A Chat with Luc from Spiritual Objects

Our graphic designer Alec Battistoni was stoked to sit down with Luc Fuller on the occasion of the release of our collaborative bowl, for which Luc generated an illustration complete with Spiritual Object's iconic music note. They had the chance to talk Alvar Aalto, chairs with wheels, and the Hollywood farmer's market:

Alec: What is your favorite fruit?
Luc:   I am agnostic aha, my favorite fruit is like the best of what's in season. So right now, pears are really good, so I'm eating a lot of pears. Doesn't matter which fruit, you can have the worstor best version of it. It's funny having a kid, cause he's super into blackberries, but then as soon as he tastes one that's bad, then he thinks all blackberries suck. And I have to tell him to just try it again.

A: I've run into you at the farmer's market before, are you a regular? Do you have a favorite stand/farm?
L: My family and I go every weekend. The weeks that we don't go, it really fucks up our whole week. It creates so many gaps we have to fill in. Ken's, Finley, and Weiser are some our favorites. The farmers market might be the best part of living in LA.

A: How did you come to collaborate with Sqirl?
L: When I was living in Portland, coffee was how I paid for life during college. I worked at Stumptown, and they were considering opening up a cafe in LA. I took a trip to L.A. and while I was here I found myself at G&B Coffee, which at the time was a pop up at Sqirl. And this was probably right when Squirrel started, around 2012, and I was just blown away. I think I had the sorrel rice bowl, and I was like, Oh, this is unlike anything I've ever had. 

Later down the road I met Scott, who created the Sqirl visual world. And I was inspired by the energy and wanted to do something with Sqirl for years. So this is kind of the full circle moment almost ten years later. I love that what I ended up working on is actually being used in the cafe, it's not just an object or a piece of merch. That's what I love about design in general is that it's this thing that you live with, you use, it's functional. 

A: How have you found your practice intersecting with food/restaruants?
L: I think in the same way that I explore experiential design or experiential art. I’ve been inspired by what lives alongside food, in the way that I’m inspired by the chairs next to a painting in a gallery show.

The first time I really experienced an appreciation for this was wandering into a hardware store in Italy a while back, and finding all these dead stock Alessi pieces. I had maybe loosely considered that kind of design, but touching it and seeing it in person, and so casually in a hardware store because people are actually going to buy these beautiful things and use them to make espresso or grind pepper, it blew me away.

I would love to design a restaurant or a cafe or a bar. That's the next step for me.

A:What have been some key inspirations that informed your practice and the way you design?

L: I've definitely been influenced by the design around me in the cities I’ve lived in. Whether it's Eames and his multidisciplinary practice here in LA or just living in Copenhagen where I saw design as such a big part of everyday life. You go to get your blood drawn, and it's on an old beat up Aalto table.

Mary Heilman is one of my favorite painters of all time. She made these brightly colored chairs on wheels that were a part of her exhibitions. You could sit in them and wheel around while you looked from painting to painting. I love when artists use design to extend the approachability and humanity of their practices.

A: Do you have any Los Angeles Dining recommendations?
L:  LA is a beast. It's huge. I don’t know if this qualifies as a food recommendation, but when I first moved to LA, I discovered Jonathan Gold and watched City of Gold. I was super moved by the documentary and it unlocked an immediate love for LA’s food scene. I think anybody who wants to understand LA should watch that documentary.

A: If you were going to eat something out of the bowl that we made, what would you eat out of it?
L: It's kind of a perfect cereal bowl. Or oatmeal, I eat oatmeal almost every day! It would be perfect for oatmeal with some fresh fruit on top.