15 Apr Texture Tuesday – Wood, Glass & Metal by CMJSCreativ at High Point

The Miles live edge canopy chandelier in stained butternut wood with eleven orchid ridged flute pendants hanging from black fabric cords by CMJSCreativ. Showing THIS week at High Point in Salon, #G-7025. Photo by CMJSCreativ.

Are y’all ready? The world’s largest furniture market, High Point, in North Carolina kicks off this Friday, April 18th and runs through the 23rd. Artists, designers, showrooms and zillions of amazing home furnishing brands are busily prepping their spaces for the thousands of buyers that stream in from all over the world to see the best of 2015 design. Then all those products are available for you to purchase for your home, through your interior designer or your favorite home furnishing/lighting store.

Today’s #TextureTuesday features one of the newest brands showing, in Salon at Suites at Market Square (at G-7025), the dynamic design duo CMJSCreativ. Interior designer, Carisa Marie Bell, and furniture maker John Strauss are behind this innovative collaboration. We’re excited to share with you their latest designs, as we have been following their work ever since they first teamed up in 2012.

Be sure to check out some of our earlier blog posts about CMJSCreativ HERE.

Today, we finally caught up with Carisa Marie and John for a brief interview about the different materials and textures they work with in their collaborative designs at CMJSCreativ.

Please follow hashtags #hpmkt and #CMJSCreativ on Twitter @deborahmain @carisamarie11 and @johnstrauss and the Interior Design Community @IDCDesigners to get a peek at some of the hottest 2015 design trends coming your way for your homes. You can also follow CMJSCreativ’s Pinterest board.

Subscribe to our blog HERE, as Thursday you’ll  learn even more about CMJSCreativ and see their High Point showroom. Please note: they’re in a new location, on the ground floor of Salon in #G-7025 at Suites at Market Square.

On a personal note, today’s my wedding anniversary and tomorrow’s my birthday, so Aprils a pretty special month around here at the Deborah Main Designs studio. Hope you’re enjoying this gorgeous weather as much as I sure am.  Till Thursday, enjoy today’s #TextureTuesday interview with CMJSCreativ! XO PG

DM: What materials do you work with mostly?

CMJSCreativ: We work with wood, metal, glass, stone, leather, fabric, fur, and recently….for our spring launch 2015, wall paper!

DM:  Wow, wall paper? Can’t wait to see that!  Is it harder to make these diverse materials work together or do you find that that is a quality of your work you both enjoy?

Carisa: My design aesthetic tends towards a mix of materials, I think the more the merrier. My interiors are like textural museums for the curious. Most of my clients haven’t even heard of half of the materials I suggest to add edge or refinement.

John: I have always liked combining different materials and themes together. Diptychs are more interesting than single views. Materials are like that for me.

CMJSCreativ Jules Vases in amber, blue and orchid.

DM: John, for those of us who don’t know what “diptych” means can you please explain? I’ve heard it used in photography.

John: Sure. There is a dialectic or conversation started when differing materials, {diptychs} come together.  {For example, when wood and glass come together in our chandeliers } somehow, complexity lends meaning to the exchange.

DM: Oh you mean like the materials are one thing by themselves, but by bringing together two or more different materials you are able to create a unique, more interesting, visual story?

John: Exactly.

2015 Koncept Sconces with cast metal and hand blown glass, debuting at High Point, G-7025. Love these sconces that incorporate a variety of materials and textures!

DM: What inspires you to work with these different materials? What is it you love about them?

Carisa: I love the depth {the materials and textures} create when used in projects with each other.  I love seeing these everyday items raw and/or stretched, steamed, laser cut and even sometimes charred, to be totally indistinguishable in how they came about or what they are. The mystery of it is sexy to me.

John: Something happens when we have multiple materials come together. One of the things we strive to create is meaningful objects, not just decorative ones. I am trained in wood, but as a sculptor I also learned how to weld and cast metals such as bronze and aluminum. So my love for materials goes back to discovering how much these inanimate substances can change.

Mixed materials and textures to create innovative sculpture designs by CMJS Creativ. Photography by CMJSCreativ.

John Strauss, of CMJSCreativ hanging one of their NEW featured Koncept lighting sconces at High Point, G-7025 in Salon at Suites at Market Square . Photography by CMJSCreativ.

DM: Can you please give me some examples of the textures your materials have?

Carisa: We use:

• Wire brushed oak with a three part stain and glaze
• Acid streaked and oiled thin cut steel, and
  
•  Hand blown glass 

Carisa: I’m very excited about our brand new finish John named “Cleveland” (even though we dreamed it up while traveling around Florida and it could easily be called Seattle) it looks like billowing clouds in grays, taupes and blues.

Detail of the “Cleveland” glaze on a dining room table by John Strauss of CMJSCreativ.

John: One thing that texture does is to create a varied viewing experience. For example, the Ceruse glaze looks totally different and interesting up close than it does from afar. But from afar the different colors blend to become a new color. The texture supports that mix and makes it possible.

Ceruse glaze, up close, on wood by John Strauss of CMJSCreativ. Photography by CMJS Creative.

Thank you both so much for taking the time, from what is obviously a crazy busy schedule getting ready for High Point, to share these textures and your inspirations with our readers. Dear readers, please enjoy these last two photos and follow my blog for more on Thursday,  because I think this just might be a peek at the wallpaper that CMJSCreativ was referring to on this cabinet…hint…hint! Be sure to stop by and see all their amazing work at High Point in Salon, #G7025, at Suites at Market Square.

Love this blue watercolor by Tracy Hiner of Black Crow Studio. It looks like a painting, right? Photography by CMJSCreativ.

And look, it’s a painting AND a cabinet by CMJSCreativ with watercolor wallpaper by Black Crow Studio. Love this!

NOTE: This is not a sponsored post.  Blog post and interview questions are my own. Images and interview responses are by CMJSCreativ.