FEBRUARY 1, 2013 | BY JC MILLER

 

Macaroni and Cheese, flimsy plastic shopping bags, and moving blankets are ordinary things, not the stuff that comes to mind when design is the subject of dinner conversation. But, it was during a conversation over a pretty amazing dish of macaroni and cheese at Homeroom, an Oakland eatery focused entirely on one of the staple foods of my childhood, that it occurred to me that there is a trend in Bay Area design right now wherein the extraordinary is recognized and teased out of the mundane.

What prompted this idea was a recent visit to The Workshop Residence in San Francisco’s Dog Patch neighborhood. TWS is the brain child of Ann Hatch, a long time supporter of the local creative community. It is a place she has created that allows visiting artists and designers to work with local fabricators to make beautiful, interesting, and useful things. Two of the artists whose work can currently be found there seem to be completely engage with this idea of extraordinary ordinary.

Lauren DiCioccio’s work riffs in a thought provoking way on ephemeral objects such as newspaper, hand written notes, and plastic bags. The embroidered “The Thank You Thank You” totes that she created during her residency mock and celebrate the generic plastic grocery sack that is now contraband in many jurisdictions.

Jim Isermann, an artist whose complex geometric compositions are often large and so abstract as to defy simple classification, took on the humble moving blanket and concrete garden screen block while he was a resident. The resulting products are simultaneously useful and remarkable.

Where does any of this lead? Hard to say with any certainty, but I find it inspirational and it motivates me to reexamine the basic building blocks of my trade—concrete, galvanized steel, overlooked common plants, etc.—to see if there is something extraordinary there that is being overlooked.