Desert Design Lab explored the Salton Sea with SDSU’s graduate students Joshua Torbick and Sophi Glenn and Steffi Dotson, president of the Furniture Society
The Bad Wolf becomes The Desert Design Lab RV
The trip has started! – But before we hit road, we customized the BADWLF with awesome graphics designed and installed by James Beer (mechanical director at Gigunda Group Inc.) James used Adobe Illustrator, UV printers and a C&C to make stickers for handouts and the large print graphics that wrap the RV.
DDL's Trip Coordinator is ready to go!
At just 1 day away from leaving New Hampshire, Mariana is busy with the last few details, as the trip coordinator she has been involved with the project since day 1: mapping the route, making reservations, acquiring the necessary materials and helping Vivian with budgets and travel arrangements for visiting artists. Mariana was previously a Sales Coordinator at SeaWorld San Diego and brings a heap of experience perfectly suited for a project like Desert Design Lab.
Susie Silbert scheduled to visit DDL!
Susie J. Silbert is an independent curator and design historian with a background in craft and design and a passion for interpreting the built world. Her recent projects include SPRAWL, co-curated with Anna Walker at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the catalogue to Beyond Craft: Decorative Arts from the Leatrice S. and Melvin B. Eagle Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and a data-driven analysis for the New-York Historical Society in support of the exhibition The Folk Art Collection of Elie Nadelman: Making it Modern in addition to numerous essays on artists working in glass, ceramics, wood and metal. Silbert holds a Master’s Degree in Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center and lectures on the History of Glass at the Rhode Island School of Design. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
“I’m very excited to be a part of this project. There’s something really refreshing about a designer using a grant to facilitate not just their own work, but also the design conversation they want to have. It’s like sculpting the world along with the work.”
Her website, susiesilbert.com, will be up soon!
Check out Lori Ferguson’s article from her visit to my studio on this winter’s edition of modernmagazine (page 60, 62)
Check out one of our first stops in the Palm Desert Area (film by Jim Lo Scalzo)
Deep in the desert of southern California sits one of the worst environmental sites in America a former tourist destination that has turned into a toxic soup…
Jennifer Anderson joins DDL as a visiting artist!
Honored to have Jennifer join us in Ely, NV!
She is a fellow Furniture Society member and a very talented furniture artist. You can read more about her work at Jennifer Anderson Studio Furniture.
Eames Study No. 1
Trip Schedule
Palm Desert, CA - February 5-14 (8 days in the field)
Areas of interest: Salton Sea, Anza Borrego Desert, Joshua Tree
Beatty, NV – February 14-22 (7 days in the field)
Areas of interest: Las Vegas, Beatty RV Park, Death Valley, Yucca Mountain, BLM lands
Virgin, UT - February 22-March 2 (7 days in the field)
Areas of interest: Zion National Park, Coral Pink Sand Dunes Sate Park
Moab, UT – March 2-11 (8 days in the field)
Areas of interest: Colorado and Green River, Canyonlands, Arches, Goblin Valley, Grand Staircase, San Rafael Swell, Capitol Reef
Wendover, NV – March 11-18 (6 days in the field)
Areas of interest: Bonneville Salt Flats, Spiral Getty, Bonneville Sea Base
Ely, NV – March 18-22 (3 days in the field)
Areas of interest: Great Basin, Mt Moriah (400 year old trees), Notch Peek and Painter’s Springs Campground
Glad to welcome Hannah Vaughan to the project!
"I’m a designer, furniture maker, welder, and chainsaw enthusiast. I make wood and metal furniture that plays with ideas of architecture, decay, modernism and consumerism. Bright shiny and rusted, angular and rough hewn. I studied fine art and religion at Oberlin College, and have taken courses at Penland school of Craft. Currently, I live and work in Chicago IL where I’m a fine furniture maker, metal specialist and all around badass at a furniture company called Lagomorph Design. I met Vivian when we were both stuck on the top of a mountain in North Carolina for two months, since then, it has been hard to separate us.
Born and raised in the desert of southern California I have an undying love for the desolate environment of sand, rock and cacti and the unique talents of boulder hopping, making a camp fire, navigating the 405 freeway and identifying the dangerous ‘jumping choya’ cactus. I’m also an excellent dancer, which I’m pretty sure is what qualified me as assistant for the Desert Design Lab”
Vivian Beer and Hannah Vaughan at Studio Works, Summer 2013
Supported by the John D. Mineck Furniture Fellowship I will be traveling across the entire country, coast to coast, in search of inspiration and adventure in America’s western deserts.
The concept:
To travel across country for two month with an RV trailer (a mobile studio) to develop my new Desert Impressions body of work, spending an extended period of time in a number of remote landscapes/Eco-systems to gather images and textures. There are four main goals during this time. Firstly to gather the imagery and physical molds for this new work. Second, virtually design the furniture forms that each texture will be used for. Third, invite a handful of artist/designers/writers/craftsmen to collaborate with me in these locations. And lastly, I will take extensive video footage during the trip with the intent of possibly using it for a documentary of this very different studio environment.
The lab:
The mobile studio comes in two parts. The living space will be in the RV. I imagine we will spend time designing inside in the evenings at the dinner table, but for the most part work will be done in on-site Studio Canopy Tent that will house tables and model making tools. I am planning on having balsa foam, plasticine clay, and small bits of balsa wood. Also, sand paper, files, micro band saw, sander, and hot wire tool, 3-d Scanner, 2 laptop computers and flat screens so that we can look at digital information together. This “Lab” will be designed so that we can work “on site” as well as in the RV Park. I will have a 4-Wheel drive truck that can travel deep into even more remote areas where we can set up and design in direct inspiration/site of the desert landscape.
More info about the John D. Mineck Fellowship here