Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Age: 28
Occupation: Artist, designer, teacher.
Instagram: @jolime
Hometown: Born in Durham, grew up in Birmingham, AL.
Studio location: Houston.
Describe what you make: Sculptures and sculptural furniture, mostly.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: Whether my work is “important” is probably not up to me to decide. But if I define it as a relationship to a people/place/issue, then I might choose the Ghostwood furniture that I made for the New Orleans Museum of Art, inspired by environmental concerns of the coastal South where I also live. The work is made of driftwood that I formed into a chair and table with legs that splay out like a mass of branches and a seatback that I burned with the silhouette of a ladderback chair. Outside of that, I also designed the layout for the communal woodshop where I teach and make work, which has been important to me and lots of students and members.
Describe the problem your work solves: I’m not sure, but making the work is the problem I’m trying to solve… Three-dimensional media can be messy, labor-intensive, and a logistical pain in the butt. Every project is a back-and-forth dance (or a fight) with the limitations of structure and material. But that relationship with reality also makes it worthwhile and fun. I can pursue a project with only an abstract curiosity or hunch about a material or technique, and it gets shaped by the real world into something new, strange, and wonderful that I could have never conceived otherwise.
Describe the project you are working on now: I just completed several chairs and am now working on pulling together an archive of process materials for my first solo exhibition in New York. As a fun side project, I’m also making little pendants using the same faux wood method that I applied on the chairs.
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: My exhibition, titled “Material Autopsy,” runs through Aug. 11 at R & Company in New York. It features new and recent works that deconstruct ideas about the making process and the relationship between outer appearance and inner structures through different chair forms, utilizing materials such as wood, fiberglass, acrylic, foam, and found materials.
What you absolutely must have in your studio: Painters tape, latex gloves, a 3M respirator, and a watch (there’s no windows).
What you do when you’re not working: If I have time, I will eke out an episode of a TV show or tend to my aquatic dwarf shrimp.
Sources of creative envy: I feel very moved by certain animated works, like Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli) and Full Metal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa (adapted by Studio Bones). These are true gesamtkunstwerks with stellar art, music, storytelling, and characters that explore themes about life and death and show an incredible complexity and compassion for ordinary living beings and their environment.
The distraction you want to eliminate: I’m not easily distracted. I could probably keep working through a biblical disaster as long as the woodshop is still standing.
Concrete or marble? Depends on the context.
High-rise or townhouse? My parents’ house.
Remember or forget? Remember.
Aliens or ghosts? Zombies.
Dark or light? Dark.
