Small is Beautiful: Dan Funderburgh

Dan Funderburgh is best known for creating obsessively detailed patterns, repeating them in multiple artful configurations. His works have shown up in some interesting substrates lately; a full re-work of a bicycle as canvas, a re-imagining of a clock for the brand Kitsune Noir, and topographic layers for luggage designed for Burton snowboards.

Some of his artwork can be found in the collections of the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum and the Miami Museum of Art. We invited Funderburgh to be a part of this exhibition because we wanted him to explore the realms of possibilities when a 2D artist tackles a project in 3D space.

Theme caught up with Funderburgh as he was putting the finishing touches on his moving piece for Small Is Beautiful.

So you’re predominantly a 2D artist, so what were the inherent challenges involved in creating a 3D diorama?
It definitely is a challenge to make flat art look more interesting sometimes. The laser cutter is a good step in the right direction, because you can engrave something but it’s still pretty flat. You can only do certain dimensions, you can only get depths, or put a hole in a material a certain way.

I guess one of the things that people really love about your work is the meticulousness, the obsessive attention to detail, which is what we feel sets you apart from people who work in 2D art and wallpaper design. You throw little surprises like fire hydrants and axes and other surprise elements that give the work a narrative quality. Do you think you brought that aspect of your work into the project?
I hope so. I feel that a lot of what I do, especially making wallpapers is a riff of, a take on an old historic pattern and making it contemporary. But I’ve been kind of fed up with that a little bit lately. The basic premise of that is a pretty easy one — you take something old and put something new into it. I’ve been trying to bring a little broader perspective — a little less obvious — into my work. But yes, details are something I’ve always been a fan of, with decorative arts and wallpapers; stuff you can look at for a long time.

How did you get started?
I guess I have to give credit to Echo Unlimited, which was my first job when I moved to New York. I did a lot of work with repeat patterns for their apparel based off of old wallpapers, and I really got into it.

How do you think your work has developed over time? How do you go from a guy designing repeat patterns for sweatshirts to an artist laser cutting intricate patterns on all sorts of things?
I got a little disillusioned with the apparel industry and started thinking to myself that if I was creating art based on wallpapers, I should try and get my work up on some walls. I began working with this company called Flavorpaper, these screeprinting folks from New Orleans who eventually moved to Brooklyn. They started printing my work onto actual wallpaper, to be installed onto actual walls in houses. Right now my work straddles an interesting intersection between art, design and interior design. I like where I’m at now. I like not being pigeon-holed as a certain kind of artist.

Where does your unabashed love for decorative art come from?
That’s a really good question. Who doesn’t love it? [Laughs.] I haven’t really figured that out yet.

Do you think that maybe that’s what your work is all about — exploring that very question?
That’s an interesting hypothesis. You know the other shapes that appear in my work besides historic design elements are also things that I have an aesthetic fondness for. I talk about ergonomic tools, weapons, and pedestrian objects like scissors and teapots; stuff that I really feel like is under appreciated in much the same way that wallpaper was for a few years, before it became trendy, and before it had a magazine named after it and stuff. I can’t explain it at all. I’ve got a couple of theories, but they’re not very sound.

You cite the “metropolises that you made when you were a kid” and also “Maurice Sendak’s In The Night Kitchen” as influences for this project.
In The Night Kitchen is a a kid’s book that is kind of like a dream. A kid gets put in a nightime city made of bottles of milk and sticks of butter. I’ve always read that growing up so I thought that had a place in this.

As for the paper metropolises, I remember in second grade we were given these little balls of fuzz with googley-eyes on them for like Valentine’s day or something like that. And somehow I folded a piece of paper into a little shoebox sized little house and I drew paper furniture for it. I kept adding additions until it was the size of my entire room. My parents are very sweet because they kept that until I was in high school. This giant structure taped to a wall. It was all falling apart by then. Definitely not something worth keeping, but I did have a fond memory of making it.

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Theme has teamed up with Scion to curate an exhibition of miniature dioramas by artists Jeremy Mora, Lori Nix, Tracey Snelling, Dan Funderburgh and Ji Lee. Asked to interpret the theme “Small is Beautiful” the five artists constructed mini cities, colored and inspired by their own experiences of urban life, touching on topics of decay, regeneration, voyeurism, multiculturalism, chaos and order.