Photo by Michael Valčić

All of your stuff is so happy and clever! I’ve always been really drawn to it. When did you start making Objet d’Art?

I’ve always made art, since I was a child, but after college I liked the idea of these small, functional products that were affordable. I was really inspired by seeing an exhibition of Yoko Ono’s work, where she had all these small, miniature things that you could obtain at a reasonable price. And, I think the first object like this that I made was an artists’ book that I sold at Printed Matter, which used to be in Soho. It was a short story on folded-out rice paper, that went inside a match box. So once I started making these small, precious objects it just sort of kept rolling.

Can you talk about how your work has progressed? When did Optimism come along?

I started the Optimism project when I was in college. I had done a senior thesis, which was our gallery exhibition for the end of the year…

Did you study design?

Design and art and creative writing. You could mix it all up, where I went to school, at Clark University outside Boston. I had written a short poem about an event that happened between my father and I. When I was a little boy, we were outside the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan. And my father was really a character – came from a very working class background, and worked hard to become a young urban professional, and had a unique sense of humor. So it was just after they passed the recycling law in New York, and you would see these homeless people collecting cans. And my father, empathizing to some extent, walked over to a homeless guy and handed him his soda can and said, “Here you go sir, here’s your 5 cents.” And the homeless man said, “I’m no sir.” My father said, “I don’t have the patience to argue with you,” and walked away.

So, I’d found a quote that said, “An optimist is someone that tells you to cheer up when things are going his way.” I wrote a poem with that line as the intro, and for my senior thesis I designed a line of soda called Optimism. It had the poem listed as the ingredients, and it was displayed as a six-pack. I made these buttons to support the launch of the “product”, as if it was a real brand. I like things that blur the line between consumerism and art. The buttons took off like wildfire. I gave them away, and it was this huge thing on campus. The buttons came to exist entirely separately from the original project.

They took on a life of their own.

Exactly. I made 500, and then I stopped. I moved to New York, and then I started making them again after 9/11. I’d always been interested in public art and things that appear in unexpected places. Some wise people in the art world once asked me what crazy ideas I had, and I said, “Well, I have the idea that this logo I designed could go on the back of a Metrocard.” A woman said, “I love that idea, hold on!” And she opened her purse and went through her rolodex, and gave me the number of the head of the Arts for Transit program at the MTA.

That’s crazy! And so exciting.

Yeah, so I called her, and to my shock, this person took the call! She said, “Oh, that sounds interesting, send me something.” I put together a press kit, sent it, and it came to life. There was some red tape, but we got here.

When I first approached them I thought, “Wow, if they do 100,000 Metrocards that would be so cool.” Well, they’ve done 20 million cards.

Have you gotten feedback from people?

Sure, and it’s been incredibly gratifying. I get random emails – especially when the cards first came out, it was fairly often. I’ve received, directly, only the most positive support for the project.

Well I’d hope so! Does anyone think, “I hate optimism.”

You never know! I’m sure you guys read blogs where people talk about your work. I accept all those things, especially in the context of the MTA.

Everybody has something negative to say about the MTA.

Exactly. So I get it, and I like the irony and the push-and-pull of of having “optimism” being supported by the MTA. Because they need it more than anyone! And they knew that.

Photo by Carolyn Nardiello

Let’s talk a little bit about other projects you’ve done. I just saw the “Forget” spray on Supermarket, which I hadn’t seen before.

Spray To Forget is a functional, conceptual, aromatherapeutic product, designed to help edit one’s consciousness. It allows the user to purposefully forget undesired memories and replace them with desired memories. I got a wonderful reception to that, and had a lot of fun making it. It’s conceptual, but I researched different essential oils that would calm the nervous system and help people let go of tension. I studied people who believe quartz crystals hold metaphysical properties, and I steeped the water with crystals. So I think it has the potential to work as a true healing device, but it also can be decorative art, or kitschy… However people take it.

Where is your work going now?

After doing 20 million Metrocards, I now wish to do precious, one-of-a-kind items. That’s what I’m working on now. They’ll probably involve type, and they’ll probably be personal, but that’s all I can say!

So you’ve gone through this really interesting journey of starting with very personal work, making it very public, and then going back to the very personal. What advice do you have for others who are just starting their creative journey?

I was very inspired by the artist that just passed on, Louise Bourgeois. She said, “I don’t make my art for other people. I make my art for myself.” In some ways, the Optimism project was art I made for other people.

It was very exhibitionist. Buttons are an advertisement, right?

Totally. But what I learned from the Louise Bourgeois quote is that art can be an incredibly personal, spiritual catharsis. So that’s what I’m going through right now.

That idea seems very much in line with the Spray to Forget.

Yes, and now I’m continuing in that direction. I’ve Sprayed to Forget whatever I needed to forget, and now I’m growing into a new space.

Tobi had an unmatched ability to re-mix cultural artifacts, making objects that comment on our society and explore the notion of value. He was the master craftsman of humor, beauty, and wit. When Kegan and I started Design Glut, it was because we dreamed of creating conceptual objects with the kind of impact he achieved. His work sparked our imagination.

Boxcutter by Tobias Wong, 2002

Cokespoon #1 – a bronze casting of the ubiquitous pen cap dipped in gold

Doorstop – Concrete casting created in a Savoy vase, which then has to be unashamedly smashed in order to yield the form.

Camoflauge iPad case by Tobias Wong and Chelsea Briganti

I cannot believe I’ll never get to see a new idea from him, a brilliant nugget, something that alters my perception of the ordinary.

The first time we met him, in 2007, he was our hero and we were a couple of kids just out of school that could barely contain our excitement. Then and every time we’ve seen him since, we found him to be incredibly friendly and down-to-earth. Even though we only knew him casually, the news of his death is hitting me terribly hard. We wouldn’t be doing the kind of work we do if it weren’t for his influence. He was completely genius, unique, irreplaceable.

Thank you for the inspiration.

Kegan (left) and Tobi (right) outside the Wrong Store. Image via Core77

Design Glut is a very small company of 2 people. We’d gotten pretty comfortable with that, until our latest adventure. As we curated and organized a show during Design Week called Uncomfortable Conversations, all of a sudden we were working very closely with a group of 15 designers and 6 sponsors.

There were plenty of times when we found ourselves less-than-amused by the number of uncomfortable conversations we had to have to pull this thing off. It was a ton of work, but by rallying a group, we were able to make a statement of such greater magnitude and depth than we ever could have done on our own.

On May 16th, 400 people came out to the opening party. Uncomfortable and comfortable conversations were had. Conceptual design was appreciated. And we realized that Design Glut has the ability to bring together the design community IRL, not just on the internet, which is super exciting. Here’s a recap of the our first event – with more shows definitely to come!

In the gallery, a.k.a. an empty storefront in the Meatpacking District that we took over for a week.

photo by Jacob Krupnick

Chrissy Conant’s A2Zzz Pillows. Cuddle up with some Ambien.

Will Robison’s Kevin Carpet Bench. For an hour each day that the show was open, a fetishist was rolled up inside the carpet and show-goers were invited to sit on him. Here’s a series of pictures showing Julio, the human carpet, going in:

Will sitting on Julio.

photo by Jacob Krupnick

From left to right: Liz, Julio’s wife, Vincent, Julio’s adorable little baby boy, and Matthew Waldman of Nooka

photo by Jacob Krupnick

Demian Repucci’s Consumption dinnerware is decorated with infographics that describe the vast differences in food and water consumption around the world.

Vincent Lai’s Deterrent bag is reversible, allowing you to bust out some spikes on a would-be attacker.

Uncomfortable Typographic Situations by MSLK shows what can happen without proper kerning. Also a good litmus test for how dirty your mind is – different show-goers saw different things on first glance…

photo by Luke Escamilla

Body Function by Matthew Waldman. It’s uncomfortable. Enough said.

photo by Jacob Krupnick

Materious’ briefcase/paper shredder (cleverly titled In Case) is a must-have accessory for crooked CEOs.

photo by Luke Escamilla

Chi-Merica by Paul Loebach is a reconfiguration of his Half Mirror, putting an uncomfortable conversation about the ethics of furniture manufacturing out there. That’s the designer, caught nervously biting his nails.

photo by Ryan Heiser

Ana Linares’ It’s Not You / It’s Not Me necklaces are a conversation starter, but a relationship ender.

photo by Ryan Heiser

Which contrasts with Sruli Recht’s Garrote necklace/choker – a conversation starter, but a life ender.

Karl Zahn’s hanging lamp, Heavy, addresses the terror of the cartoon world – death by falling anvil.

And then there’s the Trashlight by Craighton Berman. What do you throw away? What dirty little secrets get hidden in those black plastic bags? If you think you have nothing to hide, or if you’re a bold exhibitionist, cast light on your refuse and put it out on display.

And the final theme of the show was uncomfortable conversations about touching. For those of you who find the subway too germy and and tightly packed, put on a pair of Andrew Haarsager’s Mind The Gap gloves. Should someone’s hand start to drift down the pole towards yours, you’ll be well-protected and ready to impale them.

If you’re the angry type (and New Yorkers tend to be), perhaps you should consider letting go of some of your grudges. Shaking hands with your enemies might seem too extreme a first step – so use Dominic Wilcox’ Pre-Handshake Handshake Device to get used to the motion.

photo by Ryan Heiser

After being fans for a long time, we had a chance to ask him how he got started with photography and what he’s doing these days.

When did you first become interested in photography?

I took my first picture in the South of England, of a train going over a viaduct. I was probably around 9 or 10. I became interested in a box Brownie, and started taking pictures in London in the park. It was a large roll of film, in a Bakelite camera – fabulous design, all deco like a radio. You would get your negatives back, in these little glassine envelopes, and they would be fuzzy, or have light leaks and be all black.

Did you go to school to study photography?

When I was a schoolboy, I read all about how to develop film from these little books in the library, but it was when I was in college for interior design, that my friend Richard got himself a job in a lab. It suddenly re-ignited all my memories of photography. I started doing it quite a lot, and dropped out of college to try and become a photographer. I do miss never having a formal art training. I think that’s really important – the whole process of thinking. I ended up taking a more commercial approach to the field.

Once you realized it was your passion, how did you work towards becoming a professional photographer?

I tried to get a job as an assistant, to learn by sweeping the floors so to speak, but there was nothing out there. I blundered around for a bit, tried to find some work, and saw that Glaxo had a job for an assistant photographer in their research department. I went along, and got a job for two months in the summer.

I learned the technical stuff, which was very handy to know, but it was really dull. I couldn’t take it, so I left, and again there was no work. I was about to take a job selling over the telephone when I saw an ad in a popular English photography magazine.

There was an opening in this architectural firm for someone to develop a way to take pictures of their architectural models through this probe. The company had been around 100 years, and built all these incredible models of various places. They had this probe that allowed them to look inside the model, and wanted to be able to take pictures through it.

They took me on because I had done 3D design in school, and had looked through a microscope at Glaxo. It was a total fluke that I got the job. If he had put the ad in the British Journal of Photography, where the professional people look, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Was it difficult to learn the ropes of the job without much prior experience?

About 6 months into it, my boss said to me, “If you don’t get any better than this, I’m going to fire you.” So for one week, I stayed up all night, every day, developing and processing, and adjusting film. I pulled myself out of it, became quite good, and stayed on for 8 years.

How has your work evolved since then?

I’ve stopped wondering what I should be doing, and starting pressing the button. I’ve been around so many incredibly interesting people that are very inspiring, so it feeds off itself. At 54, I’ve also been through some unpleasant experiences, but the one thing that does, it gives you an awful lot of material to work with.

For a long time I didn’t know what kind of pictures to take when no one was hiring me, and the work I was doing for myself was very marginal. Now, it’s a mixture of fashion and portrait and architecture. I decided it was important to do what I like, and shoot things that have meaning to me. Try to do everything.

The last few years, I’ve been paying my rent with fashion catalogs. That’s an incredible training – bridal and evening wear. It requires a lot of thought. You’re dealing with very fussy clients. I’ve also always liked building and architecture. I don’t think you need to specialize – a photograph is a photograph, it’s cross-platform.

With advancements in technology, photography has become so much more accessible. How do you think this has changed the business?

Photography has become ubiquitous. It used to be a very expensive medium to work with, even more so because you had to buy film. It was very cost-prohibitive to test ideas. Now everybody has a camera. I go on a shoot and the client’s baby has a better camera then me!

My girlfriend and I were invited to a wedding, and there were two young photographers with four cameras each hanging off them, laptops and satellite dishes! I can’t compete with that. They did miss a few shots I got, though.

Then there’s crowd-sourcing. Buying stock photography used to be expensive. Now a company can just say, “We need a picture of someone shaking hands in front of a modern building” and a billion people will respond. They’re just happy to have a photograph out there. 90% of what’s being published is very good, and very free.

What advice do you have for people that want to turn their passion into their career?

Do what you love, and if you’re lucky, someone will pay you for it. Money was never a big issue for me. My friend Benjamin said, “If you wanted to make money you would have gone and made money, you wouldn’t have been a photographer.”

There’s nothing there that says if you do x, y and z, you’ll have a career. It’s very individual, you need to be incredibly independent, almost able to do it on your own. Then, when two independent people come together, the sum of the parts becomes greater then the individuals. For me, as long as I can take pictures I’ll be happy. That’s really it. I’m very fortunate, there are not very many people I would trade places with.

Check out more of his work at adrianbuckmaster.com.

3rd Ward gives a free bike to each of their members.

How did 3rd Ward start? What’s the beginning of the story?

Wow. OK. In 2004, a bunch of other artists and I moved to New York from Boston. We moved in together in this big loft, and we thought, “We’re all going to become New York City art stars!”

Of course!

Right? And then we got hit with all these harsh New York realities. The cost of real estate down here was out of control, so we ended up way out in the middle of nowhere in a warehouse. Nobody could find work. Nobody was getting along. “Dude, you didn’t pay rent!” or “You broke my shit!” It was totally like a reality show.

For work, Jeremy and I started doing some construction jobs. We did a lot of work for this one guy who had a bunch of real estate. At the same time, we were still trying to do our own artwork and design work. We had a lot of problems finding the resources we needed. We needed access to a shop. We needed a place to do photo and video shoots. We needed access to good enough computers to do retouching. We thought, “Man, I wish there was a place that I could go do that.”

One day I just pitched our idea to the real estate guy. I said, “Look, I know it would work because I personally need this and there’s other people out here like me.” And he said OK. He had just bought the building that 3rd Ward’s in now. He asked me how it was going to work and I said, “How about you build everything out to our specs and pay for it all, and then we’ll pay you rent.”

So he did it?

He did it, and we opened in May 2006. And then we could never pay rent! We started throwing parties for rent. I was giving him his rent money in brown paper bags that had beer-soaked cash. So that’s how we got started. There’s a long way from the day we opened to now. We’re way stable now.

How did you get past the phase of figuring out how you were going to pay rent?

Basically by learning how to serve our members. We’re customer obsessed at 3rd Ward. It’s part of our culture. We are there to serve this community of people. And we are always figuring out how to do that. If we build something that doesn’t work, we rip it out. We had a whole dance program, it wasn’t working, so we just ripped that whole room out and added a lot more to the shop.

You have to keep listening to people and responding to them. We are our members. There is no 3rd Ward without them. We have to provide resources that members want to come and pay for. So we obsess over keeping them happy and making it more and more productive for them.

What was the hardest part of stabilizing?

There are a couple things that are really challenging. First of all, you’re always treading water trying to get money in the door. You have to learn how to be a business person really fast. I really wasn’t. So I got my indie-MBA on the streets of Williamsburg! Understanding cash flows and all that.

Then there’s learning to really look down the road long-term. What we’re going to do today, we’re not going to feel until 6 months from now. You have to think, “How are all these moving parts going to impact each other in 6 months?” You don’t want to fall into short-term thinking, where something might seem good right now but is going to hurt you down the road.

The front desk at 3rd Ward.

Can you walk us through all the different services 3rd Ward offers?

It’s a lot of interrelated resources that are under one roof – two roofs now. A big thing that we do is desk space for freelancers. All the furniture is there, all the internet is there, all the utilities are there, basic secretarial stuff is there, there’s always a lobby for clients to wait. We take your mail and packages, that kind of stuff.

We have four photo studios – there’s a lot of photographers who sign up for membership just based on that. We have a huge shop. There’s a digital media lab, which is free for all members to use whenever they want. And then we do a lot of classes.

The class program that we have at 3rd Ward is massive. The woodworking classes, the welding classes, and our core digital design classes, always fill up. We also try to do weird stuff, you know? We’re always trying new classes, and some work and some don’t. We know that and we’re comfortable with that. Somebody once said, “You have to learn to see failure as progress.” We believe that at 3rd Ward. We’ll always try new stuff. We did bag building, which was really popular. Screenprinting is really popular.

What are the plans for this second location?

There’s a drop-in co-working space, where you can just show up with your laptop and work. There’s a bunch of desk space and work studios. We’re going to have a couple new classroom spaces. Down the road there will probably be a real screenprinting setup. And we’re putting in a commercial kitchen and doing culinary classes. I’m really excited about the culinary program. It’s more universal, you know what I mean?

We’ve noticed a few people in Brooklyn starting up food companies, it’s pretty cool.

It’s true. There’s actually a kind of renaissance of culinary stuff happening in Brooklyn right now. I’m good friends with the guys at Roberta’s. They have a little farm in the backyard, and they have beehives on our roof.

Do you want to keep 3rd Ward in New York? Have you thought about expanding outside?

Yeah, I have thought about it, but we have a lot of work to do here. We get courted by a lot of people. Somebody from the Detroit government called me and was like, “Please come to Detroit. I’ll do all these great things for you guys.” But I can’t just go to Detroit. I am of this community. I know these people. I don’t know what’s going on in Detroit. So the short answer is, we’re focusing on New York right now. The long answer is, wherever we’re needed. 3rd Ward Moscow!

Jason Goodman and Jeremy Lovitt at 3rd Ward. [photo via NY Mag]

What’s been your happiest moment so far with 3rd Ward?

There’s this whole economy that happens, where the jewelry designer hires a photographer to shoot her work. And then the woodworker goes to the metal guy and says, “Hey, I’ve got this table I need to make. I’m doing the wood work on the top, but the client wants a steel base. ” It happens every single day, all the time. Seeing that happen is pretty magical. And giving the free bikes out was pretty exciting. I don’t know if you guys know about that.

I saw the sign outside and I was wondering about it.

Last year I was thinking, “What is another thing I can do to enrich my members?” and the lightbulb went off. “What if I could give everybody a good, urban bike for New York City? That would be amazing.” We threw a huge party and we were like, “Free bikes from now on!” The bikes are single-speed, so they can’t really break. They have a nostalgic old Schwinn frame look, set up for a street bike – skinny tires and straight bars. It’s something that meant a lot to our members, and it also did something good for the world. Every bike on the street is better. Every day with that is progress.

Absolutely. You guys are doing amazing things.

I have a super awesome team of brains. We have a really creative culture in the office. There aren’t a lot of rules, and we don’t need a lot of rules, because we’re all really engaged with what we’re doing. I would never be where we are today without them.

And we have a great front desk crew. We’re staffed from 8am to midnight every day. They’re constantly taking care of our members. Whether people need food delivered, or to packages coming in, or a circuit blew. We make it so you don’t have to worry about if the roof’s going to leak, or if the circuit’s going to pop, or if your delivery guy’s not going to be able to get in. You can focus on what’s in front of you right now and making this photograph happen, or whatever it is that you do.

Handmade Music at 3rd Ward.

Poketo’s Art vs Music tee

How did you guys start Poketo?

T: In 2003, we started putting on art shows in San Francisco. We noticed that no one was really buying original art. So we wanted to have something more accessible – art on things that people could use. We put on a show that incorporated our very first product, the wallet. We had art on wallets, and we had original art in the show. People loved the idea. We thought, “OK, let’s do another series and a show.” And it just kind of flew from there.

Where did you go from the wallets?

T: Well, that beginning was sort of accidental. We just did it for fun. From there we decided, “Why not expand it?” We started to do t-shirts, and then planners and journals and stationary. It’s all stuff that we wanted to have in our lives – things we wanted to use. We wanted plateware, so we started doing plateware. There’s no other plateware like it, really. I know some of our friends decorate with it, but we always push people to use it! That was kind of the idea – for people to be surrounded by art on things that they can use.

Poketo wallet with art by PCP

Who are the artists you work with?

T: Both established and emerging artists, from here and abroad. The criteria is just that we love the art. Everything we come out with is limited-edition. Once they sell out they sell out, new designs come in.

A: We’ve now worked with over 250 or 300 artists – I lost count!

How did you get your product line into stores?

T: We wanted to spread the brand and the idea and the artists’ work, so we picked some of our favorite stores and we literally just called them or went in. We showed them what the brand was about and what we were trying to do, and they started to carry it. They started selling the Poketo items really well, so we thought, “Why not try to reach out to a larger audience?” That’s when we decided to do trade shows. Press, and stores, and so many people come through here. It’s been a really good opportunity for us to meet different people, who then carry Poketo and get the word out.

Poketo’s booth at the gift fair

What’s new in your booth right now?

T: The newest things are the wall decals, which are kind of a perfect extension of what we do. They’re removable and restickable. The idea is that you can use them to create your own little universe. We have four different artists that we collaborated with.

A: The wall decals that you see in the marketplace make it seem like there’s only one way to do it. We didn’t want to do that. We always want to collaborate with the users, as well as the artists. With these, you can rearrange them and connect the pieces and create your own art.

Do you still have a gallery these days?

A: Yeah, we work out of our studio in LA. We hold a lot of events there. We’ll invite artists to come and work for the day, then invite the public to come and watch and even join in. We always want to twist what’s normal and standard, and make life a little more creative. Last month we had a karaoke dance party!

T: 400 people showed up. We thought we were really going to have to give incentives for people to sing, but they just went for it. It was fun.

Inside of Poketo’s wallets

Where is Poketo heading?

T: Our goal is to continue to bring in the community, and continue the growth. More artists, more designs, and expanding into more things that we want to have in our everyday life.

A: But not make junk.

T: No, we’re really careful about the things that we make. We only make things that we want to use, with art that we want to have and artists that we want to work with. We’ve always grown organically. It’s not just about the products, but it’s about the people who are involved. That’s what we really like about it.

What has been the hardest part about turning this into a business?

A: Gosh, what’s not hard?

T: Not being able to separate personal life and work life – that was really difficult. We were working out of our house for a lot of years, and were surrounded by it 24/7. And now we’re married. It’s challenging when everything is together, and you live it and love it. It’s also hard to try to always be innovative.

A: Innovating is the most fun part, but it’s also very hard to do it and do it right.

T: We want to always do the best, you know? We’re hard on ourselves. But for the most part it’s all good.

What advice do you have for people who want to turn their passion into a business?

A: Be original. Don’t copy people – find your own voice. Also, keep persevering. You have to really love it. You can’t just do it because you want to make a quick buck. There’s a better way to make money!

T: It sounds cliche – you do have to love it. From there, if you love it, you’ll be willing to put in the time and energy it takes to make something succeed.

The Middletons plate set

Yvette’s costume for Tracy Morgan in A Couple of Dicks

Could you describe what your studio does?

We do specialty costumes. I make things that most costume shops either can’t, or won’t, because it’s not cost-effective. They need to make 50 of something for it to work for them, since they have an army of stitchers that need to be fed work constantly.

The last job I did was a cell phone costume for Tracy Morgan, for the film A Couple of Dicks. I made 16 of them in 10 days. They need 16 because he’s going to go through many phases of destroying this costume – he gets attacked by a pit bull, etc.

What’s your background? How did you end up starting a studio like this?

When I went to art school, I was going to be a graphic designer. Along the way I discovered that everything I made related to the human figure, somehow. Whatever the assignment, I would make either a person or clothing or some sort of performance. There really wasn’t a machine or a method that was not comfortable to me. For example, I’d go into the sculpture department and I’d weld a medieval coat.

Starlight Express

Awesome! What brought you to New York?

I got a job at the company which was making Starlight Express costumes for Broadway. They were the most complicated costumes I’d ever seen. When I saw their costumes, I thought, “I want to make things like that!” There was a shop full of about 100 people. They had a bandsaw in the back, cutting foam to go inside the vacuformed pieces that became the shoulders. There was a lot of spandex, and iron-on sparkly stuff, and studs and grommets. Every possible material was in these costumes. It was kind of the perfect entry for me.

It sounds like you found your niche pretty quickly.

Well, not quite. When I first came to New York from Kansas City, I was blasted out of here. In a single day I found out that my car was stolen, my roommate turned out to be a heroin addict, and one of my jobs ended. So I bought a little bottle of Smirnoff and went to the Fort Greene park and just cried! And this was back when Fort Greene was really nasty, not like it is today.

After that I ended up going to Hartford for a little while, to work for the Hartford Stage Company, a repertory theatre. But Hartford wasn’t my dream. I wasn’t thinking, “I can’t want to move to Hartford, Connecticut, the insurance capital of America!” That wasn’t the plan. The plan was to go to New York and be an art star! So I moved back here and gave it another go.

Yvette’s in her Pedestrian Project costume

So the dream was to be an Art Star?

In the beginning. Then I spent some time in that world. It felt like an insane asylum. The costume world felt much better. It had structure. The designers were crazy, but they weren’t AS crazy as the artists – they could show up for appointments. I bounced around between the art world and the costume world for a while.

Could you tell us about your famous Pedestrian Project? What was the concept behind that?

I started doing that in 1989, when I got to New York and realized it was really hard to stand out here. I thought, “Everybody is trying to be somebody – why not just be nobody?” And people did notice that! It was irony and satire at it’s best. I got to have my own little Art Star moment, and we travelled around the world. We were invited to go perform in 8 or 9 countries. They paid us to go, and I got to be the visiting person with the entourage.

I discovered that I didn’t really like it. It’s exhausting to boss people around all the time. It really is. The artist in me kind of just wants to be left alone. I don’t do good work unless I have my quiet time. When you become that person, you don’t get quiet time anymore. If quiet time is where you get your inspiration, then the whole house of cards just falls.

And at a certain point it became clear to me that I needed to pay the rent on a regular basis. The practical side kicked in – I realized I don’t have a trust fund, and nobody was dying soon, and I’d played the lotto twice and didn’t win…

Yvette for Lion King

How did you start your studio?

It was an organic process, that nobody really prepares you for. I’d been freelancing for a while, hopping from job to job. You get your name around enough and people start asking you to do things. It’s a natural evolution. People came to me asking for costumes, I said, “Yeah, sure,” and then I thought, “Where am I going to build this?”

I had a loft in Williamsburg on N. 3rd, back when there were always cars and dumpsters on fire and there were hookers all up and down Wythe Avenue. My roommate and I watched the news once and saw a crack house getting busted, then realized it was across the street from us! We looked out the window and there were cop cars everywhere.

The first job I did in my loft was a set of costumes for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak dance company. Then the Lion King came around. I had worked in a shop making the mock-up costumes for their first reading with Michael Eisner. When the show got picked up, they asked me if I would make all the hyenas. Then I got a call from Nickelodeon, asking me to build the costumes for a pilot project.

Yvette with her Rugrats costumes

Wow – so the big names started rolling in!

Yeah. All of a sudden I had an incredible amount of work! After that pilot was shot, Nickelodeon awarded me the project of making all their costumes for theme parks. I was in my little loft and I had to expand. I subletted a space in the Pencil Factory to fabricate the fiberglass molds that were needed to build the giant character heads. I hired people. We did a lot of work there – Blue’s Clues, Pokemon…

We were doing Scooby Doo and Jimmy Neutron when the World Trade Center came down. We could see it from the top of our building. The blackout also happened when we were in that building. We had made the big giant plant for the Broadway version of Little Shop of Horrors, and were loading it into a freight elevator when all the power went out. If it had been a minute earlier we would have been trapped in an elevator with that thing.

Now you’re based in the GMDC – what brought you here?

The theme parks were sold to new management, and the orders became less. I started doing less of that work and more one-offs for ad agencies and commercials. I needed less staff and less space. I’m getting back to being the kind of studio I was in 1997, when I was making costumes for Baryshnikov. But now I have this tidal wave of experience under my belt and really know what I’m doing!

We love the Chrissy Homeland Security® series, and are happy to announce that the Chrissy Homeland Security® Blanket is now available in our web store.

Chrissy Homeland Security® Blanket, 2004, 100% Virgin Wool, fits Queen and King

Do you have any particular methods for nourishing your creativity?

I watch TV. I do, and I admit it. I think I watch it in a different way from most people, particularly because my work has to do with pop culture. Ideas are fostered by being open, looking around, and trying to look at things you’ve looked at a million times in a fresh way.

I find it so important to go to museums and galleries, and I’ll talk to strangers on the subway. You never know where you’re going to get inspired. It’s a total mystery to me. I don’t know what sparked something like, “I’ll put myself in a jar!” I was having lunch with somebody. I know what I was doing. But I don’t know exactly when that little lighting bolt went off that said, “Yes! Make human caviar!”

Chrissy Caviar® – “Placed inside each jar there is, instead of fish roe, one of my eggs.”

Can you tell us about that project?

Chrissy Caviar®. I took fertility drugs, harvested my eggs, put them in jars, and created “human caviar”. It was about the human being as a brand, as a product. It was very important to me to execute it perfectly. I trademarked my DNA. I’m now a walking brand. The times I’ve been present at gallery openings, with this piece in particular, it’s brought forth a lot of emotion. Someone once told me that he contemplated the piece, got a hard on, and then had to go throw up.

I like how thoroughly you created the “brand”, right down to the the Chrissy Caviar® floaty pens. It’s a hilarious detail.

My work has a lot to do with my anxieties and fears, but I try to lighten it up, and not get too “woe is me”. It allows me to express some of my demons productively, in a way I think a lot of people can relate to.

Chrissy Caviar® – “Placed inside each jar there is, instead of fish roe, one of my eggs.”

Your body of work spans everything from painting to sculpture to design. Where did you start?

Mud pies and dandelions – those were the first materials I had available to me. I realized, “Hey, I can make cake out of dirt!” I used a rock as a base, and would carefully make the frosting. It was great. That was my first media. I slowly moved into wire, string, glue, popsicle sticks, more rocks, and then ultimately paint and clay.

Eventually I started to use more unusual materials, like parts of myself. I’m very interested in silicone rubber. My work is very personal, but also pulls from society and culture. My goal is to bring out thoughts that people might be normally a bit hesitant to reveal. To create a dialogue, or discussion, or argument before you go to lunch.

Chrissy Homeland Security® Choker Set, 2003, Plexiglas, Sterling Silver

Can you tell us about your Chrissy Homeland Security® pieces?

The idea was to utilize my fear after 9/11 in a productive way. The chokers came first. When you deconstruct the homeland security icon, and wear it as jewelry, it becomes something else. You can wear the orange piece around your neck, that says high, and people can interpret that in a few different ways.

The blankets came next, and then the wall piece. All in very different edition numbers. The necklaces are open, the blankets are an edition of 100, and the wall hanging is an edition of 6.

We love the blankets and are excited to have them as a new addition to our online store. Could you walk us through your process for developing them?

It was important for me to want this piece manufactured domestically, for obvious reasons. I created the design in Illustrator. Then, I met with a contact at Pendleton Mills, a very traditional company in Oregon. They weren’t sure they wanted to make that political statement…

I went in, and said, “I love my country, and this piece can be taken in a number of different ways. I’m not making a statement as much as I am raising a question. That is my main purpose.” They went ahead with the production of it.

The blankets are 100% wool, dry-cleanable, and 90″ x 90″. They fit a queen or king sized bed. Each blanket is signed and numbered on a customized utrasuede patch, which is sewn onto the corner, on the reverse side.

Chrissy Skin Rug, 2005. Silicone rubber, wood, glass, human hair, glass, magnets. (Images via Flickr and Saatchi Gallery Online)

One thing that really impresses me is the level of execution in all your projects.

Developing a piece is a process. This rug (Chrissy Skin Rug) took a year and a half to do. It took a lot of research, and trial and error. That’s a huge part of being an artist. You make something, and it’s not quite right, so you make it again. It’s closer, but it’s still not right. It’s interesting to go through all the variations: put something on, take something away, change this, tune that. The key is to make it communicate your idea. The interpretations can be different, but it has to communicate something, at least for a few seconds.

Teddy Chrissy (self-portrait), 2005, Stainless steel, polyester, acrylic fabric glue, blood (Image via Saatchi Gallery Online)

What advice do you have for other artists?

Realize that it’s not a race to get to the finish – it’s a lifelong calling. That’s the good news. You don’t have to be in a hurry. If you haven’t had a major retrospective at the Tate Modern by the time you’re 25, it’s OK. You’re not a lost cause.

You have to look for opportunity, and there is a fine line between being annoying and being persistent. That’s the part I don’t think anybody really likes. There is no perfect answer. Perseverance is a huge part of it, without being too caustic. The road to yes is lined with no’s.

Being that these are such uncertain times, the chances of monetary success are slim. It’s difficult. I don’t think making money should be the primary goal. If it is, that taints your purity. Then again, there is a real balance you have to strike between going for your career at all costs (never owning an iPod, nice clothes, a nice apartment, giving up on the idea of materialism, and maybe even a family) and the idea of being a responsible young adult. Finding a balance where you can support yourself, and continue to feed your soul and creativity, is a complex dance.

What has been your happiest moment?

I don’t know if I’ve had the happiest moment. I like to think it’s still to come! I have had some really satisfying moments, to think that all this effort has gotten me to a place where people are paying attention. Not that I don’t have my days or hours when I’m not happy… But I think we have the ability to change our path. If we find ourselves not doing so well one moment, we can choose to guide ourselves a different way. There is no reality – you make your own.

Seen on the streets of New York

How did Wooster Collective start?

Sara: It was the convergence of a couple things. We were living in a loft on Wooster St. and we got a puppy named Hudson. Marc had just been to Tokyo and bought a digital camera. Marc was walking the dog one day, the dog was peeing, and while he was standing there, he looked up and said, “Oh my god, what’s that?” It was a little piece of street art. He took a photo of it, and as he walked the dog around, took more photos.

Marc: We realized that the neighborhood we were in was exploding with art.

Sara: It was exploding, at that time. 2000, 2001.

Marc: It was like if you lifted a manhole cover up and saw this whole world down there. “Holy shit, I had no idea that it was there.” You literally couldn’t go four feet without seeing or discovering some hidden object, that some creative person put there for your personal enjoyment. That’s the reason so many people become obsessed with street art – it’s very personal.

Ckoe’s Bees in Amsterdam

You have that moment of discovery.

Sara: It feel like it’s yours.

Marc: When you come across a Swoon piece that she hand cut, even though you know that it’s been put on the street for everybody, you feel like there’s this personal connection to it.

Sara: Now, I think, everyone experiences things – concerts, events, birthday parties, whatever – via their phone or their digital camera. Marc was on the beginning of that. He started taking photos and it was his way of capturing these ephemeral experiences. The pieces would change over time, and we really captured that.

When did you start your site?

Marc: I started to get interested in blogging. Blogging software had just come out, and I didn’t like the way I was publishing all these photographs. I couldn’t really talk or write about them.

Sara: They were just published as big blocks of images.

Marc: So we got some blogging software and we just started. Artists started talking about it. At the time, traditional media wasn’t really writing about street art. And if they were writing about graffiti, they were only writing about it as vandalism. People connected with the Wooster Collective site. It started to really grow, and then as the traditional media started looking for what was happening in the art world, they started referring to our site. It grew and grew and grew over the years. But it’s still very much a personal blog. It has no advertising. We haven’t upgraded anything. It hasn’t really changed in 6 years.

Crateman in Melbourne

Well, there’s one notable change – at first, you were going out and finding material to post. But now people submit art to you. When did that shift happen?

Marc: That’s absolutely correct. It happened pretty quickly. Artists all talk to each other. People like to see themselves, right? So if we put up the work of an artist in Spain, and that artist sees that their work is recognized, they email all their friends. And then their friends email us their work.

Sara: That was how the network started. And just in the way we said, “Hey, let’s try blogging software,” we’ve experimented with many other things along the way. One morning we woke up and decided we wanted to do podcasts. We did those, and we put them up.

Marc: Everything we do is an experiment. Other than posting every day, which we’ve done now for many, many years without ever wanting to stop, we don’t commit to doing any projects for a long period of time. If we’re twittering, we’ll twitter as long as it’s fun, and then we’ll move on to something else. If we have a Facebook page, we’ll have fun with the Facebook page and move on. It’s about learning, and experimenting, and seeing what the reaction is.

Umbrella Bloom by Sam Spenser

What other experiments have you done?

Sara: We used to do street art walking tours. Those were really fun because unlike online, we could watch someone see a piece of street art for the first time. People would bring their moms. We had women who lived in New York City for forty years on the Upper West Side just exploding and embracing street art. “Is that a piece of art? Is that a piece?” It was really rewarding, and a nice way to give back to the city.

Marc: Since Sara and I both have other jobs, we don’t have to say yes to anything regarding Wooster Collective. There’s a reality that sets in when you’re relying on a project for your income. You go down a road where you need to have advertising, and then you need to meet with this person, and you need to do this, and you need to do that. It becomes work. Sara and I made a decision that we didn’t want to go home and start a second job called Wooster Collective.

How did you start putting on shows?

Marc: We did a group show, “Hollywood Remix.”

Sara: This was really fun. I think it was in ‘05. We lived above an art gallery, and we convinced her to give us the space in July, when they were usually closed for a couple weeks. The idea was to send out all of these posters, and have the artists remix them, paint them, etc. Then they mailed them back to us. We thought 200 or so people would show up, and it ended up being 6 or 700 people.

What a positive reaction! And somehow you went from that to the 11 Spring show?

Sara: We can’t talk about experimenting without talking about 11 Spring. I think from the outside, it seemed so amazing and huge, and like Wooster Collective, was this big company. In reality, it was so far from that, and such a bootstrapped operation. It was very organic and happened with so little resources. It’s a great example of just going out there, doing something, and having it blossom.

11 Spring

How did it start?

Sara: There was a lot of art up on the outside of the building.The developer who bought the building fell in love with the fact that the art was changing every week, as she was in the process of buying it. So she sent us an email and said, “I bought this building, I don’t know anything about the artists, but I love art and I want to learn more.” And Marc said, “Come over for a glass of wine.” So Caroline Cummings showed up with her building manager, Malcolm Stevenson. We had a glass of wine, and she said, “I’d love to honor the history of this building.”

That sounds like a dream!

Sara: It was a dream. They weren’t starting demolition for six or eight more weeks, so there was this lag period with nothing happening. We said, “Well maybe some of the artists could paint the inside, and we could have a cocktail party, and invite people to see it.” And on that day or the next day, she basically handed us a set of keys, and trusted us.

Marc: The art was all going to be destroyed. You had to paint directly onto the walls. All of the artists knew that the work was going to be ephemeral – they couldn’t own it, they couldn’t sell it, they couldn’t keep it. Certain artists respond really well to that, and the impermanence is actually a motivator.

Sara: The artists just started painting the walls. We got on the phone, and said, “Fly over, you can sleep on our floor, we want to make this a global thing.” We opened up the and WK, who lives in this neighborhood, came over with his cart. He said, “Sara, I want this wall,” and he points and a 20ft long by 17 ft high wall. He ended up putting, you know, a million dollar painting on this wall. He set the bar for every other artist who came in.

Dface at 11 Spring

What was the opening like?

Sara: We locked the artists in there the last night, and they painted all night. We came in in the morning, to open at 9AM, and they just took all their paintbrushes and pushed them off to the side. Within 3 or 4 hours, there was a 4 or 5 hour wait to get in to the show.

Marc: At that moment there was a lot of discussion about galleries and museums, and what that experience is like, and does it need to change? All of a sudden this happened, and people responded really well. People want authentic experiences. They also want to interact, and feel like they are participating.

Sara: Seeing the paint cans made them understand that this was fresh art.

Marc: The paint was still wet. The brushes weren’t props. If you go to the galleries in Chelsea, it’s great to see art in that context, but it’s not participatory.

Sara: There were holes in the floor at 11 Spring. Malcolm and Marc carried a guy in a wheelchair up five flights of stairs to get to the top.

Doze at 11 Spring

What an emotional experience.

Sara: It was a life-changing experience. If we had said, “We’re going to put on a show with 75 artists from around the world, and we’re going to paint 5 stories, and open it up and have 6,000 people,” we would never have done it. We’d say, “it’s too big,” or, “We need $30,000.” Instead, we just said, “Let’s do this, and see what happens.” It was an intense 7 weeks, and we definitely had fears, but we embraced them.

Marc: Our goal is to push ourselves out of our comfort zones. We wanted to learn how books come together, and are made, so we thought, “OK, we’ll publish our own book.” We wanted to understand gallery shows, so we organized one. I think if you look at different kinds of people, there are people that push themselves out of their comfort zone and go on to amazing things, and there are others that just can’t. They just can’t push themselves too far because it’s too nerve-wracking.

You have to have a stomach for a certain, say, element of chaos.

Sara: I’d call it ambiguity. A stomach for ambiguity. I’m not sure it’s always chaotic. There are moments. But it’s always blurry, foggy, and you have to make sense of it. Then, once you do, there’s more ambiguity that you have to make sense of.

Terrarium

I love that while you have a specific voice in your work, it’s expressed through a variety of mediums.

I think I learned this from being a garden designer. If somebody asks you to design a garden in the tropics, and you grew up on the east coast – you go to the tropics and learn from the experts there. You have to go to the landscape, ask what works in the environment, drive around, go to all the nurseries, and ask people what they know. Being led into a different medium, based on problem-solving, is so important.

I think that’s why materials are not something I identify my own process with. I love new materials, and new experts. For instance, to produce something like this bird bath, you need a Rhino operator, a really good CNC, a great mold maker, a caster, and the management of all that. I don’t know how I have come to be so blessed to be able to think of an idea, do a sketch, and tweak it along the way – to be a director of sorts.

Terrarium

What would you say is your speciality?

Horticulture is my craft. These are living art works. Sometimes people say, “I want to put it here,” as if they truly possessed it as object. With another piece of art, it would be yours, and you could put it wherever you want. You could put in in storage, in the dark, you could forget about it for ten years. That’s not the case here. You can’t ever totally posses the piece. In a lot of ways, it possesses you.

The work is both so simple and complex.

It’s the caring for it that is complex, because of how devoted you have to be to it – like a pet, a child, or a relationship. You can’t just buy it. You have understand the value of taking care of it.

Terrarium

What made you want to start your own business?

It had to do with practical issues. My kids were at a certain age, and I had to make a living. It wasn’t philosophical; it was just necessary. I was making a living, sort of, being a gardener – and I was making my very ethereal artwork. I realized that if I boiled down what I was doing, I really just wanted to grow things. That was really how it all started. It was the merging of what I was doing for a living, with my artwork – a marriage of two things that I was doing anyways.

We’ve found that for the people we interview, small business is about more than making money. It’s fulfilling in so many different ways.

What’s the point of having an extra 10,000 dollars in your account if you’re so incredibly angry, or so incredibly unhappy? What does it matter? It will kill you. I only want the jobs where the choices I make are appreciated. That’s a part of being an artist that I like – that you’re not judged.

Acrylic Bird Bath, rendering

How did you get your work out there?

I was showing my art in galleries, so I met a lot of gallery dealers. Marian Bosky asked me to design her garden. I had a masters in fine art; I didn’t go to landscape architecture school. But I said yes anyways. I was so honored to have that role that I just did it. If you’re really scrappy, and had to raise children, you can find a way to do just about anything.

The first people who recognized my work as valuable were the art dealers. It was having these people, who had the context for seeing it, understand it. It started this whole process of finding solutions to design problems, and then having it understood mostly in that world. In a certain context, someone looks at them, and thinks, “That looks like an expensive object.”

On the other hand, there’s something about the work that has a truly friendly and accessible feeling. What I have found, which I think is the most interesting thing, is people who appreciate my work do not necessarily have a background in the art or design worlds. You don’t have to have studied art history, or art making, to notice and appreciate it.

When people on the street outside the studio talk about what they see in here – I can hear everything. It’s like a microphone. The general question is, “How does she get that in there?” It’s kind of funny how detached people can be from how plants grow. I’ve actually had more then one person ask me if I blow the glass around the landscape.

Private Garden, New York, NY

It’s interesting to get feedback from outside of your usual community, because you can’t predict how people will respond.

And as technology assists our millions of voices, you can hear the voices of people that you don’t know. A lot of them. I’m really excited to talk to that community – the one I see on with my website, or design blogs. That’s not like anything else. It’s not like getting a review in the Times; this is different. Anybody can comment, anybody can have an interpretation of the work.

What’s next?

My work has existed in the art world, because it is in the realm of ideas and concepts. The people who collect art are the people who can support incredible craftsmanship. It has been amazing to have everything completely handmade by artisans. That is also, obviously, the opposite the of mass production. In a world where price doesn’t matter, that’s great.

Price does matter, though. Right now I’m trying to knock off my own work. For me, it’s been process of finding out what I really want to do, keeping that intact, and then changing the means of production. That was the leap, and it took seven years. So I’m figuring out how to change the production of something that costs, say, $500 a piece to produce.

The Living Necklaces, for example, need to be accessible for them to be successful. People who are in love with the idea of wearing a necklace that has a living plant in it, are not necessary the people who need to wear a status symbol of something other people can’t afford.

Living Necklace