Increation talk to JOHNHOUSHMAND

JOHNHOUSHMAND was born an artist in 1954. Raised by a Dutch-American mother and an Iranian father, John has always danced between Eastern philosophy and Western principles. He was cultured at an early age, spending his youth abroad in the Philippines, Great Britain, Iran, and Israel.

John's inventive essence and exceptional life experiences have harmonized to produce his latest masterful creation. His current endeavour involves designing and crafting an exclusive line of functional art, ironically disguised as furniture. John's work embodies the simplicity of Eastern aesthetics, a vibrant celebration of nature, and a deep reverence for all things esoteric. John is Commander-in-Chief of this entire operation. His unique relationship with the natural world has manifested into a 900-acre farm in upstate New York, which is where he creates his furniture today.

1. How would you describe what you do? Is it product design? Is it art? Or is it something more than that?

JH: The work that I do is not product design, nor is it art. It is an act of finding an elemental idea, and an elemental quality in a material, and merging the two in an intuitive and non-thinking act. The trick is to get OUT of your verbal thinking circuit and get into a pure state of reverie over this act, and the miraculous possibility that you can actually do this. After the Aha! moment, there can be tweaking and adjustment, but the firing of that intuitive circuitry is the magic moment.

 

2. Your musicality obviously plays a huge part in your life, how do you feel this filters into your design work?

JH: The same applies to my approach to music. I do a lot of auto-compositional playing… the act of beginning and immersing without having any written music, and launching into an improvisational act that for all intents and purposes sounds to the listener as if it is composed and crafted, but you are in free fall, no parachute, and have no idea where you are going next, but using all the tools of known musical construction. It is again getting out of the verbal and the thinking circuit. Out of the metaphorical circuit into the real-time action of reaching straight to the muse and coupling with her in joy, bliss, and ecstasy. Who in this day and age describes the act of designing on these terms? But why not? Are we machines or are we extraordinary beings called humans that participate in the conscious awareness of our own evolution as we participate in the making of all that defines our lives, our creativity, and the wish we have for the world in which we live? And we make this world with every thought, never mind product design, so purify the act and get into the bliss of it all...

 3. When creating such highly bespoke work, do you find you often fashion a concept yourself or is it more a collaboration with your customer?

JH: The creative gesture usually is pre-client. The insistent pressure to find that moment and that action needs no client. But we live in time, and these days we live in the matrix of commerce very much, and the client enters and must be regarded with the same reverence that all the other pieces of the dream are regarded. You cannot look at the client interaction as a descent from some Olympus of your own making. You need that interaction. And it is part of the desire of the entirety of your existence. It is only a question of time. When one goes to that place "pre-client" it is only that it is an act in search of a playmate, a choreography in search of the dance partner. It has the same validity whether it is on this side of the client moment or that. The only difference is that when it is on that side, one must follow the every movement of the client in the dance, and honour it. And I mean that in all cases. The most difficult or possibly "annoying" desire of a client is only a request that asks you to go beyond yourself and whatever you must do to honour it that will most assuredly change you to a higher state. I mean that in every case. I have seen a difficult commission elicit a negative response within the team, and it must be risen above. You never know if the challenge is a design and creativity challenge, or a challenge to yourself as a human. I had a client ask if they could take two pieces, cut one in half, and put it together with the other. I left the room, chewed on my ego for a few minutes, succumbed to the unknown challenge as well as the catalyst of a sale (we do live in time and space!), and then found that their request was beyond brilliant, and the piece was a great sculptural extreme. The request MUST be responded to with the highest reach of your nobility. That might be an artistic response, a side-step into mirth, or a reach to a place in yourself you have not gone to yet.

I am reminded of a great painter who when demanded by his gallerist to give him a 25% discount, delivered the painting with the upper left quarter cut out. The response was not disgruntled so much as it was brilliant, and the resulting piece became an artistic work at a dimension beyond the dialectic that was in place prior to the request. We all in the end want to be recipients of beauty, design integrity, nobility, but in the end we are really asking to step to a higher level of experience in our receipt of the created work.

And we apply these values in ALL cases whether we know it or not! Even the great sleeper score at IKEA where they actually designed a sublime piece and sold it at absurdly low prices elicits a reverie in the buyer. Tell me when you DIDN'T want to participate in the made world for anything less than a great, juicy moment of getting some magic in your life…?

 

4. How are concepts realised and developed? What does the journey look like from brief to finished piece?

JH: They take as many paths and routes as your entry into a day in your life. There is the dream in the night. There is the client request that demands an attenuated approach to paper and pencil, wanting to just hit it out of the park, often not knowing what that means and what the park is. There is the moment when a piece is cut off a tree and it screams chaise lounge, but no one else in the room seems to hear that, and they look at you as if you're an idiot when you mention it. There is the chair challenge… After millennia of humans designing chairs, what makes you think that you could have anything better to offer? There is the vomiting of the "product" notion… we need more "product?" Give me a break! We need more silence and more space (Now that's an idea! That was what prompted the "Ghost Chair…)! Then there was the moment, after literally re-introducing the idea of live-edge wood design to our world in 2003, and by 2005 seeing it turned into a cookie-cutter design fetish, that we reached into other materials, wit and whimsy, and out and out defiance, and created the "Retaliation Collection." A savage and hilarious rebuttal to the lowest common denominator approach to wood slab design, and a reach into the space beyond that… Never underestimate the power of a challenge in any form, internal or external.

5. Do you often find yourself mixing different styles to couple briefs with material choices?

JH: I sometimes get a wild idea to riff on the known, in an attempt to create something iconic. It is not simply the desire to mix metaphors but rather the awareness that if you combine two or more disparate realities thou will get "something for nothing," to quote Erwin Hauer, and maybe it will please someone, or yourself, or even be iconic enough to find its way into the permanent collection at MOMA.

 

6. Using such an organic medium, how much is the design dictated by the materials?

JH: The approach is either throughout the organic piece in search of a geometry, or through the geometry in search of the organic piece. In the Theory of Celestial Influence, Maurice Nicoll postulates that all existence participates in six processes, and one is the Process of Healing. If I could be so absurd I would like to postulate that good design must participate in that process. It states that right form attracts healing energy (the bandage), or right energy promulgates right form (spontaneous remission). So your design imperative is not to simply put another plastic wabi-jabo on the planet, but rather to reach into the invisible world and do the right thing. The materials will always be true to their nature. But can you be true to yours?

 

7. In our own experience, using raw or reclaimed timbers can be unpredictable when processing. Do you find yourself having to tailor standard or traditional processes when designing pieces?

JH: We have had to create a new technology to address the user-surly qualities of raw materials, massive materials, and insistent organic materials, as well as introduce new synergies in the handling of man-made materials. In the '80's and '90's I brought woodworking tooling methods to our metal shop, and developed skin systems, flexible assemblies, and micro-engineering tricks to our world of making. The universe exists as a response to a request. That is a dictum at the highest and also the lowest circle of existence.

8. Sustainability is evidently key to the work you create. How do you go about sourcing your woods? Are they mostly reclaimed or are some pieces specifically to order?

JH: We have many paths to the well here. We have tree surgeons, old timers all over the country, guys who pull giant cypresses out of Louisiana swamps, loggers who know us and love us, Amish hellions that aren't allowed to use answering machines but can pull huge logs out of Minnesota woodlands, homeowners that need to put an addition on and that means cutting down a monster tree and finding a home for it, you name it. This includes people all over the world who know us and reach out to us. I call it "singularly harvested." No clear-cutting here. It underscores the word sustainability in a way that most folks can't even begin to understand.