IN Toronto magazine

DESIGN:

Designers parade their passions at IDS12 and TO DO, two sprawling design events held this month

Parimal Gosai
As a child, Parimal Gosai would rush home from school to help his father with renovations. “We would constantly work on our house,” he says. “One time, we hung this hideous wallpaper through the entire house. I remember thinking, ‘Our house looks beautiful!’” It seems natural that, years later, Gosai would find himself in Ryerson University’s interior design program. But while in school, his father was diagnosed as bipolar and lost his business, forcing Gosai to question his approach to design. “I didn’t want to practice design in this consumptive way,” he says. “That really got me thinking about all the garbage in the world and wanting to experiment with it.”

Fast forward another decade, and the 30-year-old is now the design director at Public Displays of Affection (PDA), a sustainability-focused design firm with goals of community improvement. One of PDA’s early projects was a mural made with mistinted paint on the side of an old thread dying factory on Queen Street West. “It was one of the most effective, subtly romantic and subtly political things that we ever did because we knew that this building was going to be torn down to make condos,” says Gosai. “When I design an object I want people to feel something.”

PDA’s latest project at 40 Oak Street community centre is part of TO DO; Gosai contributed a hanging installation made entirely of reclaimed glass. publicdisplaysofaffection.ca.

Alexx Boisjoli
Alexx Boisjoli is putting art back into function one ceramic dish at a time. “A lot of people take for granted what they use everyday. They just use plastic crap all the time and throw it out,” says the 26-year-old OCAD graduate. “I think you can have something that’s handmade that’s equally as functional as it is beautiful.”

Boisjoli creates bowls, bottles and other forms that would please both the aesthete and functionalist. “Trades and manufacturing can be a voice for people,” he says. “I don’t want to just make things that are sellable. I want to make them because I love making them and people want to buy something that was made by someone they know.”

Inspired by kitsch ceramics, big in the 1960s and ’70s, Boisjoli’s pieces are often adorned with found images or commissions from other artists. He explores the relationship between decoration and design in his new work titled Swarm, a collection of 85 small bottles covered by decals of insects. “It’s about the contrast between surface and form and how you can play with that in the same vessel,” he says. “Individually they’re still really beautiful. But together, you’re overtaken by the fact there’s so many of them.” As part of TO DO, Swarm is displayed at Caffe Brasiliano (849 Dundas St W). rcboisjoli.com.

Katherine Morley
“Everything I do, whether it’s music, art, illustration or design, it all comes from the same place,” says Katherine Morley. “It originates with a story or a message or something I have to say. I never know exactly which way it’s going to come out.”

It was only after a decade pursuing a career in music, during a gig as a nanny, that Morley’s early love of art resurfaced. “The kids and I would be doing all these fun drawing and illustration projects and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I forgot how much I enjoy art,’” she says.  After enrolling in classes at OCAD, Morley pushed her talent for illustration to other media and now counts ceramics, graphics and textiles among her design arsenal (she’s also known as DJ Katey, a regular DJ at lesbian bar Slacks). “The more I learned, the more I figured out that design could be used as a tool to make an impact in the world.”

Morley explores yet another medium with her first professional lighting project in the form of an eggshell chandelier. “I’ve been wondering what can I do with these millions of eggs that I throw away every year?” she says. “I don’t know what it is about eggshells but they’re so beautiful and they’re so strong.”

The chandelier will make its debut at Capacity (1066 Dundas St W), an all-women show which Morley co-curates. katherinemorley.com.

Zac Ridgely
To say Zac Ridgely makes lamps is not only an understatement, it’s downright inaccurate. The trained sculptor approaches his work with the attention of an artist. “We’re designing fixtures that are beautiful and sculptural and provide light,” he says. “The light is always incorporated from the start but we’re not designing a lamp that is meant to illuminate papers while you’re working on them.”

Majoring in sculpting and painting at Emily Carr taught Ridgely to appreciate form, while his industrial design minor schooled him on the beauty of function. “If a lit element is incorporated, it adds another layer to that sculptural piece. It becomes not only a beautiful object, but it also provides ambient light and mood.”

Ridgely’s handmade work is modern yet earthy, combining materials like stainless steel, marble and river rocks. “It’s about finding material that you’re drawn to and incorporating it,” he says. One of his most sought-after series uses recycled, tempered glass to contort and soften light.
Ridgely’s latest work makes use of another innovation: LED light. “These are fixtures that literally could not have been built five years ago because of the size of the bulbs and the heat given off,” he says.

Ridgely’s new LED installations will join his classic recycled material pieces on display at IDS. ridgelystudioworks.com.

Thien Ta Trung
Montreal native Thien Ta Trung always found himself attracted to beautiful things. “When you’re young, you don’t say, ‘I want to design a chair.’ You just like the idea of creation,” he says. “I think you develop that as you grow. It’s instinctive.”

That instinct guides his decade-long collaboration with younger sister, and industrial designer, My. “I have more of the creative ideas, the vision for style and she has all the technical abilities to bring them to life,” he says. “It just happens to be a perfect complement. It wasn’t planned.” The siblings’ latest venture is called Domison, started in 2008 as an extension of their original effort, Periphere, a design laboratory filled with abstract pieces and higher price points. “People liked the style but couldn’t afford it,” Trung says. “So we did a bridge line that’s more affordable that still has all our strengths, the same aesthetics and design approach.”

Trung recently brought the pair’s work to Toronto permanently, opening a Domison shop near St Lawrence Market last spring. Their latest collection will be showcased at IDS. domison.com.

IDS12 Thu, Jan 26-29. Metro Toronto Convention Centre. 255 Front St W. interiordesignshow.com.

TO DO Most shows run Thu, Jan 26-29. Various locations. todesignoffsite.com.