Someone Else Interview
The Calm Before: At Home with Gillion Carrara
WRITER Joe Jarvis | DESIGNER Stefan Draht | PHOTOGRAPHER Jeff Marini
Intro
In March 2017 the Chicago Tribune interviewed Gillion Carrara about her trademark all-black clothing. In a few of her responses, Gillion talked about her home. "As Alfonso and I lived together," she said, mentioning her late husband, "everything went to what he wanted, which was glass and wood and marble, midcentury furniture, and that's exactly what's there today." Later Gillion told the reporter, "My meditation teacher said organization ... brings calm. People say that when they come to my home, it's calm."
I met Gillion during the 2016 Chicago Humanities Festival, where she discussed mimialism at Fullerton Hall inside the Art Institute. (Gillion teaches at the School of the Art Institute and also directs the SAIC Fashion Resource Center.) Shortly afterwards I visited her at home. At that point, I only intented to write about the influence of minimalism on her personal work as a metalsmith and jewelry designer.
But then I experienced the calm that her guests so often note.
The Aesthetic
Someone Else
When I think of minimalism, I think of really cold, clinical minimalism. But with your jewlery there's so much warmth, vitality ...
Gillion Carrara
Well, that's because of the wood, the horn. They were alive. I know what you're saying, except that's not my minimalism. For example, this is a turned hardwood bracelet and I'm going to leave it like this. It's finished because I'm showing off the grain of the wood. To me that's a beautiful object just the way it is. So there's no need for any kind of adornment.
Someone Else
On your website, you say that you are "inspired by the pure forms of nature and architecture." What does that mean, exactly?
Gillion Carrara
It would be nothing complicated. The basic geometry of a circle, a square, an oval.
Someone Else
What's your approach to creating a new piece of jewelry?
Gillion Carrara
Well, first it has to fit. So, whether it be around the neck, around the finger, on the hand, it has got to fit. It's got to function, generally on the female body. It's really important that the silver and the wood, the silver and the bone, that they're not going to come apart. So, I have to work on construction. What else can I say? It's got to be well made, function, and be as simple in design as possible.
Someone Else
What does that simplicity of design look like?
Gillion Carrara
I wait and I go into the material and I figure out what I'm going to do. When you're turning on a lathe, you never know what you're going to get. This hole, that's not a blemish to me. That's beautiful. I just appreciate this wood so much.
Someone Else
Alfonso was an architect and you're a minimalist. What you think of Mies van der Rohe?
Gillion Carrara
I'm a Miesian, oh, definitely. The Farnsworth house, I could live in it in a heartbeat, but where would I put all my art that I love? Because it's my life, you see.
The Influence
Gillion lives in a third-floor apartment. She rents out the lower floors and keeps a workshop in the basement. Alfonso was raised in this building and lived his entire life here, except for his World War II deployment and frequent trips abroad with Gillion.
A photograph on the east wall shows Alfonso as a dashing young student at the Illinois Insitute of Technology, where he studied with the Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy. Another photograph shows Alfonso decades later in a decidedly nautical mood. The voluminous collar of a fisherman's sweater frames his snow-white beard, while hair of the same color sticks out below the brim of a knit hat. The successful architect scrutinizes the camera with his lips slightly parted, more curious than skeptical. Standing over his shoulder, Gillion beams.
Someone Else
When did you first become aware of minimalism?
Gillion Carrara
I think it was being married to an architect for years, and he was a teacher. He would handle everything I did, and say, "No it needs more work." He would do the same thing. Yes, he would listen to the client, let's say for a courthouse in Southern Illinois, but then he would find the best glass, the best ... he believed in the best, and it was usually the most expensive. It would be the marble or the tile or the glass or the wood that would last longer. If he had to do furniture for a client, he would go to Herman Miller because it was well made and clean in design. He said about us, about our family, us two, that we were too poor to buy cheap.
Someone Else
Because if you buy cheap, you have to keep buying. If you buy well ...
Gillion Carrara
It's probably going to last longer.
Several of Alfonso's drawings hang on the walls. My favorite is a graphite exploration of the traditional bicycle form. Alfonso also made pots, to see how his designs translated on ceramic. And of course there are his flat files, a steel island of drawers on the northeast side of the apartment. "That's where he kept all his drawings," Gillion said. "I've kept his drawings in there and some of his art supplies." Gesturing to another part of the room, she said, "Over here I've got his drawings, his photographs, his diaries, his sketchbooks."
The top of the files used to be piled with Alfonso's projects. Now on that same surface, his work sits carefully arranged along with photographs of women modeling Gillion's jewelry, a bronze bartering tree, and rolls of antique fabric that Gillion found in Asia. During Alfonso's life, the edges of the flat files created an invisbile parallel boundary, like the end zone on a football field. "I was not allowed to come in here," Gillion said. "It was all his projects: his drawings, his photography."
That barrier has disappeared. Now that Gillion is alone, she fully shares the space with Alfonso.
The Inspiration
"Calm" is a funny word. It connotes relaxation, but excess relaxation prompts sleep. As Gillion's meditation teacher might tell us, true calm engenders clarity. It is the prerequisite state for accessing true creative energy, with all its capacity to rupture and scorch. This type of calm is shared by under-stress premier athletes, stage actors, and snipers―those with the cool heads kept in Kipling's "If."
That's what I felt inside Gillion's home.
Someone Else
There's a decorative element to everything in your apartment, but I also wonder if there's an inspirational element. You can't help but have ideas as you walk past it all.
Gillion Carrara
Definitely. That's why they're there. In fact, a good friend of mine said recently, "But Gillion, your house is not minimal. It's got little things all over." I think of my home as minimal, but I guess ... you see, my angel protects me and I keep adding to him. And this looks like one of Al's drawings but it's a piece of bark I picked up. This is some wool that I picked up on an island; there were sheep all over the place.
As Gillion spoke, sunlight poured through a row of windows facing north. Stereo speakers played classical strings. Objects on the walls (the line drawings and photographs), objects on the living-room table (the worm-eaten bracelets and silver gauge), objects on a counter top (the patchwork angel, a round tuft of island wool that looks like a hurricane shot from space)―all of it seemed to gently vibrate with the energy of an approaching force, like the glass of water in Jurassic Park.
In the mornings when I wake up, there is pressure at the back of my throat that only goes away when I dash off some stream-of-consciousness writing. Now here in the middle of the afternoon, it was back. I felt the urge to sit at the table where Gillion had laid out samples of her work, all the wood and steel, and open my notebook.
Gillion Carrara
We were talking about materials, because I work in wood, horn, bone, silver, etcetera. These are things that I've collected as I've traveled. For example, I found this on the road in Sienna, and to me, that's a face―oh, this is his hair, this is a shoe. I know what these all are: they're from the vines of the vineyard. I was in Mexico and I found these two things, but I mean, who knows? To me this looks like a beak and this looks like a beautiful piece of wood. So, they inspired. And I was in Japan and I bought this beautiful little box. It was turned from one piece of wood.
Yes, all these are things that I love and adore.
I restrained the urge to drop everything and begin to feverishly write, given my desire to not freak out my host. Instead I continued to hold my voice recorder while Gillion described all the art and artifacts of her home, where raw materials feature next to finished pieces, and the departed and living call and respond. There was no appreciable distinction between Gillion's artwork, Alfonso's artwork, and spirited decoration. A forearm gauntlet made from buffalo horn and Alfonso's pencil drawing of a bicycle seemed interchangable, each one a different iteration of the same overriding work of art―the home itself and its leavening calm.
