Riverside Collective is a working studio and retail space comprised of five resident artists, as well as rotating guest artists. We want you to get to know the range and depth of our resident artists and makers, so we've asked them to answer a few questions for us. This week: Milestone Bag Co.
What inspires your art?
Architecture. Shapes. Patterns. When I was a kid I studied buildings and houses. I built giant multi story dollhouses out of boxes and chipboard. I built my own doll furniture. I made shoebox diaramas. So, in a way becoming a bag designer is a natural evolution of how my brain and hands have always worked in unison. There’s never been a detail I don’t notice and that’s my favorite part of designing my bags - beautiful little details.
How does Saxapahaw influence your art?
Going back to the above question I’d say it’s in the industrial architecture juxtaposed against the rocky river, hills, and history of the land. My hands channel what I take in with my eyes and this village is poetry in motion. The rough rigid lines against the soft flowing water are reminiscent of the structural lines in many of my bags that are created with soft buttery leather.
If you were to speak for your art how would you fill in these prompts?
If my bags could talk this is what they’d say:
I feel…durable
I need…purpose
I am…more beautiful day after day
What’s your favorite tool and why?
It’s pretty impossible to pick a favorite. I’m self taught over a period of 14 years and learned about helpful tools as I went on over the years. There would be times I’d find a tool and think “how did I not know about this sooner?!” because I’d spent years doing something the hard way without realizing it. Perhaps my favorite tool is the next one I haven’t discovered yet that will make bag building that much easier…
What’s one thing that someone who isn’t a leather worker or bag designer wouldn’t know about what you do?
The amount of months that go into each bag design. It starts with a tiny idea of a detail, then evolves into market research to see what types of bags are trending and how I can utilize that in my own creative way, then after weeks of building a design in my mind, often as I meditate and sometimes even in my dreams, I then sketch it out. Then I create measurements on my pattern paper and cut out the pattern. Next is picking the leather. Sometimes from swatches, sometimes from my current leather inventory, sometimes in person at my main leather supplier. After that I make the prototype, field test it for weeks, gauge interest, decide on any tweaks I may want to do for the final product. The last steps are photography, editing, and listing it on the website, socials, and in the shop.
What idea or concept are you chewing on right now? Has it shown up in your work yet?
Well, my personal favorite designs are a blend of motorcycle and the southwest. Obviously that went over really well when I lived in New Mexico but North Carolina and the East Coast is much more conservative so I’ve had to readjust my designs to that since I moved back in 2018. But I’ve maintained my Southwestern connections and have grown my wholesale relationships in retail stores out that way so I feel like I can start sneaking back in some more western/biker details in some of my new designs. Just last weekend I got invited to be a vendor at a biker fest later this summer after showing them the prototypes of a new collection I’m working on…so I’m feeling pretty excited.
Are you a rebel with your art in any way? How does that make it better?
Any good designer has to be a rebel but by making calculated risks. You want to make something someone has never seen before but also can’t live without. I want people to crave my bags, my designs. I want daughters to play dress up with their mom’s bags. I want my bags to be handed down generation to generation. I want my bags to be well loved and beaten up because that makes them all the more beautiful. I want my bags to walk with you through all of life’s milestones, and turn heads the whole way. I want other designers to see my bags and think “wow, that’s a cool design move I never thought of doing!”