Many Voices.

In belated celebration of International Women's Day (but also because it's never the wrong time to recognize creative women), here are snippets from conversations with five inspiring artists I've been lucky enough to interview.

1) Arpana Rayamajhi, Jewelry Designer, New York City

Photo by Anna Rose

For The Weekender (translated to German): “I’ve always made things, and ultimately, the reason I do what I do hasn’t changed. It’s just that the language I use to talk about it has gotten a little more sophisticated. When I was younger, I would say, ‘I do this because I love it.’ Now it’s, ‘This is a medium for me to connect with myself and the world.’ In ten years it could be something completely different.”

2) Nicole Katz, Director of Paper Chase Press, Los Angeles

For Sight Unseen: "Being a manufacturer in California is important to us, now more than ever. We live in a state that’s approaching a $15 minimum wage, has some of the most stringent environmental and labor laws in the country, and supports a huge immigrant population—my family included. These are values we care about and that we live by."

3) Carla Fernández, Fashion Designer, Mexico City

Photo by Ana Hop 

For Freunde von Freunden: "We want to prevent the extinction of Mexican crafts. My clothing is very fashion-forward but if you look at how it’s made, you’ll understand that it has traditional roots. I’m always thinking, how can we allow these people, who do such amazing work with their hands, to keep their skills?"

4) Megan Eaton Griswold, Owner of Little Moving Spaces, Jackson, WY

Photo by Jenny Pfeiffer

For Architectural Digest: "I wanted to make something small and affordable, yet give it a style we hadn’t seen in a yurt before." (Griswold on her Wyoming yurt, which boasts "the lattice structure and mobility of its traditional Mongolian counterpart, but also a porcelain stove, Michael Anastassiades lighting, and a kitchen built using 800 pounds of Carrara marble hauled in by sled on a trail she forged herself.")

5) Carly Jo Morgan, Furniture Designer, Los Angeles

Photo via the artist's website

For Sight Unseen: "I spent most of my life identifying more with men, which I grew to realize was more out of my own insecurities. Something has softened in me, especially since becoming a mother, and now strong, inspiring women are flowing into all aspects of my life. The sisterhood is deep."

Many thanks to these women, and all the many others I've had the pleasure of interviewing over the last few years—your stories continue to inspire me.

All Day Drifting.

I’ve been trying for weeks now to write something on the subject of paying attention (and trying, also, not to let those weeks turn into months). For that reason, I was all the more charmed to come across Accidental Haiku, a 2009 project by artist Lenka Clayton that’s a true testament to the value of looking closely.

Outlined here, the project features pages from an anonymous diary written in the 70s, in which Clayton found several instances of unintentional haiku (rules of the form include the “use of three [or fewer] lines of 17 or fewer syllables” and a seasonal reference).

This isn’t the first time something like this has caught my eye (see: the spines of books, Google autocomplete, Times Haiku), but I’m grateful for the timing of this particular find—and the happy reminder that there’s poetry to be found everywhere, even in basements that need cleaning, in trips to the hairdresser, in snow on just another winter day.

More art in the everyday:
-Leeks / love
-Coincidental captures 

See more from Lenka Clayton, here.

Isaac Nichols on Sight Unseen.

I interviewed Brooklyn-based ceramicist Isaac Nichols for Sight Unseen earlier this fall, spending an unseasonably warm morning in his Greenpoint studio near McCarren Park. I was already a fan of his famous "boob pots", having seen them in shop windows around the city for months, but I hadn't known anything about his story prior to our meeting. As it turns out, ceramics are a relatively new endeavor for Isaac, who was once a fine arts student and began experimenting with clay amid frustrations with his formal training. Now, his pots have found an audience among creative spirits far and wide. They've even become part of a larger feminist discussion, garnering praise for their realistic shape.

Says Isaac, who likes to listen to Thoreau as he works, "I still have a hard time thinking, ‘Here I am, the boob potter.’ But I’ve been trying not to worry about whether this is the direction I’m supposed to be on. Because before I found success in this, I put a lot of emphasis on, ‘Oh, I don’t do this. I don’t do that.’ And I missed out on a lot of life."
   

Read the interview on Sight Unseen. Photos by Emily Johnston. More from Isaac, here.

New Work: Shinola x WorkOf.

For those in a giving mood (and with holiday decorating yet to be done), this beautiful selection of hand-crafted Christmas ornaments is up for auction on Paddle8. Commissioned in collaboration between Shinola and WorkOf—companies that share a commitment to supporting American design and manufacturing—each ornament was made by a different independent designer or maker nationwide. Many take cues from the makers' signature materials and techniques. All have stories behind them.

Among my favorites: Haptic Lab's sequined and pin-studded sphere; Hui Buy's suspended succulents; and Elyse Graham's blueberry-colored Cluster, made using balloons. I also love Daniel Moyer's ornament, pictured fourth below—the artist, perhaps missing summer, recreated the effect of a lightning bug using rounds of lavender resin that glow in the dark.

In honor of the auction, I was lucky enough to interview WorkOf founder Charlie Miner and Creative Director Isaac Friedman-Heiman for Shinola's The Journal.  Accompanying studio tours with Eric Trine and Ryden Rizzo—two designers who contributed ornaments to the auction—are up on the WorkOf site, too.

To shop the auction, visit Paddle8.  Proceeds benefit MOCAD, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (a place I was lucky enough to visit during my trip this summer).

Fiction Landscapes.

In love with these "Fiction Landscapes" by J.Frede, who discovers new worlds in the thoughtful arrangement of flea market photographs. Each piece holds its own mystery, and, as the artist points out, spans a wide range of time periods and places. He writes: How many people have stopped at that rest stop and taken nearly the same photo of the plain hillside? All locking their own associations into the view: first road trip with a new love, last road trip to see grandma, one of many road trips alone.

Read more at J.Frede's website, here.

Heartbeat.

I passed over photos of Charles Pétillon's balloon installation in London's Covent Garden yesterday, thinking that it seemed too similar to other projects I've posted about in the past. But I love the artist's description of the project, which he calls "Heartbeat" and which employs the airy, celestial splendor of 100,000 white balloons in its 177-foot long reconstruction of a cloud. "The balloon invasions I create are metaphors," says the artist. "Their goal is to change the way in which we see the things we we live alongside each day without really noticing them."

"With Heartbeat," he continues, "I want to represent the Market Building as the beating heart of this area — connecting its past with the present to allow visitors to re-examine its role at the heart of London's life." Also a part of the installation are white lights that palpitate to a rhythm similar to that of a beating heart, so that the cloud appears "as alive and vibrant as the area itself." See more, here.

Photos by Paul Grover. Thanks, Creative Boom. See also: manmade hills / lick-able walls / a floating flower garden / and a house made of sugar.

Globe Plotters.

For tired eyes on a Tuesday morning: a dose of old-world magic courtesy of London-based globemakers Bellerby & Co. Founder Peter Bellerby — whose globe-crafting journey began after an unfruitful search for a suitable model to gift his father —outlines the arduous process of licensing, programming, molding, balancing, and goring here. It all sounds very complicated to be sure, but wow. They make it look good.

Visit Bellerby & Co. for more information. (Their Instagram, predictably, is incredibly beautiful, too.) Via My Modern Met.

Every Person in New York.

Jason Polan — an artist who once sketched every piece of popcorn in a microwaveable bag — has made it his goal to draw every single person in New York, a city whose population exceeds 8 million. And while VICE estimates this would take 70 years of sketching 14 people per hour, he's succeeded in documenting the daily doings of 36,000 New Yorkers since starting in early 2008. (The first volume of a book series was released this month.)

Want to appear as part of Jason's New York? Email him at art@jasonpolan.com with "a street corner or other public place that you will be...for a duration of two minutes" —and see where you stand among the squiggles.

Follow Jason progress, here. See also: All the Buildings in New York. 

Have a wonderful Wednesday.

Paper City.

Paperholm is what artist Charles Young calls a "growing paper city," having added one new structure to its scaled-down streets daily for an entire year. Each is crafted by hand from paper and glue, and many — including windmills, carousels, and tiny, teetering trees — have moving parts. When I saw it, I thought immediately of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, which is centered around a wooden model of a neighborhood in Paris, and which I read in one go, wide-eyed, on the plane from Amsterdam to New York.

See more at Paperholm, here. Many thanks to Colossal for the introduction.

Everyday Rainbows.

The perfect antidote to a slow, sweltering, cloud-heavy afternoon: artist Julie Seabrook Ream's #100daysofrainbows, which features a daily rainbow crafted from a meticulously arranged assortment of ordinary household items. (The latest posts feature Lucky Charms marshmallows, scissors, guitar picks, and star-shaped Jello.) The bad news is that the project — which began just over three months ago —  has a cap. The good news? There's still seven days' worth to go.

Follow along on Instagram, here.

Stitch Therapy.

This hand-sewn book by artist Emma Parker stopped me in my tracks this morning. Its embroidered pages depict some of the more difficult emotions we experience in childhood: rejected, corrected, excluded. Its photos, transferred to cloth, are faded and grainy; its haphazard red threading brings to mind the ink of a teacher's pen.

Says Emma of her tools of choice: "I work frequently with thread and cloth as I love the metaphors they offer. Textile-related words and phrases such as 'unraveling,' 'knitted brows,' 'patch up,' 'hanging on by a thread' and 'repair' come to mind when describing aspects of the human psyche." She writes, "Art making is a ritual, maybe a little 'magic' even...[through art] I feel that there is the potential to change poison into medicine."

Find more of Emma Parker's work on her website and blog, Stitch Therapy.

See also: Daré all a Lucé, a series featuring vintage photos poked full of holes to disarmingly magical effect. It's one of my all-time favorites.