Apliiq CEO Ethan Lipsitz recently connected with Luke Haynes in the Apliiq workshop. Luke is a fabric artist who uses quilting as a medium for creating incredible works of art. His quilts have shown at The American Folk Art Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, Duke University and The International Quilt Festival and he’s been commissioned to create one of a kind quilts for many large companies and private collectors.
Hey Luke! What you up to?
It’s Marketing Monday so lots of scheduling… Lots of trips coming up, I’ll be going to the UK, Houston, NY, Portland. Lots to prep!
Cool, what’s all the travel for?
Exhibitions, teaching, networking, outreach – the biggest national quilt event is in Houston every year. I’m interested in designing fabric and exploring what it means in that world.
Wow, that’s rad. Are you thinking that will be a new direction for you?
It’s not my focus, more of a part time gig maybe. I’m curious to diversify into a marketable, monetary world – instead of making objects based in cerebral interaction making something functional. My quilts are thinking objects, people look at them, think about why I made them, but they’re not so functional.
Do people sleep on your quilts?
Nobody but me, me and my girlfriends.
Would you consider getting into wearable stuff?
I made a few blazers, hired a tailor to make me some blazers from scratch. It’s crossed my mind but very different from the industry I’m in already to such an extent that it may not have a crossover. I want to keep my existing community engaged with the work I’m making. So maybe housewares, I did launch architectural finishes – sewing an entire wall panel, window treatments… I’d like to get some big commissions, make all the curtains for a new project. That would be cool.
Friends #4 Richard Babb
Who is your community?
Collectors and museums for the most part. I have pieces in big museums. People are invested in my career, galleries, curators and directors. I could see myself working on 4 houses a year.
I’m interested in large scale commissions over commodities and would rather be the avant garde that’s informing an aesthetic than having to work towards the lowest common purchase denominator in the consumer goods space.
Is industry about working to the lowest common denominator?
Less and less now. Your company isn’t about making 100,000 gray tee shirts. You make things with a communication with the end user. There’s a lot of that going on. We’re gonna see more of that as the 3D printing generation comes to fruition where people have more self permission to design.
I agree completely
The world that I live in is a world of high design concept. I read blogs about cars that will never be built and facades of buildings that power the building. They won’t trickle down to ranch homes in Ohio, yet that’s the most powerful and interesting thing going on in the community. I pay a lot of attention to big concepts that are happening.
How does that avant garde new tech interest translate to the traditional quilting world?
Laterally, what it means is they’ll add new bells and whistles on the sewing machine, laser precision embroidery, cut the thread, but it’s still re-print cotton feed sack fabric, sewing traditional patterns for grand kids weddings. So the tech is not changing the way quilts are being conceived, made and designed, they’re just adding efficiency. Whereas in other industries it does change.
Do you see an avenue for change and innovation in quilting?
Absolutely, the avenue will be bringing in new people. Younger people is a way to put it, but it’s a misnomer. You need to bring in people with art and design influences and things that aren’t coming from a tradition of home economics from the 1950s. People interested in fabric, interested in sewing but not in the status quo.
Are you seeing those people?
Yes, eehhhhhh, slowly. Another big thing that will change the industry will be rebranding quilts out of this non-value nostalgia object of utility and branding them as works of time intensive passion and art. I hesitate to say art because of the history, tradition and method involved but some rebranding of the concept of quilt will make a huge difference.
The American Context #5 Flag
What do you think of the quilting aesthetic popping up in apparel?
Quilted handbags, stitch a little bit of texture. The hard part is that all that is doing is taking a visual language from a different medium and translating it to something else. You’re not making a quilt, you’re making a jacket with quilt as a visual aesthetic. i appreciate that because it brings people back to pay attention to quilting as a medium. But it’s an aesthetic, not a crossover in method.
Would you like to attract new people to the quilting scene?
I would love to do, I did a contest this year, make a 16″ quilt, send me a picture of it, we’re gonna vote on all of them, whoever wins I’ll make them a 3′ square portrait of them. It was an excuse to try something new, make a little thing, especially for people who don’t quilt. I got 6-7 entries this year. Hopefully there will be hundreds next year, I just want people to try it.
If we were gonna make an art project together, what would it be?
We’d talk about the dialog between the chosen fabrics. We go in different directions. Starting with a conversation about fabric and material. I’m gonna wanna do something representational, and you’re gonna wanna do something habitable like clothes, a tent, shirts… Once we agree on fabrics, I’ll do the spacial design and make the components which then come together to make something more figural. It would be a dialog between object and reference. That would be the title of our show.
Dude, lets make a tee pee!!!
Ahhh!!!
Get your mind blown, check out more of Luke’s work here.
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