Tom and I took a little drive to San Francisco, yesterday, to meet up with Dylan and poke our noses into his world for a few hours. We went straight to the heart of things--his shop. He spends most of his waking hours at a multi-storied warehouse-type building near the dry docks in the Potrero Hill district, a bit south of AT&T Park. The building houses a film school, photographers, bakery, chocolate factory, other artist-craftsperson types, etc.
Dylan and his partners occupy a space on the third floor and call themselves Link Studios. Each of them does his own thing, but they also collaborate freely. One of the major features of the shop is the C&C machine (pictured below). It's a computer-run cutting tool that can cut many kinds of materials with super-high precision. Troy and Charlie are the experts on that baby. Troy, in fact, is, at the moment, working on a project (with another guy) producing carbon fiber travel guitars (some of the parts being fabricated in China). They're so cool and light and sound beautiful. I've included a shot of one.
Meanwhile, Dylan is all about producing a few prototypes of several lines of furniture and picture frames he wants to make commercially viable. He has a couple of bookshelf units completed (or nearly so) that come from a limitless catalog of drawings and ideas he's been working on for many years. He has fun ideas for children's furniture, which also reflect his quirky, unexpected design tendencies.
The dark set of shelves in the photos, which are further iterations of the white shelves in the other picture, are just one kind of idea, and can be configured in a number of different ways. But all of his designs contain an unusual "twist" (sometimes literally). The photos don't do the pieces justice, let me just say. It has always been so much fun to look at his designs and also the craftsmanship of the pieces he's made, so it's quite exciting to see how he's pulling his ideas into focus for a presentation to the home furnishings market.
To that end, he and his shop partners, along with some outside folks, as well, are planning for a big gallery show of their work. This event will take place in San Francisco in May, and is slated to include the work of several artists/designers/musicians, and they are using all of their considerable contacts to attract the necessary attention. It's a big basket into which they are putting a lot, though not all, of their beautiful eggs. We're excited about it. He is too. And he's putting huge hours into the production of these pieces, plus some of the promotional materials.
I'll continue to post updates of his work and progress toward the show...Meanwhile, a few blocks away...
