Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Age: 40
Occupation: Designer.
Instagram: @thelongconfidence
Hometown: Brooklyn.
Studio location: Berkeley, CA.
Describe what you make: I make furniture and collectible design pieces.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: My Saguaro glass pieces. These larger-scale glass works talk about what I like to think about as a designer—letting process run through a design, seeing what works and what doesn’t, tweaking the process, starting over. Letting the work guide the next piece of work. Playing with things that are aleatory and unexpected.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: My Saguaro glass pieces. These larger-scale glass works talk about what I like to think about as a designer—letting process run through a design, seeing what works and what doesn’t, tweaking the process, starting over. Letting the work guide the next piece of work. Playing with things that are aleatory and unexpected.
Describe the problem your work solves: Seeking poetry in the fallen, contemporary world? Making beautiful stuff? The restless pursuit of both self and authenticity? No really, though. Showing the poetic and beautiful nature inherent in any one thing, maybe. I think about this quote by John Cage a lot: “The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.” In many ways, that’s it. Everything is beautiful, and there is infinite beauty and complexity and depth to all things, if you care to see it and find its divinity.
Describe the project you are working on now: I’m dialing in some details on this glass-based furniture I’ve been working on for a while now. I have a few wood-based commissions (mostly tables) flowing through the studio. I have some experimental things happening in aluminum and ceramic. Always setting things on fire. Playing with some anodizing. That’s just some of it.
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: This year, I’m launching a whole world of super special and crazy furniture that uses glass as its primary material, with an accompanying world of glass forms in both volume and sheet forms.
What you absolutely must have in your studio: Embarrassing but also not embarrassing, I listen to sports talk radio basically all day in my ear protection with built-in radio. It’s people just going on about the same stuff all day long, so you can go in and out of it all day long, and not really pay attention, but it’s background noise. I can’t do music because I don’t like the act of “picking” what to listen to, and podcasts or books on tape don’t work because I’m constantly taking my ear protection on and off, so I can’t mess with pausing things and paying real attention. I like sports a decent amount, but I know way too much about it because of the radio. There is this poetry to being able to drop in and out, and never really miss anything.
What you do when you’re not working: I spend time with my family. I have an almost four-year-old who I adore, so we play and I also bring him into the shop to work on his sculptures. I garden with my wife. We like to eat lots of tacos.
Sources of creative envy: Isamu Noguchi, Donald Judd, Max Lamb, Ronan Bouroullec.
The distraction you want to eliminate: Is there another possible answer than spending too much time looking at “stuff on the internet?” Ha!
Concrete or marble? Marble.
High-rise or townhouse? Townhouse.
Remember or forget? Remember.
Aliens or ghosts? Ghosts.
Dark or light? See the light, be the light.
(Portrait by Daniel Dent.)
