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| Chicago Tribune:
Redesigned Turning 6 Proves to be a Turning Point For the Chicago Design Show - With a Stronger Focus on Retail and Made-In-The-Midwest Furnishings Retooled Show has New Focus …no doubt, what will make or break this year’s show and determine its relevance in the future, will be the quality of individual artisans and small design firms that the Mart officials have mined primarily from the Midwest. These are the folks the average consumer and trade professional cannot find readily on the street. And they will inject that all-important element of surprise onto the show floor. Among them is Flux Design of Milwaukee, a consortium of 12 artists and designers-many of them graduates of The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design-with an average age of 26 and a zeal for making uncommon furniture, concrete countertops, dancing cages [for a nightclub in Milwaukee], a 3-foot-diameter crown of thorns made of hand bent steel, hand-bent steel bar [for an Episcopalian monastery], you name it. “We want to do Chicago,” says Jeremy Shamrowicz, Flux’s enthusiastic president and co-owner; who notes that the company’s goal is to expand beyond its Wisconsin roots. The artists and designers work in a variety of materials [the office manager is a sculptor who also likes to blow glass; one of the welders has a degree in illustration] and can do everything from graphic design for a restaurant menu to sinks and countertops that look like marble but are Flux’s own concrete cocktail. [The process could involve grinding up bronze, iron, leaves or seashells and then inlaying those powders or liquids into or onto the concrete and, perhaps, coating the result, Shamrowicz says.] Flux will be bringing many of those concrete samples plus a selection of its sculptural furniture in wood and metal - including a spectacular glass-topped table whose base is composed of many thin rods of steel, hand-bent cold and welded together into the shape of a tree…. By Karen Klages Home & Garden: Section 15 P1-6 |
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| © Copyright 2002-05, Flux Design, Ltd., All rights reserved |
