Multimedia artists Jee Levin and Randall Buck got their big break while manning their booth at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York a few years ago. Their airy, motion-based patterns had caught the eye of designers from San Francisco's new W Hotel.
"They liked our aesthetic," said Levin, "and hired us to do custom elements in 300 guest rooms." The couple and their newly formed company, Trove, designed everything from wallpaper to fish silk-screened on the bottom of the glass sinks in the hotel bathrooms.
Since then, Trove's innovative, eco-friendly wallcoverings have been featured in Metropolis, Dwell, O at Home and many other shelter magazines. Last summer, Holly Hunt introduced Trove at its International Market Square showroom in Minneapolis. In May, Levin and Buck will come out with their sixth line, for a total of 25 original patterns.
We chatted with Levin about design inspiration, green wallpaper and birds flying upstairs.
Q You and Randall are graduates of the University of Minnesota and have fine-arts backgrounds. How did you become wallpaper designers?
A We had a clay studio together when we met and worked well together. Then we moved to New York and were wide open to any creative work. I'm a painter and worked in the photo industry, and my husband was studying time-based art using light, motion and photography. We wanted to do something that would combine our interests. We thought wallpaper would be fun and liked the idea of treating wallpaper as art and the wall as the canvas.
Q How do you create your designs?
A All of the designs are culled from our personal photographs, drawings and paintings. We spend a lot of time in the studio drawing and painting and in the summer going to gardens and taking pictures. In the beginning, the collections were nature-inspired. We live in the flower market in New York and were inspired by the flowers. Now we've broadened our scope. The Venetian Opera wallpaper is a historic photograph translated into a wallpaper pattern.
