Meet The Maker: Karen Weber
If your home is a Happy Place, you have a piece of art from one of our artisans, Karen Weber. She is the artist who created the illustrations used in our cleaning line and has a set of floral greeting cards. Read on to find out more about Karen who has also done demonstrations/live painting in our Miele Test Kitchen at our Mercantile.
Where are you based out of?
Brooklyn, New York
What is the item(s) you make for Beekman 1802
Floral Greeting Cards and the illustrations used in Happy Place.
How did you get started?
I studied art & design at University of Delaware. Post-college, while still living in Delaware, a friend and I started a collaborative events platform which involved us in Terrain’s 2014 Heirloom Tomato Festival. The Beekman Boys were also featured at the event and I gifted them a few of my floral prints. A couple of years later they reached out to collaborate!
Is this your full-time focus or is this a side gig?
Illustration, Graphic Design, and Production Design is collectively my full-time focus as a freelancer. I am hoping to dedicate more time to painting and illustration in the new year!
Is there something special/unique about your process?
Because I work in both 2-D and 3-D mediums, I am always considering the big picture and the experience of an object I am making. For instance, what space will it live in? In what social scenario will it be interacted with? How will other objects around it inform or alter its beauty? Aesthetically, my work is often an intersection of feminine patterns, stark geometry, and milky pastels.
What is a usual day like for you?
I have two typical days: My “work from home” flow is often a slow morning with my husband Justin, gaining momentum by cleaning, cooking, and answering e-mails, then kicking it into high gear during the afternoon – designing and illustrating late into the night until I crash. My production design days are typically an early call time to set, chaotically transporting lots of props and tools, running around perfecting the perfect set, frantically cleaning to wrap the shoot in time, and heading home in an exhausted, happy daze. I’m a total extrovert, so weaving coffee dates, creative meetings, and group hangouts into my chaos are very important to me.
How long is the process of making the product/piece?
My professional design and illustration work tends to have a turnaround of one week to two months depending on the scale of the project. My production design for film tends to have a month or two of slower idea generation, a week or two of heavy prop gathering and one to a few days of hard work on set. Personal projects can often take me a few months to a year as they always sit on the back burner!
What did you want to be when you were little?
In elementary school, I wanted to be a vet or an artist, in high school a fashion designer. I have to laugh at because my first major in college was pre-physical therapy then I quickly changed to art & design, and now I am slowly moving towards more fashion work.
If you weren’t doing what you currently are, what would you be doing?
It’s so hard to imagine my life without art! But I’d love to be a career counselor or college professor and help people discover and move towards their dreams.