Rather than just be looked at, the screens are designed as functional works, meant to live as privacy screens, room dividers, backdrops, or headboards. That’s the part that made us stop. Gigi describes herself as a dot connector, moving across interiors, murals, printmaking, and animation, and these pieces are that idea in one object, a mural given the mobility of furniture by someone who spends her days organizing space without building walls. The accordion form also changes how you compose an image, and she leaned into it, painting carefully for the straight-on view while leaving the folded views partly to chance.

The same idea of cultivation runs through the Plot rugs she debuted with Nomadory in collaboration with The Bureau, where changes in pile height suggest seedlings emerging from planter boxes, and from there into the show’s invites, maps, and silk scarves. It’s rare to watch one concept move so cleanly across so many materials, and rarer still for it to hold up in every one.

Read the full interview below.

Bloom and Unfurl start from the idea that every cultivated landscape begins as a grid before transforming into something wild. Can you walk us through how the screens came together, from that founding concept to painting the site-specific plants of Sarah’s garden onto the panels?

I had been brainstorming for a while about what a mural could look like if it wasn’t permanently painted onto a wall. An accordion screen felt like the perfect solution… a mural that could travel and also exist as a stand alone object.

I started by thinking of the vertical plywood panels like rows in a field, organized and clearly divided. Regardless of what I designed, there would be seams, hinges, and shifts across the composition as the screen folded, so the structure and hardware became part of the grid. From there, I studied the plants in Sarah’s garden and extracted their qualities as simple geometries – the spiky edges of sunflowers, the rounded centers of hellebores and coneflowers, and the whimsical movement of pea tendrils. Sarah also shared an incredible macro image of the center of a sunflower that ended up informing a lot of the gradient language in Unfurl.

I took a weaving course on a floor loom during my brainstorm for the concepts, so cultivation was on my mind via the idea of building something row by row with fibers. I’ve also always loved the geometry of barn quilts. Bloom became a melding of those worlds… the agricultural grids of Sonoma, textile structures, and organic botanical forms.

Together, the two screens explore abundance and growth… one with more structure, one more rigid… not the right words yet. Asymmetry vs symmetry… loose vs rigid…

You also debuted the Plot rugs with Nomadory in collaboration with The Bureau, translating planter boxes and seedlings into woven form. What was it like moving that same idea of cultivation into a completely different material and process?

The rugs actually came first. Sarah sent me videos and images of her garden, and I was immediately drawn to the raised planter beds. I loved the juxtaposition of these repeated rectangular containers with growth spilling out. It also connected naturally to Sarah’s larger concept for the show… that a seedling needs time and cultivation in order to grow.

Once we started working with Nomadory, we began thinking about how that idea could be represented by the material itself. Instead of drawing plants onto a rug, could changes in pile height or stitching create the feeling of seedlings emerging from a grid?

That became a visual system for many of the assets in the event. The grid moved from the rugs into blooming animations for the digital invite, silk scarves designed as giveaways, exhibit maps, and then the screens. I love seeing how far a simple idea can live across multiple mediums.

The screens are designed as functional works, meant to live as privacy screens, room dividers, backdrops, or headboards rather than just be looked at. How do you think about that line between painting and furniture, and how does the accordion form, something meant to be moved, folded, and repositioned, change the way you compose an image?

What interested me the most was taking something I normally think about two-dimensionally (a mural) and giving it a three-dimensional function. As interior designers, we’re often looking for ways to organize space without building permanent walls, so the screen felt like a natural way to blend my art and spatial practices together. The accordion form allowed the painting to become an object that could move through different environments and take on different purposes, so the composition didn’t need to react to a permanent setting. At the same time, I tried not to over-design what would happen when the screens were folded. I developed the composition intentionally from the straight-on view and ensured alignment across the vertical pieces, but I wanted to be somewhat surprised by the final product.

I’m obsessed with symmetry and order, but in contrast, I also like working with mediums I can’t completely control. That’s one reason I love block printing. You design a very precise system, but you can’t entirely control how the ink hits the paper. With the screens, I introduced some of that unpredictability by exposing the wood grain through a colored stain in select areas. The accordion action itself added another variable – as you walk around the folded screen, you get an interaction between parts that can’t be fully mocked up in advance.

With the composition for Bloom, I was thinking about the possibility of it becoming a headboard. The blooms sit above nightstand height and flank where a bed could be, but it still works without anything in front of it. I like that the pieces can completely change depending on how someone chooses to live with them – it’s always interesting to see how other people activate or interpret an idea.

Giving up some control over how they live.

You describe yourself as a dot connector, moving across interiors, murals, printmaking, and animation. How do those different scales and disciplines feed each other in work like this?

All of those disciplines feed each other. Printmaking is what initially got me thinking about pattern… how one simple module can repeat and suddenly become a much larger composition. That way of thinking started informing my paintings and murals. My background in interiors made me comfortable thinking about those patterns at the scale of a room. I’ve always been fascinated by set design, and how visuals often accompany music during live shows. I started wondering what would happen if my patterns could actually move, which led me toward wanting to learn animation.

More recently, weaving has added another layer. I’m by no means a weaver – I’ve only taken a few intro courses – but I love the idea that you’re building an image through a gridded system, row by row, and that’s very similar to how I naturally think about space and pattern.

Ultimately, I’m interested in how a concept can live at different scales and in different forms without losing its through line. “How can a simple thing do the most?” is something I ask myself over and over when developing a composition. Many of the forms I use are intentionally elementary. It’s through repetition, scale, gradients, material, and movement that they become activated.


Photos by Cass Cleave