Adam Wallacavage is best known for his octopus chandeliers – pop surrealistic creations in saltwater taffy colors whose curving arms resemble sea creatures’ tentacles. The designer, 42, studied photography at University of the Arts, but an elective class in molding and casting turned out to serve him just as well. In 2000 he bought his current home, a torn-apart brownstone on South Broad Street, and began putting it back together to use as a backdrop for photo shoots.
Looking to the period rooms at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for inspiration, Wallacavage taught himself how to make the decorative moldings and wainscoting he imagined might once have been there. Collections of squeaky toys and friends’ paintings wink at these ornate elements, as do the octopuses – the earliest of them hang in his “Jules Verne Room.” Stepping into the aqua-colored chamber feels like stepping into a Fabergé egg – if the House of Fabergé had summered in Wildwood. … read more
Posted on March 23rd, 2012 by Caroline in consumed, Crits, In Print, Inquirer, interior (residential), lighting, Local Design, Philadelphia Design, what is Philadelphia design? | No Comments »
In the last year, Sara Selepouchin achieved two significant benchmarks on her path to success as a small, creative business owner. In April she moved into her own roomy studio off East Passyunk Avenue, and last month, she exhibited at the gigantic, influential New York International Gift Fair. Her booth was one aisle over from home design mogul Jonathan Adler.
But Selepouchin’s most significant accomplishment is less tangible. She has become so strongly identified with her aesthetic – annotated line drawings of everyday objects like pots and pans, sushi rolls, microscopes, Holga cameras, and Tastykakes – that any diagram-style work not made by her is bound to evoke a flurry of e-mails from friends in the handmade community, outraged on her behalf. After six years, Selepouchin has branded the nerdy, charming diagram a Girls Can Tell product…. read more
Posted on March 16th, 2012 by Caroline in Crits, graphic, In Print, Local Design, making it, Philadelphia Design, product, textiles, what is Philadelphia design? | No Comments »
In 2012, the bulk of my blogging about Philadelphia and design will happen over on my new blog, The Objectorialist. The word is a mash-up of object, objectify, sartorialist, editorial, and editorialize.
My “marginalia” posts on design-phan at the end of 2011 were a practice run for The Objectorialist, which looks at Philadelphia’s unique design profile via objects that are made, found, or designed and/or made here.
The idea grew from “What is Philadelphia Design?”. I realized Philadelphia is not one thing or even five things—it’s a complex tapestry of designed objects (and spaces and systems) influenced by the city’s past and defining the city’s present.
I was happy to find WPShower’s Imbalance theme, because it graphically expresses this idea—the home page looks like a collage, and each new object/post changes the character of that collage. It’s a living, breathing symbol for a living, breathing city. So today it looks like this:
And a few weeks ago it looked like this:
Posting is like creating a whole new composition every time.
If you want to know more, here’s an interview I did with Meg Augustin at the City Paper in February (thanks, Meg!). Come on over to theobjectorialist.com and check it out — and please comment!
Yours in objectorializing,
Caroline
Posted on March 10th, 2012 by Caroline in book, Crits, design crits, design matters, fashion, floral, furniture, graphic, green, jewelry, lighting, Local Design, marginalia, Philadelphia Design, product, student, studio visits, textiles, video, what is Philadelphia design? | No Comments »
Two years after graduating from Moore College of Art & Design with a degree in graphic design, e Bond planned a trip to Kenya and sought out a travel journal that would lie perfectly flat. She couldn’t find one, so she decided to make one. “That was the beginning of my loving and trying to figure out these different forms,” she says.
It turned out that the journal she made for Kenya didn’t lie perfectly flat either, but Bond has perfected the template and many more since that first project nearly 15 years ago. Although she has always made books – first while working full time as a graphic designer at CBS3 and then at Anthropologie – in August 2010 Bond turned her freelance business, as designer and bookbinder at roughdrAftbooks, into her full-time gig. From thinking about the book as a utilitarian object, she began thinking about it as an art form…. read more
Posted on February 24th, 2012 by Caroline in book, Crits, graphic, In Print, Inquirer, Local Design, making it, Philadelphia Design, studio visits, what is Philadelphia design? | No Comments »
Independent curator Eileen Tognini conjures up the site-specific works at Fishtown’s massive Skybox Gallery. So far, she and her artists have filled the turn-of-the-century industrial space with installations made of hand-charred tree limbs, recycled water bottles, and gigantic balloon sculptures. “The shows have been about taking a simple material and reimagining it,” she says.
Tognini also chairs Collab, the committee that drives the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s modern-design initiatives. Her studio overlooking the SkyBox reflects her life in design and art. … read more
Posted on February 17th, 2012 by Caroline in consumed, Crits, design crits, Field Trips, field trips (local), garden, In Print, Inquirer, Local Design, Philadelphia Design | No Comments »
Witold Rybczynski has built a distinguished career chasing his curiosity about culture, urbanism, and architecture. His 17 books explore topics ranging from the history of domestic comfort to the evolution of cities. This fall, he published his latest: The Biography of a Building (Thames & Hudson), about the Norman Foster-designed Sainsbury Center in England.
As you’d expect from a professor of urbanism who was trained as an architect, Rybczynski lives with a lot of books. The University of Pennsylvania prof also lives with a mash-up of furniture styles in the 1907 three-story stone house in Chestnut Hill that he shares with his wife, Shirley Hallam. … read more
Posted on January 27th, 2012 by Caroline in architecture, consumed, Crits, Field Trips, field trips (local), furniture, In Print, Inquirer, interior (residential), Local Design, Philadelphia Design | 1 Comment »
“I didn’t think I’d be in the toy business my whole life,” says Melissa Cohen. But as a creative who generates ideas and develops products for many toy companies, Cohen is all over the toy business. She’s had a hand in creating at least ninety toys that will be on display in Manhattan this February at Toy Fair 2012 – fifteen are debuts. The founder of MAJic Creative is a virtual idea-generating machine. But she’s also a toy and packaging designer, product developer, and branding and marketing whiz…. read more
Posted on January 20th, 2012 by Caroline in In Print, Local Design, making it, Philadelphia Design, product | No Comments »
For ten years, Philadelphia photographer Zoe Strauss has shown her work in a particularly gritty museum without walls, a section of an underpass located beneath I-95 in South Philadelphia. Her annual one-day exhibition was based on Homer’s Odyssey and was meant to illuminate “the epic narrative about the beauty and struggle of everyday life.” Throughout the decade, she accrued recognition and comparisons to Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin for her documentation of life in the city’s rougher neighborhoods. A mid-career retrospective called Zoe Strauss: Ten Years, opens at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Jan. 14. The Billboard Project, consisting of more than 50 billboards featuring her photographs around the city, is an extension of that museum exhibition. I watched one of them go up on Thursday.
An account exec from Clear Channel, who, along with Krain Outdoor Advertising, donated the billboards for the project, handed the billboard to Zoe all folded up and she joked that it felt like a flag ceremony. It looked like one, too. The billboards are giant, but the material carrying the image is lightweight and feels like Gore Tex. It’s called Ecoflex. The Clear Channel rep said they switched to Ecoflex about three years ago. It’s easier to put up and more environmentally friendly than the old-style ads with paste. Clear Channel sends retired Ecoflex ads to Avangard who recycles them into railroad ties — which presumably won’t happen with Zoe’s artwork.
Here it is going up at Reed and Passyunk, at the triangle (Acme/CVS/Rita’s/Triangle Tavern). The guy installing it looped some rope attached to the Ecoflex sheet up and around hooks at the top of the billboard and pulled and tightened. The image is of Antoinette Conti, one of Zoe’s neighbor’s at 13th and Wharton. She is bound, determined, and framed against clear blue sky.
The ClearChannel exec remarked that more advertisements should look like this: simple, straightforward with just an image and no text. He observed that most advertisers try to cram in too much information but that a simple graphic is much more effective for communicating a message.
Here’s Antoinette again, as Zoe meant for her to be seen. The cell towers behind and above the billboard are her crown — the piece is called “La Corona,” which means “the crown” in both Italian and Spanish. This language bridge signifies the changing demographics of Conti’s neighborhood, which was once mostly Italian and is now settled by a large community of Mexican immigrants.
The fact that Zoe’s work is going up on billboards is fitting because of her mandate to make art of the street and to make the street her museum. As seen in this image, Everything (2005, Philadelphia), she captures the city’s sense of place as much as she does its characters. Those characters include the city’s abandoned houses and lots, shuttered businesses, and quirky pizza parlors.
Tara Murtha of the Philadelphia Weekly has a great account of the rest of the preview tour here.
{last two images, courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art}
Posted on January 7th, 2012 by Caroline in Events, events and exhibitions, field trips (local), graphic, Local Design, Philadelphia Design | 2 Comments »
(*Marginalia is a closer look at the designed objects populating everyday life in Philadelphia.)
Object and location: Crazy Duck hairdryer at Moon and Arrow, a seasonal pop-up boutique on Fabric Row selling jewelry and vintage
Background: Check out the ad for the Crazy Duck (from Salton) hairdryer in this Pittsburgh Press ad from October 1990. Crazy is not to be confused with the Looney Tunes Daffy Duck dryer Salton launched in 1998. This duck we have above is much more endearing because he’s crazy, not daffy — his moniker may be trademarked, but he’s not part of the Disney industrial complex. He’s more of an innocent. His design probably informed the later Daffy incarnation whose feet also splayed into a stand for the dryer.
In context: Moon & Arrow proprietor Chelsea Pearce is one of those natural evangelists for style and for her own personal style. Walking into her pop-up boutique inside a space that was just a hardwood floor and four white walls a few weeks earlier, feels like walking onto the set of McCabe & Mrs. Miller. To transport people from Philadelphia’s Fabric Row to on Old West mining town requires an exceptional talent for visual merchandising. Pearce makes her own jewelry, configurations of brass tubing on oxidized chains, and capes and cloaks from vintage dead-stock wools.
Pearce says the Crazy Duck dryer, which seems out of place alongside the rest of the merch, is a beloved item from her childhood. Since she’s anticipating a cross-country move, she’s trying to unload as many personal belongings as possible—but it’s not going to be easy. This duck is close to her heart. While I was reporting a story for the Inquirer on a competition to design an overnight bag, Janet Villano, vice president for product development at Skip Hop (maker of diaper bags and bags for kids) observed that no kid can resist a product with eyes. Do we ever grow out of this? Anthropomorphizing a product is an easy way to deepen the connection between ourselves and our objects. Just look into Crazy’s big eyes. What is he saying: buy me, buy me?
This is what I saw today in Philly. You?
Posted on January 5th, 2012 by Caroline in Crits, marginalia, Philadelphia Design | No Comments »
(*Marginalia is a closer look at the designed objects populating everyday life in Philadelphia.)
Design: Silly String, spent and strewn on Jan. 1, 2012
Location: 3rd Street, between Christian and Queen
Background: Silly String was patented in 1972, the same year the United States banned the notorious Freons 11 and 12. Apparently Silly String’s inventors had to quickly change its formula once the ingredients were deemed ozone-killers. Although it wasn’t patented until 1972, Silly String was introduced in 1969 by Wham-O (see a vintage can from 1969 for sale on etsy here and an awesome vintage commercial here). In 2006 various news outlets reported that British and American troops in Iraq were using it to detect trip wires.
In context: Silly String is taboo where I got married, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art’s historic building. (This warning is issued sternly by the wedding planner when she hands over a binder whose function is to give you ideas for table linens, cake designs, and table configurations. It also contains a photo of men in tuxes spraying Silly String dangerously close to some priceless busts.) According to “How Stuff Works,” some cities have banned the product because it sticks so stubbornly to concrete and brick and because it clogs storm drains.
I had no idea the stuff that’s so plentiful on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day — Mummers Day in Philly — was such a menace. I’ve always viewed Silly String, which only pops up once or twice a year, as fun and sort of obnoxious … kind of like the Mummers, who are simultaneously considered a scourge and “a symbol of all that’s right today with America” (the opinion of one bystander interviewed by a local news station during parade coverage).
Philly Mag entered into a bizarre feud with local poet CA Conrad over anti-Mummer sentiments published in their December 2011 issue, and it felt like a kind of signpost in a deepening pro/anti-Mummer divide. How long have the Mummers been such a polarizing issue for Philadelphians, and does this newish divide signify a city that’s changing?
This is what I saw in Philly today. You?
Posted on January 1st, 2012 by Caroline in Crits, marginalia, Philadelphia Design | No Comments »
