DOWNTOWN / UNIVERSITY / 4TH AVE

Carly Quinn’s Business & Artistic Acumen

Carly Quinn at the front counter of her production studio/gallery.
Photo: Jimi Giannatti

It’s mid-August and Carly Quinn is summarizing her summer; a lot has happened since we first got together in June. In a mere couple of months, she’s garnered coverage in Phoenix Home & Garden Magazine, was an exhibitor at the Dwell on Design L.A. convention, scored editorial coverage in an upcoming issue of Dwell magazine, expanded her production department – both equipment and bodies, picked up new clients, and has been working on opening a satellite gallery in the Foothills this month.

What’s all the hubbub about?

Tile. Beautiful, ubiquitous, functional, artistic tile. Carly Quinn Designs offers custom, hand-made glazed tile – produced at 403 N. 6th Ave. in Downtown Tucson – and has gone international.

“I got into a gallery in Israel and they bought a bunch of my Arabesque designs,” Quinn says. She slightly shakes her head of curly blonde hair, with a smile that seems somewhat perplexed by the adventitious happenstance.

“Arabesque?” I have no idea what that means in the design world, but it sounds cool. Her striking blue eyes refocus, explaining, “Arabesque is a Moorish-based design, a curvilinear design.”

Getting into an Israeli gallery and into a forthcoming issue of Dwell magazine both stemmed from her participation as an exhibitor at the 2014 Dwell on Design L.A. convention. The mid-June event ran three days. “It’s a show for buyers, architects and designers,” Quinn details. “We didn’t make a ton of sales but we made a lot of contacts.”

Networking is a method that has worked well for the 30-year-old artist/business owner. Gathering contacts, taking chances, knocking on doors, good ol’ perseverance and the gorgeous high-quality product has kept the doors open for over three years and is growing the business steadily – a business she started with $800 and a folding table.

“We’re getting more orders, orders for galleries and a couple wholesale people we have, like Mexican Tile & Stone Company, their orders started to increase pretty significantly and I think that’s why I started hiring more people.

“Beyond our custom work, which has been increasing every month, our big thing is we got an account with this company called Avila Retail. They’re based in Albuquerque, and that just happened in February. They own 40 retail shops in six different international airports. And that was when things started to get really nuts over here. So we’re shipping out hundreds and hundreds of tiles to them every month. Right now, we’re in three shops at Sky Harbor (International Airport), we’re in one shop in Albuquerque, and they are putting us in San Francisco International and Denver International. So, that’s pretty sweet!”

Curious about her connection creating process, I inquire: “How did they find out about you?”

Carly chuckles, her face lights up, and she explains: “Well, I, on a whim… I got a wild hair up my ass in late January when (husband) Anthony and I had a day off. ‘Let’s drive to Albuquerque, I want to see these people.’ I saw their shop at the Phoenix airport – we were waiting for our flight to Austin for Thanksgiving I think – and I walked into one of their shops and noticed there was a lot of handmade stuff. And it took me a little bit of time to kind of work up the courage to just do it, to go up there (to Avila Retail in Albuquerque) and see what they would say, and it went really well. They were kind enough to let me present my work to them. And then they placed an order for four of their stores right there in their shop.”

Finding and expanding the number of distribution shops is perpetual, she says, “I’m always in work mode no matter where I am or what I’m doing. For instance, when we were in Austin, I had my iPhone out writing down every single store I thought my stuff would be good in, and I’d take the list and I’d email people and I’d call them, doing a lot of marketing stuff for myself. And two thirds of the time, people are not interested, one third of the time, they are.” Her shrug says c’est la vie. “I’m constantly thinking about it, it can get a little annoying. I’m very driven to take care of the business end, and I like it.”

Quinn’s laid-back exterior belies her ambition. As they say, still waters run deep. For a small business to survive, the leader must be driven, but it doesn’t mean one has to be Type-A. With mellow measure and artistic acumen, Carly is at the helm with artists and musicians Keli Carpenter, Lisa Lemke, Katie Carr and Dani Hawley helping Quinn keep the ship afloat and running smoothly. The staff keeps the kiln fires lit, firing tiles that get shipped out several times a week at a rate of 20 to 50 boxes weekly. It is work that must be done both quickly and accurately; the process of silk screening and glazing the tiles takes skill.

“We have to train everyone extensively. It takes a lot,” Quinn says. “We can’t just hire anyone. You have to be artistic, you have to have a steady hand, you have to have an eye for color. And, you have to know what you are doing with the glaze.”

Quinn glazes a tile sky. photo: Jamie Manser

Glaze. To the untrained eye, the pre-fired glazed tiles look like blobs and swirls of brown and grey, green-grey, brown-grey, light grey, dark grey, but just hues of brown and grey. It is the chemical reactions taking place in the kiln that bring the array of colors to life.

“It’s my favorite thing ever, watching those colors develop and blend and the chemistry behind it all. And I’ve never taken any kind of ceramics class ever, so, largely self-taught when it comes to firing and figuring out what is going on with glazed colors. Which can be really frustrating. It doesn’t look like anything before you fire it, but over the course of nine years of making tile, now it is really easy for me to discern what the glaze I put on is going to look like,” she explains.

“Do you still get surprised?”

Her response is an immediate, “Oh yeah, almost every day! Constantly problem solving, finding new glaze combinations that work really well together. I think one thing, over the course of playing around with these colors for nine years is figuring out what colors blend well together, what colors work in the kiln – under our firing circumstances – and what colors don’t. I’ve been able to source and mix some really amazing reds, orange and yellow colors that no one else has. I think that developing a painterly quality in my work also sets us apart from other people that make tile. It’s pretty hard.”

Quinn is no stranger to hard work. Her art education took five and a half years, resulting in a Bachelors in illustration, a Bachelors in fine art, a minor in graphic design and website design, and a minor in art history. The last couple years of her college career, Quinn worked with a tile artist, which set her on her tile-paved path.

She says it is the functionality of tile, “that had a big draw for me because going into college, knowing I was getting the degrees I was getting I was really scared about finding a job, but art was the only thing I wanted to do, ever, with my life. So I was going to do it, but I had to find a way to not be starving all the time. So I thought that tile would be a good way to maybe not be starving all the time because people love tile and it is functional.”

We look around her studio/gallery/shop in the historic Old Market Inn, surveying the different types of tile on display. There’s the previously mentioned Arabesque designs, along with her new Alhambra-inspired mural, a bevy of flower tiles, Sonoran desert scenes, Día de los Muertos skulls colorfully adorned, and even house numbers and field tiles – all in various sizes to suit any purpose. They are presented on tables or hanging from the walls of exposed brick, illuminated by natural light that comes through the floor-to-ceiling front windows.

Carly Quinn Designs is located in the 1880-built Old Market Inn on 6th Avenue.
Photo: Jimi Giannatti

She points out the second kiln that’s been brought in to keep up with demand, and gestures over the area that will be re-allocated to production. “Everything is going to move up, ” she says, motioning towards the front/east end of the shop.

It’s a great place to have a little tile factory/gallery – the 1,000 square foot space is sandwiched between Exo Roast Co. and Tap and Bottle on 6th Avenue at 7th Street, in another pocket hub of the hopping Downtown scene.

“I love it. I love that I was the first one in this building and I used to have to lock my door when I was here by myself and since then, over the course of three years, Exo has come in with their specialized amazing coffee, and then Tap & Bottle opened and it’s like – when there’s a food truck here – I don’t have to leave the shop. It’s perfect and it’s very Tucson, to me. I really love my neighbors. And we’re all designing, all four of us in the building – along with Design Collaboration in the back, and that’s Margaret Joplin – all four business owners are working to build Tucson’s first parklet, which is happening right now. We are having design meetings every week, we’re submitting our designs to the city. And, that’s kind of a big deal, so it’s cool to be a part of Tucson’s first anything and something that’s so cool like a parklet and something that we actually can all come in with our own designs and ideas and make this thing that’s going to be out there that people can enjoy.”

“What else is going on?”

She pauses for a minute, adding. “I’m going to start doing tiles for Disney. An animator that has been working for Disney for 50 years can reproduce the characters she has specifically drawn, but the license only allows her to reproduce them onto tile.” A minute later, her co-worker reminds her of another project.

“Oh yeah, thanks! I’m also doing the All Souls Procession 25th Anniversary tile, taking the artwork Mel Dominguez did and truncating it into six inch tiles. And donating half the proceeds to All Souls. I’ll start with a run of 100, it will be a limited edition, cost $25. Starting in September, people can buy them here, online on the All Souls Procession website and at local businesses downtown.

“It’s my favorite event,” she says as we wrap up our chat. “I wanted to help it somehow, and be a part of the community.”

September also sees Carly Quinn Designs expanding its Tucson footprint to the Foothills, with a satellite gallery opening in Gallery Row at 3001 E. Skyline Dr. Sample the designs online at CarlyQuinnDesigns.com, visit the downtown space at 403 N. 6th Ave. or ring (520) 624-4117 with inquiries.

Ark D’Bevel Docks; Sets to Disembark

“The primary concept, or underlying reality, of the science of our day is Relativity. Einstein added the fourth dimension to those of Newtonian physics: time. Therefore, the art of our day that incorporates time, or movement, motion, change, is the most vital of all the arts being created. It is the art of our time which will endure.” – David Bermant, 1919-2000

Mat Bevel’s General Boxhead with the Far Gun. Photo: Toshi Ueshina

Ned Schaper meets me outside of the Stone Dragon Gallery – easily identified by the large “TUCSON” mural painted on its south facing wall. It’s about a half block, dusty alley drive, north of Speedway Boulevard along Stone Avenue. Schaper smiles a hello into the beating sun and swirling dust. His countenance is lighter this time. Last time we spoke, in December 2013, he was pulling up anchor from his previous 17-year home/creative space in the Mat Bevel Institute at 530 N. Stone Ave., and was a bit weighed down and still unclear about where to float his ark – which is comprised of his 30-year body of work.

Six months after meeting with Ned Schaper last December and three months since he docked his ark, Schaper and I are catching up on his art, upcoming shows and how ultimately, he relies on faith to expose his purpose. His buoyancy is palpable when recounting the story of how building owner Steve Murray offered interim housing to the kinetic art sculptures at Stone Dragon Gallery.

“Sometime after that (Zócalo) article come out, I was actually on my way out of the building to walk up here to see Steve and he pulled up to my place. And then he’s looking at it all, saying, ‘We can keep some of this stuff at my place.’

“Steve really came through. He’s a good friend and we’ve known each other for a long time too. He believes in my work and told me – ‘When you leave that place, you are going to blossom. That was like a cocoon you were in.’ And everyone loved me being in that space, but it was not really what I needed for the next step in my career. As a career move, because it is a beautiful space and I was able to build all of this stuff, but you’ve got to bring people in. After 17 years, you are in this place, and you know, ‘Well, I’m not going to take any place else because it is great in here,’ but it’s too much trouble, no body’s coming in here. There’s really no money, to bring people in, I don’t sell things. I was sort of stuck. This here is great because I’m able to see it, able to see what I have.”

As Schaper turns on various lights, his sculptures are illuminated in ways that weren’t possible at the Stone Avenue warehouse. In Murray’s space, under bright florescent bulbs, Schaper has made repairs, tweaks and re-worked the kinetic souls/Beveldom’s citizens in preparation for their July show situated as the Ark D’Bevel at Stone Dragon Gallery, 1122 N. Stone Ave., and as a disassembled show spread throughout the Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Ave., in August.

As Ned Schaper explains through the character of Mat Bevel, “The museum of kinetic art was founded on the principle of Available Resource Technology. For 27 years, objects appeared at our doorstop. By utilizing the A.R.T. policy, we give new purpose to unwanted items.”

The Beveled Ark in Stone Dragon Gallery. Photo: Ned Schaper

“That’s what Mat Bevel is,” Schaper elucidates, “the things that people threw out, he created this whole world that then becomes all these characters, and all these words of wisdom that they gave through putting these things together. It’s a very timely sort of story. There’s the demolition, exodus and now all these unwanted items are homeless again. So now they are all homeless, floating around in this ark in town. So, the idea is we pull up to the Tucson Museum of Art with the ark and spread it out. The truth is I had to really think about arranging things according to voltage. I’ve got technical issues that other people don’t have. My biggest thing is – how do these things come on and go off?”

The beauty of Schaper’s work is not only the creative amalgam of married “junk” and the seeming whimsy of the pieces – in reality, there are deeply symbolic tales surrounding the characters in his body of work – but also the cool physics behind how the sculptures move. He shows how his six-foot tall butterfly works: “This is a perfect piece to watch kinetic energy because it runs off of this little dinky, six volt battery. This is a science project right here. And, it starts the flywheel up and people see that little motor could never run this whole thing. It’s a little dinky motor and a six volt, and how the heck? – it’s the flywheel, and you can see when I turn it off, it takes almost 40 seconds for it to stop. The flywheel is storing energy, that’s why they used flywheels in the old days.”

As we talk about the different characters and how the objects morphed together to make them, a greater sense of purpose and mysticism comes through. “The things come to you,” Schaper explains. “The idea is, when people see this, you don’t have to say anything. That’s why found objects are so great. The kids are just inspired, they realize, ‘I’ve got those things.’ All you gotta do is start putting them together, and once you start putting them together – a lot of junk artists feel the same way – they’re like, ‘I needed this and it shows up.’ When you really start working and you become a servant of them, these things start flying at me. I mean, people will knock on my door at the right second to give me stuff. It’s unbelievable, the magic that happens in the world when you stop trying to direct and that’s the basic difference in the world. And the whole idea of faith-based thinking should be the idea that, you’ll hear people say – ‘Dear God, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but please give me some sort of a signal.’ Well, that’s not what they teach at the university. That’s actually the right way, but we’re taught in our modern times that it is superstitious or something.”

Ned Schaper

For Schaper, his philosophy is informed by his experience of objects arriving and circumstances changing as they are needed. The source he culls from to create his kinetic sculptures lends itself to re-purposing what has been discarded.

“These things are always blessed, they’ve been brought back in the service of having another job in theatre; an exercise bike, a wheelchair. And now they are back at work, and that’s what God wants, for everything to be – I say, ‘Continuation of purpose is the unifying principle of the universe.’ And these are things that I’ve discovered, and it’s the truth. It goes beyond recycling. The truth is – things don’t like to be idle.”

The summer’s first exhibit of The Beveled Ark: Mat Bevel’s Museum of Kinetic Art displays at Stone Dragon Gallery, 1122 N. Stone Ave., from Friday, July 11-Friday, July 25, with opening receptions on Friday, July 11 and Saturday, July 12 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Other hours are by appointment by calling 405-5800 or 304-8899.

For the Tucson Museum of Art Welcome to Beveldom: Mat Bevel’s Museum of Kinetic Art show, running from Saturday, August 9 to Saturday, September 28, the ark will disembark throughout the museum’s exhibition spaces in interactive displays.

Schaper admits surprise when he was asked to exhibit at the museum. “The fact that I am in the museum is pretty absurd. That I’m given a one man show is quite a miracle and I can’t complain. It is quite the miracle because I don’t do galleries. I love working with Julie (Sasse, Ph.D., Chief Curator and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Tucson Museum of Art). She told me she thinks that, ‘Your work is important; it is an important body of work.’ So she thinks what I do has a place historically.”

Via email, Sasse says that she has been interested in Schaper’s work for some time and the idea for the exhibit has been in the works for about a year. “Once the opportunity presented itself, I got the exhibition on the schedule.

“Schaper’s art is playful yet intellectual and deeply involved with issues of today. It is engaging for all audiences and he shows a true commitment to his vision. For the extensive body of work he has amassed and the long history of producing quality works in this community, he was long overdue for some critical attention. He truly deserved to have an exhibition in Tucson and his work shows that progressive and exciting art is being produced in this area. In fact, I’m surprised he hasn’t been discovered beyond this area, so I’m glad the Tucson Museum of Art can share his art with the public both here in the city and beyond.”

Sasse also says that she hopes the show’s attendees can appreciate “that meaning can be found in everything and that the creative spirit is as broad as we can make it if we use our imaginations. A good work of art can go far beyond a landscape or a still life or pure abstraction — it can be a playful yet thoughtful look at the world – that’s what Mat Bevel brings to the art table.”

Regarding her personal take on his work, Sasse writes, “I think he is a bit of a local genius the way he puts objects together and makes them move. But just as important, I’m amazed at how he thinks in such a clever way — his puns always make me laugh and I appreciate his sharp wit regarding systems of power.”

“Welcome to Beveldom” shows at Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Ave., Aug. 9-Sept. 28 with performances of the Beveled Ark Theater variety show on Thursday Aug. 21 and Sept. 11, from 6-8 p.m. Find more information at TucsonMuseumofArt.org and MatBevel.com.