Museum Design Summit 2017
SPEAKER BIOS
Royce Epstein, Director of Design, Mohawk Group
A veteran materials and product specialist, Royce spent two decades working in architecture and design firms in Princeton, NJ and Philadelphia before moving to New York City to work in product design and development with Teknion Textiles and then with Mohawk. As the face to the architecture and design community, Royce shares her passion and vision for design, cultural trends, and the meaning of materials in a broad context. In addition to her work at Mohawk, she is also the founder and editor of Repeat. No Repeat, a blog about products for interior design. She was named the 2016 Designer of the Year by Interiors and Sources Magazine and received a HiP award for Rising Star from Interior Design Magazine at Neocon 2016.
Web: mowhakgroup.com
Paul Makovsky, Editorial & Brand Director, Metropolis Magazine
Paul Makovsky is editorial director of Metropolis. He is a former managing editor of 2wice, and he held a Smithsonian Fellowship at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where he worked on the exhibition and catalog Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture. He has also served as a co-curator of the exhibition Knoll Textiles: 1945–2010 at Bard Graduate Center and contributed to the accompanying catalog (Yale University Press, 2011).
Web: metropolismag.com
Twitter: @paulmakovsky
Instagram: @paulmakovsky
Kourtney Morgan, Senior Designer, Patagonia
Web: patagonia.com
Cary Vaughan and Jenna Wilson, Co-founders, Ace & Jig
Cary and Jenna pair exclusive artisanal textile stories with effortless silhouettes to reinvent the notion of cool, season-less fashion inspired by a shared passion: antique fabrics and colored stripes of heritage cloth. Each fabric in the collection is custom designed with a keen eye on color, motif, and texture, then yarn-dyed and woven on looms in India, where they travel yearly to work with textile experts and artisans to perfect their designs. ace&jig has generated a cult following and can be found at select retailers globally including Liberty of London, Beams Japan, Barneys, ABC Home and Oroboro.
Web: aceandjig.com
Deborah Palmer Keiser, Rituel Studeio
Deborah is a talented senior executive with global supply chain and operations management experience in retail, apparel, accessories and home products. She has in depth knowledge about vertical retailing, manufacturing, sourcing and distribution and her experience includes leading global teams and mentoring their development. She is also a raw materials expert with manufacturing and technology experience.
Web: rituelstudio.com Twitter: @d2pk
Joe Schroeder & Lora Smith, Freedom Seed and Feed
Joe is the founder of Freedom Seed & Feed – the first federally permitted hemp farm – and together they own Big Switch Farm. Joe and Lora – husband and wife -- are working with Patagonia on the development of a line of products using hemp.
Facebook: freedemseedandfeed Twitter: @freedomseedfeed
The Agricultural Act of 2014 allowed certain states to start farming hemp again after a ban of almost 60 years. One Southern state has already established a lead in the race: Kentucky. It will be years before we know if hemp can replace a significant portion of the income lost with the disappearance of tobacco and coal revenue, but that isn’t stopping a diverse gang of Kentuckian entrepreneurs, farmers and manufacturers from staking their futures on it.
Adele Stafford, Voices of Industry
Voices of Industry is an ongoing investigation of fiber and agriculture, of craft and contextual concern. The garments we produce are embodied objects, vernacular meditations on a particular piece of land and the stewards who reside there. Our work is modeled after longitudinal study, revisiting a set of landscapes each year to observe and document the evolution of land and fiber. Weaving, then, becomes an act of synthesis; cloth as a poetic messenger, coded and complete.
Adele Stafford began this project in 2013 after fifteen years of working in a business strategy role for numerous creative organizations including frog design and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Adele holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design and a Master of Business Administration from Simmons College.
Pamela Kelly, VP of Licensing & Brand Management
Utilizing her broad business and product development experience with several key lifestyle retailers, and her deep understanding of Santa Fe’s four state-run museums, Pamela created the licensing program for the Museum of New Mexico.
Web: mnmlicensing.org