OPEN HOUSE:
Artist and designer Jade Rude’s monochromatic apartment on Queen Street West is a bio-friendly showcase
Describe the kind of designs you create?
I’m involved in the conceptual visual art community and I’m interested in playing with the idea of perception and reality. For example, the structure in my living room is a roller coaster I created. It plays with a sense of dimension and incorporates ideas around design, architecture and philosophy.
Where do you draw inspiration?
I often turn to philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who wrote Poetics of Space, which is one of my favourite books. He deals with architecture of space and the philosophy of it. Ludwig Wittgenstein is another. He dealt with the way we see things, the perception of it.
One of Wittgenstein’s works actually hangs on your living room wall.
Yes, if you look at it vertically, it’s the same as it is horizontally. It’s the same structure.
You also have a large framed note signed by fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.
My girlfriend got it while working in Paris for Yves Saint Laurent in haute couture. At the end of a project, Yves posts a written note, which he signs, in the workroom that thanks everyone for their hard work.
Your home is also your studio space.
I also have a messy studio a few blocks away where I use spray paint, make a stink and make noise.
Some of your work will be in this month’s Do West design exhibits along Dundas Street West.
One of my pieces is a gold-mirror cutout that reads “You Look Great.” I’m doing a five-feet-by-five-feet version that will be will mounted onto a structure with crisscross scaffolding and placed into the window of a hair salon. Another piece is a series of silhouettes of trophies with lyrics from “Do What You Want” by Bad Religion.
You live with your girlfriend, who works in design. Do you share the same aesthetic tastes?
Her favourite colour is white-on-white-on-white, whereas I prefer dove grey, or shades of grey. It’s more pure because you get to add things and things show off better. We have a similar sensibility, design-wise. I like lines and form. Things that are sharp, but when there’s something curious about it.
It’s also not often you hear people cite grey as their favourite colour.
I like grey — and shades of grey — because you can use colour or design to add highlights to a room. There’s room to move, I guess. It creates more curiosity. I like a solid base to work from and make it more interesting, rather than being too splashy to begin with. Otherwise it just looks like throw-up to me.
Where does your fascination with line and space come from?
Math came easily as a child. I learn by numbers and structure. If I were to read something, I would read it in numbers, rather than the fluidity of language. It’s the structure. It’s just how I view things.
Have you always pursued art and design?
I won my first drawing contest in Grade 3. We had to create an image based on our reaction to an image in a newspaper. Most people re-drew and copied the image they saw in the paper. At the time I was attracted to a new building being built and I decided to disassemble an image of the building and re-arranged it into lines and forms. Bizarre, for a little one, but I won out of the entire public school system.
Why didn’t you become an architect?
Because I wanted bo become an artist. I did study architecture for a brief period, but it was too structured for me. I prefer creating my own structures and attributing them to my own psychology and curiosity. I would also probably forget to add that extra 1/16th of an inch on some drawing and kill millions. So for the safety of everyone’s lives, I didn’t go into architecture. It’s better for humanity.
Your entire home is what you call “bio-friendly.” Explain.
Everything is non-toxic. The paint we used for the walls is called bio-paints, a European term. The floors are painted with a natural plant-based stain that looks like milk. You can actually eat the floor paint. The range hood above the stove is also made from recycled materials.
Have you always been this green?
No. I became more aware of it when people around me and in my family started to become ill with cancer. Our environment is where we’re most vulnerable. I just feel better when I am in a bio-friendly environment.
Surely you have some bad habits.
By no means am I a hippie. I have bad habits in the studio. Right now I’m working a new jewellery line and I’m dipping it in latex. I have a mask and everything, and I’m probably killing myself a little while doing it. But whatever. You gotta live a little.
What’s your guilty pleasure?
Great scotch.
Anything else?
I have a slight addiction to Perrier water. The big bubbles tickle. It’s like having a big sweater over your tongue.
DO WEST Thu, Jan 26-29. dowest.ca.
JADE RUDE jaderude.com.
