Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/1532915
P H OTO BY PAU L H U N T E R ( A R A M ) hen Michael Aram was living in New York and starting to exhibit his artwork in 1989—he had moved back to his hometown from Maine with a group of fellow Bates College art students—he went to a sprawling exhibition of the artist Alexander Calder at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. "Calder liberated me. He was designing everything: sculptures, rugs for his house, toys for his kids, tableware, jewelry," says Aram. "I had always questioned the hierarchy of art versus craft. For me it was simply about seeing and making." Aram has been seeing and making ever since. Today his prolific eponymous business dwarfs the output of his American artistic idol. Aram's archives contain between 30,000 and 40,000 designs, though at any given time there are about 3,000 in circulation. He has expanded his offerings from the metal home accessories that earned him early notice to porcelain designs produced in Portugal, and glassware executed in Eastern Europe. A line of Michael Aram soft goods (made in Italy)—throws, duvet covers, sheets, pillows—arrives this fall. "The sad thing about our company," he quips, "is that it's run by a creative, so we just keep making things." That banner year of 1989 was pivotal in another way. Soon after that landmark Calder show, Aram departed for India, where he encountered a wealth of crafts produced in Delhi. "I was having fun discovering the city," he recalls. "As I'd go from one alley to another, I was just touched by what the artisans there were making." He created some drawings and observed the craftsmen executing them, learning along the way what was possible, which techniques lent themselves to which sorts of objects, and also falling in love with metal in the process. Designer Michael Aram has an archive of around 35,000 designs, including the Cocoon pendant lamp, at right. W With a soft goods launch on the way, Michael Aram's nature-inspired work continues to expand what the definition of an artist can be. BY JORGE S. ARANGO order natural BALHAR B O U RSH O P S .CO M ; B UYI N G I N D E X , PAG E 20 4