002
Doug McCollough
Rosebud

Subscribe via Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast service.

002
Transcript

CS — Christopher Schreck
DM — Doug McCollough

CS
As an entry point for discussing Rosebud, maybe we can start by talking about your experience with L.A. Door, since it sounds like this latest piece is in many ways an extension of ideas you explored with Katie.

DM
L.A. Door is the project I did with Katie Payne from 2019 to 2023. Katie and I were friends, we were romantic partners, we were collaborators, and we connected over furniture. I met her when she was the gallery director at Billings Auction in Los Angeles; prior to that, she had a degree from Sotheby’s in American Fine Art and Decorative Design. My background was in furniture design and furniture making. I was interested in a huge range of furniture: Danish, French modernism, American Studio Craft Movement, almost everything except ‘brown’ furniture, which was actually Katie’s wheelhouse. She opened my eyes to that whole world, and I realized how fertile it was, with motifs and building techniques and this whole history that I had not appreciated. It’s also very un-hip. Katie and I felt like we were all alone in the ‘brown’ furniture world, and I think that gave us a lot of freedom to think about that style of furniture—by which I mean things like blanket chests, corner cabinets, highboys, Federal style, Philadelphia 1700s, Queen Anne, etc.

L.A. Door was all about identifying these iconic American forms: stuff that was really fashionable, but also certain folk pieces that were detached from what was fashionable at the time. We would go to places like the Yale Furniture Archive [Ed.'s note, now the Leslie P. and George H. Hume American Furniture Study Center] or the Winterthur Mansion in Delaware, which were places Katie knew about through her time studying at Sotheby’s. As we were studying these various forms, we realized, “Okay, these are all classic American forms that are in the textbooks—but it would be terrible to write a history of American furniture design without also including something like the La-Z-Boy, right? It’s arguably one of the most important furniture designs to come out of the United States.” So, we were going to fancy museums, looking at these really important antiques that were the height of craft and fashionable design for their time, but then we’d go into a thrift store and say, “Wait, this stuff’s kind of iconic too, right? This is also really important to American furniture history.” It leveled the playing field, in a way, where you look at them with the same respect, the same eye, and then it becomes this big party. It’s like when you go to a party and there’s celebrities, but there’s also ne’er-do-wells, and everybody’s co-mingling. It just makes for a better time.

So, to get back to Rosebud, Katie and I would have lists of these forms we wanted to explore, like the corner cabinet, the blanket chest, and so on. The rocker was on there, too, but we just never got around to it. L.A. Door eventually ended, but I continue to be inspired by the way we worked and our whole approach to celebrating American furniture, so I wanted to get to the rocker. I was looking at a lot of rockers, everything from Shaker rockers to Danish rockers by Hans Wegner to production rockers that were made in large quantities in places like North Carolina. There’s just such a broad variety, and they all have their own lines and forms. I remember looking at this one rocker, a production rocker from North Carolina that was inspired by the Shakers. This one was armless, and all the beauty, all of its DNA, was in the back section. The finials, the bentwood backrest, the curvature of the posts, the shape of the rocker, all the drama was right there. The seat was just this box that was attached to it—also quite beautiful, but it wasn’t adding any information that wasn’t already contained in the back and the rocker.

So, from there, Rosebud arrived through sketching: looking at images in books and online, picking and choosing my favorite elements from all of these different rockers, and putting them into one drawing of one object. I definitely wasn’t setting out to make a sculptural artwork per se; I was just processing information and sketching to find out what I was interested in as far as rockers, trying to reveal something to myself. So, I ended up with this sketch of what became Rosebud, and I thought, “I like that. I want to make it.”

CS
It’s interesting, because although you may not have been thinking of Rosebud specifically in terms of formal art-making, it does seem to diverge from your usual ways of working. For example, there’s the question of surface treatments: Where so many of your prior pieces emphasized the natural traits of the materials and employed them almost as graphic elements, here you made a point of producing a very sleek, opaque finish that obscured the wood grain. Can you talk a bit about how and why you achieved that effect?

DM
I showed the idea to Katie, even though L.A. Door was at its end; I also showed it to Benjamin [Critton] and Heidi [Korsavong] of Marta, who had shown L.A. Door in the past. We were talking about how to finish it—should it be raw wood? Should it be glossy? Should it be painted? If so, what color?—and I remember Katie and Heidi both said it should be black. I thought that sounded a little too contemporary, too ‘design-y,’ so I tried all these other colors and finishes, and nothing was really sticking. Eventually, I just tried black, and they were right, it should be black, but it wasn’t quite that simple. The wood I was using was ash, which I chose because several of the piece’s components, like the backrest and the posts, are slightly bent, and ash is the classic wood for bending. However, it’s also a very open-pored wood, so if you paint it, you really see the wood grain pop, and that felt a bit distracting to me. So, I tried something that I hadn’t done before, where you mix up spackle and combine it with water to make a paste, which you wipe into the pores and then sand off. It fills the grain, so when you paint over it, you get a smooth finish with no wood grain showing through. I found that that really flattened the piece and made it almost like an image of itself, if that makes sense. There were no distractions anymore. You weren’t thinking about the fact that this was made in wood; it was just about the silhouette and the shape, and this allowed the concept to come through free of any noise. You could take in the idea a little more easily, I think.

CS
For sure. It adds to this overall sense of decontextualization, where you have forms and materials removed from both function and association. It renders them newly anonymous, in a way, which kind of frees up the viewer to consider the object on its own terms and, as you said, winds up opening things to a broader range of readings.

DM
Yes. I think it’s two things that do that: it’s what we just talked about with the paint, but it’s also the removal of the seat.

CS
Right. I remember you telling me that in sketching out the piece, you felt like you'd landed on something ‘pure,’ and I have to think that a big part of that had to do with the removal of the seat, which essentially means the removal of functionality.

DM
Exactly.

CS
Speaking of sketching, is that your usual process for developing ideas? What kind of steps are taken ahead of the physical production of a new work?

DM
Well, it starts with having a background in craft and knowing how things are made, so that when you’re going to a museum or flipping through a book or scrolling on Instagram, you’re looking at objects and you have a sense of how they’re made. I feel like that’s sort of critical, and then you start drawing. I’m not a very good drawer, but I’m okay. I can sketch and get my ideas on paper well enough to communicate to myself or other people. Sometimes it’s late at night, sometimes it’s in the morning with coffee.

The other important step is that I always run it by other people. I feel like I’ve had more success and more fun the more I’ve taken myself out of the center of things and put myself more in a circle with other people and the history of it all. Obviously, there was the collaboration with Katie, but I also run ideas past friends and family, and people like Ben and Heidi. And then, of course, in dealing with historical designs, you’re in conversation with a whole history of designers and builders. You’re asking them about how they produced things, the choices they made, and you’re adding to a bigger conversation. The less I feel like I’m an isolated designer drawing in my kitchen, the better.

CS
Yes. Actually, that’s part of what I find compelling about your continued references to Shaker furniture—not only with Rosebud, but with the drying racks you showed with L.A. Door at Marta last year. The fact that you were drawn to this specific section of a rocker because it resonated with you aesthetically, as a form, is really interesting, just because Shaker furniture is so often framed in terms that emphasize the austerity, the practicality, the technical precision, and then equate that with their religious ideology. But as you’ve said, within their approach, there was still an allowance for aesthetic decision-making, for really interesting visual asymmetries, as well as for allusions to outside design traditions—which makes sense, considering those early generations of Shaker craftspeople were converts who had previously lived and worked in the outside world. Many of them would have been familiar with the neoclassical motifs that were in fashion at that time, and I think that is reflected in the items they produced. So, to look at their work through that lens, being able to point to these aesthetic decisions and references and then acknowledge the way that certain aspects of Shaker design have been echoed by later generations of artists, from Charles Sheeler to George Nakashima, Ellsworth Kelly, and Donald Judd, all the way to contemporary designers like you and Green River Project and so on, is really interesting, specifically because it situates that earlier work in a living tradition, as opposed to some insular, stand-alone field of production.

DM
Yeah, definitely. I had never really thought about it that way. That’s really interesting.

CS
Have you ever seen Shaker furniture in person? Have you ever visited a landmark village, that sort of thing?

DM
No, I haven’t gone to the big ones, but I’ve seen some of the original pieces in museums and they are amazing. I feel like looking at Shaker furniture is this amazing palette-cleanser. We look at everything now: we move around from Danish to postmodern to French modernism; we look at a million different things in a given day, and then we get obsessed with stuff. We’ll look at one furniture movement for weeks and say, “This is the best thing ever,” and then those interests will shift. But whenever I come back to Shaker furniture, it feels like, “Take a breath. Let your shoulders down. It’s not that complicated, guys. Stop overthinking it. Beauty’s a much quieter thing. Let go of your ego. Stop trying so hard.” Then you get bored of that—you want to flex that ego again and go out and party. But it’s an amazing thing to return to, I find.

CS
Absolutely. Getting back to Rosebud, another defining element of the piece is its potential for kinetic movement. You have presented movable objects in the past—I'm thinking, for instance, of the [La-Z-Boy] rocking chair that you showed [on behalf of Built-In] at the Neutra VDL House in 2021—but here, you’re dealing with motion without necessarily pointing towards an overt function. It’d be great to hear a bit more about that aspect of the piece.

DM
When I think about movement, I think about how it brings life to the piece. Something that I didn’t really intend or anticipate is that to me, and to people who have seen it, it’s easy to anthropomorphize Rosebud. That’s been a common conversation that other people have brought up to me. What also resonates with me is the fact that it rocks and it moves, but when it’s at rest, it has meaning, too, because it’s not moving, even though it can. It can actually feel a little bit sad.

A rocking chair is almost like a dog, right? It’s waiting for its master to activate it, like, “Let’s go outside,” or whatever. A rocking chair just waits around all day until work is over and its sitter sits down with a cup of whatever and starts using it. Then it’s serving its purpose, it’s feeling useful, it’s feeling the love of its counterpart. But when Rosebud is static, it’s sad because it’s limited. It’s literally unable to accept love because it’s missing a part. It’s unable to have human connection because it doesn’t have a seat. So even when you move it, it’s sort of odd, because it’s kind of just spinning its wheels, which I think is also pretty relatable.

CS
Is this a mode of working you'd like to explore further? Do you see Rosebud as a one-off, or could it be the first in a potential edition or series?

DM
I wouldn’t make another that was exactly the same. It’s definitely the only one. But I could envision there being more that have their own personalities and that might feel like siblings to Rosebud, like a little friend group. I would love to do that. I have other priorities right now, in terms of what I’m making, but I could definitely see it being a larger family of work.

CS
Rosebud was recently included in the Rites of Spring group show at Marta. Can we talk a little bit about how you chose to install the piece?

DM
My main thought with the installation was that it should be on a circular plinth. I find a chair’s best angle is often its rear quarter, looking at it not directly from the back, but rather to the back and a little bit from the side. For whatever reason, I love that angle of a chair. I feel like the front is usually the least interesting, though not as a rule—like Hans Wegner, who in my mind is the best chair designer ever, his chairs look amazing from every single angle. But in general, I think chairs should be viewed at 360 degrees, so to me, the circular plinth was a necessary feature of the installation, along with its location in the show, putting it adjacent to the oak bow that I made that hangs on a wall. Having said that, I do think putting it up on a plinth probably discouraged people from activating the piece. Anyone was allowed to, but I think the plinth may have made people think they had to ask, or just to assume that they couldn’t.

CS
As you mentioned, along with Rosebud, the Rites of Spring show included a wall-mounted work that you'd produced in the shape of a decorative bow. The form itself is based on a found object from a thrift store, right?

DM
Yes. My friend Bianca Stilwell is a professional furniture and art dealer, and she’s made a niche for herself exploring thrift stores and estate sales in and outside of the Southern California area. When she finds something interesting, she’ll get on her Instagram Stories and say, “Hey, I’m at this thrift store, and I just found this crazy thing. Does anybody want it?” So, she found this oak bow and posted it, and I was like, “I want that.”

When I first got the piece, I hung it up in my house and just lived with it for a while. Initially, I was hanging a tote bag on it, but then I thought, “Why am I putting my shabby, ugly tote bag on it? This thing is too beautiful.” So, I began to use it as a decorative object. I loved it, and people who came over loved it—it’s just this undeniably positive, sweet, kind of optimistic object—so I decided I wanted to remake it and share it with people, because it felt meant to be shared. The form of the bows I made was an exact replica of the original: I took the thing apart and made templates of all the pieces out of red oak, which is the lesser of the two oaks, meaning it’s cheaper than white. White oak is what you see in fancy homes, whereas red oak is what you see in thrift store furniture. I also stained the oak to give it that brown-honey color you see in a lot of thrift store furniture. So, I made twenty or so of these bows, but I wasn’t making any money on them; I was selling them for just enough to cover my costs and a little bit of my time.

The other thing about the original bow was that it wasn’t labeled or signed, so the longer I had it, the more I wondered, “Where did this thing come from? Who made this?” I mean, it was clearly made in someone’s home studio or garage or something. I sort of imagine it being made in the 1980s or 1990s, maybe somewhere in the Midwest.

CS
In my mind, it feels like the bow is coming from the same world as the La-Z-Boy recliners that you presented with L.A. Door.

DM
Yes, it’s easy to see them in the same home. I’m really glad you said that, because I think a commonality that the two objects share are their unpretentiousness, along with a genuine desire for comfort. LA-Z-Boys aren’t particularly beautiful, but the experience of sitting in one is amazing. I just think they suffer from terrible branding. The name contributes to this cliché of it as this chair for a slovenly dude—literally, a lazy boy—but actually, the word I would use to describe them would be restorative. You can get in a La-Z-Boy, recline it and work on your laptop for four hours, and when you get up, you’re not clutching your lower back. You spring right up and feel great.

In my mind, there are two theories of ergonomics. One would be a chaise lounge by someone like Bruno Mathsson. He made these beautiful bentwood chairs that are wrapped in cotton webbing and have these amazing lines, but the thing about his chairs is that there’s only one way to sit in them. It fits your body perfectly, but only as long as you stay in one position. It does not rock. It doesn’t have a lever that changes positions. You can recline, but you cannot move—whereas a La-Z-Boy can recline, but they also rock. It’s actually a natural evolution of a rocking chair. You can sit up, you can recline halfway, you can recline all the way, you can rock. You can move around in it, and I feel like comfort over a period of time requires that you move around a little bit. You can’t do that with the Bruno Mathsson designs. So, the La-Z-Boy is functional, but it’s not attractive, and the fact that it’s not attractive is a big reason that it has never really broken into [bourgeois] design spaces. There have been attempts to make them more elegant—for instance, I think Todd Oldham might have done a design for La-Z-Boy—and usually, they’ll add a weird tapered wooden leg or something, trying to give it a mid-century feel, something a little sleeker. But in doing so, they ruin the comfort of it for the sake of elegance.

CS
Right. In thinking back on your L.A. Door pieces, the interventions were pretty minimal—maybe some reupholstering or updating the handles, but nothing fundamental.

DM
That’s right. Before I met Katie, I was collecting La-Z-Boys, thinking, “All right, no one’s done anything with the La-Z-Boy. I’m going to do something cool with the La-Z-Boy.” And honestly, I think I was taking a more Todd Oldham approach, where I was trying to make it look cool, and I just couldn’t. So, I had it on the back burner forever, but then I met Katie. I was talking to her about it, and she was like, “Just reupholster it in something cool, and maybe we can make a new handle or something.” That was the key idea: Don’t fight the design, celebrate it. Celebrate how schlubby it is, the overflowing cushion of it. We learned how to do that together.

But to bring it back to the bow, I agree, it’s easy to see them in the same space together. It’s funny, because I think the bow is immediately aesthetically beautiful, whereas the La-Z-Boy might not be, but somehow, they’re speaking the same language. Both of them care about you. You look at the bow, and it almost has open arms—and a La-Z-Boy literally has open arms that you sit between.

CS
Right, and although one comes from the crafts world and the other from mainstream consumer retail, both items would also seem to fall squarely beyond the scope of taste and aesthetics that distinguishes so-called fine art and design—which brings us to the idea of amateurism, which I know is something you’re quite interested in.

DM
Yes, I think that’s what I’m most interested in right now. It’s an interesting word, ‘amateur.’ I think the original spelling is A-M-A-T-O-R. I’m not sure how you pronounce it, but it meant ‘lover,’ or ‘to love,’ and I think that’s sort of key. That meaning has changed over time; it kind of feels like it changed along with the progression of capitalism. So, if its original meaning was ‘lover,’ it became something closer to ‘non-professional’: someone who doesn’t fully know what they’re doing, or doesn’t get paid to do it; someone who wouldn’t be recognized as a standard bearer. It becomes pejorative, even to the point where it can mean ‘unskilled’ or someone prone to doing shoddy work. And I think that’s all well and good. On the one hand, it’s sort of a bastardization, where the word’s gone from this beautiful thing to this pejorative—but on the other hand, I like that, because it kind of carves out its own space outside of capitalism, outside of expertise, and it takes on more of a folk meaning. There are no more rules, in a way. There’s more room to play around. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s not being made to be sold or evaluated by someone who might be selling or critiquing or reviewing it. I think that energy comes out in the bow.

CS
Definitely—and it seems like these ideas are at the heart of a new project that you’re in the process of launching. Maybe you can give us a sense of what you’re working on.

DM
Yes. I’d like to explore this world of amateur creators more deeply, but doing that can be difficult. Basically, you can scour eBay and you can scour thrift stores. So, I’m going to start to travel later in the summer, going to yard sales in the Midwest, going to estate sales and thrift stores out there, just trying to find objects that have that beautiful amateur energy. If I could find the actual makers of these things, that would be first prize. I would love to meet these people, interview these people, potentially collaborate with these people, make work that’s in conversation with theirs, and possibly show our work together in some sort of context that could be local to them, or here in a gallery in Los Angeles, or some combination of the two. That would be the dream—but if I can’t find anybody, I’ll just have to do what I can with the objects that I do find. Really, the goal of the project is just to commune and collaborate with amateur artwork, and to share that with as many people as possible.

CS
I remember you telling me that there was something about the design of the bow that made it feel like it ‘belongs to all of us,’ which ultimately made you feel comfortable with replicating the piece despite not knowing who its author may have been.

DM
Right. A lot of it has to do with the intent. Like I said, when I was first making the bows, I was not making any money. The intent really was to share, and I’ve always been upfront about the fact that it’s not my design. In a way, I think about the bow more as a form, like a blanket chest or a highboy or a rocker. When Katie and I would do riffs on these classic forms, we saw it like country music, where these pieces of furniture were like old country standards, like “That’s How I Got to Memphis.” With those songs, other people’s covers of them are almost as important to the song’s place in the culture as the original. It’s what keeps them alive, in a way. I think that’s something that Katie and I honed in on, and it’s something that I still carry with me. So, whenever I’m confused about what it is I’m trying to do or look for or make, I return to this question: “What are you celebrating?” That's kind of my center, and as long as I’m celebrating something, I feel good about whatever comes out.

—

Doug McCollough’s Rosebud was recently included in Rites of Spring.

Christopher Schreck
is a Chicago-based writer and editor whose work has explored subjects ranging from art and design to wig-making and digital conservation. A former editor at KALEIDOSCOPE, his writing has been featured in publications like Mousse, office, CURA., and Aperture, among others. Christopher also runs the popular blog and Instagram account Art Damaged and serves as co-host of the Abundance Zine podcast.

Doug McCollough
lives and works in Los Angeles, California. McCollough (b. 1982, Tokyo) is formerly one-half of the Los Angeles furniture practice L.A. Door, who previously showed work with the gallery on behalf of the group exhibition Built-In at the Neutra VDL House in 2021, and again in their aptly-titled Open & Close solo exhibition in 2023. McCollough’s work in furniture, cabinetry, and sculpture rigorously and winkingly updates and recontextualizes diverse instances of American decorative arts.

Motion in Field
is hosted and produced by Christopher Schreck in tandem with and on behalf of Marta Los Angeles. Motion in Field’s theme music comprises portions of Leaving Grass Mountain, composed and performed by Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer.

001
Minjae Kim
Fold Sconce

Subscribe via Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast service.

001
Transcript

CS — Christopher Schreck
MK — Minjae Kim

CS
How did the idea for the Fold Sconce first come about?

MK
It was really an attempt to diversify my market audience by creating a work that was simple enough that I could bring down the price at the end. Through working with the gallery and growing my practice the past few years, the pricing for my pieces was going up—which is necessary for my practice, and for Marta as well, but at the same time, I felt like I was isolating a lot of people who would potentially buy my work. So, when I started working on the Fold Sconce, the idea was to make a really simple design that could be reproduced relatively quickly without losing the touch that I usually find important in my pieces. I wanted to try to make a piece that could hit a specific price point by getting closer to a production mode, rather than the one-off approach that I'd been taking.

CS
So, how did the piece develop? Were you sketching things out, or was it more a matter of experimenting with the quilted fiberglass and arriving at your form?

MK
Yes, there were some initial sketches. There was a wall sconce piece that I made for my first show at Marta—a torso-shaped plaster piece with two brass legs and little bent-edge feet—that I thought could be a departure point. Then I was thinking, “How can I use fiberglass in the simplest way without losing the characteristics of my quilted fiberglass pieces?” The solution was just to build a sheet of fiberglass quilt and fold it to create volume. Then, in terms of hardware, I was able to use a conventional light bulb clip, so that you can just clip the two loops onto any existing light fixture, or you could simply buy a wall-hanging sconce piece and just clip it on top.

CS
As far as sketching or modeling, would you say that’s typical of your practice? Does the process vary from piece to piece, or have you arrived at a consistent approach to developing new works?

MK
My production now is more diverse, so it really depends, but fundamentally, I always try to start with a sketch, because for me, it’s the most economical way to work with an idea. So, I’ll start with a sketch, and then sometimes I go straight into material production, prototypes, or mockups, or I might develop something in 3D modeling, just so that I can work with the real dimensions. But there are also times that I don't even do a sketch, because the parameters are so straightforward that I can just get into production. For example, if I’m making a chair, a lot of times I don't have to sketch anything, because I know that the chair blocks—or ‘chair blanks’ as I call them—that I order from my carpenter friends will always come in the same dimensions, so I can basically just start cutting, or I’ll sketch on the chair itself and then remove the material.

CS
You mentioned a moment ago that Fold Sconce was designed to free things up for you by allowing your assistants to handle production. Has that been true in the past? Have you presented works that you had no direct hand in sculpting?

MK
Yes, sometimes. What I realized as the practice kept going was that I myself became the ultimate bottleneck. Communicating is sometimes hard when I’m making new pieces; sometimes I do a terrible job of explaining things to people that I’m working with, and then everything gets kind of clogged until I’m able to clarify. So that was something I realized I had to work on, and eventually it got to a point where I specifically tried to make a piece where the intention is more explicit.

There were economic reasons, too. For instance, I expanded my studio last summer with the specific idea of separating the production side. I was in a 400-square-foot studio where we did everything: there was a table in the workspace, and I would work on my laptop in there while somebody else was sanding or pouring resin, and all of us would be wearing respirators. It just became way too stressful to be in that environment, so I kind of split that through the expansion, where I doubled my studio size. Then, in order to afford it, I felt like I had to be able to come up with baseline tasks or projects where I could just ‘push a button’ and not question what the outcome would be, which would buy me time to develop new projects, work on emails, talk to clients, and do more of these software projects, as opposed to putting my hand on everything, because there was a lot of inefficiency in that process. So, with the Fold Sconce, I could ask my assistants to work on that, and it was a huge benefit on my end.

CS
So, it sounds like there were economic considerations, as well as labor-related considerations, but what about your interest in the form itself? Obviously, there are many different types of wall sconces, but I would imagine that most people think of stylized furnishings with ornate designs, maybe mounted onto plates. Here, the form, as you said, is deliberately simple, and the nuance really seems to lie in the surface texture and the way the fiberglass thins under direct light. So in building the Fold Sconce—or, for that matter, in creating your chairs, your lamps, and so on—how interested were you in the idea of subverting convention, in terms of form and material? Was that part of the appeal, being able to approach a familiar item in a new and unexpected way?

MK
Not necessarily. There wasn’t a huge aesthetic or philosophical drive in making the piece—it was mainly driven by finding a solution, and then I figured I could just let the material speak for itself, because with quilted fiberglass, there's so much variation that happens in the process. In a way, I hadn’t really done that before: I was always using the material to create a specific form or silhouette or effect, but I never really let it be on its own. When I first started doing quilted fiberglass, the goal was just to achieve volume by creating some sort of rigidity in the loose fiberglass sheet, because it comes in a thin weaving and really doesn't hold its own form. I started laminating it to create a quilt, just so it could have a base structure, and then all of the other aspects—its texture, or how the thread works with the fiberglass weaving, or how the fiberglass weaving becomes transparent when it's embedded in resin—all of that was a secondary discovery, in a way. When you're working on something on your own, you find quirky little methods to resolve an issue, and sometimes you get kind of stuck to it, and you don’t really have a chance to look back and appreciate those other things. I think it was a little bit like that.

So, I was sitting there, trying to come up with a really simple lighting solution, and the fold was the smallest gesture I could make to give it volume and a little bit of structure. Architecturally, I think it works quite well, too, but none of these ideas were driving the design at all. They came secondary.

CS
One of the Fold Sconces was recently included in Marta’s Rites of Spring exhibition, and it made me wonder about your thoughts on installation. Judging from the documentation photos for the piece, it seems like it continues a theme that's been true of a lot of your work, where the handmade qualities of the objects become even more apparent—and wind up creating this really interesting tension—when they’re set in contrast to the architectures of more formal or pristine environments, whether that be a gallery space or a domestic setting. I wonder if you would agree with that—and if so, how conscious you are of embracing or inviting that tension.

MK
Yeah, absolutely. It’s probably one of my favorite ways to work, actually. I was always trying to get rid of the straight line; a couple years ago, I would put a lot of labor into making everything kind of squiggly, because a person can’t draw a straight line, so it would almost feel like a sketch or a drawing, and it always felt like people were more drawn to that in the end. But the contrast is something that I find more and more interesting, and I think that comes from seeing my projects in more diverse environments. I’ve started playing with the contrast of having this organic line juxtaposed with the more industrial straight lines from different processes of building volume, but with fiberglass, especially the way I’ve been working with it, it always lends itself to imperfections, and in a way, that could be considered a shortcoming in my own process that I really lean into. I can imagine making any form that I’m drawn to and translating it through this process. It’s not even translating with my ideas or my hands—just the process alone can translate a form or idea into something that’s more familiar to myself, and that’s something that I’m always drawn to with this material.

CS
Would you say the Fold Sconce was created with a particular environment in mind?

MK
No, not really. If anything, the idea was to make it as approachable as possible. If I’m making something too specific, I think it becomes a deterrent for people to picture it at their home or whatever, so the idea with the Fold Sconce was that you could imagine it being anywhere. Some of my work takes on characteristics and becomes like a character or a creature, and I like that, because it gives me the impression that the piece is self-sufficient. It’s complete on its own, it doesn't require an environment to complete it, and when you’re thinking of interiors or architecture, that’s not always the case. Sconces especially can sometimes need to respond to a specific architecture (or vice versa), but this wasn’t the case here.

CS
How do you think readings of your work change when viewed in a gallery as opposed to being integrated into a domestic environment? Does it read differently to you?

MK
Yeah, I think so—especially if the work is created for a gallery environment, because then it exists very specifically in my head, and I’ll have a hard time imagining it in someone's domestic space, or any other space. I just kind of have to trust that journey, because it’s not always clear to me, but it usually works out, and it does make me very happy. It’s always a nice surprise.

CS
You were speaking earlier about how you've incorporated outside fabricators into your process for certain pieces like the wooden chairs, where you’re outsourcing the more precise elements of design or assembly and focusing instead on the more open-ended or artistic decisions. There’s an element of collaboration in that arrangement that I find really interesting, and I’d be curious to hear how you arrived at that approach. Was that a lesson learned through trial and error, or was it part of the plan from the beginning?

MK
It was always a twofold thing. I knew from the get-go, when I started learning woodwork in my early twenties, that I never really had the patience to do precision woodwork, so when I realized I could work with other craftsmen, who are far better qualified than I am and have much better facilities, it was a huge discovery. I first started working with other professional builders while I was working with Giancarlo [Valle] at the interior design studio, and I realized how fluid and collaborative that process could actually be, so when I started doing my own projects, that was something that I told myself: “Oh my God, I can actually work with other people and compensate for the things that I don’t have.”

With the methods I use—and just the way I am, I guess, my personality—I do really enjoy working on my own, especially when I’m building. When I was at school, in the woodshops, there would always be somebody looking over my shoulder, and that always made me uncomfortable, because I knew I had to try something wrong to get it right, and I felt like there was no opportunity for that. So, the process I set up was just to outsource that more precise aspect, and then the part of messing up, getting rid of all the clean edges and wrestling with a piece, I would do in my own environment. When I set up my studio the first time, it was tiny; I knew that I couldn’t even have a proper table saw in there, so I immediately started sending out drawings so other woodworkers could do the assembly and deliver the pieces to me. It became this thing where I’d set up the parameters, and then I’d give myself room to mess it up, and it kind of stuck, so now that’s just how I work.

Another big thing it allowed me to do was to not be tied down to a location. Fiberglass work is a bit more site-specific, but for woodworking, now I can sort of finish my work anywhere I want. I have a lot of woodworkers that I’ve done projects with in L.A., just to avoid expensive shipping. Same in Europe—I would go to a shop and find it really satisfying. So, I’m building relationships with these carpenters, continually revisiting their studios over the years, and that’s been super nice. It’s also been nice to see that they understand my process, because once the woodworkers understand the process, there’s this kind of trust, as opposed to when I just show someone a drawing of a project. That’s a much more difficult conversation, where they have to bring it to completion without being given the context of how I usually work.

CS
When you talk about making space in your practice to work at a different pace, to allow room for messing up and trying new things, it makes me wonder to what extent you’re interested in being surprised by your work. Where in your process do you tend to find those moments?

MK
The element of surprise is something I’ve embraced from the get-go, but it also comes with being flexible. I’ve learned that if I get rid of my rigidity, then it becomes a much easier work process. That’s my personal philosophy, too, not only in work, but just in day-to-day things. I’ve been doing this work for quite a bit now, and I’ve learned to let go of a lot of that over the years, because I realized that it was not the best way to approach work or life. There are always accidents and surprises and quirks that happen in any production, and once you let go, you realize that you’re okay, and even though things didn’t go the way you had initially wanted, you come up with much better results.

CS
Yes. It seems like having a tolerance for imperfection is part of how an artist makes room for spontaneity and variation in their work—but it also just seems like the less precious you’re able to be in your process, the more fun you’re probably having, and I tend to believe that translates to how the resulting pieces feel to others as well.

MK
Right. Quite often, in my pieces, you can see attempts to recover from a mess-up, because I very rarely start over. It gives me a tremendous comfort to know that I can go into a situation and come out relatively satisfied, but I also hope it gives comfort to the people I work with as well. Even if something unexpected happens, collectively, all of us together will come out of it fine.

CS
It seems like no matter what kind of unexpected turns the work might take during production, the resulting items always retain some degree of functionality, or at least an implied functionality. Are you generally hoping that your pieces will be used, or are you comfortable with the idea of them being treated more as art objects to be viewed rather than utilized?

MK
I’m comfortable with both, but I go back and forth with the functionality. I don’t know if I always felt that way, but sometimes it does seem frivolous to need function. At the end of the day, what I’m creating is a form. It’s a form-building exercise, like making a drawing, so sometimes I do question myself, like, “Why am I putting a light bulb in here?” It’s an interesting back-and-forth. But if I’m going to give it a function, or if I’m going to allude to a function in the piece, in my mind, it absolutely has to work. I may have a piece that looks uncomfortable, and people might question if they can use it at all, but my intention is always that you have to be able to use it. Otherwise, there's no point in using functionality as a driver for a piece. If that’s not the case, that should be explicit on my end, in how the piece is designed and presented.

CS
Materials can play a part in that as well. Especially with fiberglass, I feel like people who aren’t familiar with it might assume it’s too fragile to physically engage with.

MK
Yes. In my first show at Marta, I had a lounge chair that looked very, very thin, and a lot of people didn’t think that it was a functional piece, but it’s very satisfying when you convince them otherwise.

CS
Prior to this conversation, you mentioned to me that you’re increasingly interested in exploring molds and casting as means of faithful reproduction. That strikes me as a pretty significant development in your practice. It’d be great to hear a bit more about that.

MK
The idea of being able to reproduce, or to give some consistency to the production, came when I did the studio expansion last year. The Fold Sconce actually does have a mold—it's basically two pieces of plywood put together at 90 degrees, so the quilted fiberglass can rest on it—but before that, I hadn’t made any fiberglass pieces with a mold. Usually, fiberglass is always made with a mold, so it felt kind of necessary to try that technique, and for me, the consistency was very, very satisfying, so we’ve started exploring more ways to use molds in the studio. Recently, we’ve been making silicone molds for resin casts, because I’m making these corkscrew bottle openers for a friend of mine. At first, I was carving them out of wood; it’s a relatively simple form, and small enough to fit in your hand, but this idea of a more approachable production method has been on my mind for a while, so I decided to lean in. I bought some plasticine clay, started sculpting some forms, and made molds out of them, and it was amazing. I made three designs for the initial piece, which took me a couple of hours, and that was it: we were able to plug it into a production line and experiment in other ways. That was very satisfying, because I was never able to reproduce a form I’d created in a truly repeatable way before, and it made me realize, “Oh, wow, I can really take this far.”

CS
It’s the best of both worlds, in a way: On one hand, you’re using the same manual techniques to arrive at the source form, so that sense of character is retained in the editioned pieces—but at the same time, on a practical level, one can see how exploring these new modes of production might become a necessary part of scaling your practice.

MK
It just came with an economy of time and effort. I love to carve wood, but sometimes the idea of carving fifteen pieces can be intimidating. The idea of replicating a piece was always so daunting to me, so I just had to find a way of working around it.

CS
You’ve spoken elsewhere about how your current practice arose from side projects you’d developed during your time at Giancarlo’s studio—but even your path to Giancarlo’s studio was driven, at least in part, by the extracurricular work that you were doing during your architectural studies, when you were making one-off pieces in the furniture studio. Now that you’ve established your own practice, do you still have side projects? Are you creating separate space for exploring new territory, or do you feel like you’re finding ways to incorporate that experimentation into your everyday process?

MK
I had to incorporate it into my day-to-day work. My practice has really taken over my life (in the best way possible), so the big challenge has been how to blend those two things. Most of the projects that I work on, the ones that I’m really excited about, are experimental in their own right, but the idea now is to allow that experiment to have more longevity. Before, when I was working on projects, I wasn't really looking at the full picture of what would happen once the piece was made, how it would be consumed or distributed. Now, being able to create molds, or making the Fold Sconces with this production-specific method, it’s still an experiment, but there is a longevity to the piece after the experimentation, and it’s not specific to the first physical piece that I make. Usually, when I do an experiment, it kind of dies when the piece is made, because I don’t really have a way to replicate that – but relying on the mold, and being more conscious of the production method, allows it to go on even after my portion of the work is done.

To me, it’s closer to the holistic idea of a design object. We always say we’re working at the intersection of art and design, and all philosophy aside, for me, on a day-to-day basis, it comes down to how the production works and how it’s communicated and consumed. My earlier production methods really didn’t have the longevity, and I realized I would exhaust myself if I kept working that way, trying to keep up with that type of demand, so this allows me to separate things. I like the idea of the work continuing in the studio, but also being able to separate my role within that production scale. It’s a comforting thing.

—

Minjae Kim’s Fold Sconce was recently included in Rites of Spring.

Christopher Schreck
is a Chicago-based writer and editor whose work has explored subjects ranging from art and design to wig-making and digital conservation. A former editor at KALEIDOSCOPE, his writing has been featured in publications like Mousse, office, CURA., and Aperture, among others. Christopher also runs the popular blog and Instagram account Art Damaged and serves as co-host of the Abundance Zine podcast.

Minjae Kim
lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens. An alumnus of the Architecture program at Columbia University’s GSAPP, in 2018 Kim began complementing his interest in the built environment with works built from hand, often rendered in a reductive craft language. Kim’s dovetailing sculpture and furniture practices persuade through functionality both suggested and actual. The artist’s inaugural solo exhibition, I Was Evening All Afternoon, was held at Marta in 2021, and Kim has since gone on to present work with and for Etage Projects (Copenhagen), Nina Johnson (Miami), Blunk Space (Point Reyes), and Salon 94 (New York) among others. He has been recognized in a cadre of international publications, including Apartamento, Architectural Digest, Cultured, Financial Times, MilK, The New York Times, Office, Pin-Up, Surface, and Wallpaper.

Motion in Field
is hosted and produced by Christopher Schreck in tandem with and on behalf of Marta Los Angeles. Motion in Field’s theme music comprises portions of Leaving Grass Mountain, composed and performed by Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer.