I call my design studio in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City my White Box Sanctuary. It is my fourth such studio. They have all been in Chelsea. They have all been white. They have all been the focus of the physical work we do to create our jewelry designs.
I could just as easily call my studio a white box laboratory, because it is a place where I and my staff brainstorm, experiment, try ideas that “fail,” try ideas that succeed, and move through the various artistic techniques and media that become a part of our products: painting, sewing, weaving, folding, beading, sketching, photographing, printing.
The white of the studio makes it a perfect canvas for color and design, a clean, calm counterpoint to the chaos of the urban landscape outside. That urban landscape is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for our work. And the sanctuary part of the design studio, well that provides the safety and encouragement needed to imagine, test, innovate, create.
Those elements – a canvas, inspiration, and encouragement – are, in some shape or form, the foundations of all creative endeavors. I have built mine here in a White Box Sanctuary. But for anyone who wants to write, paint, build, sculpt, innovate, or just imagine, the possibilities are endless. We owe it to ourselves to find that place of our own, now more than ever.
