Interview with a Stumbleweed
It’s September in Detroit and Laura is perched in her Stumbleweed studio overlooking a beautiful neighborhood and the continually raucous freeway down below. Detroit has been Laura’s home for 3 years now, and I don’t get the vibe that she’s interested in leaving. She has an affinity for the city’s history, its current situation, and its misunderstood and underestimated spirit.
She’s surrounded by piles of linoleum. Years of carving stamps have led to quite the collection, neatly drawered up but ready to use at a moment’s notice. She lets me finger my way through – although it feels a bit like I’m rummaging through someone’s underwear drawers… 100’s of hours have been lovingly poured into these little slabs of rubber. There are donuts (with frosting), pies, adorable cats and bats, opossums, rats, painstakingly intricate botanical carvings, fruit, barbed wire, bolt cutters, and burn barrels. It’s a unique collection, and it says so much about Laura’s life and the places she sees beauty.
These stamps will get inked and printed onto a number of items – upcycled fabrics, apparel, baby blankets, papers, postcards, labels… soon, she’ll be turning the designs into print-on-demand items that allow for a larger range of sizes and inventory.
Beyond that, she’s a candlemaker. So, the other side of the room is full of candles and their accouterments. It smells heavenly. She even hand-prints every label for her candles. We spend a few hours discussing her process and what she wants to do in the future. Clearly, she has many ideas and not enough time for them all (ah, yes, the creative life). So we smoke a joint and roll out to some visually appealing spots around town to slap up stickers, sing “Save Tonight” by Eagle Eye Cherry very loudly, and take some photos of her new gear. That is precisely how I snagged this awesome shot:
We got to see some sanctioned murals and hit up some abandoned buildings for some not-so-sanctioned art.
We wrapped up our visit with a Wu-Tang Clan show and Nas was there too. I had a fantastic burrito that I wasn’t expecting at an outdoor concert venue, and left feeling very “New York State of Mind.” Scouting out Detroit, its architecture, art, culture, and the people… made for a great trip. Detroit never disappoints. So if you’ve been sleeping on this interesting city, wake up already.
Thank you Laura for hosting me for such a nice trip. It’s gonna be fun getting to see what else you come up with over the years.
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