The inherent challenge posed to every Maker trying to fit-in is finding a way to stand out. From wearing their cultural and political hearts on their sleeves to throwing wicked whisky curveballs, here are 12 Makers who stood out to us at Agenda, Capsule and Liberty!
To Lucinda’s paternal grandmother, Mary, there was only one way to cook meatballs: drop them, uncooked, into a bubbling pot of tomato sauce, until the sauce and all its contents could marry the meat, making it one. Lucinda’s grandmother’s sister-in-law, Aunt Josephine, saw it differently. The real way to cook meatballs was to brown them first, then pour the sauce on top. Any other way was absurd.
There is an in-between space that every maker knows. The space between falling and flying. To fall is to give yourself up to someone else’s vision. To fly? Doing whatever it takes to see your vision come to life. Any vision worth having is formed by fire, grit and determination. Unsurprisingly this is the story of Sean Yoro (a.k.a Hula).
Growth should never be measured by the length of the branch; but by the depths of the root. This is why urban farmers Ryan Anderson and Hannah Clark created ACRE, a sustainable urban farm in the heart of Detroit to help Detroiters eat fresh and healthy produce made in their own backyard. With this comes the prospect and potential for many people to get back in touch with the earth in which we all live.
There is an in-between space that every maker knows. The space between falling and flying. To fall is to give yourself up to someone else’s vision. To fly? Doing whatever it takes to see your vision come to life. Any vision worth having is formed by fire, grit and determination. Unsurprisingly this is the story of Sean Yoro (a.k.a Hula).
Growth should never be measured by the length of the branch; but by the depths of the root. This is why urban farmers Ryan Anderson and Hannah Clark created ACRE, a sustainable urban farm in the heart of Detroit to help Detroiters eat fresh and healthy produce made in their own backyard. With this comes the prospect and potential for many people to get back in touch with the earth in which we all live.
In the many ways that we'd want our relationships with home to be easy, we come to discover that, in so many more ways, our relationships with home is hard. They're troubled with the traumas of our childhood. Some we've acknowledged, others are buried down so deep, archaeologists can't find them. And it's the difficulty of the search that makes you understand home is wherever, whoever, or whatever you're willing to fight for.
Independence is one of the few gifts in this world that no one can give us. We have to give it to ourselves, deciding whether or not it's something we actually want. By the time furniture designers Alex Rosenhaus and Drew Arrison arrived at this conclusion, they realized independence was what they were actively working toward their entire lives.
If duty makes us do things, love must be why we do them well. Watching metalsmiths Gabriel Craig and Amy Weiks of Smith Shop, a dynamic craft-centric metalworking studio based in Detroit, you see the love they have for their work, and for each other.
Every city has a cultural narrative that shapes the spirit of the people living there. So when you visit the "Motor City," and the Chief Operating Officer of Detroit Bikes, Chris Kiesling, tells you that the first thing he remembers making is a motorized mini-bike with his father, a mechanical engineer, at the age of six, you understand that the stories people tell of their cities go deeper than the mere recollection of memories and facts. Fate is unfolding before your eyes.
One of the greatest gifts an artist can give to the world is their art. For more than 20 years, graphic designer Julian Alexander has done just that. He's created some of hip-hop's most iconic album covers; he's won a Grammy for the sublime art direction of Miles Davis's The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions; he's designed innovative retail spaces for Nike. The Bloomfield, Connecticut, native even used to charge little to nothing to cut the freshest designs in his friend's hair in high school. These things are only an extension of Julian's nuanced vocabulary as an artist.
The American writer, Susan Sontag, believed that photographs were capable of shocking us if they could show us something new. But when looking for the novel, the question almost immediately becomes how do you find something you've never seen before? Do you actively pursue the new? Or do you allow yourself to be discovered by it? For London born, Brooklyn based, photographer John Midgley it's been both. Discovery is a simultaneous act of looking and being lost. Sometimes we find what we're looking for. But so many other times, what we're looking for finds us.
Whenever art seems too simple, there's the ubiquitous notion that a child has made it. It's a revealing sentiment that often says more about the person observing the work than the person who made it. If art was truly as simple as it looked, more people would do it. Plain and simple. The truth is: art is a serious endeavor.
One of the worst things a child can ever say to an adult is that they're bored. Food traveler Gabrielle Etienne first learned this lesson at six when she told her maternal grandmother, Artris P. Woodward, that she was bored. Gabrielle's grandmother grabbed her globe, placed it in front of Gabrielle, and told her granddaughter to spin it. Wherever Gabrielle's finger landed—Mexico, France, South Africa—she would then have to retrieve her grandmother's atlas and read about the people living there. It had been her grandmother's way of letting Gabrielle know, "the world is so much bigger than your boredom."
