Let's Walk (with Halli)
Go for a walk with Halli as he chats with creative people about their life and work.
Let's Walk (with Halli)
David Wiseman : Wonder As A Process.
A mirror that stares back at a goddess. A studio that runs on play. A maker who treats mistakes like maps. Walk with us and David Wiseman along the LA River as we trace the making of a seven-foot grotto mirror bound for Chatsworth House and the winding path that led from deer wall hooks to Dior ceilings. This story is about process as much as product, how a single wax drip can become a piece’s DNA, how deadlines sharpen invention, and how the right mold can multiply originality instead of cloning it.
David opens the door to his compound and his philosophy. We get inside the feedback loop of an artist-run foundry, where modular stalactite “archetypes” allow real-time composition and patina chemistry compresses weeks into days. He threads myth and material with a light touch, Diana’s grotto meets peyote faces and desert toads, reminding us that wonder belongs in serious work. We talk Victorian follies, garden hermits, and the joy of looking at nature until it reveals itself, then building a form that feels discovered rather than imposed.
The journey arcs through RISD, early “deer guy” days, and the aha of bronze, into collectible design, editions, and the practicalities of wiring, structure, and safe installation. Along the way, David shares how he builds a community of “no-people,” hosts Thursday art nights, and reframes failure as information. He’s candid about scaling a practice, balancing life around a 26-person studio, and the ambition to make beautiful, meaningful objects more affordable, yes, even exploring an IKEA collaboration, without extinguishing the spark that makes the work alive.
If you care about craft, sculpture, design, and the slippery line where they overlap, this walk is a field guide. Hit play, then tell us where you find your spark.
Welcome back, dear listener. My name is Holly, and you're listening to Let's Walk, a podcast where I go for a walk with creative people from different fields. In today's episode, I met up with David Wiseman and we walk along the LA River. David is an American artist designer. He's known for his detailed, nature-inspired works that combine craft, sculpture, and ornament. He took me for a tour around his artist compound where he crafts his creations. Among them, an incredible mirror he had spent months working on and is about to ship. And we'll get into that a little bit. Well, that's it from me. Let's walk.
SPEAKER_01:It is a very flexible day because yesterday was our ship day on the mirror. I showed you the mirror, right? Yeah. Yeah, so we just finished. So I'm in the kind of basking in the glow of having just finished a major piece, and now I can relax a little bit. It's actually quite weird. The world looks different now. It's all I could think about. I just dreamt, slept, ate. The anxiety of not knowing. Yeah. Three months? Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh do you want a coffee or anything?
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:And so that project, so you say you started, was that when you say start, was that like the first client meeting, or was that when you actually started like manufacturing?
SPEAKER_01:Started production. I really had no direction from the client side of things, other than this is a this isn't a commission necessarily for a artwork that they bought. This is very pro bono. I it was an it was an honor to be part of the show. Chatsworth House is this storied palace of the Dukes of area. I think they're called the Devonshires, the family. And they've been living there for 18 generations and have been continuously collecting art. The royal families have taken residence there. Mary Queen of Scots and the Tudor dynasty. It's just a very important venue for as part of the sort of English identity and the history of decorative arts is sort of told throughout all the various rooms. So it was just such an honor to participate. It's it's outside of Manchester, I think, close to Sheffield. So excited to go. Uh Chatsworth House. Okay. I'll be going for the first time. Yeah. There's a big uh flatware industry, metalworking, you know, the Industrial Revolution really took place in the north of England, so it's gonna be great to see the vestiges of that past because we're sort of you know employing a lot of techniques that were developed then, and there's still a couple manufacturers that are creating flatware, so uh we're uh organizing a tour of some of their uh facilities. The curator asked us to participate in the show and selected a room called the grotto, it's an interior room. Often grottos are like garden follies that are in you know the outside in landscapes, but this was an interior grotto, and I think it was named because of a fountain that was in the room featuring the goddess Diana, who is often seen bathing, and it's in the Ovid's metamorphosis. She's encountered the chaste virgin goddess is encountered bathing in her grotto by a hunter who she turns into a deer, and his name is Action, and his dogs then rip them to shreds. It's kind of a sad story. So I wanted to depict a grotto, like a uh my vision of a grotto. I thought this would be an amazing opportunity to go deep into that world of the cave. Because I had been making these sort of another thing about the commission, sorry, is that they particularly wanted a wall piece and it's directly facing the sculpture of Diana I just mentioned, the fountain of Diana. So I thought it would be great to depict the grotto because she will be directly in the frame of the mirror, so you're kind of seeing both you know her the mythology that the Greco-Roman mythology, and then sort of surrounded by my dream grotto. So this is just a really an amazing opportunity to kind of engage with history, but then also into this other facet of nature. So, yeah, anyway, this is just a deep dive into the world of the cave, and you know, the the grotto has been featured in Midsummer Night's Dream, and it's a place of nymphs, it's a portal to the underworld, a dwelling place of the gods. I wanted to see if I could engage with that and bring that kind of a layer of mysticism to all of the elements. So there's a lot of psychedelic references to the plants and animals that I chose. There's this desert toad that shamans use uh the secretion of its back to right where you lift the back, then exactly. Yeah, there's little peyotes uh lining the side of the cave wall, uh, and some of them have faces that sort of emerge through the glazes.
SPEAKER_00:You can kind of see what's the definition of a grotto? Like, what is there one?
SPEAKER_01:There when you look it up on Wikipedia, it's generally speaking a cave that has a water element to it, whether it's close to the ocean or deep in the forest, it's not quite specific, but typically it's a cave with some kind of water. But other than that, sort of open-ended. Anyway, so there was this fad to create grottos and follies and gardens, and some of them were like fake ruins or a tower or like a place where there was like a druid ritual, right? So it's this kind of opium dream of the Victorian era of what, you know, sort of chancing upon some kind of fantastic.
SPEAKER_00:So this was a Victorian fad?
SPEAKER_01:Where it even goes back beyond before, like Edwardian in the 18th century, but it was carried on in the Victorian time and definitely fueled by the kind of opium dreams of the sort of fantasy and the exotic. And I just love that sense of you know, looking at nature with wonder. One of the folly archetypes that I encountered in my research was what's called a living garden ornament, where they would people would actually have a hermit living in their garden, and they would provide meals for them for uh over the course of seven years, and they would have to don the robes of a hermit and remove themselves from society and just sort of live there. They would sort of be like, you know, kind of exhibitionists or they're a hermit? Yeah, exactly. Voyeuristically gazing upon this kind of oddity.
SPEAKER_00:Was this something people volunteer for, or would they just go back to the room?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they put ads out in the newspaper, apparently.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Yeah. So this was a paid gig.
SPEAKER_01:It was a paid gig in the in the 19th century. I think that there's a couple famous accounts where they only lasted like three months and they were found at the local bar. But there was a big pot of money at the end if they could have lasted the seven years.
SPEAKER_00:Well, what do you know what the intent was? What were they hoping to get out of this other than just having this person? Was there was there by having it seven years, was there any kind of spiritual connection with the number?
SPEAKER_01:And that's a good question because a lot of the imagery is inspired by Freemason occult secret societies.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not an expert on it. I've I I'm curious to know myself.
SPEAKER_00:Do you think you could be a hermit?
SPEAKER_01:I sort of feel like one, actually, already. You know, If you're surrounded by people. Yeah, I've sort of created my own little oasis. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Do you feel like you feel like the hermit in your little big compound on uh 40-50 people-ish?
SPEAKER_01:There's 26 that work every day with you. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So from the moment I arrive till about 7 p.m., I have employees there. But then the night is the time either to be kind of a hermit with the work, with the art, the design projects at hand, or my friends started coming over pretty frequently. And actually, one of my best friends has a a studio now in the in the building that we also rent the foundry. We don't have the entire property, so he has uh he's now rented out a portion of that same building. So I love having this kind of community, and then every Thursday night we've been opening up the studio to we just call it art night to people that uh want to play and want to learn about welding or bronze casting, and that's been really fun kind of teaching people.
SPEAKER_00:Do you do this as like do you feel lonely? Yeah, if you don't have people around you?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, if I don't, yeah, it can get very isolating.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But people are at the end.
SPEAKER_00:Because you've built this kind of community where people will come and you know play with you basically.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:It's like a little kid's playground.
SPEAKER_01:It is exactly that. It's somewhere between an art study studio and a playground. I find that the best work comes from play. Nothing really great happens when I'm stressed out and anxious, although that's part of it too. You not knowing the answer and having to be okay with that for a long time. But but the you have to look at a problem creatively and and have fun with it and play.
SPEAKER_00:But you need a deadline, or or or you need to be a good idea. I need a deadline, otherwise I won't stop.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. At a certain point, you have to move on. It's it's amazing what can get done if you set that in stone.
SPEAKER_00:And so, in the terms of this mirror sculpture, did you sort of go into it and say, okay, we're gonna deliver it on like we end of February is the deadline? We all go in into it with that, or was that just like a few weeks ago when you said like we have to stop at some point, let's just at this date?
SPEAKER_01:We knew we knew that the show was opening March 13th. Okay. And so we worked backward from how is it gonna clear customs, how much time does the art shippers need to make the crate? Yeah, and we were pushing that date for as far back as possible. There were rumors that I had to get it done the first of February, so I we really pushed back and tried to see if we can use all of the time. So um we also had a big book party launch this weekend. Uh so we wanted to display the all the hard work and share with the friends that came for that opening. So everyone was really flexible to allow me to have as much as much time as possible. Because really, I was condensing this was a three-month inquiry, but this is kind of it was kind of crazy to create an all new work, all new molds in bronze, a new patina as well. I've never really worked with their degree, it's a process of making a a blue uh a blue-green um patina, and and that often takes weeks to develop, and we were trying to do it in the span of you know each process in two days.
SPEAKER_00:That I find although that that kind of pressure often leads to innovation because you're like, okay, we don't have this time or the resources or whatever it is, yeah, where you like in your dream dream world would say, let's take a year and let's do this, like you know, with all these resources, but then you're like, okay, here's the reality with three months. It's exactly what can you do?
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. Yeah, it kind of necessity is the mother of invention. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I love that. And I've always been a fan of um allowing the process to inform the final piece and keeping it open, open-ended. Instead of sculpting every element of the mirror, I created sort of archetypes of stalactites and they became my Lego pieces that I could kind of use and kind of create in real time. And that's really the benefit of having the foundry in the studio is that it allows for that um open-ended kind of feedback with how it's going as it's being created, and I can make modifications as opposed to another model that a lot of artists employ of you know making a finished clay sculpture and handing it over to the foundry, and then it's their job to figure out how to do it. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:And and into this, like for example, this piece, how how big is it? I can't.
SPEAKER_01:It ended up being about seven feet tall. Okay, wide by maybe about four.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And there's a depth depth.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, it comes off the ceiling plane because I really wanted you to feel like you were in the cave. I wanted you to look up and be able to see the kind of cave ceiling. Uh so it sort of comes out about a maybe a foot.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And how much of the work happens in the process versus you sketching out sort of, as you said, in you know, there's multiple ways to do this. If you were an external illustrator, let's say, you would hand in like a finished idea, quote unquote. And then uh, but in your case, you're able to just see it being built over time. Right. And so how much of this is you've already you know where you're going versus let's see what happens.
SPEAKER_01:It's I'm in a dark room. I always feel that I'm I I'm discovering it as I'm creating it. So I generally knew I wanted to evoke a cave. I generally knew that I wanted to embed the sense of mystery and to hide the animal and the vegetable and the mineral and to make it feel like like it always was there, right? But how do you do that out of pieces that are, you know, never knew that they had a relationship with one another, like lychees and stalactites and crab claws. Uh so you just have to boldly with with kind of false confidence, you know, kind of pretend when no one's looking, then they don't really see you nervously kind of picking up charcoal. I kind of create strokes of ideas of what a you know cave stalactites could feel like. And then I started dripping wax and uh mimicking the process of uh the the millions of accumulated drops. I was kind of trying to experiment in my own way with dropping wax and creating these kind of haphazard stalactites and and just uh being close to the process, and then suddenly, you know, you kind of look at it the next day and you see, oh, there's there's something in the spirit of that wax and that line that I created that is the first step toward taking the idea and bringing it into three dimensions, and then and then you lean on that, like that that's now your tiny glimmer of light in your dark room, and you just like stay by that candle and you like try to like try to light another candle. Is there is there something that lives in that space now? Now that I have this beautiful cave ledge, is there is there a gecko that's on it? Is there a dragonfly? Where how does that connect to the base? And so it's just this story that kind of unfolds as you as I was just paying attention to the process and being close to the process.
SPEAKER_00:You know, once you've found that spark, that little light, is is that still in there? Yes. Is the whole piece sort of built on the built around it? Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like the it's almost the cornerstone. It it it is the DNA of the piece. So everything involves around that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I always ask, what is my solid ground?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And if I don't have it, you gotta go back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And then you just keep going until it's done.
SPEAKER_01:Until it's done.
SPEAKER_00:But do you have that moment when you sort of are done, you sort of step back and say, wow. And I made that because that's you know, again, looking back on any project where I've worked on for years, I'll look back and be like, I don't understand actually how this happened, but this is here now. Do you feel that?
SPEAKER_01:I do. Um it's a great question. This was a short project. I just uh shared the room in Hong Kong that took four years. When I remember where I was when I started, and now to your point, the the the final piece is nothing like what I thought it would be. I try not to be um tied to any vision that it has to live up to this or that um kind of ideal. It was the journey. The journey was incredibly rewarding. I discovered so much. I have so much more information now than when I started both of those projects, the mirror and the Hong Kong room. This new patina, the relationship between now. I really rarely use a lot of color in my work, and now this thing is has color all over it. A different blue-green uh patina, a different treatment of glazing ceramics. It's interesting, I'm not actually creating that one mirror because I don't only make one thing. That that mirror is an archetype of now a cave mirror, and I want to make more, and so I'm sort of designing for the next one, right? Uh, and the one after that, and each time we refine and explore and and learn about it. So it's interesting because I I of course I'm trying to make the very best thing I can, but I'm also making for the next project. Because often I that's just how it works. You have to let go, and these pieces that I make live in other people's homes, and they're no longer with me. And so I'm I want to make sure that I have the mold and so that I can recreate elements of all of that hard work and iterate for the next one and the next one. But that's always how I'm sort of looking at the future project.
SPEAKER_00:Do you ever find yourself in awe of yourself? Not not in the sort of not in the bad way, but in this like surpr, you know, after all this work, after months or even years in some cases, being surprised that you were able to do that.
SPEAKER_01:Surprise, yes, I do see that. I I have a a tenacity where there's like if there's a challenge, I am excited to meet it head on. That's always been my personality. I have this kind of dogged, whatever it takes, I'm going to solve this problem.
SPEAKER_00:Does that lead you into trouble as well? Because I have that too. And it does drive me sometimes to to keep going when looking back, I think I should have stopped there. Like that was the you know, I had you know, and and because I had this, I think um implanted me somehow is like you have to finish your thing. Whatever it is, you do go to the end. I think that's uh good, but for in my case, it has driven me to do things where I've like I should have stopped. This one was like this was not you know, I knew halfway through stop, but it's then then I go back to this sort of something in me is like, no, you finish it. Like you started it, you finish it.
SPEAKER_01:Right. That kind of testing the viability of an idea, a thesis, that is the design process that you know is was was I feel so important to the success of any future piece. You have to, you know, to chew on the idea and have different voices. I have inner inner critics uh that look at it, friends who are often harsher than enemies. You know, I have really trusted uh a lot of people have yes men. I have a great collection of of no men and women around me that are brutally honest, which I cherish.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And then I'm also often the harshest critic. So I'll look at it with the eyes of you know a misanthrope or a art hater or a you know, just how how do I prove them wrong? Right. I have this sort of like uh I hold court where I have to argue for the uh for why this thing is being created.
SPEAKER_00:And it's all in your head.
SPEAKER_01:It's all in my head, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I do that same thing. Again, that that has led me to be good at the things that I'm doing, but there's a downside to it, obviously, where it's just these imaginary people, like it's usually real people that I'm basing like what would this person think about it? Exactly. You plant them and then I have this imaginary argument with this person about it uh over and over again.
SPEAKER_01:Totally the same.
SPEAKER_00:They have no I have no idea what they actually think about it, right? Like the person themselves. Yeah. And it and it helps me sort of like, okay, yes, okay, uh I'll I'll fix that. Then it becomes ultimately becomes a problem. I think it's a lot of it for me was driven by I didn't want the critique. So I wanted to create something that wouldn't get critiqued.
SPEAKER_01:Really?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so as a kid, like I was just afraid of doing making a mistake. And so it was driven from that part and not like the like a just a joyful part or a that's fear. Yeah. It was driven by fear, which was not, you know, helpful.
SPEAKER_01:It's not.
SPEAKER_00:And ultimately it fails because you know, it was me. I was afraid of myself.
SPEAKER_01:Timid, yeah. Yeah. That's that's in that's information. Yeah, I love hearing that. Everybody struggles with overcoming their fears. And the act of creation is like a it's like a protest. It's a it's a it's the ultimate act of optimism and life affirmation. You have something to say that you want to share with others, uh, and you have to overcome yourself. You face yourself every day. And it's quite difficult. I used to just have to do this, or I used to enjoy doing this and torturing myself alone, but now I have to do it in front of 26 other people. And that's a new challenge. And to try to feel free when you're and being very vulnerable with pitching a new idea, celebrating the mistakes. Failures, there's no such real thing as a failure. They're they're just it's just information. Yeah, so cultivating a positive kind of playground where mistakes are embraced and just something to learn from. That's that's everything. If you can maintain that, you know, the next time that piece you won't make that same error, or maybe you'll make it again and no big deal. And maybe the third time you'll figure it out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:If I can add one little inch today, it's a good day. I really want to be open as well and open my doors. That's become a big part of having this new studio. It's a much bigger environment, and um, we can show other people's work, we can have classes, we can have schools come in. So yeah, I really want to share that and not be a kind of artist that's like in an ivory tower locked away.
SPEAKER_00:Um, no, that was not the feeling at all. It it it felt collaborative, it feels like a playground. Uh yeah, it feels like a place that I would want to go to every day.
SPEAKER_01:You're welcome to stop everyone.
SPEAKER_00:And yeah, do something. Like, I mean it's also so uh what I like about it, it's so messy. Yeah. Like, how does that happen? Like, where did you start as on your journey? What was the first thing you remember thinking I made that?
SPEAKER_01:In the beginning, uh I think I was a senior in high school, maybe earlier. You know, I always liked to draw with my mom. She would we would play what was called the doodle game. She would do kind of a scribble, swirl, spiral, and I would have to turn it into something recognizable.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right?
SPEAKER_00:And I do that with clouds.
SPEAKER_01:You do that with yeah, it's an exact exercise. How cool! That's exactly that's a cool exercise. So that was uh maybe some confidence building measures that my mom was just a great mother and figured out uh how to build my self-esteem. She was uh she is a uh therapist, couples counselor, and and then when I started to take my expression seriously, um when I was in high school, I was looking at different colleges and thinking about what I wanted to do with my life and the projects. Whenever there was an option to write an essay about a book or create an artistic piece about it, I would obviously opt for the latter. Expressing myself through sculpture and drawing just was always fun, came easy. Whereas sitting at a computer and typing, although I really enjoy now getting my thoughts out if I have something to say. But somehow being forced to write essays just didn't work with my process, I hated that. So I decided I wanted to spend my time for four years after high school and college to study of sort of visual arts, and I did a pre-college semester or summer semester at Rhode Island School of Design, uh, my summer between my junior and senior year. And when I realized that I could, you know, pull all nighters instead of cramming for a test, but pouring it into something I loved, like a huge charcoal drawing. I was just on cloud nine, and I just knew I wanted to be in that environment. Um, I made lights for when I was in high school, I made these kind of paper lanterns, um, wall hanging and a ceiling-mounted pendant, and uh that was a big aha moment where I now you know I felt like my kind of sketches could become objects that had a lot of power for me. Was that a way in to make it sort of economically viable for you to also be able to sell these things, or was that yeah, I didn't sell those, but I was thinking about space and and how to make things for people, how to imbue an object not just with function but with joy. Uh that was very important. And uh the joy has to start from admiration for nature or of uh just a facet of reality, and I explored my joy through drawings and cartoon art of uh I found this little ceramic, I think it was actually a lamb, but I called it a deer at this at Salvation Army, and I just created a world, it was like a muse. It was like this innocent way to look at nature. Um, and I gave it friends to hang out with and environments to exist in and little silly stories about interacting with squirrels and other kind of handlers. I was at RISD at that time. Okay. Yeah, uh freshman sophomore year. And then I decided I wanted to make furniture from that world. Uh I studied, I went into the furniture department. The first project was a hat hanger. It was basically just how do you stick a piece of wood in another piece of wood to hold your hat. But I made the deer, it was sort of like this taxidermy kind of anime-inspired, simplified deer with its ear coming out and it was flocked, you know, that velvety sort of fuzzy texture. I showed it to a um to my favorite store in LA. At the time it was called Plastica. It sold little uh cool Japanese and European little knick-knacks and um like great little uh alarm clocks and wristwatches or just just household appliances and items that were just fun and kind of of a different world. I showed her my deer hat hangers. Um, I said, I just loved your store, and I you know, I just wanted to show you these, and not like asking her to carry or whatever, and uh Frank Zappa's daughter, uh Moon Unit Zappa, was right behind me, and she was like, Oh my god, I want one of them. And the Carla, the store owner, who's since become a good friend, um, she started carrying them. So while I was in school, I had this thing on the in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And I started building off that. Like, what else can I create for an interior? A whole wall of these colorful deer started looking like three-dimensional wallpaper of sorts, um, like kind of like a three-dimensional pattern coming out at you. So I just started, you know, that was my first little candlelight in a dark room. What else can I bring into an interior sensitively? And I started with the walls. Um, it wouldn't be a heavy-handed approach, but something to give us joy and to take us to another realm, to turn a blank wall into perhaps um an ether or a material that a porous world that could emerge and disappear through the surface plane. So I had this idea of bringing nature because I felt very uh alienated from the natural world, and I wanted to think of a way to have our daily life more integrated to our primordial home in the forest. So I was casting these different species of trees and noticing that the barks from, in this case, this is sycamore, that oak, these are also oaks, vary so so beautifully. And when you cast them in a monochromatic material, then you just start noticing textural differences.
SPEAKER_00:And so they have character.
SPEAKER_01:They have incredible character, history and life and identity.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's a little bit of a doodle game. It is, yeah. Yeah. Because you take these little things and then you start to piece them together until they start to look like something.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly right. The doodles are just these elements that are in our daily life that maybe we can look at in a different way or start to see images.
SPEAKER_00:So then I started the yeah. At this point, you're where?
SPEAKER_01:Are you a now this would be my third year in the furniture department, junior, senior year? I took a trip to Japan that summer year. Japanese design was always so important to me. I was just really moved by Kyoto and the traditional Japanese home. There was this architectural element called a tokenoma, a place in a home. Where it's sort of an altar to art in a home. And it's often delineated or demarcated from the rest of the interior by a vertical weight-bearing organic trunk. As opposed to everything else is milled lumber. There's this one area with a slightly curving sinuous trunk and often a shelf. And that shelf would be a or a table. It would be a place for displaying ikebana or a flower arrangement or a poem. And I thought, wow, what a what a beautiful statement.
SPEAKER_00:This is like in in a person's home what they care about or what they is like their essence. Yes, you know, whatever it is. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And I thought, what are ways in which I could imbue that beautiful idea in a Western home? And I thought we have all these wall surfaces. We have this planes and drywall. Can can I use that as my canvas to say something in an interior that could speak to that moment of reflection, honoring nature somehow. So that's how the wall forest came about.
SPEAKER_00:But you're still, I mean, you don't have any employees at this point, obviously. No, I'm still in school. Yeah, here's the school. That was my degree project. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Create three-dimensional wall, wall coverings, wall hangings. Then I started showing that work after school. I was still making the deer. That became a little wholesale business on the side for me, and I got into some other design stores, and in that very early era, I became known as the deer guy. Like paper magazine did a full page on me next to my deer called Deer Guy.
SPEAKER_00:The original thing was not a deer. Is that correct? It was actually a lamb, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I saw more deer in it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And I've since been given other figurines that were similar to that. It was like a very popular 19 sort of 50s tchotchke knickknack. Some are like creamers, you know, for a little set.
SPEAKER_00:So now you're the deer guy.
SPEAKER_01:Now I'm the deer guy. That was like 2001. Let's see, when did I graduate? 2003. And I'm selling deer far and wide in San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, LA, and the rest of it's different objects.
SPEAKER_00:Like you've got the coat hanger, but you've built this whole world around other types of deer, home objects.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, some have antlers now, not just ears coming out. And then the kind of glacial backdrop of those original comic books were these kind of vases, became vases, tabletop vases, um, faceted mountains, and the wall forest was also that was a little bit more of a sophisticated aesthetic. It went away from the cartoon world. It was a it was they were life castings, so you got the vivid texture from the trees themselves.
SPEAKER_00:And what materials are these at this point?
SPEAKER_01:They were called uh aqua resin, it was water-based resin. This other material called Forton. It was a cementitious kind of material with fiberglass. And then, because I really didn't have a background in ceramics, I took one class uh my senior year, I think.
SPEAKER_00:And these are all handmade, this all handmade, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I would I kind of I loved um mold making, so that I focused on throughout my time at RISD, and I love the idea of instead of looking at a mold as a way to recreate uh similar object or an identical object every time, kind of fucking with the cis with the process a little bit and trying to create individualistic pieces out of a single mold. So I would take a mold of a tree in traditional mold making, you would then put a case on top of that case mold or a mother mold to keep that rubber in place so it always recreated the tree. Instead, I abandoned that case mold, I took the floppy skin of the rubber off, and I would sculpt in sand a trough for it to go into a very different physical orientation than the original tree. So so now you have an unlimited variety of forms that the mold could yield as opposed to the single one.
SPEAKER_00:So I love that kind of uh that mass, it's it has again it has that first spark, yes, but it's not mass manufacturing things that are exactly the same.
SPEAKER_01:Then you go to the process for the feedback, yeah, right, and unexpected, serendipitous things come from paying attention and messing with the process at different stages. Yeah. So then I was showing those trees, and then the right people saw it. This incredible guy, we're just he just we had a book party together with him, Rodman Primach. He came out with a book a couple months ago, and so we sort of celebrated together along with Nicole Hollis, who's another interior designer who's used a lot of our work throughout the years. A lot of help from the interior design and architecture community. Yeah. So they they were, I guess, hungry for new artists to help with their projects. Rodman saw these trees. I want to give him a lot of credit because he had the vision to take my wall-based idea and he saw a lot in it. And I didn't necessarily know that that idea wanted to become entire ceiling installations. So I really credit my conversation and relationship with him over the years. I then did a couple other sketches on napkins when we were having lunch, and he was like, Oh my god, I found the right project for this, and and and and and his ideas as well. He he he um introduced me to you know some of the great estates in England that I'm excited to go for the first time. It's gonna be sort of a pilgrimage when I'm going um in March. Uh, to see the great homes of the past, the the ceiling was just a a canvas that somehow in the modern era we've lost that emphasis, but it was such a was such an important part of a you know distinguished house, was an entire total artwork from the ground up. Yeah, you know. So I guess I kind of entered into the maybe design world zeitgeist of the 2000s because of my ceiling work that stemmed from that wall forest.
SPEAKER_00:So are you still the deer guy, also? I don't think I don't think so. I think that I was able to manifest 2000s like your ceiling works. Were you?
SPEAKER_01:I think that superseded the deer stuff. Okay, yeah. I mean I was still making them at till a certain point, and then it became pretty cumbersome to uh take wholesale orders. I was trying to keep the price points down. There was a sweet spot, they were like under 200 bucks. Yeah, but then I had to focus on the commissions, and sort of one ceiling led to another, and another, and so yeah, and I was sort of seen as maybe the ceiling guy. Got some press, the New York Times featured a ceiling and again what what are the materials at this point? Plaster. Things are light light, yeah. Yeah, plaster, fiberglass. A lot of the thicker branches, trunks were made like a surfboard, fiber layers of fiberglass and resin, and then um and then porcelain. Porcelain was uh the kind of the cherry blossom, the floral elements.
SPEAKER_00:That gave it color, or was it? And at that point it was still white on white.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, yeah, yeah. Then the LA Times assumed that I had also made lights because if you're doing ceilings, it looks as though you're you know a lot of the ceiling branches kind of engaged with an existing chandelier, like they grew off the ceiling plate. LA Times, like I said, they were doing a roundup on LA kind of chandelier makers. Um, and they asked if I made a chandelier, and I was like, Oh yeah, no problem all the time.
SPEAKER_00:And being that I had all the molds that I used to create, I I And I mean also you uh you were making these lights as colleges and since college. Right, yeah, I did that in high school. Oh, in high school, okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but it was very jerry-rigged. I think yeah, I was just going to the hardware store and electrocuting myself and figuring out how to make uh something light up. Um but uh to actually make something that's viable in the market. Yeah, and it yeah, that was a steep learning curve, and I just found the right people at the right time.
SPEAKER_00:And that was basically again, that was just the LA Times misunderstanding you, and you just said, yes. Yes, I make them all the time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's my I would love to make them for you. That's my whole thing.
SPEAKER_00:Do this for decades. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um same deal, by the way, when I made my first ceiling. The clients were great friends of mine, lovely people, were willing to take a absolute risk on a nobody. And I said, Yeah, ceilings, no problem. But I they had to I had to wait for them to leave the room when I put the very first branch, my hands were shaking. I was as I was applying the very first tiny little branch on the ceiling.
SPEAKER_02:I was like, what did I get myself into?
SPEAKER_01:But uh yeah, that same attitude. One, if I can do one little inch today, one foot, it was a good day. Yeah, I'd have to drive across the city. I was in my parents' garage at the time creating this very decorative plaster tree, cherry blossom ceiling on the lawn that I used to play soccer on, kind of creating it piece by piece.
SPEAKER_00:And then um, but at that point though, again, you have to have I mean you have to know it's not just the art piece, it's you know, it's a part of a ceiling. But you know, you need to make sure the ceiling doesn't come down. Yes. There's a lot of engineering thinking that has to go into this. And again, going back to the especially if you add wiring, now you're you know, not only tearing the house down, you're also burning it down if you mess up.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. This the first piece was a non-illuminated piece, and it actually functioned too well. But the clients unfortunately had to move and wanted to take it with them, but it's too, it's it's like a house. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So now you're making chandeliers.
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah, now I'm making chandeliers. I made the first one. I met Jose Luis, and uh at there's LA used to have a a host of amazing art foundries. There's still a couple great ones, but a lot of them closed down. Jose Luis was part of a foundry that yeah, wasn't wasn't doing too well, and he was about to go back home to Mexico penniless, yeah, after 30 years of working in the industry.
SPEAKER_00:And he is this great craftsman, incredible craftsman.
SPEAKER_01:He sort of started from you know sweeping the floors, ended up running the entire foundry. He can do every single process, and he's a true Renaissance man and you know, master of this kind of Renaissance era craft. Actually, it's even older than that. Bronze Age era craft.
SPEAKER_00:When did Bronze enter what?
SPEAKER_01:I wasn't trying to create a bronze piece. I was remember I was making these glacial vases that were these kind of sculptural vase forms. I say vase because I always say if you can, well, when when you charge more than$400, a vase becomes a vase. But a vase, I was making a vase. It's so so I was making these kind of faceted uh forms, and I was making them in wood and plaster and ceramic, and what I would do is I would I was interested to see what mark the tool made on the material, and then I would make a mold from that and uh slip casting mold and and cast the porcelain in that mold. So being that I was working in all these materials, I wanted to see what effect making a bronze faceted glacial mountain would have, with the idea that the end result was gonna be porcelain, but I would use a metal tool to create a clean cut facet, and then when I saw my plaster sculpture now cast in bronze, that changed everything because that that object in and of itself not only yielded a beautiful pattern texture for a porcelain mold, but it suddenly had power. This I had never worked in bronze before. This the transformation is absolutely magical.
SPEAKER_00:And and and Jose Luis had that in his bones, like he he knew that process the process in backwards and forwards, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That was what he did. Yeah, he he yeah, it was an art foundry, but they offer they created you know everything from doorknobs to vintage car parts to sculptural pieces, so and everything in between. Yeah, he just really understands the lost wax.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, I needed his help to create that first chandelier that the LA Times asked if I could make because we had to cast it hollow.
SPEAKER_00:Was it actually made then for the times?
SPEAKER_01:It was made, yeah. We made the deadline.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay. Yeah, got it.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, yeah. It was really important to me that you wouldn't be distracted by the wiring, um, by any of the kind of engineering, that it was safe and also beautiful. So I cast local oak branches actually from Elysian Park. Um, I had a lot of molds that I had built up because I was making the ceilings based on and the walls based on uh different species. And instead of casting plaster or aqua resin, I cast wax into those molds, and we figured out a way to cast hollow mold so that we could place the wiring inside. Is that a tricky thing to figure out? Tricky thing, it is tricky, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, okay. Now so you made the light for the times, and now are you this is just you become the chandelier guy now? Or is that in a sense, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, the the amazing thing that happened after having created a chandelier is that it can then be seen in a type of gallery space or uh a non-room installation setting because I up until this point I had been spending minimum one year or sometimes even more on an entire installation, right? Right, yeah. So now I've created a little microcosm universe of an installation in a three-dimensional chandelier. It's not as simple as just put it in a box, IKEA, put it up, but it's not too different. So thanks to my incredible staff, we have these beautiful uh instruction manuals with kind of photos of how to do each step. So it is sort of IKEA actually. More and more we're able to send it along and they can install. Um, but then um Rodman was acting as kind of um maybe a kind of manager art dealer at the time. Rodman is so again? He he commissioned, he was the first to uh give me the opportunity to do a ceiling.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And and so he had his own interior design practice, but he was also very involved in this new marketplace at that time that was growing called collectible design.
SPEAKER_00:Where are we in time now?
SPEAKER_01:2007, eight, nine.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. What is collectible design?
SPEAKER_01:Collectible design is a grouping of dealers that argue for the importance and influence and cultural importance of design on the level of art. And it started with the interest in mid-century designers.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Um, Jean Prouvé, uh Charlotte Perrion, you know, Isama no Gucci, Charles and Ray Eames, the sort of originals as opposed to the mass-produced pieces, sharing it on the level of Art Basel. And one of the pioneering galleries in that world of collectible design, of which there's maybe a dozen, uh, was it was one called R20, but they've since changed their name to R and Company. Um, and um Rodman suggested that uh sort of my work to them and vice versa, we we met. Um Rodman at that point then went to London to help with uh the auction house Phillips DePurie. He since became the director of Design Miami after that, so he was still very involved in the design world.
SPEAKER_00:And but this so to but just to break it down, so at this point, you're thinking of yourself and what you do as design. Correct.
SPEAKER_01:Um I didn't really feel the need to locate myself. Right, but it but people function is important for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah, but people would look at it and say, this is design versus art. Sure. How would you like do you think of yourself as if you were to be asked, are you a designer now?
SPEAKER_01:Or are you I still have struggle with that? I think I've lately I've been saying artist a little more.
SPEAKER_00:Sneak that in? I'm sneaking that in.
SPEAKER_01:Maker's the easy way out, just kind of like I make stuff, yeah. But I think one really pressed, I would say an artist begrudgingly.
SPEAKER_00:But you sort of like yeah, I whisper it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. The idea of like a bohemian artist that you know lives on the margins of society and it just feels so somehow indulgent to me. Uh I don't like things on a pedestal. I don't like like don't touch the art. I I just don't like that uh separation. I need there to be a direct relationship to people.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Okay, so we're in uh 2006-ish era. Your uh Rodman is sort of pushing you and and a group of these uh you know fellow-minded people to be elevated to you know be in the same category as art, at least, whether we call it art or not.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and suggested that I meet with this uh gallery called Arn Company. Yeah, I think it was the 2008 Design Miami where I showed my first installation at an art fair or a design fair, um some of those glacial vases. I also started working with um a Czech glass crystal company called Artel, and they took some of those glacial forms and created pendants, ceiling pendants, lighting, and then branch chandeliers, that first one for the LA Times. And so those aesthetics.
SPEAKER_00:With changing of materials, does that impact like the weight of it? Like do you not have to have to reinforce the ceilings?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, although the lights really aren't so heavy, the it depends on the scale of the branch, but all the original sort of pendant chandeliers that had six or seven lights attached to them were cast hollow. So it's really still under 50-60 pounds. Okay, so a standard, standard um attachment is possible.
SPEAKER_00:I keep asking these very practical things. No, that's important.
SPEAKER_01:Uh the engineering is critical. Um but with plywood blocking installed, no problem. And we create these very heavy-duty uh plates that go into the ceiling first that can handle hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
SPEAKER_00:So then I started selling in New York at these fairs in Basel, Switzerland, Miami, and this point, how many are you able to make in a year? Like what is it?
SPEAKER_01:Well, they uh R was very ambitious, and we set forth kind of additions. That was an important part of selling as an artist. You kind of maybe fictitiously create a certain supply and demand kind of constraint. And it's it's not so fictitious. I didn't want to make a thousand of something, I wanted to limit it to a certain amount.
SPEAKER_00:Let's be realistic, like what was the realistic amount of objects you could make um at that point?
SPEAKER_01:You know, like I think the largest edition of any design was maybe 18 of something, which is good. We can make batches.
SPEAKER_00:And how many editions in a year? Is that a year?
SPEAKER_01:We sort of viewed it as kind of three years because it takes a long time to develop something that I like and then bring it to market. But I was I was I went fast. I was then, you know, I was like making vases, making trays, making I made some silverware, making jewelry, candlesticks. I was really trying to explore as fast as possible an idea. So we were a bit ambitious with all the different editions. Every time I made a new thing, it was like, okay, this is gonna be an addition of 12. And we had no idea what the market was gonna be.
SPEAKER_00:And um and is it then sold at an auction, or is this a fixed price?
SPEAKER_01:First come, first, you know, it usually starts off um at a lower price, and then as the edition sells, yeah, it gets a little more limited, you know, and then the laptop.
SPEAKER_00:That's their deal. Somebody has I mean we're in conversation setting these prices, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's their understanding of the marketplace. Yeah, okay. That was kind of their deal. But I went along for the ride and that allowed my studio to grow. And so I'm very grateful to that.
SPEAKER_00:Um, was that here in the same location?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I went from my parents' garage to see that there's sort of a church on the hill over there. That's Forest Lawn Um Cemetery. I was at the kind of base of that hill. Okay. And I was there for 13 years before moving to Frogtown. But the studio was like a fraction of the size of the one here.
SPEAKER_00:At this point, you now you you have sort of a trajectory. You're uh able to spend a significant amount of time on making these things, and you know, they they will cost a significant amount of money, uh, and you're able to make a living, you're able to support yourself and build your foundry.
SPEAKER_01:I mean it uh it was a wild ride. It went from really tiny budgets for year-long projects for those first ceilings to the first I'll sort of give general ballpark. It went from like$14,000 for a single commission.
SPEAKER_00:Which was would take a year.
SPEAKER_01:It took more than a year, yeah. For the first one.
SPEAKER_00:And and that's including materials?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, that was all.
SPEAKER_00:What do you want to buy at that point?
SPEAKER_01:Liv living in my parents' garage and um selling also deer on the side. Right, of course. It was a very like you know, it was it was a hustle period for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And every probably half of that 14,000 went into buying my kiln and materials and tools. You know, so I was very frugal. Lovely neighbor who we're still close with would take me out to lunch all the time. And I abandoned at that because I was 24, 25, you know, the kind of time when maybe you started looking for, I don't know, a family or I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Like-minded people.
SPEAKER_01:Like-minded people. I just went into the studio. Yeah, and I put everything into the studio and to the into the work.
SPEAKER_00:And then a few years later you were selling pieces for like a ballpark.
SPEAKER_01:So it went the first ceiling 14,000. The second ceiling there was a big jump. 70,000. That was huge for me. But it was a much bigger ceiling, and it was a year of work or that was longer. That was it, that was it. It was a ceiling in San Antonio, Texas, and that took uh probably two and a half years.
SPEAKER_00:Oh wow, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then I started working with the gallery, and then the next uh commission was like a$250,000 commission uh for a four-story townhouse in New York. That ended up growing into I think closer to$400. Uh so it but then the gallery takes a cut. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:At that point, it was they're handling all the negotiations 50% for the gallery? Yeah. Holy shit.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a big number.
SPEAKER_00:It's not your stuff.
SPEAKER_01:But it was worth it at that time. It was the right move.
SPEAKER_00:You know, they really worked hard to validate my work and to give it a great, you know, platform and I imagine also just giving you a sense of the value of these things. Absolutely. Because then you could, I mean, uh I don't know if you're working with them still, but you you sort of like that's now my value. Like this is all I try.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I try not to think I didn't get tied to like, oh, I'm a$200,000 artist. I don't think I thought of it necessarily that way. I just saw that okay, now I have a little bit more runway so I can make the next thing so that the studio can be, you know, have be more diversified. If next year the ceiling business goes down the drain, I got pendant lights and I got vases or whatever mirrors, whatever the next thing would be. It was just I I I used it as my war chest.
SPEAKER_00:So you're uh so you're building up the studio with these projects, and and what's the next leap?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, good question. Um, I think it would be the show that I had with R and Company. That would be 2012. It was actually with Rodman. I wanted to include him because he went to London and I just felt like he was so much a part of how I started. So together we designed a show uh surrounding the dining experience. So I created a suite of objects, like a tablescape of candlesticks and tongs and a dinner bell and everything with this kind of collage aesthetic of play of buds and berries and branches and little animals that I found, and I wanted to make utilitarian objects. And that was a big show. It was an important part of my own process that uh it said, hey, I'm I'm not just a ceiling or chandelier, I have more to say with our daily life. It was confidence building, and I got a lot of new work from that. I think at that point I introduced mirrors. I'm still making mirrors, I just shipped one yesterday. Yeah, a book was also published at that point.
SPEAKER_00:And that was sort of a retrospective of your work about it. Yeah, up until that point.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Um, we've since made a couple more books, uh, but it was yeah, that was an important setting. It was by no means like secure, but I had like uh a place. Maybe uh people people started to know of the work, and so there was a lot of commissions that continued to come. Um Brandt Chandeliers then really started to take off. Um Michael Smith is a designer that commissioned a piece for the embassy in Spain. Peter Marino is a sort of architect designer who did all of the Christian Dior stores and as well as Chanel and works from My Heroes, the Lalans. They're uh French bronze uh sculptors, designers. Um but he commissioned some ceilings for Dior flagship stores, yeah. Um little by little just built this practice.
SPEAKER_00:Now you're you may you're able to be less reactionary and make these deliberate choices. Right. Is that easier or harder?
SPEAKER_01:It's harder, yeah. It's definitely harder. Yeah, yeah. It's exactly right. It's like a it's reacting to the universe, the market. The art nights that I mentioned are an extension of um my interest in opening the studio to community, and I learned that I love teaching and I love sharing.
SPEAKER_00:So and in those classes, are you teaching your process or just a general like no?
SPEAKER_01:We're talking about an idea. Um, a friend's cousin who's a stand-up comedian, wanted to, she moved into a new apartment shoestring budget. She was gonna buy uh uh off-the-shelf pendant, and I was like, Well, you could, and I could we could learn how to kind of make a steel um shade, but would there be something you want to do that could be more organic or could have a paper lantern glow? And she saw some of the examples that I was working on, and she was like, Yeah, let's do a paper piece. She did a drawing, she was like, Okay, I want to make a wire datura flower, this hanging trunk. So I was like, Okay, let's learn how to braise. So we bent some bronze rod, and I taught her how to braise with brass. Um, and she made this stunning lantern and she covered it with paper, and little, I mean, step by step, we're learning what now it's like what is the correct light bulb, what's the glow, what's the temperature, what's the chain mechanism. We're going over all these options, you know. These are these are decisions that I've dwelled on for so many years, so it's really fun to be able to say, have you seen this? And could you know?
SPEAKER_00:So, um, so we also get the benefit of someone new coming into it. Yes, and then then you know, you're learning something new as well. Totally.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, there is a back, yeah, there is a feedback to me. Absolutely. That's one aspect. I I love teaching, I want to open up the studio more, be more communal. I also would love for my work to be less expensive. Yeah, I've been afforded these opportunities to create kind of dreamscapes, dream ceiling, whole room installations, total works of art, because like Zamkunstworks. But but I've I didn't set out to only create for the 0.0001. Yeah, I want to offer something that's affordable. And the way that our manufacturing process is now, it's very difficult to bring price points down to justify all the work in marketing and distribution and quality control. So there are other ways to do it, maybe finding other manufacturers that I can uh trust and to offer something at a at a lower price point. But um, that is a huge goal of mine, as well as continuing these kind of over the top, like where can this go projects. Yeah, but bringing it down.
SPEAKER_00:I'm personally, I mean, I know a lot of people are not. I'm a huge fan of IKEA. Yeah, me too. In general, the idea that you can buy things that are functional, that look pretty good, that you know last a decent amount of time, yeah, and they are.
SPEAKER_01:affordable yeah um I think that's it's incredible it's incredible it's such a great resource and they also highlight designers and I think respect the craft of design uh the as a as a as a profession.
SPEAKER_00:Would you want would you want like to have an IKEA lab?
SPEAKER_01:I would I would love that I hope this finds its way to somebody who can put us in touch. I would we actually had a conversation about that today so it's so funny that yeah I'm trying to manifest that that would be fantastic. We have a couple designs that I think would be really cool for that context.
SPEAKER_00:That seems like an easy thing.
SPEAKER_01:I know some people at IKEA do you incredible okay let me dig up some people amazing thank you as long as it satisfies that very first spark spark if we can maintain that level of quality that you're not distracted by maybe the compromises or the needs for you know production techniques that as long as it comes across then I'm cool with that.
SPEAKER_00:Great. So let's do that. Yeah let's do that I would love to have uh one of your lamps is IKEA amazing if you're still in the mind of a designer which sounds like maybe which sounds like you are as well even though you're a whispering artist right that is that is the same itch that I have is I I do like making things. I also come from a very poor home and I remember like I was eating noodles for years but I still you know like nice things. Yeah and so how do you you know how do you do that at a scale is the ultimate goal of a designer is like how can you make this thing uh have meaning but still be affordable.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely that's the dream that's the goal.
SPEAKER_00:Without killing that spark right which commerce has a tendency to do.
SPEAKER_01:Right. That is gonna be you know a a design process. That's the challenge. I I think it's doable and but it's gonna be a lot of hard work. If it was easy it would everybody would do it. So yeah it's uh something I would love to devote energy to but up until now the studio has just been completely overwhelmed with kind of the over the top side of design the kind of like you know you know oh yeah dream oh I don't want to use the word decadence but you know that has a negativity to it but when else are you going to be given the opportunity to do an entire room and to go you know dream big so it's just required a certain budget that yeah I mean you're basically making things that would fit in the Versailles or something.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. You know then that then obviously that comes at a high cost. Yeah. And they're so detailed and intricate that it'll be very interesting to see how you approach like a mass uh producible product.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah yeah I'm interested to learn myself I don't know if we're you know starting in the dark room.
SPEAKER_00:How what does this mean? Like you know it sounds like you spend you work all day in your foundry and then you're all night as well. Yeah. What kind of um I don't know and stop me if I'm going too far is like what does this mean for you as a partner or like how are your personal relationships that are outside of work or is it all inside of work.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah um you know the center of gravity is the studio and everything kind of it's been a huge challenge to figure that out and I I don't have it figured out. Okay I'm happy uh with my dogs and cat and my incredible friends I'm tentatively starting a kind of dating life a little bit. I had a pretty disruptive no children. I made the mistake of bringing somebody in that wasn't ready for that level of commitment and that was very difficult because she was a part of my process until she couldn't be anymore and she had to have her own identity and that's kind of has happened a couple times now. Yeah and that's really hard because it's just so disruptive to my just inner life and my inner life is in turmoil then the art life is in turmoil and so I'm very very cautious there and I just go very slow.
SPEAKER_00:Well thank you so much. You're so welcome it's been wonderful my pleasure yeah it was a great conversation likewise like I said I I I really admire what you built here. It is like a uh you know a kid's dream basically come to life and and being in that space you can feel like the energy and yeah it's a fun place and obviously the work that comes out of it is great but I think what I admire the most is actually this place.
SPEAKER_01:The place itself wow love that yeah I'm very proud and I want to share it how if someone get if if someone is wants to come and learn with you like what is is there an application is there a thing or is it uh I don't have anything formal but instead of DM me I guess I don't know if I would that would open up uh plug games but uh I'm I'm cool with that I'm I'm trying to open up as much as possi as I can so yeah come to creative nights on Thursday let's let's make some shit maybe that's a good end and that's it from David Weisman um I hope you enjoyed this episode of Let's Walk and if you're interested you can always check out our other episodes where I go on yes walks with creative people like Seth Godin Matt Dillon and others thank you for listening and I'll see you soon this episode was produced by Jihan Sincerely and edited by Kunart Hanson.
SPEAKER_00:Our theme song is by Atnerunar