Can you give us a little info on your background? I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2002. I work as an illustrator and pattern designer in Brooklyn, New York. I do editorial work for newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Food & Wine, and Bloomberg Businessweek. I also make patterns and have a range of products like wallpaper, stationery, and fabric and make patterns for companies like Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters, and Crate and Barrel. I authored and co-authored The Where, the Why and the How, Farm Anatomy, The Exquisite Book, and Drawn In and am currently working on a book about New York City that will come out next year. I’m also part of a three-person company called ALSO with designer Jenny Volvovski and animator Matt Lamothe.

Tell us about yourself and your work: what you’re passionate about, what inspires you, and where you’re going. Lately, I’ve become more interested in working on self-driven projects. Whether it’s a book project or a set of patterns, I like doing work that generated from my own ideas because it gives me complete freedom to do what I want. I’m currently trying to experiment with new mediums, too. I’ve always drawn with a tight pen line so lately I’ve been switching to a thicker brush and trying to loosen my work up a bit. I’d really like to push the handmade quality of my drawings and use the computer as little as possible.

Describe your studio space. What’s the aesthetic? What do you like or dislike about it? How is it different from your home office? The studio is great because it’s completely different from my home office. At home, I have a tiny room that’s basically closet-size and it’s always a complete mess. Sometimes you can’t see the floor because there are papers and drawings everywhere. I decided to have this second space because I wanted a cleaner place that I could go to to work on bigger projects, away from my computer. I bring my laptop to the studio, but mostly I come here to paint and draw. It’s about a 35-minute walk from my apartment in our Park Slope neighborhood to the studio in the area of Crown Heights. I like that it gives me an excuse to walk a little bit, especially now that the weather is getting so nice.

The space has really high ceilings and great light. There are two enormous windows and they look out over subway tracks. The train runs right outside the window every 20 minutes, only a few feet away. The first few times it happened I gasped because it comes so close.

Before Caroline and I moved in here, her boyfriend, designer Joel Speasmaker, shared it with Meredith and another designer. Joel left some of his stuff behind for us to use which includes shelves, flat files, and a giant ladder that they found. He has great taste, so we’re lucky that he’s lending his furniture to us.

The floor above us has another studio of our friends, illustrators/designers Josh Cochran, Mike Perry, and Jim Datz. It’s great to have them close by to visit or get coffee with.

Tell us about your studio mates. What are the advantages of sharing the space with Caroline and Meredith? What’s a typical day like? Do you influence or inspire each other? Caroline Hwang is an amazing illustrator and artist and Meredith Jenks is a super talented photographer. But honestly, we don’t see each other that much. We have such different schedules that it is pretty rare that all three of us are working here at the same time. The day we took these pictures was an exception.

Caroline is here nights and I get to see what she’s been doing when I get in the next day. Lately she’s been indigo-dying fabric which looks like a crazy science experiment. There are tubs filled with colored liquids lining one side of the studio. Her results are stunning, rich blue fabric pieces and color-saturated clumps of yarn hanging around the studio drying. She’s preparing for a big show coming up at Beginnings, a gallery she, Joel, and some other friends run in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Sometimes she’s working on illustrations in studio and she uses embroidery in most of her work. Her desk is full of string of every color and there’s bin under her desk full of hundreds of fabric pieces. I’m always peeking at her desk to see what she’s been up to, whether it’s a drawing for a New York Times article or a little zine she’s put together.

Meredith keeps absolutely tidy and it’s rare that I can tell what she’s been working on since it goes straight from her camera to the computer. The other day, though, I found a stack of gorgeous test proofs from a shoot in our recycling bin and had a hard time throwing them out. She’s able to really capture stories in her photos and they all have such beautiful bright palettes. One of my favorite photos of hers, that she hung behind her desk, is a photo of an abandoned ice cream cone that had fallen to the pavement. Caroline asked her if she set the whole thing up because it seemed to be such a perfectly captured moment, but Meredith said she just found it that way. It takes a really good eye to notice that something like that would make such a striking picture. Currently she’s traveling for a big editorial photo shoot of some famous chefs.

You have a few vintage Eames molded plywood dining chairs in the studio. Which chair is it, and why did you choose it? What do you like about it? In the middle of the studio, we have a little common area that has a table and a couple Eames molded plywood chairs. These we also got from Joel and were all in place when I arrived at the studio. I asked Joel where he got them and he told me he found them at a small furniture store in Richmond, Virginia, many years ago. I always eat my lunch at the middle table; they’re pretty comfortable.

Photo: Meredith Jenks

Last spring, while the original contents of Charles and Ray Eameses’ living room were on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Herman Miller Collection team had the rare opportunity to hold a photo shoot in the husband-and-wife team’s landmark home. The capper? They were also invited to explore Ray’s extensive, well-curated personal collection of objects to use as props. In celebration of Ray’s upcoming 100th birthday, we asked Jennie Maneri, Art Director, Collection and Retail, to walk us through a few of the shots and explain how the details Ray was know for helped bring the Collection to life.

“We knew going into the project that many of the photos would draw from Charles and Ray’s own photos — not shot for shot, but as inspiration. This image [above] is a re-imagining of a picture they’d taken [below] using all the same furniture pieces in the same location, except their lounge and ottoman had black leather and the old Rosewood shell. We wanted to do the updated version in white ash and pearl MCL leather. We included one of Ray’s baskets and her jade plant, which we brought in from the outside. This photo really moved me, as I felt that it was the shot that shows what the Collection is all about: a lived-in quality, a feeling of warmth, beautiful architecture, timeless design.” Pictured above: Eames Lounge and Ottoman, White Ash and Eames Sofa Compact

“We, of course, wanted to shoot the Ray-inspired Select Eames LTR in the home. The bowls on the tables are hers, as is the unique cat sculpture sitting on top of the grouped tables.” Pictured above: Select Eames Wire Base Low Tables and Eames Molded Plywood Chairs

“The inspiration for this shot was ‘Ray getting ready for a party.’ We used her china, her champagne glasses, and some amazing gold flatware. We even went into her garden and picked Aster flowers for her bud jar.” Pictured above: Eames Table and Eames Molded Plywood Dining Chairs

“We shot this photo in the Eames Studio, which is adjacent to the house. The whale sculpture was hers. According to old photos, it was once hanging in the house. It had also been in the original Herman Miller showroom in Los Angeles, which Ray and Charles had designed and styled. We found Ray’s rug folded into a tiny cube within a big stack of textiles. We didn’t even know it was a rug until we opened it up. There were a lot of wonderful surprises like that throughout the day of the shoot.” Pictured above: Eames Molded Plastic Armchair and Eames Storage Unit

“This shot is not in the Collection catalog, but everything here is Ray’s: the plants, the decorative sculptures, the saucers (which were almost like little dessert bowls on pedestals). And then there are pieces from her collections of bowls and salt-and-pepper shakers. . . . There was so much to choose from. Ray didn’t just have one salt bowl; she’d have 40 salt bowls, all different. She’d have 50 different candlesticks and all kinds of plates and bowls. There were cabinets of vases. Drawers of linens. We saw artifacts from different cultures — earthenware, African baskets. But they’d all still be a curated collection. And we found inspiration in the way she could could take very-different objects — a sea pod, a bowl, fresh flowers — and turn that combination into sculpture. Ray made sure her toolbox was abundant, but how she put it together — that’s where the art came from.” Pictured above: Eames Table Outdoor and Eames Molded Plastic Side Chairs

See more of the Collection at hermanmiller.com/collection.

Photos: Francois Dischinger for Herman Miller