I’ve known artist Emma Kohlmann since she was a kid and am a huge fan. I’m not the only one. Her beguiling, dreamlike paintings were discovered on Instagram 10 years ago when she was in her mid-twenties and she now has an impressive CV of shows near and far (she’s represented in NYC by Silke Lindner and in Copenhagen by V1 Gallery).
Emma began by self-publishing zines and continues to make printed matter (with her sister, Charlotte Kohlmann, she runs Mundus Press in Northampton, Massachusetts, where the two live). Emma also frequently collaborates with other creatives—with Simone Bodmer-Turner, for instance, she produced a sell-out line of vases, and she’s currently designing tableware for a major Danish brand. Emma Kohlmann Watercolors, a large-format monograph on her work of the past decade, is being published any minute by Anthology.
Today, we’re featuring her latest collab: the Emma Kohlman Lamp Collection for online art and design shop Slow Roads. The brand’s founders, Catherine Costanza and Evan Dublin, supplied Emma with custom canvas lampshades to paint. They sized the shades to pair with vintage tree root lamps that they ferreted out on road trips in Upstate New York, Seattle, and California, and carefully restored. The sculptural collection debuted on the Slow Roads site on March 11, with prices starting at $1,450. Take a look. There are only six lamps (and three have already been sold), so speak up if you want one.
Photography courtesy of Slow Roads (@slow_roads).
Emma typically works spontaneously without advance sketches, and has developed her own benevolent universe of reclining figures, floating faces, plants, and animals. She painted the lampshades with watered-down acrylics; each is one-of-a-kind and displays evolving patterns and scenes.
