 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
||
|
 |
|
|
||
|
|||||||||||||||||
| To celebrate the coming of spring, we got together with one of our idols, designer Jill Bliss. Her nature-inspired designs dazzle our eyes and fill our dreams with poppies, daffodils and sea creatures! Although based in California, Jill popped by our Brooklyn warehouse recently to chat with us about her amazing necklace note set, a fredflare.com exclusive, as well as her childhood memories, undersea adventures, biggest influences and more. What age did you start drawing and designing? My dad worked at the Wall Street Journal in San Francisco when I was really young and would bring home the end rolls of newsprint paper. One of my earliest memories is being in my room with one of those rolls, drawing all the cool toys my friends had that my parents couldn't or wouldn't buy me: kid-size kitchen appliances that really worked, pedal-powered mini cars, etc. That was in the Silicon Valley during the first wave of the home computer industry, so my friends had tons of awesome toys to covet. I'd draw their toys life-sized and would try to replicate them as best I could, then tape them on the wall or put them on the floor and pretend to play with them. I also remember spreading one of the rolls the entire length of the house and drawing the Jolly Green Giant, life-sized! You grew up on a farm in Northern California. What was it like moving to the industrial metropolis after growing up in such a natural environment? Was it a hard adjustment? To me, rural natural environments and manmade city environments are a lot alike. Each has its own natural order and everything in each has cultivated its own niche. There's always so much going on
Is your nature-inspired design sense a result of your childhood surroundings? Yes, definitely! I have one strong memory from when I was three or four years old that relates to tide pools. I’d stay with my grandparents a lot when I was really young, and we'd go to the beach often. One time I was following some older kids around the tide pools and fell into a pool that was deeper than me. I remember standing in the middle of all these rocks, mesmerized by a starfish and all the other tide pool creatures around me. We were all hanging out, gently swaying back and forth with the current. Then my grandfather lifted me up and out of the water. The whole event was probably not much more than thirty seconds or a minute, but I still remember all the small details of that experience! Some of your work seems to reflect Japanese influences. Have you ever been to Japan? I did research for my MFA thesis and apparently our local mall was the first to receive a Sanrio store in the U.S. in 1976… I’ve been a huge fan of Sanrio since first discovering it there in kindergarten! Some of my best friends are Japanese also. I’ve always admired their aesthetic, which has many similarities to the Dutch aesthetic I grew up with in my family. I was finally able to go to Tokyo for five cold January days, two years ago. It was a ton of fun visiting all our friends there and I took pictures of absolutely everything I came across (especially in all the shops). That was the first time I was such a stereotypical tourist with a camera around my neck, taking pictures of every little thing! That's another city I'd love to live in for a while. What's it like to have your own published line of stationery? How did that come about? I have drawers and drawers of stationery I've been collecting all my life, so it's beyond amazing! It's two steps up from my childhood efforts of making my own Sanrio-esque stationery, and one step up from the stationery line a friend and I made together in high school to sell in the print shop where she worked… It all came about when an editor at Chronicle Books contacted me a few years ago and asked if I'd be interested in making stationery with them. Boy, they didn't know what they were in for! I brought them a huge box of prototypes and all the things I'd ever made for blissen.com. Everyone who works at Chronicle is super nice and they're all super crafty too, so everyone in the department came by the office and we all geeked out over all the different things we all made! OMG, we love your new necklace note set! How did you come up with the idea? Back in 1997, the first incarnation of my personal website had an area where you could download projects to print out, cut out, and assemble. The necklace note set is a more sophisticated version of the print-and-wear jewelry I used to make. It turned out so great! How do you spend your free time?
You do a lot of collaboration with other artists. How does this experience influence your own design process? I adore working with other creative people! Working together you can create some of the most amazing things you'd never even think of on your own. You also get to learn how the other person thinks and makes things and teach them what you know and do at the same time. Who are your favorite artists? My favorite people and places are the ones that don't limit themselves, the ones who aren't afraid to experiment and try new things. Past, present and future dream project collaborators are or would be: Sarah at thesmallobject.com, Kathleen at seamripper.net, Melissa at lekkner.com, Oilily, Ikea, Saelee at lemonademaid.com, Shinpei at pleanflatplan, Souther Salazar, Hella Jongerius, Lotta Jansdotter, Marimekko, Vera Neumann, Orla Keily, Sukie, San-X and far too many others to list! Okay, time for fred’s SPEED ROUND! FAVE COLOR: green FAVE TUNES: Lately we’ve been enjoying Ha Ha Sound by Broadcast, Risky Dazzle - a service party shuffle comp, the new Stereolab, Ms. John Soda and perennial favorites to get me through a late night in front of the sewing machine or computer screen: the Pulse Compilation, Eggstone in San Diego by Eggstone, Cut Copy, or iPod shuffle genres such as: new and new new wave, disco, or early rap FAVE VIDEOS: videos on constant repeat this week are Nth Degree by Morningwood, Birds by Pleix and Baby Blue by Halcali FAVE DRINK: Daytime: water or tea - especially green pear tea. Nighttime: red wine FAVE CANDY: grape Pez or expensive dark chocolate 4/2006 |
|||||||||||||||||
