this is a design blog

I am a big fan of artist Amy Helfand’s work and am looking forward to meeting her in New York for ICFF, where she’ll be launching new pieces. Her rugs are exquisite as are her prints. There’s a really acute sense of colour that I appreciate. I asked Amy a few questions about work, colour and kids…read on for her answers.

CH: What inspires you?

AH: I am inspired by walking in the woods, the shapes of blooming branches or strange fruits and vegetables, sometimes by music or journeys (both my own and those of other people). My artistic background was originally in photography, and there was a photographer, Minor White (a contemporary of Ansel Adams), who said “One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.” I think this idea has stayed with me and very much influenced the way I make my work. In a way it relates to abstraction, which I am very interested in.

CH: You began life as an artist working with collage and painting. What drew you to rug design?

AH: My work was becoming more and more graphic, and for some reason I started thinking about rugs. I was doing a show at Wave Hill, which is a public garden in the Bronx, and conceptually, the idea of a rug worked well, with the gallery space in an old mansion on the estate. I did a bunch of research on how to get rugs made and, in the process, discovered Rugmark (www.rugmark.org). They are a non-profit working to end child labor in the rug industry and through them, I found a manufacturer. The rug came out well, and it sold, and I loved the quality of my image as a rug. They have a lot of soul, if that makes sense, and I think it comes from the labor involved, and the care taken in the process. I still make my artwork in the same way as always, and don’t think of myself as designing rugs, per se, but the translation has worked well, and the tactile quality of the rugs adds something to my work.

CH: What’s your favourite piece at home?

AH: It’s hard to pick just one. I would say that my favorite artwork is a photograph by Uta Barth that was a wedding gift. It’s called Ground #47, and is a slightly blurry photo of a blue curtain against a white wall. There is also a little thrift store painting of a man standing on a cliff in front of a roiling ocean that I love. And we are very fortunate to have lots of incredible work by artist friends. My favorite piece of furniture would have to be our over the top, Mexican tin headboard by Casa Midi. It came to us serendipitously through a friend of mine who used to work at House and Garden magazine. They had used it for a story and it was just sitting in storage–no one wanted it! It is incredible!

CH: . I recently watched Elizabeth Gilbert give a TED talk (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html). She spoke about genius visiting. We aren’t genius’, we are visited by genius. I think that’s true of artists as well as writers. How would you describe that moment when a design comes to you?

AH: I do think that I have to be open to receiving something (genius??) as I’m making work. And I don’t mean to sound flaky with that, but generally, I am a planner (or at least I think I am), and do alot of research in my process. When something sparks my interest, I do lots of reading, and looking, and sometimes visiting a place, etc. I have learned that it doesn’t always go the way you planned, though, and this is what I think is connected to the idea of the “visiting”. And in a way, I have learned to have faith that the right idea will come to me, and to be patient with that (which is not always easy). When I am between things, I always go back to the most basic practice, which is drawing. I don’t necessarily draw from life–I have made tracings, used springs to generate images, and other wacky things, but somehow this leads me to what is most interesting to pursue.

For instance….last fall, I thought I was going to do some work loosely organized around the idea of “This Land is Your Land”–like the song. It came from my research on Lewis and Clark, and music, and the American landscape in general. At the same time I was looking at photographs I took when I travelled to Nepal last year. I started drawing from them, and the resulting forms are what really worked for me and got me excited about the new work I am doing.

CH: Right now I am drawn to the color yellow…I’ve no idea why, but I am really loving it. Do you find yourself drawn to certain colors?

AH: Yes, I do, and right now it is a blue with alot of green in it–darker than turquoise, and not as green as teal, but somewhere in there. I saw it in a photo in World of Interiors magazine. We used to have a big orange wall going up our stairs, and we just painted it that blue (and hung the painting of the man facing the ocean–which goes perfectly).

CH: You’ve got three kids. How do you strike a balance between your work and the rest of your life?

AH: The truth is, making art is most likely to get the short end of that stick. There aren’t really enough hours in the day to spend in my studio. We don’t have childcare, and while my kids are in school all day, the school day is short, and I am the one most likely to be picking them up and driving to piano lessons, soccer practice, etc. I am so lucky that my husband is incredibly helpful and available, but there are 3 kids, so sometimes it takes both of us. I manage to take care of the business, and run the household, but I don’t get as much new work done as I’d like. There are so many ideas waiting for me to get to them!