Jeff Hamada: What’s Halifax like?

Zara Huntley: Halifax, located on Mi’kmaq territory is a cute and small city. I grew up spending lots of time at the beach and in the ocean. My dad is from Cape Breton so we visited lots as a kid, it is so incredibly beautiful. I feel lucky I get to visit as much as I do as my parents still live there, although I haven’t been back since before the pandemic and miss it dearly.

JH: How did you end up here? Maybe you can share a few of the milestones that happened in your life between Halifax and Vancouver.

ZH: I moved to Vancouver in 2007 to play basketball and take kinesiology at UBC. I was part of an inaugural high school national program based out of Hamilton in my last year of high school and decided to stay in Canada for university. I played my full five years of eligibility at UBC, playing for Canada a few of the summers in some international tournaments, and finished my career with a professional season in Spain. After Spain and some traveling, I returned to Vancouver.

JH: Wow, that’s amazing. What made you choose design? Do you come from a family of designers?

ZH: I don’t come from a family of designers! Although my mom and sister are very creative people. Going to art school was something I was interested in for years but didn’t feel like I had a big enough portfolio to apply. A pivotal moment in making my way to Emily Carr occurred during the summer before I applied. I was living in Nelson, B.C. working as a forest firefighter for the government. Someone who worked at the same base had just graduated from Emily Carr and we got talking about how I wanted to go. Through those conversations, I realized I had lots for my portfolio already from all of the makings I had done throughout the years and he really encouraged me to give it a shot.

JH: How would you describe your personal design aesthetic?

ZH: That’s a tough question! I think I’m still figuring that out in a lot of ways. When it comes to ceramics, I love clean lines as well as the softness of a piece. Often times I really like chunky forms but that changed a lot with Soft/Light as it’s more thin and delicate.

JH: I love that your Soft/Light project is about the relationship between a cup and a lamp. It feels like it was a direct response to the pandemic, was it?

ZH: It was definitely a direct response to the pandemic. My project shifted quite a bit second semester. What I was working on before my lamp idea was iterating and replicating sentimental objects and seeing how that would shift my perspective on them. Soft/Light was very driven by emotion. The pandemic made me reflect on the material objects around me as well as the relationships in my life. The relationship between a cup and a lamp became really prominent for me while I was spending more time than ever in my home.

JH: Can you talk about some of the technical aspects of your process? How did you make the lamp specifically?

ZH: The lamp is made from a type of ceramic process called slip casting. Soft/Light is made of porcelain, a translucent ceramic body. The shape of the lamp was created from a balled-up quilt I had made the year prior. I balled up the blanket and vacuum formed it (essentially heating up a sheet of plastic and vacuuming it over the blanket to create a mold). From there I took the mold and poured a plaster model (the positive form). I then sanded down the form until it was smooth, leaving some of the ridgelines from the blanket. With that plaster model, I created my slip cast mold and used that mold to pour the lamp form. As for the cup, it is an exact replica of a glass cup. A similar process, except I made a silicone mold from the glass and then poured my plaster model from there.

On the bottom of the lamp, there is a hole for the lightbulb to fit in, surrounding the hole is a small lip with two keyholes. The light bulb and socket are housed in a 3D-printed PLA cylinder with two semi-circle notches. These notches match up to the keyholes, twisting in to fit flat and snug.

JH: Were there any happy accidents, or is the final product pretty well exactly what you planned from the beginning?

ZH: There were some happy learning accidents along the way but not with the final form itself. I was lucky in a sense that alongside my final project I was in a ceramics class that gave me the ability to do projects with the same clay body and therefore was able to test out a few things. Although, having a PLA plastic piece fit mechanically with a porcelain clay body (a ceramic body that is not very forgiving) feels like a happy accident in some ways!

JH: Who or what gets you excited to create these days?

ZH: My peers and friends. I recently went to a ceramic open studio to throw some forms and it was really nice being around other people creating again. I’m also part of a book club with some of my friends from industrial design and it’s motivating to meet up and chat design.

JH: What’s one thing you’d like to accomplish this next year?

ZH: I’ve taken a bit of a break from ceramics and textiles, so I’d love to get back into it, refine some work and maybe sell a few pieces. I would also love to find a job related to design.

JH: What about one thing you’d like to accomplish in your lifetime?

ZH: I think if I’m happy and fulfilled doing work that I love, I will feel pretty accomplished.

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Zara Huntley’s Website