Month: June 2019

Picture a tangerine—it’s bright, juicy, practically glowing with freshness. But like eating a delicious fruit, that glow is temporary, as after tartness comes the possibility of rot. There’s a dark side to everything, and despite the effusive cheeriness of Galerie Tangerine’s name, its exhibitions hardly feature art that is so simple.

Owner Anne Daigh brings her own artistic sensibility and love for darker, complex art to the sunshine-filled walls of Galerie Tangerine. Daigh opened Anne Daigh Landscape Architect in 2010, which became Daigh Rick Landscape Architects when she partnered with Wade Rick in January of 2018. For the past two years, the firm has operated an art gallery from their airy landscape architecture studio, located in a former repair shop in the Gulch. There’s art everywhere—from the foyer where clients enter to the studio where the firm’s architects get down to business. It’s a gallery that has no remove from the day-to-day of normal life, from the realities of workspaces and meeting rooms. Art doesn’t just occupy these rooms; it exists as a part of the living space. Principal and founder Daigh, along with office manager and gallery coordinator Lilli Robinson, recently opened their doors to Nashville Design Week for a studio visit.

On the utterly charming name.

Anne–
One day I was folding my clothes, and [on] one of my tank tops, the name tag inside, the brand was Tangerine. I saw it and was like, that’s going to be the name of the gallery. Our first artist, actually—his name was Henry Rasmussen, a brilliant artist, amazing guy—he suggested we switch it. It was going to be Tangerine Gallery, and now I can’t even imagine saying it like that. And [the neon sign is] his handwriting. . . . And then once I got comfortable with “Galerie Tangerine,” I started thinking about how one of my favorite songs of all time was Led Zeppelin’s “Tangerine.” And then also, I was looking into it and the word tangerine actually means “prosperity.” Everything about it just makes sense.

On the voice of the gallery and the work of Rasmussen, who brought such a melancholic style of art into this space.

Anne–
There’s something about the rawness of [melancholy]—we all experience it, but the gallery is my way of expressing it through the art that we show. . . . I can’t quite put my finger on it, but Galerie Tangerine is more about fresh and new, not necessarily happy. There’s a dark side to everything, a yin and a yang. That’s kind of how I like to design, too. I like to create, in the landscape architecture side of things, hard and soft elements. That creates balance, acknowledging the hard and the soft.

On how the gallery fits into the landscape architecture firm.

Anne–
Art is the basis for all design, in a way, and [the gallery] provides a different platform for us to explore that. I’ve actually had an issue with buying art. [Laughs] I love curating and finding new artists, so this was a vehicle or forum for that, so other people can experience it. Rather than it just being my own personal art, this is a way to share that with other people. It does feel like an access into my heart.

Lilli–
It’s beneficial on both sides. On the landscape architecture side, we work really closely with interior designers who are oftentimes searching for art for their clients, so it builds relationships.

“There’s a dark side to everything, a yin and a yang. That’s kind of how I like to design, too.”

On choosing their artists.

Anne–
A lot of galleries have rosters, and [artists] sign a contract with them. Once a year they’ll have a show, and they’re represented by that gallery. . . . The artists that we select and find is an organic process. We only do it for a quarter, and then we move on to the next artist—and what I realized we’ve been doing is we’re providing a platform for these artists to get their name out into Nashville. We’re not so hooked on the fact of representing them. It’s kind of a stepping stone for them, for other galleries to pick them up and represent them.

On what makes Galerie Tangerine different from other galleries.

Anne–
The landscape architecture is what’s allowing us to be risky and do what we want with the art, because the sale of this art is not dependent on paying the rent. That’s pretty critical. All we hope to do is break even after each show.

Lilli–
It’s more enjoyable because we don’t have that pressure.

Anne–
It could be really stressful if we were dependent on selling art, a certain amount each month. That almost could take the fun out of it.

On their perspective on Nashville’s art scene.

Anne–
I’m a little disappointed by it. It hasn’t been as accepting as I would’ve hoped to putting riskier stuff out. The fact that we’re able to be more risky, we’re able to put out stuff I love—I quickly learned that [people felt] this is cool and all, but this is nothing I’d want to hang on my wall. Nashville is not quite as edgy as some other places. . . . I will say that we’ve gotten to know the art community well, and they’ve all been kind.

If you’re looking for the source of the thrum of unconventional creativity in Nashville cuisine, you might point to the genius of The Catbird Seat and follow your way to one of its co-founders, Josh Habiger, who took everything he learned from that first restaurant and poured it into Wedgewood Houston’s nacho mecca and not-so-hidden fine-dining playhouse, Bastion.

Foodie culture is a tricky thing in a city that’s torn between locals, tourists and outsider restaurateurs hoping to capitalize on Nashville’s buzziness. With Bastion, Habiger offers a 24-seated restaurant with innovation, refinement, and the intimacy of a neighborhood watering hole. Elizabeth Williams and Kelly Diehl, co-designers of New Hat and creative directors for Nashville Design Week, visited Bastion one afternoon to chat about Habiger’s balance of freshness and familiarity.

On getting started with food.

Josh–
I grew up in a really small town in Minnesota—one set of stoplights. We lived in a trailer park next to a diner, and my mom was a waitress at the diner [called Kay’s Kitchen]. Fifteen years later, I was a dishwasher at that diner. I would get the dish room all caught up and watch the cooks. The owner saw that and asked if I wanted to cook. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so we didn’t go out to eat. So at the diner, I thought, this is what people eat when they go out to eat. From there I went to a steakhouse to a fake Italian restaurant, Olive Garden-esque. When I was twenty, I went to culinary school in Vermont. I kind of hated it. I still thought it was what I wanted to do. I don’t know why this is such a telling moment, but the classes were small, like six or seven students. After six months of school, a girl was like, “Is this parsley or cilantro?” and I was like, I’m going to get the same piece of paper as this person when I leave here. … [Later] I ended up going to England and working for a restaurant called the Fat Duck and working for free.

Elizabeth–
You worked at a lot of fine-dining restaurants—often as an unpaid intern—before kind of getting fed up with hotel restaurants and coming down to Nashville to work as a bartender at Patterson House. When did the idea of the Catbird Seat start to percolate?

Josh–
[While I was at Patterson House, I was asked] if I ever wanted to cook again, and I said, only on my own terms. I want to cook the way a bartender bartends. You know, the interaction you get when you sit at a bar, and you get to know the bartender, and they know what you like so they can make things for you. And that’s how the Catbird Seat originated.

Elizabeth–
It’s more of a human experience, to get to share the one-on-one conversation that you get to have. I got to have many [of those conversations] when I was eating there. It was natural. I didn’t feel like I was watching a caged animal. It was really positive, and it demystified the fancy food experience. You know you’re getting this special thing, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel bougie in a bad way. It’s interesting to see that you were able to see that fine dining could be interactive.

Josh–
That’s another part of it, too: How can we make it more comfortable? I ate at all the [fine dining restaurants I’ve worked at], and like, I know everyone on the staff, so why do I feel so uncomfortable right now? [Laughs] Am I sitting the right way? You’re questioning everything. Whereas, the first course you get at Bastion is finger food. We want you to eat with your fingers and not worry about it.

Elizabeth–
So the Catbird Seat was your first time designing a restaurant. Did you want Bastion to be more like a bar experience, more one-on-one?

Josh–
With the Catbird Seat, you have this counter with the kitchen in the middle. And then the people, I think it’s seven, six, and seven, which is twenty people at the counter, and then all the cooks working in the middle. Which is cool, because all the attention shifted inward. But for the people on the opposing sides, you’re watching the cooks, but you’re also watching other people, which is kind of weird. And maybe that’s nice, maybe that’s a positive thing in some ways. [But at Bastion,] if two people were sitting at a counter, I wanted it to be the two of them and then all of us working here, and nobody else. So since it’s rounded, you innately shifted toward the person you’re with. You forget about all the other people.

Elizabeth–
And there are tables, but they’re all against the wall.

Josh–
And that’s a different experience.

Elizabeth–
You wanted it to be two separate styles?

Josh–
Yeah. Groups of two or three would be at the bar, three or four would be at the tables, and then bigger groups would be at the big table. It’s three different experiences. But when you’re sitting at a line at the counter and you’re trying to talk to someone four seats away from you, it makes the whole room louder. It affects everyone.

On placating the health department.

Elizabeth–
I was thinking about my experiences at Bastion, and I love the little entry bar, because it feels like the womb before—it’s smaller, the ceiling is way dropped. And then you go into the restaurant, and I would still say it’s even like a cave, in a way. The lighting is really cool, and it’s darker and intimate. How intentional was that little bar into the restaurant? Was that a happy accident?

Josh–
Initially, I wanted the little bar to be a walk-in cooler. Like, a walk-in cooler-style door, and then you see someone walk in and you don’t see where they go.

Elizabeth–
And then they all died in the walk-in cooler. [Laughs]

Josh–
It would also be a way to force the cooks to be cleaner! [Laughing] And it would kind of be this cool entry thing that you’d walk through. The health department didn’t like that.

Elizabeth–
So Kelly was one of the main bakers at Dozen, which is a cool way that New Hat can relate to food in a way, but I don’t know if you can talk about part of the design of the restaurant being for the employees, not just for the patrons.

Kelly–
Usually the design is, you start with the public space, and then the kitchen kind of fits where it can. And I’ve never eaten in the restaurant [Bastion], so I don’t know where your stations are.

Josh–
Everything is exposed. The dish area is hidden, but no one wants to see that.

Elizabeth–
[Bastion’s setup] is a bit of a performance. My experience, especially sitting at the bar, you’re watching an artist scoop the ice cream, warming up the spoon, dragging it across the ice cream just so to form a little egg shape. Everything’s so measured, and part of it is that you want everyone to see that.

Josh–
I think it’s part of the charm, especially in the advent of the Food Network and foodie culture, whatever you want to call it. People see it on TV all the time. I remember someone saying, “I feel like a judge on ‘Top Chef’ everytime I eat here.”

Elizabeth–
Did you want people to feel that?

Josh–
I like when people come in and are not super critical, just because it’s about the whole experience, not each individual [part]. There’s so much subjectivity in a plate of food.

On creative blocks.

Elizabeth–
I remember one time here for Nacho Friday, and as you always do, you came and said hello. And I asked how it’s going, and you had this really honest moment with me that I won’t forget, and you said, “I don’t know, I’m just having a creative block right now.” I’m curious, what does that mean to you, when you have a creative block? I have it, we have it all the time. I’ll be sitting at a computer and have all the elements here, but I can’t see how to arrange them right now. I know how to do this—this is my job!—but there’s something blocking me.

Josh–
A good plate of food, at least at Bastion, is something new but familiar at the same time. How do you both of those things? How do you make someone recognize it but also feel like they’ve had it before? It’s kind of impossible.

Elizabeth–
That’s our checkmark, too—foreign but familiar. Going back to the holistic design—all parts are considered, all details matter. You chose to go with local potter John Donovan for some of your dishes. How involved are you in that process—shape, color?

Josh–
That was a super-cool process. We were looking at textures in the room, the colors and textures and shapes of things.

Kelly– Are there any dream collaborations? Any plans for working with other small designers?

Josh–
We did a dinner with Brett Douglas Hunter, and he made these chairs, and every chair had a personality trait. So like if you sat in one chair, you’d have to speak in Beatles lyrics or something. I think there was one with a little cubby underneath, and the woman sitting in it had to steal stuff off the table and hide it in the cubby without anyone noticing. It was super fun. The food’s just kind of there then.

Elizabeth–
It was an art experience with the food-art experience, which is really something that should happen more often.

Kelly–
It’s a natural marriage.

Elizabeth–
It is! Because the food is art, which is cool about what you’re doing. It’s why the color of the plate matters, because you’re considering what the food looks like. Do you work with your team on that, or is plating all your vision?

Josh–
We’re really collaborative. The longer someone’s been here, the more they can start to contribute because they know the vibe and what we’re trying to do. I think, as a whole, it makes the whole experience spectrum wider, because you have more brains.

Oil/Lumber’s handmade clothing and furniture are designed to exist and change with people over the years, and in the same way, the company’s studio has grown and changed with them.

The materials used in Oil/Lumber clothing and furniture are natural, recycled, organic, and they go far: A beautifully cut jacket might be made of the same material that will be used to upholster a sofa. Founder Ethan Summers is half Japanese and grew up making shibori, and many of his designs draw from items of his family’s heritage, such as a tiny, beautiful jacket he used to wear when he was five years old. He’s continued that tradition, now collaborating with Patagonia, Bar Otaku, and hotels like Noelle.

The studio for Oil/Lumber is clean and simple—the equivalent of a basic white T done perfectly. It’s located in a giant converted warehouse, with offices, industrial sewing machines, massive cutting tables and a classic showroom existing effortlessly in one open space, with wood and metalworking done in a cavernous shared basement. But first, it all started at Fort Houston, back when the co-working hub was located in the May Hosiery building.

When the creatives of Fort Houston were forced to move, Summers set out with a few friends—Adam Gatchel of Southern Lights Electric, Luke Stockdale of Sideshow Side Co., and Bingham Barnes and Drew Binkley of silkscreen company Grand Palace—to find a new place to land. The warehouse, located near the fairgrounds, had no air conditioning, no interior walls, no big glass garage doors that allow light to spill in. But they saw potential, and what was once the practice facility for the Nashville Roller Derby (the floor is still stained with a ring from so many roller-skated laps) is now a co-working space for Oil/Lumber, New Hat and many others.

How do you use the space?

We cut and sew all the garments here. We design them all here. And then the furniture the same way. We sometimes outsource some of the upholstery down the street, but for the most part, we upholster all our sofas and chairs right here. We have all the machines to do it, and that’s the only way I can control how good it is, is if we have our hands on every piece of a project. That doesn’t mean you make more money. It usually means you make a lot less, but I just couldn’t find anyone to do the level of stuff that we wanted at the quantity we had.

How has the space changed with you?

We were doing all the welding and screwing and doing it all up here [in the showroom space]. As we’ve grown, people have either decreased their size downstairs or expanded, and [we’re] just like, ‘Can we take this? Alright, we’ll expand.’ And now we have 3,000 square feet downstairs that’s dedicated just to that.

The clothing’s gotten bigger. We didn’t have a cutting table [at first]. Now we need two of these big ones. So we’re just scaling and trying to figure it out. We’re doing it a different way. Elizabeth Suzann–we’re trying to replicate what they do, just on the men’s side. So how they’ve scaled over time is what we’re trying to do.

How far do you think you’ll expand?

The plan is to always make everything here. Regardless, we would never outsource the manufacturing, and if we did, it probably wouldn’t be my company anymore.

With the mixed sense of a showroom and a workshop, this room feels a bit like a restaurant where the kitchen is open to the dining room, or like coffee shops with the bull pit at the center of the room. The work you do is really on display.

No one knows how stuff’s made. We say it’s handmade, but no one knows what that means. They see it as a buzzword sometimes. . . . The hard part is educating people who aren’t local. We sell most of our stuff online, and when people buy it, I’m like, ‘What do know about us?’ and they’re like, ‘I just like the jacket. I bought it.’ That’s great, but you need to know what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.

I do every button hole still. I do ever bar tack myself because it’s the last part. I kind of QC everything myself. There’s still levels of that we have to do.

How do you replicate this experience of being in this room?

We want to be as genuine as possible and make sure that they know we’re not playing the game, and that it still looks beautiful and looks cool. . . . Even if that’s made in China, Korea, wherever, someone’s hand-sewing that, and it’s kind of cool to know if it’s made by somebody.

And it’s got to be across the board. We claim to be as sustainable as we can be. We don’t claim to be 100 percent sustainable because I’m not 100 percent perfect. If I claim that, I will get called out. Whenever we get a decision [whether] we can make it sustainable, we usually choose yes. The only reason I wouldn’t is because we don’t know enough about it or we don’t have enough money to do it.

Those shorts over there, they’re [made from a material called] cocoTEX, which is 80 percent recycled bottles and 20 percent coconut husks that we weave into it to make it strong.

We’re doing a fleece for the fall, like a standard knit fleece. We’ve never done that. The debate is whether to go organic cotton, which is awesome but it doesn’t function as well, or you can get recycled polyester. It’s the first polyester that can be biodegradable. It’s a huge company called Polartec. They give to Patagonia, North Face, and just released this brand-new fabric that’s supposed to be revolutionary.

How do you expand while staying true to yourself and your company?

Quality just can’t drop. On anything. I didn’t think I was a perfectionist, but we hired new people and Mike was like, ‘Man, you might be a perfectionist, because stuff’s got to be so perfect in your eyes.’

I’m very hands-on with both [furniture and clothing]. I do all the designs from the ground up. . . . Furniture stuff I’m probably more versed in because I’ve built it for so long. It’s pretty straight-foward, working with materials that never change, like wood. Wood is always the same. It can move a little bit, but clothing, between this material and this material, an armpit can be different even though it’s sewn exactly the same way. Fabric stretches and pulls and fits everyone’s shoulders differently. That’s something to get used to, but now I feel like we’re on equal playing field with both.

What’s next?

We’re trying to move the furniture into more direct-to-consumer, like the clothing. I have Ikea stuff, but some of it’s like, you can buy one thing that will last you 20 years, or buy one thing you buy every three years. We’re trying to educate people on, this is a solid hardwood table. A thousand dollars for materials is not crazy.

Our differentiator is that we do both. If you do one or the other, it’s not really that different. All the things that make you weird as a kid are the creative things that you push away for the longest time, and if you end up doing it professionally, that’s the things that make you better. All the things that make us weird, spin it, use it as art, differentiate.