chandeliers

Stuart Haygarth is an artist and designer who works with the stuff that other people throw away. After beginning his career as a photographer and illustrator, he burst onto the design scene in 2005 at Designersblock in London’s Shoreditch with a pair of extraordinary chandeliers. Millennium was made from a series of party poppers he’d collected on the first morning of the year 2000, while Tide comprised of flotsam and jetsam picked up over several years from the Kent coastline. Subsequently other pieces have used the tail lights of cars and spectacle frames.

He has exhibited around the globe, including: the V&A and Gallery Libby Sellers in London, The Lighthouse in Glasgow and DesignMiami. There has also been a solo show at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris. 

As the critic and former director of the Design Museum, Deyan Sudjic, has written, Stuart ‘has a gift for placement and a colour sense that give the mundane a sumptuous, tactile quality… He finds richness in the traces that wind and weather leave on humble materials and that can give dignity to even the most tawdry of things.’

In this episode we talk about: his interest in abandoned objects; why he’s neither a designer nor a fine artist; his obsession with collecting; not being an eco-designer; walking 500 miles along England’s south coast to pick up detritus; the problem with German beaches; and trying to make sense of the world through his work. 

You can find out more about Stuart here

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This week on Snacky Tunes, Greg and Darin welcome Amanda Freitag, one of New York’s most celebrated chefs, and the band Kal Marks, who came all the way from Boston to play some rock.

Amanda is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, and a well known TV personality and chef for battling Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America on the Food Network. Getting her start under the guidance of Jean-Georges Vongerichten at Vong New York, she eventually teamed up with legendary restaurateur Godfrey Polistina (Carmine’s, Ouest, Virgil’s BBQ) to start the popular upper west side restaurant Cesca Enoteca & Trattoria. Most recently, Amanda was the executive chef at Gusto in the West Village, where she received both critical and popular acclaim. Lastly, Freitag found a new opportunity at The Harrsion in Tribeca. Since Freitag’s arrival, The Harrison has received numerous accolades from local and national media, including a two-star review from The New York Times, as well as features in Time Out New York, New York Magazine and Forbes Life.

Boston’s Kal Marks (originally the solo project of Carl Shane and now a trio) are set to release their first full length album as this lineup, and first recorded in a real studio, Life Is Murder, on September 17 via Exploding In Sound/Sophomore Lounge/Midnight Werewolf. They come from a scene of other young raging rock bands (like Pile and Speedy Ortiz), and like those bands, Kal Marks get loud. But they’re also part of a long lineage of indie rock bands with weird-voiced singers that spans from bands like Modest Mouse or Wolf Parade to more recent things like Alt-J. Ever wondered what Titus Andronicus might have sounded like if Patrick Stickles was more into Isaac Brock and less into Conor Oberst? Kal Marks could be your answer.

“When I got to The Harrison, I got a call asking if I wanted to be on Iron Chef. I had a great experience that led to Chopped.” [24:30] — Amanda Freitag on Snacky Tunes