Artfully Crafted
A Collaboration with Artist and Marine Scientist Oriana Poindexter to Create a Truly one-of-a-kind Roman Shade
Oriana Poindexter is a photographer, marine scientist (Princeton and Scripps Institution of Oceanography), and waterwoman in every sense of the word. A long time friend, the cyanotype prints (ie photographs) she creates from harvested giant kelp (and other marine vegetation) and sunlight have always inspired me. During a recent bathroom build that focused on natural and local building materials, it got me wondering if we could produce her artwork on a piece of pure linen and turn that into a roman shade. The video documents a bit of the process and how we came to bring our Artfully Crafted philosophy to life.
I met Oriana back in around 2010 or so (a bit blurry…). I had graduated from UCLA a few years prior and was working in product marketing, and she had just graduated from Princeton. She grew up in Laguna Beach, me in Long Beach, and our love of the ocean, photography, and adventure made us fast friends. Ironically, two coastal Southern California natives in Venice in and around that time were not all that common, so I think having a lot of shared 90s kid experiences on the beaches of our home towns brought us together.
I remember our first free dive in Malibu, me with a speargun and her with her camera, of course. We were hanging out the night before as we did most weekends with our extended group of friends and I must have mentioned I was going diving the following morning. She asked if she could come and I was a bit skeptical. Mainly because at the time I was interested in efficiently finding fish and / or lobster, and didn’t want to have to wonder if this person I was inviting into the water with me was actually ocean-safe. I knew she swam at Princeton, but also knew a lot of collegiate swimmers at UCLA who were completely lost in the ocean. Needless to say, within about 5 minutes it was immediately clear she knew her way around a pair of fins and a dive mask.
Some of our amphibious adventures over the years
Despite all the (self-proclaimed?) hard-charging guys I knew in LA during those years, Oriana was the one that was always down for an adventure, whether driving into Baja on a surf mission, taking a boat out to the channel islands for some free diving, or just driving up the coast for some car camping.
Going through some old photos of our (mis)adventures, a few themes were ever present: cameras / photography (both she and I have been shooting film for as long as we’ve known each other), surf, and the ocean. She has always been true to these things, and is one of the most authentic people I know, which is why her doubling down and committing to her art full time is only par for the course.
The harvest.
And all of this leads to why when I picked up the phone a few months back to explain to her this bathroom build I was in the midst of, how my whole focus was on “more sustainable and more local" materials - lime plaster walls, hand made concrete tiles made in LA (I had to talk myself out of making the individual tiles myself…), and in the case of the roman shade that would provide privacy, a natural linen fabric sourced in the fashion district in downtown LA featuring her artwork.
We debated whether or not it would work, went through the process of testing various fabrics to see how they performed - did they take to the cyanotype process well? Did we feel that they could be made into a roman shade that would represent the quality that my work must maintain? Yes and yes.
Testing fabrics
So we planned a date, I dawn patrolled down to San Diego where she now lives, slid our fins on and harvested some kelp. She taught me about her process, which is pretty dang cool. I’m glad Oriana agreed to do this collaboration and hope we get to bring this sort of creativity to Field Work clients in the near future. And even if not, we had a lot of fun bringing this piece to life.
Aside from family, friends, and perhaps education, nature has been the single biggest influence in my life. This extends itself into my personal life, as well as into business. There is no bigger reality check than being humbled in big, scary surf. There is no time to be more present and prepared than going deep into the mountains where anything can happen. And if you’d like to be made to look foolish, try to control or predict what nature will do on any given day. All of these lessons I’ve learned lend themselves incredibly well to running a small business where you are expected to perform, and meet and exceed client expectations daily. A challenge I welcome with open arms.
This project in particular is true to that in almost every way - from the ocean not cooperating on the day we harvested the kelp, to the learnings and pivots we made along the way, to the satisfaction we felt upon completion and standing back and looking at our final product - the way you do with photographs (literally!) of an epic trip.
If you are interested, go check out Oriana’s social media and website. Her work is regularly featured at galleries and institutions around California, usually near the beach. You won’t be disappointed.