Rafi Ajl
For many designers, materiality is at the heart of what they do. Whether its mixing them or customizing them, few designers represent the power of materials more than Rafi Ajl. Based in California, Rafi studied critical theory and literature, and earned his MFA in Design. We met with Rafi to understand his inspiration and what it takes to be a maker of furniture and objects. We talked a little business as well, because after all, the life of a professional artist requires acumen beyond creative endeavors. Meet Rafi.
Portrait of Rafi by Benjamin Heath
DS: Hi Rafi! Welcome to Design Storytellers! We love your work, specifically how creative and experimental you are with materials and textures. What is your favorite material to work with?
RA: I really love all the materials that compose the practice: Wood, metal, brass, aluminum, stainless steel. Each has aspects that really can’t transfer across. Maybe this is like picking your favorite child? Ha! Right now, I’m very much captivated by aluminum. It’s so unglamorous, almost a little dirty in a way. But the relationship between strength and lightness, weight, is really interesting to me, and the way that it can actually take some different kinds of surface conditions is also really cool. I’m playing with a few ideas for new furniture works that use aluminum as the primary material. It also cuts and machines really easily, so even though it is a very solid metal, there’s an almost plasticity to its nature that allows it to be worked with relative ease.
DS: Amazing. We can’t wait to see what that creative exploration looks like. You seem to have such a natural ease about your work. What do you love most about your job?
RA: Such a tricky question in a way. The reality of my job, as a working artist, is a funny thing. On the surface, perhaps, there’s this romanticism to it. But I wear so many hats and do so many things. I experiment and play, I work on producing the work, I run the business itself and work with various folks associated with that. I order supplies and talk to clients. I have a small team and I talk to them, making sure they have work that makes sense; work that gives them meaning, and is interesting to them.
Gathering Chair as photographed by Ryan Burroughs
DS: You raise some good points there. So many people perceive the creative act as the work and forget that even artists have the typical labors of business, management, and customer service. Thank for providing that broader perspective. I imagine it’s exciting for you when you get to put the business aside and just make.
RA: Sometimes - regularly, really - the actual act of making just feels like a relatively small pie of the proverbial pie. But to be sure - that is where I am happiest. I am in a flow state when it happens, working with my hands, keeping them busy. The kinesthetic nature of the work, body and mind both involved in the creative act. Each thing I make, each piece, is the result of dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of small moves and it’s this bundling and building process that I am deeply in love with. The act of making, in its simplest form, is the thing that drives me, and propels me through the hardest times in the work and being a working artist and designer.
DS: Here’s to hoping you get more of those moments. Speaking of making, what project are you most proud of?
RA: My current body of glass works, the Saguaro collection. It has been a long process. From the initial explorations where there was a ton of failure and learning, to the present, where we still push boundaries, over the course of about three and a half years - really learning a process and a material, how to play inside this system that I created and learning about what can happen, where the edges are. I think about projects often not in terms of centers but of outsides. That the space of a project is defined by the exterior, the liminal space where things are just before the point of failure, and all these points create a space. So when I make this work, I’m always finding new things to explore, new trajectories and ways the work can continue to depart and find new forms to take. It started out as a work of sculptural vessels, but that has grown into experiments in pure form, into furniture, into lighting, into drinking glasses, into who knows what’s next. I love how it enables me to chase down this space of play.
Stomper table photographed by Rafi
DS: You’ve covered a lot of the real life world of professional object design. What other advice would you give emerging designers and makers?
RA: Find what you’re curious about, what you are interested in and can't stop thinking about, and chase that down. Your curiosity can shift, but curiosity is the thing to cultivate. Anything can be a world - you could spend a whole life and practice thinking about one small detail, one small thing, if you’re interested and curious enough.
DS: You experiment across so many design types and materials. What is your favorite design style?
RA: I think for this, I’d exclude the contemporary moment, or the current gestalt which can extend backwards years as well, and so - going with a historical example - perhaps trite but I really love the Shaker work and style, which really is a calling and religious devotion. And that’s part of it actually. But there is an essential nature to Shaker work. It’s not minimal, it is super focused and super intentional. But also not utilitarian. The spacing and the scale of each component is so considered. And the religious nature too. I’m spiritual, I suppose, but not religious. And I do really love how the act of working was this act of devotion. An acknowledgement, an appreciation, and a searching for the divine. I have a friend who channeled his inner John Cage when we were talking about sculpture, and he said “everything is divine if you look at it in a certain way,” and I really took that to heart. That all the work is an elevation of these basic things into objects to be appreciated and respected.
DS: That is beautiful. I love that. Where do you find inspiration for your work?
RA: Everything I intake goes into the blender of my head and mixes and swirls around. I just really look at the world, being present and taking it in. To me, there’s not a difference between going camping at the river, going for a dawn run through the woods, going to the SF MoMA, and going to a small, local gallery show. It’s all input, sensory information that moves together to make things gestate in my head. I’m always processing, combining, and synthesizing things.
I do take a lot from both the natural world and contemporary design, and historical work as well. For me, it’s more about the process of assemblage and the creation of juxtapositions. I get a lot of inspiration from the act of doing. My work so often starts with experimentation and play, and seeing the possibilities inherent in a process or a material, and pushing that line of inquiry forward.
Rafi, photographed by Benjamin Heath
DS: Do you find inspiration in travel? If so, where are some places you like to visit?
RA: I’m honestly not the most well traveled person out there, so I think my answers might be a little expected here!
Mexico City, Mexico - I love the feeling of age and patina. I love the hand-painted signs and the textures everywhere. I’d very much like to have an opportunity to live here for a few months someday.
Los Angeles, California, USA - Even though I’m based in Northern California, I have a current love affair with LA. I try and get down there three or four times a year. The endlessness and possibility inherent in such a huge landscape. It’s almost infinite.
Varanasi, India - Intense. Magical. Like you’re in the living, breathing center of the universe. It’s beautiful and filled with life and death. A juxtaposition of people waiting to die in this spiritual center, funeral pyres, age and decay and death, and then all around there’s a virility and life force and fecundity that is palpable. The energetic force of the city is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
DS: Amazing and not expected at all. Last question, can you share a few people that you find interesting?
RA: Sure. Alma Allen, Franz West, Peter Voulkos, Sterling Ruby
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