Simone, Emma thanks for joining us. Simone, you recently moved from New York City to rural Massachusetts. What motivated this change, and how has it impacted your life and work?

SBT: Before I was able to do my work full time, I spent a period of time working at a food/farming-centred start up, then working in restaurants and farming to support my studio practice. Being close to food, growing it myself, and being very intertwined with nature has been something I’ve been trying to re-incorporate into my life, but I had to be patient through the initial years of solidifying my work becoming my business in New York before I could do that. It’s been freeing to be able to expand into the spaciousness of the countryside.

Your solo exhibition at Emma Scully Gallery, “A Year Without a Kiln,” features pieces created during this transitional period. Can you tell us more about this project and what inspired it?

SBT: The work in the show was created both in a moment of transition, but also in a moment when I didn’t yet have a studio or access to my usual materials and tools I had used to make my work up until this point. I had had the privilege of collaborative work before, but finding myself in this place with the invitation of a solo show, made collaboration key to the conceptualisation of the work. It was an opportunity to design in materials that I was not personally a master in – wood, bronze, iron, lacquer – but that resonated with me for their rootedness in traditional craftsmanship and the unadulterated materials of the natural world.

Emma Scully described this exhibition as a tactile encapsulation of your work and perspective. What do you hope viewers take away from “A Year Without a Kiln”?

SBT: I hope that viewers and clients begin to understand what work I do as diversely as I dream it up in my imagination – covering all manner of materials and ways of working. I want viewers to recognise my language of form and see it transposed onto unexpected and sometimes more traditional shapes. I want to remove preconceptions and categorisations – both in my work and in all these overlapping worlds of art/design/craft – of “high” vs “low”, “functional” vs “sculptural”, “craft” vs “art”. I want the work to serve as a small part of a movement towards a different way of designing and fabricating, with craftsmanship and human relationships at the center. Collectively we need to recover from the hangover we have from the 70s when the idea of craft erroneously came to equate to craftsy, rather than multi-generational, learned craftsmanship – an error that has birthed multiple generations who turn a blind eye, often unknowingly, to how the things we bring into our homes are made and by whom.

Where do you see your practice going from here?

SBT: I’ve dabbled in many materials and ways of working over the last few years, and plan to spend the next bit solidifying and clarifying the arms of the studio and our offerings. We’ll be growing our site-specific interior installations, continuing to partner with craftspeople to develop furniture and sculpture in other materials, and building out our new ceramic studio in the countryside to have a ceramic offering again.

What challenges have you faced in transitioning from ceramics to working with materials like wood, bronze, and lacquer?

SBT: Every material is so different. Wood requires precision whereas clay does not. It’s challenging to make progress with bronze in the summer when it’s too hot to have the furnace going. Bronze also brings weight into the equation as a potential issue, though luckily it has much more capacity to bear weight that clay does and there’s the ability to create finer, thinner areas within a piece, unlike clay. True urushi lacquer takes an immense amount of time (4 months per piece) and the right moisture conditions to cure, unlike any material I’ve encountered before.

Speaking of the Tadpole Bowl, its polished bronze silhouette reflects the titular creature. Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind this piece?

SBT: I had to come up with a name that quickly reframed for the viewer what they initially thought, might just possibly be a sperm. It was early springtime when I finished the model, and all the tadpoles were out in the ponds, and hence…

Calder and Giacometti are muses for you. How do their influences manifest in your new work?

SBT: Calder was the first creator of objects that I understood, as a child, to be “an artist”. My parents really loved the whimsy, balance, and lightness of his work and took me to his exhibitions when they came to town. A lot of the playfulness, interactivity, and tension I bring into my work stems from a lifetime looking at his. Diego Giacometti was a later discovery, only finding out about him from underneath the shadow of his brother when my work was moving more distinctly into the design realm. His adornment and twists on traditional structures of lighting, chairs and tables, has been influential in this most recent body of work.

Now, I’d like to shift our focus to Emma Scully Gallery, where your latest work is being showcased. Hi Emma, how did you approach curating this exhibition, and what was your vision for presenting Simone’s work?

ES: A solo show is a wonderful opportunity to show the world of the designer. Simone took the lead on the exhibition design of her show and thoughtfully created a space where her work could be presented in the context of her larger design ethos.

How do you choose the artists and designers you collaborate with for your gallery? And how do you envision the future of galleries in promoting hybrid forms of design and art?

ES: First and foremost, my responsibility to my clients is to show them the best of contemporary collectible design. Beyond this, a lot has to align to show an artist or designer at the gallery. It has to be the right time in someone’s career to be supporting their work, and we have to want to embark on this intensive journey of working together! One of the things I am most proud of in my work at the gallery is supporting the fabrication of work. What this means looks different for each artist and designer I work with. But I hope it is something other galleries continue to do – and find ways of supporting the work and the artists we work with beyond sales.

Emma, what advice would you give to emerging artists looking to find their unique voice?

ES: Experiment, work and look at a lot!