An embrace of craft jump-started the lighting and furniture designer’s practice
Photography by CHRISTIAN ANWANDER
Words by DEGEN PENER
The directness in creating objects that have a function constitutionally suits Bennet Schlesinger.“You can show someone a chair and they either like it or not and that’s really nice,” says the Ventura-based designer, who started out in the fine art scene but eschewed the pressure to explain his artwork.“I spent eight or nine years in the art world talking about why I was doing something.”
Creating furniture offers a contrast.“What is amazing about craft is that there’s no, like, overarching conceptual weight to it,” Schlesinger says. There is, however, clear-as-day poetry to be found in Schlesinger’s works, which were the subject of his first solo show at L.A.’s Marta gallery earlier this year. His pieces range from floor lamps crafted in paper-covered bamboo frames set atop ceramic and brass bases to black walnut tables that he inlays with hand-painted tiles.
Since starting his practice about eight years ago — early on, he recalls making “eight or nine lights in a six-month period that sold in like three days”— he’s now happily in a creative groove.“I struggled for years and this is not that. I’ve had like a four-year run of green lights so I’m very, very blessed,” says the designer, who has worked on commissioned pieces with such interior designers as Kelly Wearstler, Jamie Bush, Pierre Jovanovich, and Nicole Hollis.
“What is amazing about craft is that there’s no overarching conceptual weight to it.”
On a recent day, Schlesinger, who grew up in Costa Mesa and surfs when he’s not working, was in his live-work studio crafting handmade ceramic buttons to sew onto leather bean bag cubes, an ongoing collaboration with New York-based fashion designer Emily Dawn Long. One day, Schlesinger dreams he’ll get the chance to design a church. “A chapel would be the most amazing thing in the world to create,” says the designer, citing his affinity for the iconic Sea Ranch Chapel in Sonoma County as well as a trio of churches built in Japan by Tadao Ando. “My focus with my work is about finding quiet, moments of reprieve,” he adds.
As he prepares for his next show this winter at Galerie Timonier in New York, he’s happy to lose himself in the work. Although he does note, with a tone of bemusement, “I’m super busy, but as someone who works with interior designers a lot, sometimes I don’t get to see where the things I make go. They really sort of disappear and I go, ‘I swore I made more lights this year.’” marta.la.
KERI RUSSELL wearing JACQUEMUS jacket and TOM FORD shorts.
Feature image: Lighting and furniture designer Bennet Schlesinger at Emma Wood State Beach in Ventura.
This story originally appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of C Magazine.
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