who and when and how do we decide what is “Significant Architecture,” or not.
Papanek’s anecdote above leans into my point, and the importance of LA Chair being a project where we experience chairs - not just look at them.
“Significant Architecture,” is architecture to look at, not live in, it seems.
Papanek proceeds:
“Architects, architectural students and the general public experience buildings that are considered ‘important’ largely through television images, slides projected on to a screen or photographs in a book.”
If we follow this logic, our cultural anthropology would suggest something like:
Architecture becomes important, culturally, when it is no longer architecture.
Objects become powerful when they become images/illustrations of ideas, it seems.
That’s how discourse works. No issue there.
The problem, of course, is when the discourse is driving the work rather than responding to the work.
And the reason that is a problem is because Architecture is for people, not for talking about architecture.
At the LA Chair event in October, one participant said, “I feel like like I sat in more chairs today than my whole life!”
Is that true in the real sense of the statement?
Did this person actually sit in more chairs that day than their whole life?
Of course not.
We merely introduced a discourse about chairs that may have potential recourse as you go on through the course of your day and life .
It may be true, that is the course of life, we’ve sat in hundreds of chairs without giving much awareness or attention to it.
So yes, it might feel as if we are doing something for the first time - but I think that has more to say about how unaware we are with regards to our awareness and feelings about everyday things.
It is the everydayness of architecture and design that I am interested in.
Not transcending the everyday.
Feeling every day.
Feeling every thing.
How does a chair feel?
How does this chair feel?
What are you feeling?
How does that feeling feel?
-E
Gnomon
Gnomon is a cool word.
It is the name for the part of a sundial that casts a shadow.
The Wikipedia definition points to the greek word as “one that knows or examines.”
In that sense, perhaps, that is a unique feature of the evolution of the human species as well.
Homo-Erectus.
No doubt tools that were invented for extending oneself, came in tandem with a realization of one’s cast shadow.
Shadow is perhaps not as important to 4 legged creatures?
To be aware of one’s shadow, is to be aware of oneself outside of oneself - as a shadow is a physical phenomenon.
And we are a diurnal species. We need sunlight.
Some nocturnal species have a mechanism behind their retina called a Tapetum. I remember this from elementary school because it is a funny word.
The way I heard it described is that “cat’s can amplify star light so they can see it night.”
Which is true enough to make the point that our human eyesight has a way of relating to our own physical shadows in a way that is different from other species.
I love the night shadows cast from a full moon.
I think about how up until modern history, night shadows functioned so much differently than now.
First, the straightforward way to imagine it, is how bright the night sky is in the middle of nowhere - which means, away from “artifical light.” When you’re camping in the desert.
I love my moon shadow.
Second, just think how many shadows there were dancing around walls all the time because of fire light.
Just a blazing light source on the floor, casting massive shadows across rooms.
That sounds really disorienting.
Perhaps the impulse in uplight for interiors is more rooted in the desire to avoid one’s shadow.
Is it agnomonically rooted?
Agnomon — something that blocks the part of a sundial that casts a shadow.
Perhaps, psychologically - we could say that an “Agnomonic tendency” is that which blocks one’s shadow from view.
I’ve never read Carl Jung - I hear he’s into shadow stuff.
I like all the words that spring from the greek root of gnos or gnostikos — which I would transcribe as “self-knowing”
I like this idea - that the gnomon - the part of the vertical element that casts a shadow - is where my mind/brain is.
My head is the gnomon.
Perhaps a series of gnomonic sculptures is in order!
Gnomon and Agnomons.
Gnostics and Agnostics.
I think that is why I’ve never connected with the term agnostic.
Why would I reject my own self-knowing?