One printer, an artist and an industrial designer all have this in common: precision.
Making the Cut -The Main Squeegee
The last textile screen-printing bastion in San Francisco is still a hidden treasure.
Craftswoman Anne Kirk has been hand screen-printing textiles since 1985 and is now the last still doing so in the Bay Area — and among few in the country. “Griswold just closed,” she notes, referring to the legendary Rhode Island print house where giants like Brunschwig & Fils and Clarence House quietly produced custom runs. With other longtime operations shuttered or absorbed, Kirk is a resilient part of a disappearing tradition.
At her San Francisco studio in Pier 80, a warehouse that once housed Zoo-Ink (where she first began her career), Kirk produces her own linen and wool fabric line, started in 2005 and sold through national showrooms. She also prints for interior designers like Charles de Lisle, who want custom fabrics, and for museums seeking exacting reproductions from historical fragments—sometimes requiring eight or more colors per design.
Vintage fabric recreations are a specialty. “Ann Getty once brought me a swatch she’d found, and we replicated it,” Kirk recalls. Every job is different, which is part of the appeal.
The space required for this work is substantial, and costly. “It’s a real estate story,” she says. “I used to have 7,500 square feet—now just 5,000.” Still, she keeps going, passing on her knowledge to a young printmaker, Ryan Harrison. “I’ve survived, basically!” Annekirktextiles.com
Tricked-out Reflection
Artist Andy Vogt’s magic mirror.
Ever Diametric marks a striking departure from San Francisco artist Andy Vogt’s usual material of choice—wood lath—yet it stays rooted in his signature approach: two-dimensional surfaces that suggest spatial depth.
This sculptural light piece features a 3/8-inch thick acrylic mirror mounted perpendicular to the wall, like a sconce, and illuminated by a focused spotlight. Vogt has meticulously cut away sections of the mirror’s reflective film to create a crisp geometric pattern. When lit, the beam is both reflected by the mirror and transmitted through the cutout bits, casting twin effects onto the wall: a bright highlight and a shadow. These opposing forms—mirror images of each other—always take the shape of a stylized arrowhead.
“I created Ever Diametric during my residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts,” Vogt says. “It was a period where I began experimenting deeply with light as both material and subject.” Completed in 2010, Ever Diametric became one of the first works in what would evolve into his ongoing Drawing with Light series—an exploration of mirrors, lenses, and sunlight across installation, sculpture, and photogram.
A maquette of Ever Diametric was recently included in a group show co-curated by architect Anand Sheth for Re: Riddle gallery at the Minnesota Street Project. Custom installations are available through the artist or gallery starting at $8,000, plus lighting and electrical costs. andyvogt.com, reriddle.com
Chain Links
Molecular screen for the front door.
“I have never enjoyed science,” says Annie Kantor, founder of Modern Metal Designs, a decade-old Oakland-based laser-cut metal products company. “But I could like organic chemistry,” she muses.
A good thing, too. The former textile designer and custom studio head at textile firm Maharam was invited to create a see-through panel for the front door of a client whose biotech firm’s logo is based on a steroid molecule. The logo — four hexagons and double bond — lacks the pentagon of a typical steroid structure.
So, Kantor chose to further abstract her version. She drew on her inner scientist — and consulted her husband, a biologist at another biotech firm — and added a five-sided ring to the logo. It is not a true representation of a steroid’s chemical structure but symbolic.
The finished panel shields a translucent glass door. From inside, the diffused pattern takes on the hazy appearance of a molecular chain under a microscope.
It’s exactly what was asked for: a striking, decorative focal point at the entry.
As usual, Kantor was involved in the making. Her sketches were scanned into a textile design program, and vectorized before sheet metals met the laser cutter.
“Textile weaving is very mathematical,” Kantor observes. And, even cutaway patterns must hold together like a weave — no breaks, no floating islands. They repeat with the consistency of fabrics.
“I’m always trying to push it back toward textiles,” she laughs. “Even though it’s metal.” That’s not quite science — but it’s definitely a kind of alchemy. modmetaldesigns.com
