Patterns with Purpose

It took a Terry Winter’s retrospective at the Whitney to help Kim Piotrowski put things into perspective. As a struggling pre-med student in college, Kim found herself shadowing the art student crowd on a regular basis. But it wasn’t until Winter’s exhibition that Kim finally decided it was time to hang up the lab coat and pick up the painter’s smock.

“That show changed me,” Kim explains in her City Island studio. “I couldn’t do organic chemistry anymore. I was horrible at it. I thought, how could I do this for the rest of my life?”

It was around the time of this major change that Kim’s father shared a National Geographic article on fractal geometry. Visually, she was drawn to the detailed, self-repeating patterns characterizing fractals. Conceptually, the prospect of maintaining some connection to the sciences even as she took the plunge into the fine arts was a reassurance. “I just started painting the fractals. All the while, I was attempting to blend the science and the art together so I wouldn’t forget one or the other.” Read More

Consider the Clasp

“I still don’t feel like I work in fashion,” Fay tells me. “In a sense, of course I do, because I make jewelry. But I never studied it, and before I started making it, I never thought I could be a part of it.”

Now working fulltime on her independent line from a studio in Greenpoint, Fay Andrada is enthralled by the process of creating staunchly unique and refined pieces of jewelry. In fact, it might be her high level of engagement with the creation of new pieces that makes her reluctant to self-describe as being “in fashion.”

“I really want to preserve the newness of the idea. I don’t present anything that I’m not super excited about. I’m really self-conscious about that, and I’m really picky about what I put out there. I don’t yet feel able to enthusiastically deliver ‘X’ amount of new ideas or styles a year in order to fulfill the seasonal cycle that the fashion industry operates on.”

Fay may term it as “pickiness,” but a more apt label might be integrity. Read More

Enlightened Adornments

Eco-jewelry. I suppose we think we know what that means–conjuring images of hemp bracelets donned by global-relations students. Or maybe that’s just me. But regardless of what we infer from the terminology, affixing environmentalism to our favorite adornments is, for the most part, an unnatural proposition.

Andy Lifschutz makes eco-jewelry. But you probably wouldn’t guess it from looking at his work and he certainly won’t be the first to tell you. “When i think of ‘eco-jewelry,’ I think of people using vintage watch pieces or old chains they got from estate sales. You know, people rummaging around and finding junk to string onto a necklace. I don’t think of it as people creating new designs that are every bit as ethical or recycled. What I do is eco-jewelry, but I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as modern, relevant art.”

Working primarily with reclaimed metals and stones found close to the earth’s surface (think: quartz), Andy’s work finds itself teetering between contemporary abstraction and enduring naturalism. Read More

Creative Solutions

“I had a nightmare last night about the number of styles I need to do for Spring ’13,” designer Ann Yee tells me. “Someone in the dream was telling me that I had to create more than 100 styles for the season. And I was screaming back, ‘How is that possible? There’s no way I can do that!’”

There is something really refreshing about Ann’s candor. While it is understood that developing a collection as a singular, emerging designer is no cake-walk, it is also rare to hear an ambitious upstart discuss the challenges.

“Developing a collection is expensive,” Ann continues. “I am always thinking: how many different styles should I construct for the season? I know I need to provide a variety for the buyers to choose from. But I can’t create so many, that if some don’t get picked up, I didn’t waste a whole lot of development money. It’s a delicate balance.” Read More

A New Edition

Recently, Of a Kind co-founders Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur stopped by Ursa Major designer Kate Jones’s Tribeca studio to discuss the jewelry maker’s contribution to their unique website.

Launched in 2010, Of a Kind entered the online retail sphere just as editorialization had begun to incorporate into e-commerce. Until that point, as Claire puts it, internet shopping was both “an anonymous and impersonal experience.”

Using this experiential failing as a prompt, Claire and Erica conceived of a website that not only sold items but also gave the story behind them. “There are boutiques where you have really knowledgeable salespeople, who can tell you a lot about the pieces their store is carrying. You definitely don’t get that online. This idea of bringing that person outside of the brick-and-mortar space and into the online realm was really exciting to us. It felt like something new–to make e-commerce more than just click-and-buy,” Claire says. Read More

The New Knitting Circle

These days, people don’t often consider the social benefits of a traditional knitting circle. Perhaps it seems too old-fashioned. Or maybe the dexterity required eludes the majority of us who only ever use our hands for texting and typing. Whatever the reason, the timeless tradition of hand-knitting has found itself nearing obsolescence in contemporary society. That is, until a gang of foresighted designers and founders initiated Wool and the Gang.

“Aurelie and I were both very hands on at Central St. Martins. We would just get some yarn and needles and freestyle, while most of our classmates would learn to knit on machines. We were very strong at hand-knitting” Jade says.

Aurelie adds, “We exhibited a very different process from our designer friends. Generally, they would begin by sketching a garment–before even considering the fabric–then they would make the fabric fit their sketch. We are more interested in seeing how the fabric reacts to different techniques and determining what we can make out of it. We go the opposite way.” Read More