Bad Idea, Good Design: New wine bar in East Nashville highlights local makers

Story By: Lindsay DeCarlo and Read Ezell

Originally published in Nashville Interiors—see the article here on page 88.

Photography by Daniel Meigs
Nashville Design Week 2023

In 2021, as the pandemic forced everyone, especially the hospitality industry, to reevaluate their priorities, Alex Burch decided to open his own restaurant.

Given the timing and the state of the restaurant industry, it was hard not to think that this might be a bad idea. That fact became a tongue-in-cheek rallying cry for Alex. Today, it is the name of his newly opened restaurant in a beautifully reborn former church in East Nashville.

Bad Idea isn’t just a new restaurant. It is a celebration of wine exploration, an expression of Nashville’s design talent, and a testament to creative collaboration.

After managing the wine lists at Nashville favorites, Bastion and Henrietta Red, since 2016, Alex set out to create a restaurant unlike anything else in the city. As a sommelier, he knew Nashville lacked a wine-focused restaurant. Alex sought to emphasize great wine and wine education while making it fun and approachable. Together with Chef Colby Rasavong, Bad Idea features an evolving menu designed to complement its ever-changing wine list.

This community focus started with the way Alex funded the restaurant. Rather than traditional investors, he turned to the community he’d built in Nashville, opening a campaign on the equity crowdfunding platform Wefunder to raise capital. Today, over 150 neighbors of the restaurant, former colleagues, and Nashville community members and collaborators are investors in Bad Idea.

Alex, in turn, invested in collaborations with some of Nashville’s most talented designers to bring his vision to life. While he was at Bastion, its Big Bar hosted events for Nashville Design Week, including the Calendar Launch Party in 2019. Already well connected in Nashville’s culinary scene, events such as this exposed Alex to the deep design talent in his home city. 

I always thought it was a bad idea to open a wine bar in Nashville.

The design collaboration on Bad Idea began with motion branding shop Lasso Studio. Long before the restaurant was funded, Alex reached out to Allen and Lindsey Laseter, the husband and wife team behind Lasso Studio, to create a brand identity for Bad Idea. “Alex was drawn to the work we did for the Nashville Design Week 2021,” said Lindsey Laseter. “With Nashville Design Week, we were given total creative freedom and leaned into our own approach and style, so it felt great that Alex responded to something that was truly ‘us,’ and trusted us with the same freedom.”

“Alex falls into the camp of founders who know what speaks to them. He had a clear vision, thoughtfully bringing in the partners needed, and trusting the creatives to do what they do. Alex is steadfast, and that shows in the project.”

“We worked to create something quirky, toeing the line of irreverent,” continued Lindsey. “I remember Alex saying, ‘I always thought it was a bad idea to open a wine bar in Nashville,’ that just really stuck with me. The name is irreverent, so the challenge was to create a brand identity that was too.” 

Lasso’s system for Bad Idea confidently exercises type, illustration, and color. Much like the space, the brand is at once playful, elevated, and relaxed. “It doesn’t have to be rigid to feel unified and impactful,” says Lindsey. A more artful approach felt right, with bold brand illustrations leading the way as a clear visual to represent how Bad Idea’s approach to wine and food is joyfully unexpected.

This is not the first time wine has been served here.

“With Nashville’s rapid growth, it’s difficult to find a distinctive space with character, especially in a great location,” said Alex. But in a former church nearly destroyed in the March 2020 tornado, Alex found just that. The building at the corner of Russell Street and South 11th Street was redesigned and revived by EOA Architects with a team led by Principal Tracey Ford and Senior Project Architect Keith Bush. “It was a rare opportunity to get to work with such a unique space, especially one in reconstruction. I feel incredibly fortunate to go beyond restoration and create something new and distinctive with such fantastic local talent,” said Alex.

For the interiors, Alex engaged Design Object, a design firm led by Jesse Brown, Lauren McCloud, and Abi Spear. Design Object took on Bad Idea’s interior design as one of their first projects as a new studio. “In a place with a storied past, this is not the first time wine has been served here,” said Jesse Brown, “with an atmosphere as eclectic and lively as the wine selection, guests are welcome to come as they are and break bread over their favorite bottle.”

“Bad Idea offers a unique experience, taking risks with bold color and contrasting modern forms against a historic backdrop,” describes Abi Spear. “Whimsical details, sophisticated patterns, and laid-back furnishings create an unexpected spirit of self-assured playfulness.”

Design Object brought in art and design studio New Hat, also a former Nashville Design Week brand partner, and expert at pattern play. “It takes a lot of vision to do something different without overcomplicating it. Design Object had the creativity to see that the patterns and compositions we design transcend wallcoverings and invited us to do something entirely new here,” described New Hat Founder Elizabeth Williams. 

New Hat wove inspiration from the building’s window frames, an eye motif, a droplet, and elements from Lasso’s brand identity to create an avante-garde composition that is at once reflective of the building and playful in approach. The design comes to life with a millwork wall and printed pattern acrylic “cloud” that floats above the bar. New Hat and Design Object worked closely with local furniture and millwork fabricator Mesa to print and fabricate the bar cloud.

The space was brought to life by general contractor The MCR Group, who oversaw the construction of the breathtaking space, and Aberdeen Studio, who fabricated the center bar. 

“There aren’t many people as stalwart as Alex. We are all independent small business owners and identified with Alex and what he is doing with Bad Idea,” said Elizabeth. “The amount of great practitioners working on this project is evident in the results. All of us really believed in Alex and his vision.” 

Bad Idea is open at 1021 Russell Street in East Nashville. Follow Bad Idea on Instagram @badideanashville and book a reservation at badideanashville.com.

 

Not Missed Connection: The story of how two Nashville Design Week contributors met

Story By: Jayla Jackson
Photos By: Joana Vargas
Nashville Design Week 2023

The saying often goes life imitates art. For photographer, Daniel Meigs and architect, Heather Crabtree, they consider themselves a match made in heaven. The couple met in 2018 during the very first Nashville Design Week, but it wasn’t until now that the pair decided to give us a peek inside their story. “We normally have different accounts of how things went down,” Meigs jokingly said. “Normally she’ll correct me.” What was initially painted as a casual night out resulted as an unprecedented beginning to their happily ever after.

Jayla Jackson–
So, tell me your story.

Heather Crabtree
We initially met at the first Design Week. We met really in passing first, Lindsey DeCarlo introduced us at an event at Alfred Williams.

Later that same year, both went to a small get together at a mutual friend’s house and sat next to each other during a group conversation.

We ended up having a really great conversation that he remembers little to none of which is fine but it’s funny because the conversation made a huge impression on me. According to Daniel, I asked him out, but according to me he asked me out. We went on a date which neither of us knew was a date of just two friends hanging out. About a month later, we went on a real date to Otaku in The Gulch.

Daniel Meigs
All of that is factual. Heather was flirting with me and I think that was at the New York Times party that I was asked to shoot. I was like we should go look at Christmas lights together. Later, Heather came up to me and said “Well if we’re going to go look at Christmas lights, I should get your number.” And I was like, yeah, okay. For some reason I was really excited about this date. We went around saw the lights, had a couple of drinks, and it was really good.

“We went on a date which neither of us knew was a date of just two friends hanging out.”

Jayla Jackson
What was your first impression of each other?

Daniel Meigs–
My first impression I remember was, I really like this person. I felt comfortable having a conversation with her. For me as an introvert, it was nice and refreshing to have a three-hour conversation with somebody and feel like, “wow, that was great”.

Heather Crabtree
My first impression of him was that he was easy to talk to and I enjoyed that. He had sort of an adventurous, go-getter spirit. 

For me as an introvert, it was nice and refreshing to have a three-hour conversation with somebody and feel like, “wow, that was great”.

While several consider 2020’s Covid-19 Pandemic as a lingering, dark, cloud paired with a nationwide lockdown, Meigs, a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Crabtree, a native of Pawleys Island, South Carolina found a silver lining while spending time with each other throughout that challenging time.

Heather Crabtree–

We officially started dating December of 2019. It was about three months before Covid hit. In that time, we were the only people each other saw besides his kids. We were constantly spending time with each other cooking in Daniel’s kitchen and making absurd frozen cocktails. We just had such a positive experience amidst the negative happenings in the world.

Daniel Meigs–
I could talk about our experience during Covid for a long time. That was almost like our official time to get to know each other. You hear about divorces during Covid all the time, but we had the opposite experience.

Jayla Jackson
What are you looking forward to the rest of this year?

Daniel Meigs–

Heather is designing a master bedroom edition for our house. That’s a big thing we’re looking forward to and there’s a lot of moving pieces to it. Also, we have our Gulf Shores, Alabama trip coming up, so we’re excited about that as well.

“I could talk about our experience during Covid for a long time. That was almost like our official time to get to know each other. You hear about divorces during Covid all the time, but we had the opposite experience.”

Fireside chat with the Fabulous Five

Story By: Veronica Foster
Featuring: LeXander Bryant, Kelly Diehl, Emmanuel LeGrair, Ethan Summers & Elizabeth Williams
Nashville Design Week 2022

Come sit around the proverbial fire with us, as I share the story of how five creatives in different disciplines found each other and created something beautiful.

When you see a final editorial photograph, maybe you don’t think about the story that led to the fashion, artistic direction, and overall mood of the piece. However, when you see the photo of Emmanuel LeGrair amidst a myriad of patterns leaning not-so-casually under an ominous looking security camera, you might just pause to wonder. Where is this beautifully juxtaposed backdrop? How were these fabrics so artfully placed along this chain-link fence, and why does it work so well?

“it so magically came together because we just so easily trusted each other. It was so conceptually and strangely rich.”

If you weren’t curious before, I welcome you to sit around the proverbial fire with us, as I share the story of how five creatives in different disciplines found each other and created something beautiful.

I was getting ready to meet the Fabulous Five, as I’ll refer to them, at Monday Night Brewing in Germantown, so I set us up in a circle where I could get the full effect of the collaborative energy. The temperature was a perfect 80 degrees with a slight breeze in the shade, and in that moment, I knew this would be a special conversation.

LeXander Bryant arrived first, and I was already inundated with how effortlessly cool this group was about to be. LeXander is a photographer and visual artist, and if you didn’t know him before this year, you would absolutely recognize his name from his recent show, FORGET ME NOTS, at the Frist Art Museum. Ethan Summers, owner of clothing brand Oil + Lumber, arrived next with an electric smile on his face. I actually got to witness Ethan and LeXander meeting for the very first time despite being two integral pieces of this collaboration.

Manny LeGrair, stylist and Programming Design Director for Nashville Design Week, walked up in a fresh white button down, but everyone’s eyes in the circle were looking at the kimono draped demurely over his legs. The surface design duo that makes up New Hat Projects, Kelly Diehl and Elizabeth Williams, each arrived a few minutes late completing our circle. Each member of this Fabulous Five was effortless, warm, and full of joy when we sat down for our conversation. So, now that we’re all together, I can finally share the story about the unique collaboration behind that mysterious photograph.

It all began 5 years ago with a meet-cute at the closing party of the inaugural Nashville Design Week. It was a block party setting where creatives, including Kelly and Elizabeth, had pop-ups displayed to showcase their work. Manny recalls showing up at their table and introducing himself as a fan of their work.  He shares, “They had this concrete linked necklace on display that I was fawning over. It was probably not meant to be worn, but I just started talking to them and decided to put it on my person. That was the moment that kind of solidified my weirdness with them that would become our friendship”.

Clearly this was not the first time that Manny had formed friendships over art, design, and fashion appreciation. He recalls meeting Ethan at a Porter Flea some time ago where Oil / Lumber had a booth set up. When other people’s work inspires Manny, he describes it as “love at first sight”. He has a sixth sense for creativity and quality, but his real superpower is making the connection with the makers, as he did with the minds behind New Hat and Oil / Lumber.

Ethan cuts in to share his admiration for Manny in the way he curates his purchases. “I appreciate that while most buyers are a one-and-done, you aren’t reactive. You are the kind of customer who asks questions. How am I going to wear this? You are invested in knowing about us, and that’s a lifelong customer.” When you really try to describe Manny’s curated look, it’s so clear that he chooses each piece carefully upon purchase, but also in how everything is styled. Most people wouldn’t know how to mix and match patterns, but then you see Manny rocking animal print loafers like they were made for him. But wait, let’s talk about things that actually were made for him.

Last year, Manny got a text from his old friend who was visiting family in Ghana. She sent 5 pictures of different types of fabric, and asks Manny if he wants her to bring it back for him. A whole bolt of fabric for $30? Of course he said yes, but you know Manny wasn’t going to wing this. He had no idea what this fabric would be when he got it a few months later, so he started by asking his friend some questions about what she thought would be culturally appropriate considering Manny isn’t Ghanain. After scrolling for inspiration, he spotted a kimono, thinking about the creative mix of cultures that could take shape.

Guess who was making kimono-style jackets at exactly the same time? Oil + Lumber, of course. At this point, it is years after Ethan and Manny not only formed a friendship, but Manny set himself apart as a Oil / Lumber advocate. Manny goes to Ethan and asks if he could create this unique piece for him, unsure of how he might react, unsure if it was even possible with the material. Ethan would not just do this for anyone. He told Manny he would do it just for him, but it would take some time since Oil / Lumber didn’t necessarily have the capacity to take on custom orders in addition to focusing on their own line. When both admiration and friendship exist in the same relationship, you create the special sauce for collaboration.

Four months later, once the kimono was constructed, it was clear that it could not be kept a secret. Oil / Lumber have a studio space right across the hall from New Hat, so when Manny went to go pick up the kimono, he squealed, then immediately went across the hall to show Kelly and Elizabeth. The momentum shift was palpable. Elizabeth immediately says, “Let’s shoot it.” In response to their proposal to contribute other patterned fabrics and textiles among other brainstorming, Manny says, “Sure, let’s go all out. Let’s do everything we can to make this happen.”

Elizabeth pauses the story, reflecting,  “You don’t get to do things for no reason, you don’t get to make things just because you want to. Since we’ve all been in the game for a little while, we could be like, let’s just make it because we want to make it. That’s what made this so special.”

Flashing back to the collaboration in progress, the team began considering the perfect photographer who could elevate the vision into an art. Elizabeth and Kelly finally suggested LeXander, and Manny’s first thought was, “He’s doing a show at the Frist, I mean, can we even get this guy?”

Thankfully for all of us, he agreed, and it turns out Manny was not the only one with admiration. LeXander remembers running into Manny fairly recently. All he says is, “you came in and you had the clutch…,” and everyone in the circle bursts into laughter at his expression, “it’s not even my style, but man, you get it off, why did you even bring that out?” Manny simply responds, “Because you have to. Why not?”

Knowing LeXander’s perspective of Manny played a lot into how he decided to set the scene for the final shoot. LeXander shares, “Most of my work, it’s a slower pace, I feel like it makes you want to slow down and think, but Manny, you can feel his energy and his passion is more like New York, you know, where it’s busy, it’s chaotic.” Ultimately, Manny was going to be modeling this kimono, so his energy had to be the inspiration.

Even though this mood was outside LeXander’s style, there was a great deal of trust as the collaboration started to take its full shape. He shares how much fun he had in the process, “It’s rare that collaborations are fun. Sometimes they’re just necessary, but this was one of those ones where everyone has some skin in the game, we all working, but it’s fun.” LeXander knew that the team trusted him to find the right place for the shoot. He also trusted that the intention behind the photos would cut through any complicated background, so when he was on his scout and saw the chaos of construction on 2nd Ave, he just knew. His immediate thought was that it doesn’t feel like it’s in Nashville.

“It’s rare that collaborations are fun. Sometimes they’re just necessary, but this was one of those ones where everyone has some skin in the game, we all working, but it’s fun.”

Ethan, who wasn’t involved in the creative process of the shoot, actually remembers seeing the photos after they came out and wondering if they went to another city to do the shoot. Urban feeling shoots may be really hard to do in Nashville, but the cool, chaotic spots are cropping up more and more as construction takes over. They won’t last forever when the new shiny thing replaces it, so really it emphasizes that this is simply a moment in time.

Elizabeth reflects that on the day of the shoot, they were just following LeXander in his car, thinking, “Oh God, we’re right by the bombing site, but it so magically came together because we just so easily trusted each other. It was so conceptually and strangely rich.”

So concludes the mystery behind that rich photoshoot, years in the making, but full of happenstance. I asked the group, “how does this collaboration represent ‘what’s new’”? Kelly put it so beautifully, saying, “New ideas happen with experimentation. When you are in the capitalism grind you don’t have the luxury of experimenting, so it’s kind of nice to all meet at the same place and have the freedom to collaborate.”

While the Fabulous Five didn’t all meet directly because of Nashville Design Week, it has brought each of them together one time or another, and this is the kind of community we want to see cultivated year after year. LeXander concludes, “Sometimes, you work with people and the work is good, but you don’t really care to stay in touch with them, but I feel like this is one of those projects where this won’t be the last time you see us together.”

 

In Conversation with Clarence Edward Simpson: Nashville’s Best Kept Secret

Story By: Veronica Foster
Featuring: Clarence Edward
Nashville Design Week 2022

We had the pleasure of interviewing Clarence Edward Simpson, owner of Cë Gallery in Madison, and new project, Cëcret, in Wedgewood Houston. What’s unique about his gallery experience is all about the “experience”. While curating shows seemed to be a natural evolution for Clarence Edward, it’s not just about the art on the walls. He makes art both elevated and approachable by first, setting the scene around a show and then hosting accessible pop-up events inspired directly by the essence of the artist. From regular sound bath meditations to unique events, like “Prosecco & P Funk” to go with the renowned funk musician, George Clinton’s, visual art showcase, Cëcret is clearly burgeoning into a special community. We know our Design Week community will want to join in to see “What’s New.”

It was a joy to get to know Clarence Edward, and I am just as excited to share an excerpt from our interview on July 25, 2022

Veronica Foster–
Tell us a little bit about yourself! Since you’re a Nashville native who has lived out of state for awhile, how did you make your journey back home?

Clarence Edward–
I am a Nashville Native, but I knew my goal was always to go to New York City. I was like, Nashville was not for me. I left Nashville right after high school at 17 and went to college in Memphis to study Communication and Fine Arts.

During my senior year, my advisors said, “you’re not going to graduate unless you do an internship.” In Memphis at the time all I had was Nike and FedEx. And I was like, I’m just too fabulous for this! Like, I cannot do it! I’ve always thrown underground parties, so I literally rented out a vacant space and just put all my friends’ artwork in one space. My family always had art around for sure, but I didn’t have a formal gallery or museum experience until I did it for myself. I had no idea. I had no idea I was doing shows, but people came in and bought work. My beginning phases were natural and just happened out of nowhere.

VF–
You said Nashville wasn’t for you, so why are you here? Why are you back?

CE
I would do shows when I came home for the holidays, so I was doing shows in vacant dive bars at Printer’s Alley for locals. My family was like Nashville is growing, Nashville is progressing. During the pandemic, I was doing my research and I’m like why is Nashville popping up on Buzzfeed, why is it on everybody’s top 10 lists, so I’m like something has to be up. After year one, year two into the pandemic, I went to check out Atlanta for about three weeks. Studied. I’m like, Atlanta don’t need me, they got enough Black gay dudes. There’s so many of me here that I’m gonna just go home to Nashville. I hadn’t even realized SoHo house had opened in Nashville. And I was like, hold on, something’s happened. So let me just take this shot on this venue that I found.

VF–
So you just got back and last year, you already jumped right into Design Week to host an event. Clearly you’re thinking, “I just got home, we’re just gonna dive in”. You’ve been diving in since the beginning of time. Tell us about a special memory from the Design Week event you hosted.

CE–
I felt like I wasn’t ready for Design Week. To be honest. I remember when Hunter Claire and I first met and she was like, “You should do Design Week” and I’m like, “Girl, I just moved back home”. Like, I opened my business in February [2021]. Then I get an email from this girl named Camila who signed me up for Design Week. She said, “The program got chosen. We got work to do”.

I had to get a crash course on that in preparation for this event for design. Then in the midst of that I’m learning, the metaverse is becoming a phenomenon. It was definitely a challenge for me. But to see the gallery in the metaverse, in action on the wall, is still, to this day, one of my favorite videos on my Instagram page. I’m fortunate and thankful for Design Week putting us on the map on that level. Because after that, I feel like I have to maintain the standard. As Nashville grows, I know that Nashville Design Week is going to be something that people in other countries are going to look at as a source for design when they’re coming to Nashville. I’m just proud.

VF–
The theme for Design Week this year is “What’s New”, so what feels new for you? Since you’re coming home does it feel new?


CE–
Oh, everything feels new, actually. I mean, I drive around and I forget some of the things that were there before. I spent years in New York just hoping and wishing and dreaming for like this moment. And in New York, it would have taken me 20 years to get to this level. The Nashville community is so welcoming and so open. As soon as you come here and you say, what you want to do, the resources start coming. It’s in your hands, whether you make it happen or not. If you’re authentic, you bring your role, then the arts community will support you. I want to say in terms of newness, it’s just inspirations that I’ve seen in other places that I’m excited to bring home to a lot of new people.

VF–
That’s really good insight. Do you feel like the welcoming aspect of Nashville is what’s so unique about the art scene? Or do you think there’s something else there?

CE–
Yes, and it’s not common, especially in the art world. I mean, it’s a gatekeeping industry. Because art is a luxury, you know, it’s not a necessity. It’s something that you know, you got to be in rooms, you got to be in a certain space, speak certain languages, and it can be it can get to a level of pretentiousness, but Nashville because it has such a small art community, but it’s very, very vibrant. And I think music has a lot to do with that as well. And I think that because music and art are not too far from each other, that it’s an easy flow. It’s a genuine flow. And I love that about Nashville specifically.

VF–
You also have this background in communications and it’s clear your space is so much more than just curating the art on the walls. We walked into the space and there was music playing that created this funk vibe that set the tone before you even processed seeing George Clinton’s “Grooves from the Deep” show on the walls.

CE–
The experience is very important to me. Every artist that I work with, it’s almost like we start with a therapy session. I ask, “when you created that piece, what mood did you have, what candle did you have on or what music were you playing,” because at the end of the day, it does matter. Artists feel fulfilled when whatever they were trying to express is related to the audience.

It’s my job as a curator to make sure that when you walk in here, you feel like you walked into the artist’s thought process.

VF–
That’s so special. I want to sit down with you and be a fly on the wall when you’re having those conversations.

CE–
It’s my job as a curator to make sure that when you walk in here, you feel like you walked into the artist’s thought process or their studio. With George Clinton, he wanted minimalism, and he wanted the art to be the focus in the funk, because everybody ideally sees him as a legendary musician when he’s actually more than that.

You know, what I love is that within these pieces, people who are diehard George Clinton fans see the connection, they see the mathematics, the atomic dog, the spaceships, the Funkadelic part of it, and then being able to, like make these connections.

VF–
Do you think the general public is more appreciative of art and getting to do these moments now?

CE–
I’m literally getting bombarded. If my sign’s out there, they’re coming in. Nashville is just not accustomed to a Black man gallerist. There’s only two Black-owned galleries in the city that are already very eclectic. I don’t like the level of being intimidated by gallery experiences. I bring in a very underground view. I love to have music. I love to have DJs and parties, date nights, and meditations amongst the work.

I’m bringing in underground artists who honestly probably have never been to Downtown galleries or some have never been shown in galleries before. It’s just the world that I’ve liked being in and been intrigued by, just educating people on having an artist statement, having PDFs of your work, the commission process, the measurement of how your work should be displayed, etc.

I also tell every artist that I work with, “your work is going to be on display, but be prepared for your work to be an interactive experience.” I want galleries to be very accessible, like I want to be open at midnight amongst the mecca of creativity rather than close at 5 pm on a Saturday.

VF–
Is there anyone who’s inspiring you right now?

CE–
One of my best friends just opened a coffee shop called No Free Coffee right down the street. His name is Mario Christian and was doing very very well and people always wanted to have coffee dates with him just to like, pick his brains, and he was just like no more free coffee dates with people, so that’s where “no free coffee” came from. He just moved back home to open his coffee shop and to see people’s reaction and then being receptive to it… it’s almost like an out of body experience.

Studio Visit: Lasso Studio

Story By: Priya Ollapally
Featuring: Allen & Lindsey Lasseter
Nashville Design Week 2021

Husband-and-wife team Allen and Lindsey Laseter weren’t always planning to marry their talents professionally. Lindsey spent ten years in branding, graphic design, and strategy at traditional digital agencies and branding studios while Allen — an animator, illustrator and director with a background in film — worked independently for much of his career. But a perfect storm of introspection, external factors at work, and shifting perspectives through the pandemic showed them what it could mean to join forces creatively.

They have just launched Lasso, their official studio as Partners and Creative Directors, and they spoke with Nashville Design Week about what it means to reflect on the life you want and deliberately design your careers around that shared vision.

Who is Lasso Studio?

Lindsey–
Lasso is our creative studio. We specialize in motion-focused branding, creating brand identities with motion design as a core component, which allows us to combine our areas of expertise. So for me, that’s graphic design, strategy & branding and for Allen that’s animation and illustration. We both had been working in our own careers for the last ten years, and it’s really because of Nashville Design Week – the opportunity to brand it last year – that we saw the opportunity to pursue being an official studio. We had chatted about it casually before but we realized “Oh, this is something that we could actually do.”

Allen–
Working in animation there hasn’t been a lot of focus on branding. Typical projects might be an explainer video, web content, maybe a music video every now and then with animation, occasionally a narrative short for a publication.

We realized that there were many talented animation studios and brand & design studios, but very few who brought those two components together to both be equal and integral to a brand. Animation adds the chance to tell a deeper story. Elements of traditional design were typically restricted to a static form, and now we can expand so far beyond with how fast everything is evolving.

Lindsey–
With traditional design, digital design, animation, and illustration all under one roof we realized we could really do some incredible work that we couldn’t do alone. We can bring expertise from both worlds to every project. It’s an opportunity for a seamless marriage of two art forms: motion and design building upon one another. Plus, we could work together, and learn from one another… our skills and passions were opposites, and a great complement in how we’d run the business.

We also wanted to form our studio around the life that we really want to live. That’s been exciting to think about: how we can do work we’re passionate about, but live the family life we want to live as well as make time for the things that excite us beyond commercial work.

“We realized we could work together, learn from one another…our skills and passions were opposites and a great complement in how we’d run the business.”

What is motion-led branding? How is it different from traditional branding?

Lindsey–
Motion-led branding to us means using classic graphic design and motion and animation as key components to one another. So many brand studios create beautiful brands but they lack the layer and power of motion. So many animation studios create impeccable motion pieces and videos, but they often are created without a brand system at the heart. We’re merging what we love to create work that can take the idea of branding to the next level in our increasingly digital world.

It was exciting to realize our skills and industries could be combined and give us the opportunity to grow together, both personally and professionally.

“You realize your work is still important to you, but satisfaction and joy is so much bigger than work.”

What were your careers like before forming Lasso Studio?

Lindsey–
Allen originally went to school for filmmaking, and that’s where we met, at art school (Watkins College of Art, Design & Film). His career was focused on directing and cinematography when he first got out of school. He’s self-taught in animation and illustration which has always blown me away.

Allen–
It was out of necessity because I was looking for work when I was still doing live-action stuff and a job fell into my lap that was more animation-focused. I had just enough experience working with After Effects to take it on, not realizing how much I still needed to know. So then I had this whirlwind experience, basically learning how to animate on the job.

Lindsey–
Allen’s always been independent and freelance his whole career, but I worked in-house in agencies and studios, so I was used to a more traditional nine-to-five-with-a-boss type of thing. I was always very intimidated by the idea of going independent. Allen had encouraged me to do it years ago, but when one spouse is independent, it’s nice to have the stability of a full-time job and insurance.

I actually lost my last full-time job. I was working as a Creative Director in house for a hospitality company and made that shift to a leadership role to grow but also to shift how we lived and worked as we had our daughter.

You know, early on in your career, you’re so passionate about the work. It’s all about the work; you’re spending late nights staying up to work, just because you’re excited about it. I worked at the digital agency redpepper and then the branding studio Perky Brothers — I was on fire to be creating incredible work. But after all those years, our priorities started to shift and so did our goals for how we wanted to work and live. You reach burnout when you only prioritize work. You realize your work is still important to you, but satisfaction and joy is so much bigger than work.

Losing my job was kind of a magical thing because after I returned to that in-house job for maternity leave, I recognized it wasn’t the right thing for me long term, and the next week I was called into the office with HR to be told they were restructuring and no longer needed me. It naturally flowed into freelance for me, which I don’t think I would have pursued on my own. It was one of those things where a power that is greater than you knows better than you do.

Having the chance to be a freelancer showed me how working independently was perfect for how I wanted to work and connect with people. Then the opportunity to brand Nashville Design Week came and we really saw the potential of joining forces.

Establishing a new business together, what are the decisions you’re making as a couple and business partners?

We’re working with a business advisor called Ellevated Outcomes that’s based here in Nashville. So much of our work with them is doing a lot of deep thinking about who we want to be, who our ideal client is  and getting clear on the unseen work of how our business works and evolves as we grow. We both had ideas early on about what got us personally really excited, and now we’re breaking it down, thinking in terms of functioning as a business: what to charge and how much our time is worth, what’s the value with the addition of branding and motion together since it’s not as common, but is more and more valuable.

Allen–
Right now we’re pretty happy  just being a two-person operation. We have the ability to scale up to do bigger projects as needed but we don’t want to rush in to bringing on full-time staff and then be forced  to take on bigger and bigger projects just to keep the lights on. We always want the work to be satisfying in and of itself.

Lindsey–
A goal for us, too, is being able to have a studio model that supports us doing client work that we love and focusing on finding the right partners to work with. Not just being hired hands, but partners who seek us out for our approach, and our point of view to work on projects where we can make a real difference. Something that has been exciting in my career is that shift from being a young junior designer, where you just want to make things that are beautiful and cool visually, to using my skills to support a business or cause I believe in. There is so much power in using design to solve real problems.

Running our own studio as a couple is also really exciting to have the control to make business decisions based on our lives — we don’t take on a huge project if it means we can’t be together as a family and enjoy what truly matters to us. We can structure our work to support our life.

What’s your relationship with Nashville? Why were you drawn to Nashville? What sets the city apart?

Lindsey–
There were multiple times where we thought we’ll move to a bigger city, that to play in a bigger field we would need to move to a big city. We thought we were going to move to the west coast to go to San Francisco or maybe Seattle or Portland or something. It’s been really cool to see how Nashville has grown and we’re so glad we stayed. Our ideas for what we want personally and professionally have changed too, and it’s beautiful to see that evolution.

We both moved here in 2007. Nashville was still considered a small city. At that point, Nashville was really just still known as the country music capital.

Allen
It was right before the boom.

Lindsey–
It wasn’t necessarily known for such a wide range of creative industries and creative talent aside from music. I was drawn to the city because it was so friendly. I’m from South Carolina, so it was bigger than where I grew up in Greenville. A few years after we moved here,  it got the title of “It City” and suddenly there was an influx of growth, especially people moving from bigger cities which I think naturally just brings different perspectives, and ideas of how things could be approached. There’s certainly pros and cons, you know. I’ve been missing some of the character that Nashville had when it was smaller and a little less metropolitan. But so many exciting things are coming, including bigger opportunities for us creatively so I’m excited for the evolution and growth.

How did your sense of community change when you made this shift to form the studio?

Allen
I don’t know that mine has really changed. I mean, obviously the biggest thing was learning to work together and learning the language that we speak and how to give and take criticism and that kind of thing. Lindsey probably has had more of a dynamic change going from full-time to independent.

Lindsey–
I’m definitely an extroverted person and I love to be surrounded by people. My fear of going freelance was that I’d be lonely or I wouldn’t have people around me to push me.  Throughout my career,  i have made a point to reach out to people that I admire and ask to connect. If didn’t have to have a full-time job, I’d just want to meet people and essentially be a professional friend. It’s always been a gift that I credit my dad for, being able to reach out to anyone or walk up to anyone and let them know, “Hey, I really admire you. I’d love to connect and hear more about you.” And from that you just naturally learn a lot.

And so I think something that was really incredible was that instead of my world feeling smaller working independently, my community actually grew significantly. You know, you’re not in an environment where you are just talking to the same people every day – and I certainly worked with incredible people over my career, and I’m still very connected to a lot of them, which I’m grateful for – but it expanded so much. Talking to people across the US and hearing their stories, hearing from their experiences behind the scenes at agencies or studios I really admired, it really opened my view of what a studio could really be.

Allen has his community within the motion world, and I have mine in design, and now we’re merging it all together and learning from peers and people we admire.

Are there studios or artists you’re inspired by who have found balance between passion projects and profits, work and non-work life?

Lindsey–
Locally, some of our friends run IV Studio, which is a motion studio. Allen met them initially working freelance for them. I think they were one of the early motion-specific studios in Nashville. We’ve stayed friends with them over the years, but one thing that’s really cool is that they’ve essentially taken the things they’re very passionate about and created products and businesses. So from their own coffee brand to designing their own board games, and now they have a series of shows on Youtube. We want to create our own products and side projects too, so it’s encouraging to see your peers doing it when it can feel so challenging.

Allen–
They make board games, they make mobile games. They’re awesome. There’s also a studio called Gunner in Detroit who does a really great job with this. They are an amazing motion studio. They do client work for huge clients, and they do great work in that realm, but they also have put out a crazy amount of purely studio-driven, personal work. I don’t know how they do it, but it seems like they set an intention at the outset that they wanted that to be a part of the work that they do, so they’ve set up the foundation to be able to support that. That’s kind of an encouraging example that that balance is possible.

Lindsey–
There are so many artists and creatives who inspire us here in Nashville and Nashville Design Week has been a great way to connect with even more. New Hat is another studio who not only have become dear friends, but who inspire us and show what a successful creative business can look like outside the mold.

What’s next? What are your dream projects as a studio?

Lindsey–
Experiencing Nashville Design Week this year and actually seeing all the work come to life in person created so much energy and momentum for us. Designing the brand for 2020 was great, but we missed out on the in-person components of design in the project because of Covid, so the chance to see that come to life, from projecting our animation work onto walls 20+ feet tall to supporting each event with signage to buttons for volunteers, gave a real look into the effect the work can have. That was pretty incredible.

As far as dream projects, we’d love to partner with companies and creative visionaries who really believe in what they’re building. It could be brands, products, services, events, museums… we’re thinking a lot about how motion-led branding would be most useful for communicating and creating experiences. And we’re looking for projects that can be fun and truly interest us. Let’s brand the Sundance Film Festival next. Let’s create really special projects in Nashville that make our city an even more amazing place to live. Let’s create our own products, make a children’s book, and create public art. We want to make commercial and personal work equally important.

There’s certainly a balance in commercial work where people believe you can’t have all three F’s: Fame, Fortune and Fun… I was told early in my career that you can pick two. Recently, we’ve been trying to break that belief. I think it is possible to have the work and life we want. We’re working on a clear vision, taking action to make it happen and trusting it will all come together.

“I think it is possible to have the work and life we want. We’re working on a clear vision, taking action to make it happen and trusting it will all come together.”

Follow along @lassostudio and say hello.

In Conversation With Samera & Jason Breese of zpais

Story By: Priya Ollapally
Featuring: Samera & Jason Breese
Nashville Design Week 2021

You don’t have to be an artist to care deeply about the welfare of artists during tough times. Samera and Jason Breese of ZPais House of Art have day jobs and a young family keeping them busy, but the desire to be in business for themselves and a deep appreciation for creators led them into the art world.

Pre-covid, they held live events including a pop-up gallery and an artist-entrepreneur mixer and panel discussion. With live events on pause, they turned their attention to telling artists’ stories through a docu-series. We spoke to them at a moment when they are between the two worlds, navigating change while working to help artists do the same.

“What if we take passion and mix that with entrepreneurship: what would that look like?”

How did ZPais get started?

Jason–
The idea started years ago. A conversation we kept coming back to was being in business for ourselves; we thought “What if we take passion and mix that with entrepreneurship: what would that look like?”

The first idea was a pop-up gallery. We had access to a space, and I thought, “Let’s start small. Let’s find some artists and see how we can collaborate”. I just started reaching out to people I didn’t know. I connected with Watkins, Nossi, Belmont. I met with anyone who wanted to participate. We had our first event in November of 2019. We invited 40 people or less but we got twice that.

“For me it’s not just artwork, it’s about educating the viewers about what’s going on around them.”

What came next?

Jason–
We live in a time when everyone has a digital profile. What do you do to build your brand? We wanted to provide that knowledge to people. We asked three people we know who are established creators [to do a panel], and they all said yes.

Samera–
One of the panelists was Nathan Brown, who is a well-established muralist in Nashville. The other was a well-established artist, Derrick Ramey Jr,. who has done bow-ties and clothing for Grammy-winning artists; his clothing has been on the red carpet. Also, XPayne – he did the mural on Broadway at Slim & Husky. He’s also a college professor at Belmont.

We invited upcoming artists to come and listen. We held the panel at Jamaica Way, and it went well. We thought “Success again, now what’s next?” And then, the pandemic.

The attitude we took was, “Ok this is an opportunity. Like any other business, we have to pivot.” So we decided to focus on media, which led us to the docu-series.

Tell us about the docu-series, “Art, Food and Culture”. Who do you want to elevate through this series?

Jason–
The way it’s designed is to interview these artists and explore a day in their life. Where they go to eat, to socialise with their community. We want to explore all of that.

Samera–
I choose artists that have a deep-rooted story and are also influential in their community. There’s a muralist who’s also a tattoo artist who brings awareness to the community about tattooing people of color.

Jason–
There was one guy who came to a networking event who was not only homeless but was dealing with mental health issues. So coping with anxiety and homelessless, but still making artwork and trying to make a living and get established. We don’t think about how someone is barely eating but still creating beautiful work. That’s the kind of stuff people don’t see.

Samera–
For me it’s not just artwork, it’s about educating the viewers about what’s going on around them. And reach out to people going through the same thing.

Jason–
Whether we are exploring being not only a Black tattoo artist but also a female tattoo artist in a male-dominated field, or having mental health challenges and trying to be a creative entrepreneur, it’s about having the world on your shoulders and still overcoming.

Gentrification is a pressing topic in Nashville. What does this mean for artists?

Jason–
Whether you are a visual artist, performing artist or musical artist, it’s never been a big money-maker unless you make it to the top. So you already have a financial challenge of trying to become established, and now with the cost of everything — housing, gas — you have to fight even harder. While Nashville’s growing, it’s not considered a big city. There’s only so much space and opportunity.

For example, real estate investors might scoop up a good opportunity, but they want to hold on to the organic flavor, so they might reach out to an artist to put a mural on that building. Yes, gentrification is a challenge but if you know how to navigate it you can capitalize on it, rather than being a victim of capitalization.

That’s why education and networking are so important. There are people who have navigated the change and challenge and who came out on top. Maybe they knew the right people or knew the inner workings of being a self-supporting artist. If we can help in the process we are all for that.

So what comes next?

Jason–
We’re developing the pitch package for “Art, Food and Culture”, and we’re presenting that to local networks; hopefully that gets snatched up quick. We’re presenting the concept, presenting why their viewers would want to see it.

Samera–
It’s like Shark Tank for a film: presenting your work in detail. How will it last? What’s the twist? There is always a twist.

Head to Head: Derrick Moore x Jon Dalman

Story By: Priya Ollapally
Featuring: Derrick Moore & Jon Dalman
Nashville Design Week 2021

As a Nashville native, Derrick Moore of Slim & Husky’s has watched the Nashville skyline rise over the decades, but he doesn’t wax nostalgic about the Nashville that was. Instead, he credits tenacious newcomers like Jon Dalman (partner and designer at Mesa) with saving Nashville from becoming the kind of city where every pizza joint is a Dominos.

Their collaboration, co-creating the furniture at Slim & Husky’s many locations, and the friendship that underpins it exemplifies how Nashville welcomes burgeoning talent and how its local business people champion one another.

“That’s why he is one of our favorite clients. He trusts us. There’s a lot of trust.”

On trust


When you first started collaborating you were at different places as far as building your businesses. Jon, this was a big job for you. Derrick, you’d already opened a couple locations. Tell us about what it’s been like to work together.

Derrick–
When Jon comes in and it’s time for furniture, I don’t say, “Hey, you have to stay within these lines. [Maybe] the type of wood, and maybe the chairs, but everything else is just free reign. As we’ve progressed we’ve just gotten better and better style.

Jon–
More functional.

Derrick–
I don’t hold his hand. I don’t say, “Do it like this dude.” I say, “Hey, just show me what you got.” He’ll send me over a few renderings and then I’ll pick one. And then even in one that we pick, we’ll still make changes before we get to the final production.

Jon–
Yeah. That’s why he is one of our favorite clients. He trusts us. There’s a lot of trust. And, we’ve had a good setup for it because there were three locations under the belt where the design parameters had been sorted out. And so I was walking into something that was established enough to find the things they wanted to fix and change and grow and move forward.


How has your work evolved?

Jon–
With all the commercial furniture we’re doing, durability starts to win out. When we get to do multiple jobs with one client, the first job is way more focused on design. The second job they start to see some problems with durability. We don’t always have durability on the first step because we really value these design ideas. So it just gets more and more durable.

[The first tables were] eight quarter maple, milled and joined together in these huge waterfall shapes, which are like the highest design value out of all the pieces. But three years later, they’re sticky. They need to be refinished and there’s no way to take the top off and refinish it. And they’ve got mop lines down at the bottom, from the water brushing up against it, and they’re starting to sag a little bit.

That looks the best, but only for a short amount of time. So next we added a metal trestle and a plate around the bottom so that you wouldn’t see the mop lines. But still we knew we’d run into finishing issues.

So then we moved to a metal frame table with inserts of wood that can be removed and refinished really easily. We’ve taken it to the last step, which we were kind of cautious about, which is going to be a laminate top in that metal frame. It’s not wood, but is going to last 10 years in one restaurant. And it might cost a little bit more on day one, but not on year ten. So still the same design, and looks like maple. Most people wouldn’t know that it’s a laminate. But yeah, you can clean it a million times and it’s not going to dissolve the finish on it. And that’s what we’ve done for the past two or three locations: Memphis, Murfreesboro, 5th & Broad.


What has been like for you, Derrick, to work with somebody who’s evolving their craft versus going to a big shop that is predictable from day one?

Derrick–
I value it. I tell Jon all the time that I value his opinion, his craftsmanship, and his expertise. I want to be around smart people — I want to be around people that are smarter than me. I also want to be around people that are curious and creative, right? And that don’t just work in a box. So his evolution has allowed me to trust him more because I see that he’s not one-dimensional in his thinking. He’s not just, “oh this is a beautiful design.” Or, “Oh this is functional and durable.” It’s all of those things.

I never stalled that creativity; I value it and it’s been great for me. I wish I could find that not just in my furniture design guy. I wish I could find that in every position within the company or that I work with.

Jon–
I think that what we lack in experience, we make up for in tenacity and do-overs and picking up the phone and late nights. We’re willing to fix our mistakes. We’ve rebuilt entire patios, entire sets of furniture before for clients, just because we got it wrong the first one or two times.

And I would do that again because we’re still getting valuable experience and they still trust us and they still pick up the phone.

With Mo, I know he trusts me. We just sat here right before you called. And we’re like, what’s not working about these tables? What do we need to redo? I don’t take it as negativity when it comes from him. I look to Derrick as a mentor. He’s getting a service and we’re delivering, but he’s gonna call me before he talks to someone else. He’s given me every chance to mess up, you know, and he’s calling me out for things and it’s all good.

So, yeah, it’s been a really positive environment to collaborate on, but that’s been our journey with a lot of clients. This relationship with Slim & Husky’s is the most beautiful and longest example of this kind of collaboration for us. But in Nashville, you get to work with other people that are as passionate about the creative energy in the restaurant as they are about making a dollar. And so we’re kind of all speaking a similar language and learning together. It’s just the perfect city to do this in.

On the ‘new Nashville’ and being a local business

As a transplant and a native, what have each of you observed about how Nashville has changed as it grows?

Jon–
I came here 11 years ago when I was 19 from a small rural town in Indiana. I moved here having no idea what I wanted to do and learned so much about myself as a creative person through the community and the professional opportunities to make money as a creative person. Nashville totally showed me who I was in a way that Indiana didn’t have the community to. And it’s been great ever since. It’s been just bigger and more fun and scarier and it has so much to offer for creatives.

Derrick–
Seeing the skyline change is one thing, but also how receptive people are to local businesses has changed as well. You know, Nashville growing up was kind of behind Memphis. So very close to Atlanta, but we didn’t get the love that Atlanta gets. Memphis was just killing us because it was just a cooler city, all the way around, you know? And Nashville was just straight country music. No diversity. The art scene was horrible. Just to see the evolution with transplants coming into the city, gravitating to the local businesses, that’s been awesome for us. But also just awesome for Nashville’s scene, you know what I mean?

There was one point in time it was all chains. It was just a bunch of chain restaurants around here. You have the few that’ve been around for a very, very long time, like Sperry’s, but I mean, I wasn’t going to Sperry’s growing up. Shoney’s or die, right? Even the pizza scene was Pizza Hut, Dominoes, Papa John’s.

You had a few like Joey’s, but he wasn’t getting that much love because only a select few were going in there, buying slices of pizza. So we came on the scene and people embraced us because we are local.

How has Nashville held onto that, and avoided becoming a faceless sea of chain restaurants?

Derrick–
The business owners in Nashville, they rally behind each other. So we do something, and Daddy’s Dog’s is repping us. Miranda, Frothy Monkey, Martin’s, Prince’s. They’ll retweet us or whatever the case may be, and then we do the same thing. That’s just how it has been. When you’ve got business owners that rally behind each other, the public sees that.

And we have conversations with local leadership. We say, check out Marcus Buggs at Coneheads, call Pat Martin for this, call Max and Ben for this, you know what I mean? When you do those things, you can work together. The public sees that and they can’t miss it. You want a good steak, go to Pelican & Pig. It’s just how it is. I think that’s why Nashville has been able to retain that local feel when it comes to — especially — the restaurants.

On what’s new and inspiring

Jon–
I love the days I get to go down and do downtown site visits and then just get to cruise around and walk. I love the high-rise architecture right now. The new Whole Foods downtown? You can just sit at the bar and eat, and there’s a high rise being built right there.

And it’s not as sexy of an environment, but the elevator scene in Nashville?! We’re doing some interiors of elevators and getting to be on the floor of these high rises and watching the lobbies come together. The new Amazon building interior is nutty.

Derrick–
I am stuck on the elevator thing. I’ve been blessed to have gone through a lot of cool places, some dope buildings, and if the elevator is spectacular, then the rest of the building, nine times out of ten, it’s just as beautiful. You know what I mean? It ain’t sexy, but it is kind of sexy.

Jon–
It can be. It can be.

Derrick–
We’re sitting in the new bar we just opened, EG & MC on Jefferson street. It used to be the old Garden Brunch, and we’ve got Mesa all through here. This was a cool project, and it was a lot different than Slim & Husky’s because Slim & Husky’s had already got a concept, but with this we really had to get in there and build out the concept, what we want to look like, the design and everything. But it’s really cool. It’s really dope.

In Conversation With Brittany Cole

Story By: Jessie Taylor
Featuring: Brittany Cole
Nashville Design Week 2020

Everyone has the right to feel like they belong in their workplace. No one understands this better than Brittany Cole, an author, TEDx speaker, and inclusive leadership development consultant who helps organizations cultivate more inclusive cultures.

As a former sales, marketing, and DEI leader in the healthcare industry, Brittany has experienced how intentional leadership development increases colleague engagement, accelerates career achievements, and drives business results—in short, makes the workplace better for all. With this knowledge, Brittany founded Career Thrivers, an inclusive leadership development firm that provides targeted leadership development curriculum, strategic planning, and coaching to enhance equity in the workplace.

“Every experience is an opportunity for continuous improvement” is Brittany’s motto. Her aphorism on improvement is in line with Nashville Design Week’s theme this year: to Reshape design.

When discussing DEI strategy during NDW, what terms and statistics do you want the audience to be familiar with?

“Strategy” is the first term to understand. The Oxford dictionary defines a strategy as “a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.” A typical business strategy spans at least three years with a very clear purpose, north star, and objectives. These components are also critical to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Research shows that taking a momentary, compliance-centered approach to DEI work isn’t sustainable or successful. Starting with a clear why (purpose) and where (vision) is important. Lastly, it’s helpful to understand what diversity, equity, and inclusion mean and the differences between the terms.

Please see some brief definitions below:

“Diversity is a fact. Inclusion is an act. Equity is in the stats.”

Diversity
Simply means difference and includes visible (race, gender, etc.) and invisible (education, experience, etc.) differences that make up a person’s identity.

Inclusion–
Intentional action to incorporate and value difference.

Equity–
Distributing information and resources so that outcomes aren’t determined by the differences that exist.

Uncomfortable conversations drive change. What tactics have you found to be the most effective in helping people understand your point of view?

Embracing discomfort and empathy are essential elements of communication. If your focus in the conversation is on making your point, perhaps there’s an opportunity to elevate your empathy. Empathy is about centering the other person—so my intention in the conversation is to understand and step into their mindset, feelings, and experiences. We are often trained to initiate hard conversations with “I” statements. Although this kind of preparation may be helpful in negotiations, etc. it can be an unproductive approach with emotionally charged conversations. Empathetic conversations don’t start with “I”; they start with inquiry. Be curious, and begin the conversation with a question to understand their point of view.

What educational materials do you suggest to the NDW community? Recommendations can be in the form of articles, talks, books, movies, podcasts, and more. 

There are so many outstanding resources to tap into. Here are a few…

Books–

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in World Made for Whiteness
by Austin Channing Brown

The Memo: What Women of Color (and allies) Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table
by Minda Harts

How to Be an AntiRacist
by Ibram X. Kendi

Videos–

A Must Watch History of the Confederacy
from the ACLU

5 Essentials for Getting Started with Your DEI Strategy
from Career Thrivers

What Leaders Must Do Today to Address Systematic Racism
from Harvard Business Review

Podcasts–

1619 by New York Times

Code Switch by NPR

Seeing White by Scene On Radio

Career Thrivers by Brittany Cole

Is there a question you would like the NDW community to consider prior to your event?

A powerful, emotionally intelligent conversation to ask yourself anytime you have thought about a person or group of people is to challenge your thought with, “Why do I think that?”

The second question to ask yourself is “What action am I taking to make my organization more inclusive?” Inclusion starts with “I”—it begins with yourself—and cultivating a culture where everyone can thrive takes all of us.

Follow Brittany on her LinkedIn account.

In Conversation With LaKeithea Nicole Anderson

Story By: Jessie Taylor
Featuring: Lakeithea Nicole Anderson
Nashville Design Week 2020

For LaKeithea Nicole Anderson, supporting BIPOC designers means bridging her two passions: community engagement and design. It all started with a childhood love of FUBU, the Black-owned brand that celebrates Black culture in all its creativity and power. That vision continues through LaKeithea’s PR agency, For Us. The Agency, in which she helps launch, establish, and grow Black-owned brands and talent.  She’s also the Community Engagement Coordinator for Nashville Community Education. Nashville Design Week reached out to LaKeithea for her insight into supporting BIPOC designers.

“To connect with BIPOC designers, you should show up to where they are.”

How do we engage, encourage, and support the next generation of BIPOC designers?

To truly engage, encourage, and support the next generation of BIPOC designers, you must open your platforms for BIPOC designers to showcase their work and expertise. Many times, BIPOC are asked to discuss trauma-related incidents and Diversity. All too often we end up being asked to showcase who we are when there is trauma involved in the Black Community or when audiences are asking for more transparency from the organizations and communities they are part of. Encourage your team to dig into the work of BIPOC as the thought leaders, creatives, and the educated designers they are.

Often, organizations say they “don’t know many designers of color.”

This is a disconnect that stems from two places: (1) Not putting forth the effort to safely include BIPOC into the spaces they occupy. (2) Not showing up to where BIPOC are.

If the spaces you are in don’t have the representation and diversity you desire, you need to change the spaces you are in. To connect with BIPOC designers, you should show up to where they are, go to their events and showcases to see their work.

Lastly, talk to your teams about how to support the BIPOC designers that are already within your organizations. Think about the opportunities and training they are being offered. Are you nurturing and supporting BIPOC that are already within reach, are you utilizing their expertise? Are they having to jump through hurdles for opportunities? If you have BIPOC in your spaces that have been there for years, ask yourself why they are still not at your tables to help make decisions?

What educational materials do you suggest to the NDW community?

The Black Experience in Graphic Design: 1968 and 2020

Boss Betty Newsletter

The fashion industry is notoriously racist. Here’s how to make it more inclusive.

Is there a question you would like the NDW community to consider prior to your event?

What unconscious biases are you carrying, and how do those biases affect the way you connect with the BIPOC community?

When was the last time you have shown up for BIPOC community events to engage? How do you expect to diversify your brand if you are only in the same spaces?

Follow LaKeithea on her LinkedIn account.

In Conversation With Pascale Sablan

Story By: Jessie Taylor
Featuring: Pascale Sablan
Nashville Design Week 2020

Meet Pascale Sablan. You’ll be formally introduced during the [re]SHAPING THE DIALOGUE Nashville Design Week event. Pascale’s career kicked off in 2003 when she worked on the African Burial Ground National Monument, which marks the nation’s earliest and largest African burial ground thus far rediscovered in the United States.

For nearly eleven years, she has created sustainable and dynamic architectural designs all over the world, holding multiple leadership positions and receiving honors for her work, including the 2018 Pratt Alumni Achievement Award, the 2018 AIA Young Architects Award, and the NOMA Prize for Excellence in Design. She was also a Building Design+Construction 40 Under 40 honoree and was featured in the Council of Tall Building & Urban Habitat Research Paper—in the same company as the legendary architect, Zaha Hadid.

While working as a senior associate in New York City, Pascale founded Beyond the Built Environment, an architecture company created to address the unjust disparities in architecture. She’s given lectures at colleges and universities all over the U.S., as well as cultural institutions such as the United Nations and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American Heritage and Culture.

As Nashville Design Week invests in reshaping design by helping to foster a more diverse design community, we contacted Pascale to help us set the tone for [re]SHAPING THE DIALOGUE and Nashville Design Week as a whole.

“First, I would like to challenge the idea of “uncomfortable conversations.” Uncomfortable for whom?

It is not about comfort; it’s about justice. If speaking about racism and oppression makes one feel uncomfortable, then that’s on that individual to self-reflect and understand why. ”

How do we engage, encourage, and support the next generation of BIPOC designers?

We begin by understanding the complex and multifaceted challenges that suppress BIPOC designers’ access to the profession. (Hint: It’s not just a lack of mentorship.)

We ask the BIPOC designers what they need and give them the opportunity for their experiences to guide the well-intentioned effort to help.

We create an action list with dates and deadlines, establish metrics of success, and invest in implementing the co-developed initiatives.


When discussing inequalities within the design industry, what terms and statistics do you want the NDW audience to be familiar with?

NCARB by the Numbers Report
Design Justice Demands

Uncomfortable conversations drive change. What tactics have you found to be the most effective in helping people understand your point of view?

First, I would like to challenge the idea of “uncomfortable conversations.” Uncomfortable for whom?

The point is to say, framing it as such already sets a priority and sensitivity for some people in the conversation, a courtesy that often has not been extended to those who are being marginalized or oppressed. It is not about comfort; it’s about justice. If speaking about racism and oppression makes one feel uncomfortable, then that’s on that individual to self-reflect and understand why. My priority in the conversation is to be thoughtful, to learn, and to express my values and strategies for achieving a diverse and inclusive profession / built environment through just and equitable practices.

My tactics are to stay honest, to speak from a position of learner and leader, all while staying authentic to my concerns and beliefs.

What educational materials do you suggest to the NDW community? Recommendations can be in the form of articles, talks, books, movies, podcasts, and more.

As we discuss the books that must be removed from the curriculum (in which the word “slavery” is being replaced with “unpaid laborer”), I have been looking to make a meaningful addition, a textbook for schools of designs. I am working toward publishing a Great Diverse Designers textbook and creating an online directory for business opportunities for the featured designers, leveraging the profiles that we’ve gathered. Due to the efforts of our Dismantling Injustice: Action 02 SAY IT LOUD – NOW Global Virtual Exhibition, our library now contains 395 profiles of Diverse Designers in the United States, the Caribbean islands, and from each inhabitable continent.  Here’s a link.

Is there a question you would like the NDW community to consider prior to your event?

Acknowledging that architecture historically has been and continues to be used as a tool of oppression, name a project that oppresses a community, and identify the oppressed community. Name a project that heals and repairs a community, and identify the architect or firm.

Follow Pascale on her LinkedIn account .

In Conversation With Valarie Franklin

Story By: Jessie Taylor
Featuring: Valerie Franklin
Nashville Design Week 2020

Meet Valarie Franklin. Valarie is a senior architect at Moody Nolan with over 20 years of experience in the architectural world. Most notably, Valarie is a champion for reshaping design.

Valarie serves as president of the Nashville chapter of NOMA (National Organization of Minority Architects), whose purpose is to minimize the effect of racism in the architectural community. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Civic Design Center, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advocate for civic design visions and actionable change in communities to improve quality of life for all.

As Nashville Design Week invests in reshaping design by helping to foster a more diverse design community, we contacted Valarie via email to help us set the tone for [re]SHAPING THE DIALOGUE and Nashville Design Week as a whole.

How do we engage, encourage, and support the next generation of BIPOC designers?

To engage with the next generations, we must show them early in their childhood that a career in design is attainable and barrier-free to them. It’s important to understand that as a result of past segregation and redlining, our neighborhoods have had very real issues rebounding and truly integrating. These socioeconomic disparities continue to play out in our public education system. As a result, many BIPOC students don’t have the tools available to them during their formative years that would guide them into professional careers in design. If we want to grow the pool of BIPOC designers, it’s imperative that they’re engaged early and afforded the same opportunities as public schools in areas with higher property values. Actionable ways to engage these students are to sponsor or create initiatives such as hosting workshops, donating art supplies, and participating in career awareness days in our public school system as early as kindergarten.

“As a result of past segregation and redlining, our neighborhoods have had very real issues rebounding and truly integrating.”

When bringing a team into the schools, it’s important that the teams engaging with students are diverse. Diversity adds another level of confidence in the students and encourages them. When they see someone they identify with who is successful, it becomes more realistic that they, too, can find success. To effectively encourage the next generation, there has to be follow-up and a true effort to nurture students within the pipeline to professional careers. “Nurturing” in this case means keeping in contact with them after the initial engagement, and becoming loyal mentors and advisers throughout their education. Mentoring includes sharing programs and initiatives that the students can benefit from. If the right programs don’t exist, you help create them.

Mentors also have the opportunity to financially support mentees and/or make them aware of scholarships that they would be eligible for. Monetary support could look like scholarships, competitions that have a monetary prize, or gift cards to be spent on books that aid in or that are required for their education.

Attrition is a huge issue in the pipeline. Studies prove that many BIPOC college students don’t finish their degrees simply due to the financial strain that it causes themselves and their families. Much of this hardship is due to generational poverty—a direct result of historical racial disparities. The only path to eradication of generational poverty is through education. Higher education opens up opportunities over a person’s lifetime that impact the next generations.

When discussing inequalities within the design industry, what terms and statistics do you want the NDW audience to be familiar with?

Women make up 20% of architects, black architects make up only 3%, and black women architects make up a mere .03% of architects. Women are paid 80% of what white males are paid, and black women (who are hit with a double whammy of sexism and racism) are paid 63% (63 cents on the dollar). Attrition and equal pay are systemic issues.

Uncomfortable conversations drive change. What tactics have you found to be the most effective in helping people understand your point of view?

“Often when someone is not afflicted by something, they have the perception that it does not exist.”

It is very effective to be able to tell a story in order to humanize the conversation. Often when someone is not afflicted by something, they have the perception that it does not exist. Storytelling that’s personal, followed by facts that support the story, helps the listener develop empathy for the situation. This method can even inspire actionable change.

What educational materials do you suggest to the NDW community?

Written by Valarie–

Health Equity
Growing Compassionately: Transportation Equity in Communities
Equity In Communities
Systemic Racism Explained

Watch–

Understanding the effects of segregation 

Read–

The Color of Law

Buy–

NOMAnash The Coloring Book of Architecture

Donate–

NOMAnash

Is there a question you would like the NDW community to consider prior to your event?

Do you think Systemic Racism exists? If so, how do you feel it has affected professional design careers?

Keep up with Valarie on LinkedIn.

Studio Visit: Galerie Tangerine

Story By: Cat Acree
Photography: Daniel Meigs
Nashville Design Week 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.

Head to Head: Josh Habiger x New Hat

Story By: Cat Acree
Photography: Daniel Meigs
Nashville Design Week 2019

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.

On creating something new.

Elizabeth–
Had you ever been to a restaurant like that before?

Josh–
There weren’t that many, but I was super disappointed with the ones I went to. [Laughs] Not because of the food, they all had really good food, but why create the interface if you’re not going to utilize it? … It was such a missed opportunity for someone to have an experience to learn something new, and the cook can talk about something [they’re passionate about]. That’s what I tell [the team at Bastion], is that we have this connection with people just by them walking in the door. They’re excited to eat here, and we’re cooking that we should be excited about. We already got through that first barrier, and we’ve already started sharing something.

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.

Studio Visit: Oil/Lumber

Story By: Cat Acree
Photography: Daniel Meigs
Nashville Design Week 2019

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.

What changes did you make to the space?

We made it as cool as, we think, a metal warehouse can be–within a budget. So when [tenants] move in, you have to be okay with like, you don’t have a light switch, you just have a breaker. And we’ll help you with whatever else we can, but you take care of your own house. Unless there’s a hole in the roof, we don’t really do much.

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.

In what ways do you think you’re succeeding in sustainability?

Material sourcing, I feel like we do a pretty good job. We try to get organic as much as we can, or at least natural-fiber materials, stuff that will biodegrade into the earth. Using conscious dyes. We dye all of these ourselves here from indigo we source from Columbia, Tennessee. There’s a huge indigo supplier here called Stony Creek. They’re awesome. They work with Madewell, J.Crew, Lucky Brand, Patagonia. They’re the national supplier for indigo for them, and it’s a lady in East Nashville. She was smart because she found that . . . the machines to mill tobacco and grow it was all the same as indigo.

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.

Head to Head: Caroline Randall Williams x Poni Silver

Story By: Cat Acree
Photography: Daniel Meigs
Nashville Design Week 2018

On a Saturday afternoon, over Bloody Marias and a well-mixed playlist, Maria “Poni” Silver and Caroline Randall Williams settled in for a conversation at Williams’ house about their art, their lives in Nashville, and their shared love of the stage.

Maria Silver is the founder and designer of her namesake label, Black by Maria Silver, which was the 2018 recipient of the Nashville Fashion Week’s Fashion Forward Fund. Caroline Randall Williams is an author, poet, and academic born and raised in Nashville. She is a writer in residence at Vanderbilt University and the author of Soul Food Love and Lucy Negro, Redux, a 2015 book that explores race, identity, and feminism through poetry and prose.Their unexpected connection came through production design with the Nashville Ballet—Silver as the costume designer for Seven Deadly Sins, and Caroline as the author of Lucy Negro, Redux, which was adapted into a ballet by TPAC last year.

On how they got involved with the Nashville Ballet.

Caroline–
It was so dreamy to think about my work being on the stage because I had written those poems with the stage in my mind. The poems themselves are very performative. . . . When Paul (Vasterling, the Creative Director of Nashville Ballet) came to my first reading after I agreed to work with the narrative of the book, he said, “I think you might have to be a part of the score.” And I thought to myself, duh. But also, I am delighted that I didn’t have to pitch myself! The joy of finding many ways into a creative life and having them all intersect honestly is an exciting thing.

Poni–
Paul Vasterling, [artistic director for the Nashville Ballet], had reached out to the Nashville Fashion Alliance looking for a costume designer, and [the NFA] put us together. I went in and interviewed with my portfolio and everything––and I hadn’t interviewed for something in a really long time! It turns out the Nashville Ballet uses the same costume design house that I used to work for in New York, so it all lined up. When I met with Christopher [Stuart, choreographer of the Nashville Ballet], he told me the vision, and I came up with several different aesthetics that I wanted the costumes to represent, and most of it was about the guilt you carry around with being Catholic. As for designing for movement, those are standard things I know from dancing. Asking myself if they can move and dance in something is so important.

On creating art with subtext.

Poni–
Everyone was wearing these nude jumpsuits in their own shade of nude, with your guilt floating around you shackled in different places, representing you carrying your guilt. It’s something you can’t escape, but because it’s the ballet, I still wanted it to look beautiful. At the end of the ballet, they took the sins off and just had their flesh-toned body suits. There were scars made through stitching all over the suits, and we had to keep adding more color because it got lost in the lighting and wasn’t registering to the audience. They all had black wigs because chopping women’s hair has historically been a way of shaming women.

Caroline–
I wish that they’d let you put a designer’s note in the program. Sometimes with a costume, it doesn’t cost the audience anything not to know the symbolism, but with yours in Seven Deadly Sins, it would have elevated my experience to know more. That knowledge is transformative to the experience of watching the ballet.

Poni–
But I also loved that they all looked really beautiful on their own without context.

Caroline–
But with the extra knowledge I would have been both struck and shook!

Poni–
Part of art is that it should speak for itself. A nerd like me wants to know every piece of the detail, but as long as people are enjoying it and grasp the general idea, at the end of the day . . .  extra information is a bonus.

On the ways Nashville could continue to support their craft.

Poni–
I always wanted Nashville to have a co-op space because resources are difficult and machines are expensive. It would be cool if we could only need certain items individually but pay a monthly fee for the other things.

Caroline–
We were talking about Creative Mornings earlier, and I love that event because the people I met made me think a lot about interdisciplinary collaboration and facilitating conversation throughout the year. I would attend any and all gatherings of creative people coming together . . . something like a socializing series for people who don’t typically get out of their bubble so more collaboration can happen. That is my favorite thing. Also, Poni, I want to collaborate with clothes and words.

On the concept of art that nourishes the soul.

Poni–
What you leave the house in determines a lot of your mood. When I leave the house and I don’t look right or feel right, it really derails my day. I have to ask myself, is this what I’m trying to say to the world today? With my own designs, if I’m not going to wear it then I’m not going to put it out there for the world.

Caroline–
It’s funny, though, some people don’t feel that way about aesthetics. For some people, if it’s a shitty day, they just want to look like that . . . kind of like the people who wear sweatpants to the airport. It’s like that Oscar Wilde quote, “Either this wallpaper goes, or I must,” and then he dies because he hated the wallpaper. It’s life or death, the way that things look and nourish your spirit. The question is, does it sustain you? Food is private in some ways but not when you publish a book or have a dinner party. When I made these Bloody Marias, I wanted y’all to have some hot fire and see my style of it. . . . It speaks to that same impulse of looking right and feeling fresh. Soul food is called soul food because it’s soul-sustaining, and fashion is also soul-sustaining.

On what brought them to Nashville.

Poni–
It was an accident.

Caroline–
OK, keep going!

Poni–
I moved around when I was younger and was in LA before this. My band and I were on the  road so much, and a friend of mine who was born and raised here, Kelly Williams (an amazing painter), suggested we come. We stayed for two months and thought, hey, this place is pretty  rad. We went back on tour, came back, and just moved here because it was cheap to live. My plan was to move back to New York, but eleven years later, here we sit.

Caroline–
Because writing is my calling, I feel lucky that I get to be involved in Nashville Design Week because design is the rendering of the things I’ve imagined in concrete ways, which I don’t do as much. I teach, so the teaching is what pays the bills. But the poem-ing, I’m like, good luck if you don’t like it because . . . I’m going to write only exactly what I’m interested in writing. When I think about Nashville, having been raised here, this has always been a city with at least one genre of art. It’s a city that I’m excited about having as my hometown. We are a place where young artists can move and have access to intelligent, creative people. There’s this idea that if you build something, we will come to it, and no one is going to stop it.

Studio Visit: Ona Rex

Story By: Cat Acree
Photography: Daniel Meigs
Nashville Design Week 2018

Perhaps long ago, on some dark night, Nashville native Ashley Balding reached through a crack of time, some portal of futurism, and pulled back the furiously innovative designs of Ona Rex, her line of luxury women’s wear.

From malleable dresses with slippery ruffles and paracord spines, to elbow-sweeping capes that belong in Lando Calrissian’s closet, to her iconic, freshly peeled gallery pendants, Ashley Balding’s designs demand a world to be built around them. I’d say that Balding is an alien that’s fallen to Earth, but as she shares in our conversation, that would be a terrible thing to say.

How did you begin your design practice?

My plan was to study fibers in school. I knew that I liked fabric, but design was not on my radar. I ended up leaving school and taking several years off, but I kept coming back to fashion. I went back to school [at O’More College of Design], still not thinking about design, but once I got into classes, I realized my brain was a little bit different from the people around me. I felt kind of stupid about it at first, until I realized it was a good thing.

I had no plans for starting my own line. It was something that I thought I would do later, like when I was middle-aged. But I just got so angry when I was out of school. There was such a small group of people here, doing something really good, but it was so tiny. I knew that I could add to that, only differently.

Did your definition of design change throughout that experience?

There’s a lot of clothing out there—technically, someone’s designing it—but there’s no garment innovation. That’s what I’m excited about. I’m not an expert and I’m still learning how to do that. I think my paracord stuff was the first time I was like, this is where it’s going where I want it to go. That’s not something you see everywhere. It changes shape on your body. If you want it to be a giant, puffed-up shirt, you can scrunch it all the way up, or if you want it to look like a more normal dress, you let it down. That’s the kind of stuff I get excited about—trying to think of how these flat shapes come together on your body and can totally transform how you feel. To me, I think that’s the most important aspect of design, is creating, innovating, reinventing.

What three things most influence your design?

I am obsessed with science fiction. It probably plays into the part of my brain that likes science, and the part that likes weird. I get excited about fantasy worlds and outer space. I think there’s something exciting about futuristic things. Aliens, creatures, monsters—I’m terrified of all those things. It’s the most gut-wrenching fear I have. If an alien walked into the room, I would die. There’s just something about the human form in a completely different, abstract view.

I love structure—it could be a building, it could be sculpture—but there’s something about 3-D forms that are really exciting to me. I like the design process of linear things coming together, and I like to think of garments in linear perspectives. And color is a huge part of what I do. I can drive down the street and see a color, and it sparks an entire thing in my brain.

How do you characterize your role in the Nashville fashion world?

I just want to fuck everybody up. If I’m going to expend the emotional and mental energy of doing this—because it’s not easy, and a lot of times it’s very disheartening—I’m not going to make white T-shirts. I think it’s true in any creative field that you can feel overlooked sometimes, you can feel misunderstood sometimes. It’s really hard. What’s the point anyway, so I’m just going to do something how I want to do it. I’m learning to be brave about it.

It feels the most complimentary to me when someone says I’m doing something totally different, or that they’d never expect me to be from Nashville. Truly everyone here has been very supportive and are very excited about what I’m doing, but I don’t sell much here. I never have. I’ve always said that, that this isn’t my market.

Is that why you made the “Base” line? With the simpler shapes and colors?

Yes, and it sold the best.

It’s like a painter who makes a smaller, more affordable painting to pay the bills.

I’ve learned that if people have a taste of something they feel safe in, then they’re more likely to be like, if I like how I look in this, and that’s like a little more adventurous . . . I’m trying to put cheese out for people.

What do you think is your role in the larger Nashville world?

I would like to represent a modernized city. I grew up here, and I was very fortunate that my parents were very worldly and were excited to take us to other places. It’s important to me that I not be a representation of what Nashville was twenty years ago. There are good parts to that—I love tradition, I love heritage—but I want to represent a forward thought.

Is this a one-woman operation? Any plans for collaboration?

Brett Warren is my very unofficial business partner. I would never say that it’s just me doing this. He does all my photography. He’s my art director and my greatest support. He sculpts my necklaces, so he’s very involved, and I think we are each other’s muses in that way. In the way that I’m a little different, he experiences that in his field as well. It’s easy for us to be like, we’re doing something different, and it’s uncomfortable, but if we can help each other go along that path, we do.

Blaque of PORTmanteau jewelry, we will have a collaboration at some point. We’ve been working on one for a while, but it hasn’t become what we want it to be yet, so it just hasn’t happened. I would love to get into many different aspects of fashion, but I love her stuff so much.

Studio Visit: Norf Art Collective

Story By: Cat Acree
Photography: Daniel Meigs
Nashville Design Week 2018

Community engagement is at the heart of the Norf Art Collective, a group of artists that formed following 2015’s Norf Wall Fest.

Organized by Jay Jenkins (aka WOKE3) and funded by a Metro Arts THRIVE grant, the event transformed a courtyard in North Nashville into a canvas and brought together the artists that would eventually form the core of the Norf Art Collective: WOKE3, doughjoe, Keep3 and ArJae (aka Sensei). In the intervening years, the collective’s murals have memorialized civil rights leaders and sparked conversations of affordable housing and gentrification. They’ve honored the North Nashville neighborhood’s history and unearthed some of its roots. Norf’s voices—which extend far beyond its founders—speak clearly to and about their city, and above all, they’re making a statement of what their neighborhood’s future will be. This is design with people in mind.

Unlike other NDW interviews, this one had to take place over the phone, in which WOKE3 was painting (and making a pizza) and Sensei was doing some graphic work (and making a sandwich.)

How did Norf begin?

WOKE3–
I knew ArJae from probably the year before [the Wall Fest]. We did a poetry and arts fest together, and after, I started planning for the Wall Fest because it was my senior project. He was one of the first people I thought about [for the project] because I’d already seen his work, and one of his friends introduced us, and so that’s how that whole connection was made. Doughjoe I met probably during the planning process, and then again, the same thing: A friend of ours introduced us, but we kind of ran into each other just out biking every day. And Keep3 I’ve known since high school. Along with other artists like [Brandon] Donahue and [Sam] Dunson, we all were in this project, and we created those murals and everything like that, and that’s how Norf came out of the Wall Fest.

Why did you form the collective?

WOKE3–
If you had seen this space before [Wall Fest]—there was stuff on it, and stuff around it, but you had empty walls. After the Wall Fest, people loved to see it. They were talking about it, saying that they loved to come out and be able to see that. The reaction: Look how powerful we are when we come together. That’s really what it is, people coming together. Man, look how powerful you can become. That sparked like, we should come together and do something like this more often.

Speaking about “you’ve seen the space before,” what makes a good wall? How do you pick a wall, and how do you approach it?

Sensei–
It depends on the space. That can open up a lot of opportunities of what you can actually put on there, especially if there are pipes running outside, or it’s a weirdly shaped wall. Maybe it’s a little long in some areas and short in other areas. That can give you a little room to play with concepts and how you would go about doing it. Sometimes the wall picks you, and sometimes you pick the wall.

When has the wall picked you?

Sensei–
The “Workers’ Dignity” wall … It had some overgrown parts, and during certain times of year, it’s going to look full and flush. It was cool to think like, what kinds of colors could go there? We knew the time [constraint because it was commissioned], but now you get to play with the little elements that were already pre-existing, and you can either work around it or work with it. We definitely worked with it on that one. It kind of informed us, design-wise.

There’s a certain air of mystery around you guys—with the artist names, which seem to suggest a separate and mysterious persona, as well as what appears to be intentional vagueness on your website when it comes to who you are, with a greater emphasis on the projects themselves. And I know that during the photoshoot, one of y’all didn’t want to show his face. What’s that mystery?

Sensei–
I don’t think it’s intentional as far as gimmicky. If anything, the idea is to bring light to these projects and these spaces and not so much focuses on the faces behind them.

WOKE3–
It’s focusing on the work.

Sensei–
It’s about the community that we’re serving.

When you put this work up on a wall, it’s almost like it immediately becomes endangered, especially in a boomtown like this. The art could be knocked down as quickly as some great old building. With that in mind, what do you consider to be your role within Nashville?

WOKE3–
As artists—and this is me personally, someone else might look at things differently—as artists, we’re scribes. We tell what’s going on. We put it out there. If it’s me, I put it out there visually. Everything comes to me, and it becomes this story that I have to tell. As artists, we can speak to somebody subconsciously. If you look at a piece—and that’s why I love public art and why I think public art is very important. If you’re just driving down the street, you might not be looking out for things that are going on. You’re just going through your day-to-day routine. But as you see a mural on a wall that’s just huge, that has little girls sitting in a broken house or something like that, that’s talking about home. You’re going to stop. You’re going to think or feel something. … As artists, we don’t have to do anything for people. We can just stay in our studios and paint. But you know, I started off doing graffiti, so I always wanted to push a message out.

Sensei–
It’s finding out what your social responsibility is as a creative. For me, it can’t be just focused on the self, especially if it’s public [art]. The ideas are for everyone else. Keeping that in mind, what is your social obligation, and are we being responsible? Imagery is very powerful. How Woke had mentioned the opportunity to penetrate the subconscious and to really spark something in someone who might be casually going back and forth in their commute or going to school, you can have something very self-serving or very detrimental, or you can put something up there that sparks a conversation.

So your work is speaking very intentionally to a community. What has that community taught you turn? I’m asking because I heard that a man pulled over while you were painting the mural of Jimi Hendrix and told you that he was dressed differently than what you had, that he wouldn’t have worn that ’60s psychedelic look that we know him for.

WOKE3–
No, no, no, no! What are you doing?! [laughing] STOP. STOP. STOP. Oh man, that was funny.

Sensei–
Moments like that. They’re always teaching us. Part of that is being aware that art creates communication. It’s a form of communication that sparks communication. When the dude came over, he put us on game. Do you think that would’ve happened if we were tucked away in a studio?

WOKE3–
I’ve been meeting a lot of people, a lot of elders. They’ve always got some knowledge for you. They see where your work is headed, and once you talk about the subject, they want to put what they know in. They tell you stories about the neighborhood from maybe 50 years ago.

What else have you learned about the neighborhood?

WOKE3–
I learned about Club Baron from back in the day. I didn’t know about all those people coming in and playing, like Little Richie. There’s another club I’m thinking about—the Shack. My dad told me about it. He said when he was young, he snuck up there and tried to get in. They wouldn’t let him in, but he said that place used to be jumping so much that the building would be moving, literally moving. They had that on Jefferson Street, and then you think about all that before the interstate coming through and destroying everything. We had a community inside—we didn’t have to go out, we had it here.

Sensei–
If we had that now, man. I know Ella Jean’s had its spot, was something that was going on. But it is kind of cool how some of those traditions are still there despite all the changes—the interstate, gentrification and stuff like that that we’re facing now. There’s still those pockets of folks that do gather and do really dope community-engagement things.

What do you see as the future for Nashville’s design community? Or maybe, what do you hope it will be?

Sensei–
I don’t know if I see a specific future, but a hope would be: being cognizant of what’s here and not trying to reinvent something. Notice the infrastructure that’s already here, the people that are already here, the culture that’s already here. It’s a big, beautiful city. In the four years I’ve been here, it’s become grafted onto my skin. There’s that phrase: We’re not place-making, we’re place-keeping. Whatever happens in the future, I just hope that that’s the general consciousness.

Head to Head: Jeremy Cowart x Dave Powell

Story By: Cat Acree
Photography: Daniel Meigs
Nashville Design Week 2018

Picture your dream collaboration—the nature of that relationship, the mutual respect, humility, empathy, and, perhaps most of all, excitement. It might look a lot like what’s happening between Hastings Architecture Principal David Powell and award-winning photographer, artist, and entrepreneur Jeremy Cowart.

Jeremy Cowart, whose extensive list of accolades also includes speaker and published author, is currently working to build The Purpose Hotel, a for-profit hotel chain that’s in collaboration with nonprofit organizations. After Cowart’s successful Kickstarter campaign, David Powell brought the project to Hastings, where designs for the Nashville-based Purpose Hotel began to take form. Cowart is taking a hard look at the upscale hospitality industry, but he has also clearly found an enviable collaboration with Powell. The Nashville Design Week team wanted to hear these two creatives in conversation, so along with NDW members Lindsay DeCarlo and Cat Acree, Powell and Cowart shared their experiences, advice, and a peek into their working relationship.

David Powell–
Tell us about your first memories of being creative. Have you always been creative, or was it an a-ha moment?

Jeremy Cowart–
I was the youngest of three. My older two brothers were the stars. There wasn’t jealousy there; it was almost like they were my heroes. I was very content to not be the star. It was in seventh grade when I took my first art class. It’s not as though I was a master artist, but I was good enough to where I was like, oh, this is something I excelled at. At that point, I was not excelling at any academics whatsoever. So that was the first moment I was like, oh, I both enjoy this and I was good at it.

David–
You started with music, right?

Jeremy–
It was both, music and art. And then I had a band in college with my brothers.

David–
What was the name of the band?

Jeremy–
Threefold Chord. Terrible. Anyway, it was like they were the more talented, but I was the more discipline-focused. Once I could tell they weren’t as disciplined, I was like, alright, I’m out, I’m doing my art/design thing.

David–
Tell us about your first job and how that ended.

Jeremy–
Out of college, I worked down the road for Anderson Thomas Design. I loved being there. They were a big deal, and it was a big challenge. But I was not excelling, I was not learning quickly. They ended up firing me after probably about a year or so.

David–
What did he tell you when he let you go?

Jeremy–
I don’t remember the exact words, but what I heard was, “You’re not cut out for this. You’re not creative enough.” They suggested youth ministry. [Laughs]

David–
[Laughing] Because you’re really fun!

Jeremy–
It didn’t come across to me very well, but in hindsight, I needed that moment and needed somebody to tell me “no.” If I’m told “no,” it only pushes me further, to dig deeper into my design. So I immediately got another job. At some point I switched from print to web [design], and after that I jumped out on my own and started my own design company at 24.

David–
And then, photography.

Jeremy–
Yeah, digital cameras really became the thing, and I really needed a camera just as a scanner. I would always be shooting concrete and walls and textures to overlay in my design work because I was a Photoshop user. But all my buddies were musicians, so they were like, “You take my picture,” so I started taking pictures of my friends for fun. Those friends would get signed to record labels, and then labels would start hiring me, and it kind of took off.

David–
And so you ended up successful enough that you moved to LA for a while, doing this for . . . ten years?

Jeremy–
Yeah. In 2005 I decided no more design, only photography. I left my design company to shoot full-time. A few months later, an agent from Hollywood called me, wanting to represent me. She really took me from zero to sixty, from shooting local Nashville musicians to shooting on TV and movie sets in Hollywood.

David–
And now you’ve circled back to doing a lot of visual art again. You had a gallery opening, a couple of shows just in the last month.

Jeremy–
There’s something about commercial photography—you make a picture, and it ends up everywhere. I don’t get to experience it with people. Whereas, I did that art show that you came out to, and it was so lovely. Here’s an image, here we’re experiencing it together, and this is the only one. It’s not mass-produced. It’s the only one like its kind. It was so much more meaningful for me.

David–
So between art, music, and photography, and now writing, with a book—what’s the thread, the creativity thread, that you can weave through all of those different things?

Jeremy–
The thread for me is the intersection of creativity and empathy. So, how do I help people with ideas? How do I help through creativity?

David–
That’s a great lead-in to the Purpose Hotel. In a nutshell, the inspiration for the Purpose—tell us that story.

Jeremy–
I was minding my own business on a photoshoot in Los Angeles on April 30th, 2012. I was walking through a hotel that was standard in that way, and they had the room numbers designed like name tags. I had a brief moment of design inspiration: They rethought how the room numbers should be designed, and I was like, man, instead of a cool name tag, there could be a story. If you wanted, you could stop at each room and read a brief story. But what could that story be? I thought immediately of a child that you could read about, and then a dollar a night per room could go to that child. So for a hotel with two hundred rooms, you’re sponsoring two hundred children.

When I walked into the room, it was like a movie where everything transforms in front of you, because I saw, in real time, I just understood the entire room in an entirely different way. You hear songwriters talk about the song coming to them. Sometimes they come over a year; sometimes they come in a minute. This was one of those moments. I saw this big, vast building, everything connecting to causes and ultimately helping people in need.

I knew it was the right idea, but I did nothing for three years because I was so intimidated by it. So it wasn’t until 2015 that I kind of found the guts to start walking toward it.

David–
It’s a very, very different type of creativity. It’s a business venture as opposed to a lone, solitary art form or shooting [someone’s photo] or painting by yourself. It’s a lot of money and a lot of people that you’re engaging. Is that pretty daunting?

Jeremy–
Because I wasn’t brainstorming a new career that morning, I don’t feel like I can take credit for it. That was truly a divine moment where I give credit to God. It didn’t feel like me.

David–
So much so that you kind of ran from it.

Jeremy–
Totally ran from it. How does a freelance photographer build a 150 million dollar hotel first and then a hotel chain thereafter? That doesn’t add up. [Laughs] So I said no for three years. But eventually when you wake up every day and go to bed every day still thinking about it for three years, it’s like, OK, this thing isn’t going anywhere, so it must be time.

Lindsay DeCarlo–
So what was the moment when you were like, “OK, fine, I’m going to do it now”?

Jeremy–
One [moment] was flying over New York City and looking at the thousands of skyscrapers as you fly over New York City, and I had this very simple thought: All of those buildings had to start with one person and one idea. And this building is so much more worthy of being built because of its mission to help people.

David–
And you’ve met so many people over the years through your travels, and to be able to leverage all those relationships into one vision is incredibly creative.

Jeremy–
The hotel, to me, is not about a building or a hotel industry. It’s community, it’s nonprofit, it’s technology, it’s art, it’s painting, it’s design. It’s all the things that I love and am passionate about wrapped up into one [thing], whose goal is to spread out and help people locally, domestically, and internationally.

And now we should tell our story! So I’ll ask you how you found us.

David–
We knew each other from church, the previous church that both of us went to, that neither of us go to now. A long time ago, my wife, Carrie, and Jeremy were on the worship team together.

And then I just followed you on Instagram. After the Kickstarter, you had so many followers that I just assumed you already had people working with you, but I reached out and said, “I’m assuming you have an architect, but if you don’t or need help or an adviser or help with how it’s going to happen…” Just really wanted to help with the vision, because I believed in it so much. Your response was, “No, we actually don’t have an architect.”

JC: I think the biggest thing was your heart in the email. This is a business that I can just see when someone’s in it for the right reasons and when they’re in it for the wrong reasons, and it was very apparent that you got it.

David–
Anyone that knows me and knows my creative process knows that I’m all about the story. Everything I do, design-wise, needs to tell a story. That’s who you are. You are so much about the human touch, the relationship, and the story. This hotel is just relentless with storytelling. Everything has a story. I think so much of that comes from your heart. There’s a lot of people that are really talented at what they do in the creative field, but there’s something special about somebody who does it with the heart and the compassion that you summed up in your own creative process, and that’s empathy.

Jeremy–
We should do this every day, just…

David–
…just build each other up!

Cat Acree–
Do you have advice for a designer who is seeking to build a relationship like this one?

Jeremy–
It comes down to humility. So many people let their egos get involved.

David–
If there is conflict, it takes humility to really embrace empathy. It takes empathy to be able to care for the other person enough to work through a situation that would otherwise be that conflict. It is amazing how so much of the conflict that we have in our industry, at least, really is about a misalignment of goals. I’m just trying to make my money versus we’re trying to do a great project. Of course we need to make money. We’re in business; this is not a gift, it’s not a charity. Like the Purpose—that’s one of the things I love about it. It’s trying to be a viable business. What is the human goal? What is the economic goal? What is the impact on the city, the urban goal? As long as you’re clear about what that relationship is and what the roles are and what the goals are, that would be the advice that I have.

Studio Visit: Libby Callaway

Story By: Cat Acree
Photography: Daniel Meigs
Nashville Design Week 2018

If we could pick anyone as the doyenne of Nashville’s design community, it would be Libby Callaway: former fashion editor and journalist for the New York Post, hunter of vintage and deadstock treasures, and founder of The Callaway, a branding and PR team whose clients include the wallpaper design duo New Hat and the 91-year-old European beauty company Erno Laszlo, as well as Nashville’s groundbreaking boutique hotel Noelle.

Callaway’s home is almost as well-known as she is, and her enviable, cluttered-to-perfection space is likely as recognizable as her long red hair. Paintings fill her living room walls from floor to ceiling; a mistletoe-adorned Christmas ornament hangs from her kitchen fan; necklaces drape over lampshades; and a staple remover with eyes has been placed near her kitchen sink. It feels like the whole layout could pick up and change in an instant—like design has never felt more encouraged to change.

How do you define design?

I think design touches every part of your life. Honestly, I’ve thought about that a lot as we’ve grown the Callaway, in that I want every decision we make for a client—every client we choose, every event we do—to have some kind of a relationship to an aesthetic world, and to have a point of view. I think that’s what good design is—it has a point of view. It’s happening a lot more in Nashville than it used to, which is really exciting.

Where are you seeing that?

Bubbling up, it’s the creative economy. It’s the small business economy where you’re seeing it, like the New Hat girls or over at Elephant Gallery, which I am obsessed with.

What is the goal of The Callaway?

We try to say we’re not a PR company because it’s kind of a concept that’s being phased out. We do public relations for creative companies, but mainly it’s figuring out ways for them to communicate their message to not just the press but to the public, and to engage people, whether they want them to buy something or talk about an idea or attend an event. It’s figuring out ways to help creative companies tell their stories.

I come from a journalism background, so for a long time, I always thought that there were two sides to the coin—kind of like Woody Allen, you’re either a New Yorker or you’re an LA person. [But] actually I realized about 10 years ago that I like LA, too! You can be both. You can hold these two opposing ideas at one time. I realized that the work that I had been doing post-working at a newspaper was really the same work I was doing as a writer. It’s sort of like business-to-business but it’s business-to-consumer. B2C instead of B2B. It’s figuring out how to tell stories in a different way, and that’s what I think we do.

Tell me about a project that you think has been especially successful and why.

I’m setting myself to talk about Noelle! Funny how I did that. I’m continually impressed with the Noelle owners in that they have really put their money where their mouth is in terms of engaging the creative community here. I’m really always very surprised that they continue to listen to our sometimes weird ideas or programming. … Our line is—it’s not a line, it’s the truth—there are over 55 local designers, makers or artists that are represented in that hotel, and that’s kind of a low estimate. There’s just dozens of people who are not megacorporations and do not have a lot of money behind them who have invested a lot of love and time in creating that place.

I think there are people who come in—and of course, I’m very attuned to it—I see even other hoteliers come in and been like, “We’re investing in the creative community, paying homage to Nashville, so we’re getting this designer to make a chair.” They’re not going as far as to hire tenured ceramicists to make all the ceramics for the restaurant, or getting Jessica Cheatham at Salt Ceramics to put a vase in every room.

How do you characterize your role in Nashville?

I feel like potentially a creative place-maker. Nick Dryden—a friend and someone I really look up to in terms of how he conducts his business—he talks about place-making a whole lot. If The Callaway’s doing our job right and I’m doing my job right, I’m figuring out how to create opportunities for that kind of place-making. It’s almost like an idea—not necessarily a physical space, just creating spaces for people to have creative experiences.

What do you think is Nashville’s greatest design strength and its greatest weakness?

I think weakness is listening to all the deep pockets that come in and wanting to put up monstrosities and terrible-looking apartment complexes. And I know you can’t say no when someone’s writing you a big check for a slab of property, but I feel like there have been aesthetic choices that have been made that were really dubious and that have now scarred our skyline and landscape, ruined neighborhoods. Not to use the word ruin—have challenged the aesthetics of our small neighborhoods.

In terms of strength, on the flipside of that, I think there are a lot of people who are really interested in engaging young thought-leaders, young design-leaders and different small companies, getting them involved.

What three things influence your design the most?

My family. My mother’s family’s business is interior design. My grandparents opened a floor- and wall-covering company in east Tennessee in the forties, and my aunt is with ASID [American Society of Interior Designers]. So I grew up in a 1929 home that was continually evolving. Walls coming up and walls coming down—wallpaper changing constantly. Things were always happening. My mom and my aunt are really big design influences.

I think fashion is a big design influence on me—color and pattern and texture. I’ve spent a lot of my career working in that realm.

I guess necessity is the other thing. I’ve got a lot of shit that doesn’t do anything. [laughs] But the things that do need to do things like lights, why should they be ugly when they can be cool?

If you could collaborate with any designer in Nashville who you haven’t already, who would that be?

This is the really, really cool thing about what we’ve been able to build over the last couple of years: We’ve worked with all the brands we really want to work with. I definitely want to get more involved in the interior design community. That’s something that’s personal, just growing up in the environment that I did. It’s just a lot more interesting to me right now than fashion.

Why is that? What are you seeing that you’re excited about?

I think the whole Memphis design movement, just that whole seventies and eighties European design aesthetic, that I was kind of, ugh, so over because I was a teenager in the eighties. But now it just looks really good and fresh and exciting and vibrant. It’s full of color. It doesn’t look like it’s stuck in this very upper-crust place. That’s really fun and joyful.

I think fashion has some of that, but I think fashion has just gotten over-commercialized. I don’t know who owns who anymore, and that seems to be all anyone wants to talk about. The choices being made in terms of all the designers going from house to house with really increasing frequency—I don’t feel like aesthetics are being developed in ways that they should, from the top down. And then of course the problem of fast fashion, which I’m just as guilty as anyone for investing in it sometimes. But I don’t know, I just don’t think that people are being very thoughtful. You have to be more thoughtful when you’re working with interiors because there’s a little more permanence in it.

Studio Visit: New Hat

Story By: Cat Acree
Photography: Daniel Meigs
Nashville Design Week 2018

Kelly Diehl and Elizabeth Williams of New Hat Projects are slowly transforming Nashville’s interiors with some of the freshest, boldest surface coverings this town has ever seen.

From their first collaboration in 2014 with Dozen Bakery to the graphics and event design for last year’s Nashville Fashion Alliance Honors awards ceremony, their work signals a new generation of fearless creativity in Nashville. Portal Project, their hallway installation at Clay Ezell and Vadis Turner’s home that is a combination of hand-printed and screen-printed wallpaper and brass, is so cool it makes me want to cry a little.They’re also queens of collaboration: Diehl, a Nashville native, brings a fine art focus, while Williams, who has lived in Nashville for nearly 15 years, brings graphic design. In their East Nashville studio, the two women speak lightly and hilariously about their work. The launch of their first product line looms over them (a notepad on their desk has a to-do list; number one on the list is “LAUNCH”), but when it comes to New Hat, playfulness and joyfulness are unavoidable.

How did you find your way to your design process?

Elizabeth–
Just out of necessity. We wanted to start this business and be artists and work for ourselves, and that necessitated us working on commercial projects and connecting with people who needed us to solve visual problems for them.

Kelly–
The way we started was a way to make our artwork and large-scale work with no overhead. It’s spread kind of by word of mouth. We’ve gotten to the point where we want to introduce products as another stable revenue stream so that we can devote time to bigger, more impactful projects.

How do you define design?

Elizabeth–
What was the really dumb thing I read yesterday? ‘Design is a way of life and how it makes you feel. In a space. In a room.’ We’re in the middle of having to write statements about things, so we’re having to speak truthfully and say things that we’re passionate about but not in platitudes. It’s hard to answer those questions without seeming disingenuous.

Kelly–
Or vague.

Elizabeth–
I remember having a conversation with Kelly, because when you’re in your mid- to late-twenties, you’re asking yourself big questions. One night I was like, ‘What is art? What do I think good art is?’ It was a question that scared me because I had never asked that question in art school. … [Kelly] said the most profound thing to me at the time: ‘Is it true, and is it beautiful?’ That was so simple and perfect for me to hear, because I wanted it to be this analytical, heady thing. … I think I’ve been chasing after that feeling since then. That’s why we make design work, and try to make things better and clearer and more beautiful and surprising and delightful—all the things that you want to better your surroundings or better the world that we live in in a way that makes sense to us.

Kelly–
Design is always solving a problem, and doing so to the best of your ability and experience and history. I guess I separate design from art, with the problem-solving aspect. … Product design, any kind of design, graphic design, architecture—those are all born of some kind of prompt based on the material world and needs, whereas art comes from a more immaterial, spiritual place.

What three things influence your design the most?

Elizabeth–
I’d say architecture, art history.

Kelly–
And decorative arts history.

Elizabeth–
Wallpaper and pattern designs specifically.

What is your process for working together?

Elizabeth–
It’s definitely a conversation, and then we tend to get each other excited about something, and if we feel that energy spark between each other, we go after it. You can tell when the energy’s not there. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Something happens that I can’t necessarily describe—an energy exchange that’s an unsaid pact that we make. Yes, we will carry on with this idea and see it to fruition.

Kelly–
Or even if we don’t know at the moment, it’s something that we can come back to.

Elizabeth–
Then Kelly may draw it out, and she’ll give it to me, and then the computer magic happens, and she helps me refine it. And then we go into the land of color, which is so deep and wonderful, and explore how the design changes because of that, and then we talk about scale. … It’s layer upon layer of complexity added to the process, and we’re both part of those decisions.

Kelly–
We trust each other’s instincts and ways of talking about things. It’s become this effortless build.

Elizabeth–
Which is totally unfair for the rest of the world because everyone else has to work with people that they hate collaborating with and they have to listen to podcasts that tell them how to work with other people’s personalities.

Kelly–
[Laughs] And then they try to do it alone, and it’s too much work, and they hate their failures.

Elizabeth–
We just think that we’re failing together, and then we can cry and talk ourselves out of it. Collaboration is very difficult, but we’re lucky that we work so well together.

Kelly–
We have a shared catalogue of visual references that has really gotten us going—geometric, architectural, minimal, playful.

And what’s it like to add in a client or third party?

Elizabeth–We’ve been able to do some weird commercial projects [because] people put us in this weird, kooky category. We didn’t have to do something that we weren’t necessarily proud of in the beginning, which is really lucky. Sometimes you just have to do jobs to make money, and then you get known for doing the thing that you don’t really want to do. …  We’re working with 8th and Roast right now, and they want a large-scale mural in their new location. They gave us a prompt to use some of the ethnic vocabulary and regions where they get their beans from, so we did this weird collage, more avant-garde thing, and everyone’s like, ‘I don’t know what the hell that is but I like it and I’m into it.’ We’re able to do something that’s weird and that they didn’t expect, but it’s not so weird that they can’t get behind it.

Kelly–
It’s not confrontational. We work with color and pattern, and those are things that are very familiar to all of us in terms of all these learned histories of textiles and craft.

Elizabeth–What we strive for a lot of the time is something that has a sense of familiarity that also seems foreign, and that duality is very important to us.

Kelly–
And right now, feminine crafts and work are more accepted and creeping into all these art and design forms. We’re seeing fibers, embroidery—it seems new, because it’s been this colder, more masculine environment up to now, but it’s like a rainbow explosion of more voices in design. Plus with Instagram, everyone wants STATEMENT SPACES.

Elizabeth–
[sings] Where’s my selfie wall??

How do you characterize your role within Nashville?

Elizabeth–
For us being younger women who are trying to have a voice in the conversation in Nashville, the fact that we’ve been able to do our business and people are supporting that is a testament that there is some value to design in Nashville that’s bubbling up, even if we are one of the only options [for what we do].

Kelly–
We’re trying to look outward more, within the community, to what’s been successful and trendy. We’re bringing that perspective. But just being the first can be a step forward for our microindustry in Nashville.

Elizabeth–
We really care about things like [Nashville Design Week], because we see that it will bring more attention [from] outward to inward.

Kelly–
There’s an intellectual capability to assess and live in and seek out high design, better design. It’s just a lack of options or precedence.

Elizabeth–
And manufacturing stuff, too. That’s not as available in Nashville, too. … There are a lot of people who can provide that stuff [in Nashville], but it’s not built in. Similar to the fashion industry, and that’s what Nashville Fashion Alliance is trying to do, with bringing more sewing and fabric and all the stuff you need to put together a collection.

If you could collaborate with another organization in Nashville, who would that be?

Elizabeth–
We would love to do something with Andra Eggleston, who does fabric and textiles, and that would just be easy. Do a wallpaper with her. In a more real way, I think the opportunity to work with Sideshow for Nashville Design Week is really exciting for us, because we do have a lot of sculptural ideas. Kelly is a sculpture major, but we don’t do a lot of fabrication ourselves. We do what we can, but we don’t have all this overhead with machines and space that can accommodate all of that, so [we’d like to continue] working with more production and fabrication people. And maybe to have a heavier hand in the future with any sort of development project, being more of a creative director role with an architecture firm that we love and adore.