Alley-Oop 

Opening Night, Saturday February 16th, 7pm – 10pm

Poketo is located in Downtown LA at 820 E 3rd Street 90013. (map)

Facebook event coming!

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Alley-Oop is an exhibition of collaborative work created by Eric Trine and Will Bryant.

In Fall 2011, both of these dudes moved to Portland, Oregon for graduate school. Eric is from Southern California and typically works in sculpture, furniture, and environments. Will is from East Texas and has a practice rooted in illustration, graphic design, and art direction. Though they attend different schools in Portland, their paths often cross, their social circles overlap, and their criss-cross-overlap has blossomed into a whirlwind of high-fives, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle anecdotes, b-ball You Tubes, and buckets of laughter. As their friendship grew, talks of a collabo laced every hangout. Something was bound to happen. It was just a matter of time (and space).

Eric, Will and Poketo share an ethos that a life well-lived comes from the infusion of good art, good friends, and good vibes! As Charles Eames once said, “Take your pleasure seriously.” As someone important once said, “Form follows fun!” The work in this exhibition is the truest combination of the artists’ creative whims: colors, materials, subject matter—it’s an equilibrium, it’s a twister, it’s a day-glo refraction of positivity and goodness.

The artists influenced each other, developing pieces and remixing in real time, yielding a mega variety of multi-media, multi-dimensional pieces. Two vibes collide in the work, aiming to lighten and brighten moods, days, smiles and lives.

In true Alley-Oop fashion, the assist is as important as the dunk, and it is teamwork that really makes the dreamwork.

Here is the latest and greatest version of my Rod + Weave chairs. This design traces back to Chair No 2 of my 5 Chairs project from last year. I dropped the height of the arm rests and made walnut landing pad.

I used Black 11oz American Buffalo Shoulder leather for the weave, and I got the metal powder coated matte black with a small amount of texture.

On this pair, I really amped up detail moves – like in the image above, where I welded and sanded the joint so it looks like one big, faceted piece.

Oh, one more thing, I love the little details that come out with using real wood – I love the strand of light blond wood on the arm rest above. Beautiful moments.

Come on down this weekend to the Portland Bazaar!

I’ll be debuting a new bottle opener design, a collaboration with my studio mate Theresa Arrison, and I’ll also have a ton of indigo dyed bandanas available as well.

The Little Dude low table emerged for me for as a response to the Herman Miller low table designed by the Eames’. The odd thing is, this idea emerged because I saw a photograph of one of these tables in a magazine and I thought to myself, what did the Eames’ call those little dudes?

I’d always thought that the size of the table was kind of silly – I thought it was so small that it was beyond practicality. But then I made a prototype for myself – with my dimensions 16″L x 10″W x 10″H – and I lived with it for a while, and that’s when I discovered how practical this little dude actually is!

It’s a perfect size as a mobile side table. In my house I like to have a little table by whatever chair I’m sitting in – So I can just pick this Little Dude up and place it wherever I need. It also works well as a stool – it’s not too low for adults, and it’s also a great size for children.

They stack up nice and neat, and the rubber feet give them traction on any surface.

Unlike the Herman Miller tables, I use solid wood for the table surface. This makes the table much more resistant to wear in the long term, but will also show signs of use/age in a graceful way. The great thing about solid wood is that you can sand and re-finish it.

The base is made from solid mild steel and is available in many powder coated colors.

Hopefully I’ll be better at naming my children than I am with naming my pieces. Ugh. It has parallel shelving, but then it also has a leather sling – Para-Sling. Why not?

This piece started like a lot of pieces do – an open ended commission request. The request went something like this: “My friend is getting married, they don’t have a coffee table, a bunch of us pitched in some money, can you make them a coffee table?” That’s it. And this is what I came up with.

Materials: 1″ Square tubing, White washed White Oak, Perforated steel sheet, Veg tan leather – dyed white, Powdercoated gloss white.

Dims: 48″L x 20″D x 16″H

I like this design because it’s simple but allows for a lot of variation – I could change up the powder coat, wood choice, or leather – creating innumerable options for customization! Para-Sling!

They already had this pair of Jens Risom lounge chairs with the red cotton webbing, but they didn’t match with the new color scheme in the room. So I decided to re-wrap with some dyed leather straps. Boom. Love ‘em.

I collaborated with a fellow student in my program to create large hanging geometrical sculpture chandelier things.

I’ll follow up with more detail in the next post, but for now, here’s a video of the centerpiece that we made to hang over the stage. I made the structure out of 3/16″ solid steel rod, and my collaborator, Andy Lonnquist, created the industrial felt formations to attach to the frame.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRTV-r8s0Mk