I'm Leta Sobierajski I'm a graphic designer and an art director and I share
a studio with my husband Wade
I'm Wade, I share a studio with my wife Leta.
I grew up in upstate New York and I went to school at SUNY Purchase which is
about an hour north of New York City, I studied graphic design for four years
graduated and moved to New York and have been working here ever since.
I'm Wade Jeffree I'm from Melborne Australia, I came to America maybe 5 years ago, I still never remember.
I should, but, yeah I went to school there, came here to explore the world and see if I could do things on a bigger scale.
and I guess the rest is history!
our creative process is pretty all over the place we don't have one specific way
of tackling a project we're extremely hands-on and I think that's one of the
only things that's so consistent about the way that we work we typically start
with whether it's branding or art direction or photography no matter what
it is we typically start with sketches working off the computer oftentimes then
building things photographing them bringing them back onto the computer
into the cyclical process
After we've sort of got the breif we'll go off into our seperate avenues, we'll explore everything in an individual component,
And then once we start getting our ideas to a point that we're happy, we'll bring them togther and discuss which one's the best
and how to elevate whichever one is the best to the place we want it to go
it's pretty important to have time separately so that one so that our ideas
are not fluid from the start
Yeah and our backgrounds are different so therefore our influences and our thinking is different
So we need to make sure that we have the ability to do that before we do come together
I think the best way to gather inspiration is through your experiences
and your exposure to culture and your exposure to art and exhibitions and food
and everything tangible and having conversations with your friends and with
strangers and traveling to places that are unknown and foreign I think those
are the best invigorating ways to develop new ideas and spark new ways of
thinking
and getting off the computer, you know Pinterest might be a thing - and everyone uses it
but, there's a multitude of books with references and resources that you've never seen before
and no one else has seen before, and you can be inspired in so many different ways by a couple of written words
or an image that's profound, or you know even going to a gallery, exploring other ways and other forms
of creativity to allow yourself to be inspired in multiple ways to make your work, better.
I think Wade and I are both heavily inspired by fashion it fashion's quite
you know it's such a contemporary thing and it's always changing and fashion
tends to inform a lot of art and design and other creative avenues
Yeah I'd say that, and also architecture, and large scale art in that sense, that could be almost architectural ,
We do a lot of traveling to go see, or catch a lot of trains really - cos we don't drive, we catch alot of trains
to go see large pieces of art and also (landscape) and buildings and landscape architecture to
inspire thinking on a bigger scale, and how does that thinking on a bigger scale inspire us to
bring those avenues into work, whether it's a printed piece, or whether we're doing an installation or something.
But looking definitely outside different trains of thought, like whether that's cooking
Cooking's also a big one, like reading things about chefs, because you know that time component of being
someone that's working in a kitchen, is something really interesting to us, because quick ideas, quick executions
how does that mentality come back to what we're doing?
I think Wade and I often time we try to do a lot of travel for art
as he already mentioned art and landscape and nature and we have done a
lot of travel to Japan to see these things, things that we seek out where we
read about them and realized that it's a thing that we have to have to experience
on our own but I think it just it doesn't limit to just there I mean I
grew up in the countryside in upstate New York like in the literal woods and I
think that's just as inspiring like being able to observe not necessarily a
visual but the absolute silence of your your ears ringing when you're in this
completely barren landscape.
Yeah and for me I guess it's always referential to where I'm from - Australia,
Whether that be sort of the landscape or the people or the historical components to that,
You know and the indigenous culture within Australia and sort of the artistic practice that's come with that
I think is really profound and beautiful, matched indefinitely in other indigenous cultures and stuff.
That and then also look at where I am now, because I have moved here and sort of look at that story
and the ability to throw yourself into a place where you don't know, and become a fish in a pond
and figure things out , so in terms of locations and cities and cultures, I guess this one's a big one for me
But, I mean that idea should be strong for everyone hopefully and throwing yourself into a situation, where you don't know what the fuck's going on
and you have to just figure it out!
my favorite tools our hands our hands are undoubtedly our favorite tools as
as well as exacto knives yeah and we don't use rulers very much it's hard to say
Favorite tool is my brain - I think it's the biggest tool that no one wants to talk about
what our favorite is because we've done so many projects with so many weird
materials that just the exoticness of what we're using is really exciting like
we've done projects with wigs like colored wigs as well as different types
of like hands like we have we have all these monster hands in our studio
they also have rubber snakes there plenty of eyeballs some people would
call it shit but we use it like it doesn't make sense to throw these things
away because it's cool we can repurpose them or just figure out something silly
to do on a slow Friday afternoon
I see our society changing with the influence of technology hopefully in a
positive way but I just see it as more mediums and more possibilities for
making work and different with different capabilities that we will grow to learn
and understand but may not necessarily be able to fathom right now yeah
roundabout way
that's cool you can already see that there are people who are exploring those
ideas or even I know Apple just did their latest update where you get to
choose to have it monitor how much you how much time you spend on your phone or
on an app and it's really helpful because we are being sucked into these
things that are extremely productive but also the massive time wasters and it's
important that we're acknowledging that this is something that needs to be
remedied or we need to identify how we can be more efficient with our time no
but I mean we take