MARGAUX DE PENFENTENYO AND TIM SOMERS
ILLUMINATING NATURE
Born in Paris, Margaux de Penfentenyo grew up in the suburbs of the French capital.
Her early career saw her working on high-end hotels, including opulent accommodation far from home in Dubai. De Penfentenyo also worked creating restaurant and bar spaces in Mexico, where she remains based. Her experience in the hospitality industry sharpened a natural ability to create highly customised spaces and design pieces.
She now creates pieces of collectible design that are both functional and sculptural.
The pieces are handmade in her Mexican studio.
Landscape Lamp
“I have been based in Mexico City for 5 years. I came to Mexico as artistic director
of a restaurant company. I created the interior design and the furniture.
I designed and I made the furniture, so that's when I started making.”
De Pententenyo enjoys working with materials that offer her a multi-sensorial creative experience. The smell of wood or palm leaves as she works with them,
or the colour of an element that changes with a chosen dye, these are the small things that ignite her imagination as she works.
Landscape Lamp
“I use exclusively natural materials such as wood, wool felt, palm leaves. They are living materials. A certain heat is released from them,”
she explains. “I also like the scent that emanates from these materials
and that perfumes my workshop.”
The pieces included in Cluster’s online collection and shop
blur the line between art and design. The three pieces,
named the Landscape Lamps, are based on geological strata.
The patterns in the pieces mimic patterns in rock formations,
but the colours are ultra surreal.
Landscape Lamp
“I think that what characterises my work the most is the colour.
I have a deep joy in creating ranges of colours. I find that my objects come alive when they take on their colour. Or rather, life is reflected
in them through the colours.”
Each lamp is handmade using wood, acrylic paint, cotton, and led strips, and punctured by a hollow centre from which the light shines. T
he pieces act like sculptures in the day and sources of light at night.
“I have no method or process. The golden rule for any creation
is originality. I forbid myself to design anything that closely
or remotely resembles an existing object,” she says.
“The handmade element is fundamental. The hand gives
a vibration in an object, which a machine is unable to give.
To make an object by hand is to deposit your soul in it.
And that's what buyers feel.”
Forest Light
Somers set up his eponymous studio, Studio Tim Somers, to focus on creating spatial interventions in interiors
and landscapes that change the way people use
and think about the space. His team pay utmost respect to the materials used in the process.
“Within the studio we try to show as much respect
as possible to the environment in which we work,” Somers explains. “For us, material is central,
so that the design or implementation can change
as the process progresses. By making the furniture
or the entire space themselves, all parties get the opportunity to experience the project
in their own perspective.”
Also inspired by nature, Belgium-based artist Tim Somers creates highly charged works that highlights big deforestation problems.
Where de Pententenyo takes inspiration for the shapes and patterns in her pieces directly from the world,
Somers takes inspiration in a more conceptual manner, using his pieces to draw attention
to sustainability problems.
He explains that he is inspired by the “relationship between man-made space and space that has existed longer than man himself, nature”.
Forest Light
Forest Light
The Forest Light, which forms part of Cluster’s digital exhibition and online shop, can be used both indoors and outdoors. It is made of steel plates,
and a LED fluorescent lamp that makes the piece glow.
Every Forest Light lamp symbolizes a tree. Each weld seam is a symbol of a branch and knot on the trunk
of a tree. The idea behind Forest Light was to place
the lights in places where a tree was felled, symbolising the functions of trees. The materials are often left bare
or painted black, so that they speak for themselves without the distraction of colour.
“With Forest Light I wanted to raise the issue of massive, illegal,
forest clearing,” explains Somers. “I wanted to talk not only about the natural disadvantages of a forest clearing, but also about what trees do in our daily field
of vision and perception of the environment around us.
Forest light is / was the first object that I made entirely in sheet metal,
which was and still is an interesting and educational process for me.”
The work of Tim Somers and Margaux de Penfentenyo can be viewed
and purchased on the Cluster Crafts online shop.
Thank you for reading,
Katie De Klee & Cluster Team.