The J Schatz studio, listed on the national register of historic places, was originally the dye house for the Weybosset Mills in Olneyville, Rhode Island—a neighborhood of Providence mentioned over and over again in conjunction with things that are new, interesting, and just plain cool happening in PVD. Jim Schatz and Peter Souza of the J Schatz design and ceramics studio are major contributing representatives.

The two met in Florida three years ago, and later moved Schatz’s studio from Upstate NY to Los Angeles. But, as Souza remarks, “We felt really isolated in the city, so we took a trek last October and we scoured New England and the Berkshires looking for a community to be a part of. We fell in love with Providence; we found this gorgeous building that we were able to work and live in.” It is an ideal spot for them, with the roots they’ve put down, and are expanding upon, exhibiting their commitment to the area. The 160-foot long tunnel of a brick building houses two live-in suites on one end, their production studio in the middle, and their own apartment in the back. A continuous line of dormer windows along the top stream in natural light.

“We found a really great community here of artists and designers and folks that really welcomed us,” affirms Schatz. “We found a nice place to be.”

J Schatz studio | Photo by J Schatz

All work happens on site. Schatz started his ceramics career with the Star Egg Nightlights that project astral spots of light into a room, and then kept moving that ovoid shape forward through his work. It shows up in the company’s outdoor products of polished, modern, and colorful bird houses and feeders. The lighting line features table lamps, pendants, and uplights, all made of high-quality materials: glossy, brightly colored ceramics and rough, metallic, urban stoneware. The Porcelana Uplights are a standout, translucent porcelain cylinders with a glossy interior that throws the warmest tones of pink or orange.

Form following function is evident in all of the J Schatz products. Everything is beautiful to look at and touch, but these are real usable products, down to the brutalist coffee maker. “That happened because there was a Chemex coffee maker in our studio that kept breaking,” says Schatz of the origin of that design. “This is before I met Peter. His first visit to the studio he’s like, ‘What’s that?’, and I said, ‘It’s this coffee maker that I made because I was so frustrated with the Chemex breaking.’ And he said, ‘This is something we should be making.’ It looks crudely made, but it’s actually very ergonomic and nice to use. It’s now a production piece.” The dark, craggy look of the set is precisely what everyone’s morning cup of coffee should look like.

Brutal Coffeemaker | Photo by J Schatz

The two have recently purchased yet more property in the neighborhood for their Airbnb stock: a cottage with a terrific view and outside space. It will get the full J Schatz makeover, everything from tableware to room dividers, to vases and bird baths. “We’re putting the finishing touches on two more rooms and we’ve outfitted it completely in J Schatz custom work and new pieces,” explains Schatz. “And we’re going to have a yard and a garden, too.” Expect more outdoor work and housewares from them in the coming season. “Peter and I have a vision that complements each other,” Schatz says. Souza agrees. “We’ve integrated our products into environments that other people can share.” It’s a real treat to be able to live among a design team’s work, and the environments that J Schatz creates are a treat indeed.

Porcelana Uplights | Photo by J Schatz

J Schatz – James Schatz and Peter Souza, principals
Providence, Rhode Island
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Top photo J Schatz exterior | Photo by J Schatz

The post Community of Design appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally appeared in our November 2015 print issue.

Because it only takes a few visits to this small taqueria in the Olneyville section of Providence, Rhode Island, to realize that Maria Meza—the Doña Maria in question—is this restaurant’s heart and soul. When Meza steps out of the kitchen, friends and regulars greet her with hugs and kisses as the littlest guests rush to her as if she is their abuelita. Meza may be slight of build, but in this world she is larger than life.

The restaurant itself is homey, with about 10 tables and a six-seat bar guaranteed to satisfy serious tequila and mezcal aficionados. The brightly colored room is adorned with a blend of art from Mexico, framed accolades from the local press, and a TV to ensure that no one misses a single Liga MX soccer match. The soundtrack is a who’s who of Mexican music, with hits like Vicente Fernández’s “Por Tu Maldito Amor” in regular rotation. And the taqueria is named after the title song of the classic 1936 Mexican film Allá en el Rancho Grande.

El Rancho Grande | Dominic Perri Photography

The smells of Mexico emanate from the kitchen. Hints of chocolate, cinnamon, chiles, and cilantro, and the rich aromas of the al pastor on the trompo are integral to Cocina Poblana—the cuisine of Meza’s native Puebla that is famous for its mole: a rich, spicy sauce tinged with chocolate and several types of hot peppers.

While the authentic food of El Rancho Grande has lured guests through the doors for eight years, it is the hospitality of the Meza family—led by the indomitable Maria—that has created a devoted legion of diehard fans. Maria is joined by her husband, Joaquin, and sons in running the business.

Meza had dreamed of starting a restaurant long before El Rancho Grande opened in 2007—a dream that seems fantastical given that initially she didn’t know how to cook Mexican food. Yes, members of her extended family owned fondas (small restaurants) during her upbringing in Puebla, but when she met her future husband in 1977, she didn’t know how to cook at all.

Maria tells the story during a break from the kitchen. Having recently returned to Puebla from a seven-year stint living with her sisters in New York City, she invited Joaquin to lunch and prepared the only specialty she knew: tuna fish sandwiches and Lipton soup made from packets she had brought back from the States. Joaquin reached into the cloth-wrapped basket on the table expecting the traditional tortillas, only to find the very nontraditional tuna fish sandwiches. To Maria’s dismay, Joaquin announced, “I’m sorry, but I don’t like tuna fish.” Joaquin summoned Maria’s younger brother and instructed him to retrieve lunch for four from the fonda down the street. Her brother returned shortly with two baskets loaded with traditional Mexican food. That day Maria said to herself, “That will never happen to me again,” and she set out to learn all she could about cooking from her aunts and friends.

El Rancho Grande | Dominic Perri Photography

Joaquin and Maria married the following year. In 1984, after finishing his military service, Joaquin moved to New York City to work. Maria remained in Puebla working as a hairdresser until 1992, when she and children Isobel, Joaquin Jr., Jose, and Marco moved to the States to join Joaquin. They followed other family members and settled in Providence, where Maria and Joaquin spent the next 14 years working in a casting factory that made jewelry.

During that time, Maria talked frequently about her desire to open “a little taco place.” When she and Joaquin lost their jobs in a factory layoff, they started the search for a spot to make that desire a reality. In 2005 Maria found a vacant space on the first floor of a house on Plainfield Street. However, the property was for sale, not for lease. The Mezas’ savings would never cover the price of the house as well as costly restaurant construction. That’s when Joaquin Jr. and his wife, Kimberly, agreed to help buy the place, putting their own dream of home ownership on hold to help Maria start her business.

It took the Mezas an arduous two years to renovate the space and get all the permits required to open a restaurant. They did everything themselves. Joaquin Jr. and his father-in-law, who worked in construction by day, spent their evenings building the restaurant with Joaquin Sr.’s help. Meanwhile, Maria navigated the red tape of the licensing process. Their permits were only days away from expiring when they finally opened El Rancho Grande on Cinco de Mayo 2007. After a celebratory day of a mayoral ribbon cutting, mariachis, and folk dancers, El Rancho Grande closed for the evening, having sold every morsel of food Maria had prepared.

El Rancho Grande’s connection to the community continues to this day. “Don Joaquin” rotates between helping in the kitchen dish pit and greeting regular guests tableside. Sons Joaquin Jr. and Marco, reticent participants in the restaurant at first, are now regular faces behind the bar. Marco, who at one time wanted to be a pastry chef, now finds his creative outlet through cocktails. Joaquin Jr. is quick to say that the restaurant has become a part of him.

El Rancho Grande | Dominic Perri Photography

Together with their mother, the brothers are considering the future of El Rancho Grande, including the possibilities of a second location and the bottling of Maria’s delicious mole. “We didn’t have a background in this business, but we knew we could learn,” says Joaquin Jr. “We always knew this would be a stepping stone to great things.”

Marco adds, “My mother cooks the food that she would make for you if you came to her home. Her greatest satisfaction comes from seeing people happy with the food she has prepared for them.”

El Rancho Grande – mexican restaurant
Olneyville, Rhode Island
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

All photography by Dominic Perri Photography

The post A Little Taco Place appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally ran in our April/May 2016 print issue. 

Curators and working artists Lindsey Stapleton and Corey Oberlander—neither of whom is yet 30—have an ambitious remit to “exhibit the work that we feel deserves the spotlight,” particularly by artists just starting their careers.

Since opening in 2013, the duo have staged more than 30 shows at a breakneck pace, including the first Rhode Island edition of Bring Your Own Beamer, a worldwide series of pop-up exhibitions where groups of artists project their work on bare walls. In addition to attending annual art fairs like Art Basel Miami Beach and the SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York City, they recently curated GROUND RULES at the University of Arkansas’s sUgAR Gallery.

The inspiration to start an unjuried, democratic space has its origins in Stapleton and Oberlander’s student days at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where they grew frustrated by how difficult it was to show “in a real space that wasn’t a café or a basement.”

That challenge stayed with them. After graduating in 2009 and 2010, respectively, the two lived on opposite coasts (Stapleton in San Francisco and Oberlander in the greater Boston area) until escalating rents forced them to look for a more affordable, art-friendly city. A Google search for “live/work/Providence” landed them squarely in The Plant, a sprawling mixed-use complex in the heart of Olneyville, a working-class neighborhood often called Providence’s “second downtown.”

Starting a gallery wasn’t their plan—at least not at first. “We knew we wanted it to be a studio space,” says Stapleton. “But we didn’t really figure out what we were going to do until we moved in and realized what Providence could handle.”

It took the duo a couple of months to realize that the city was hardly oversaturated with galleries showing emerging contemporary art. Researching Olneyville, they saw an opportunity to contribute to the growth of an up-and-coming arts community that includes feminist collective Dirt Palace (which celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2015) and neighboring art space Yellow Peril, which opened in 2011. “It was the perfect place for us to be,” explains Stapleton. “Not overly gentrified, still close to downtown Providence. And in the larger art-world scale, still close to Boston and New York City.”

The Transplantable, 2014 | Sarah Tortora | wood, wood composites, paint | 60×96×24 inches

GRIN’s inaugural exhibit was a group show titled Some Place Here that asked artists to riff on the prompt “home.”

“We try to do one group show to three-to-four solo shows,” says Stapleton. “We like solo shows. We like working with people who have the ability to put together a really solid body of work that can make a whole collection.”

Defining the GRIN aesthetic is a tricky business, because the work is so wide-ranging. Whether big or small, two-dimensional or three-, the guiding philosophy is playfulness and sly humor. (“Expect anti-jokes and anti-art,” reads the one-sheet for the recent group show, Besides.) Rough edges are welcome, self-importance is not.

Materials are frequently abused or subverted, as with Leah Piepgras’ day-glo clouds made of quartz, resin, or Styrofoam, or Charlie Smith’s punctured, cut, and drilled wooden assemblages that bend, snake, and contort.

Exploiting the tension between fantasy and domesticity is another frequent theme. Allison Baker’s mordantly funny video Party Girl crops tightly on two sharp-taloned hands as they carefully rip layer after layer of garish wrapping paper off a succession of gifts. The clichéd femininity of the trappings (long pink nails; hyper-saturated pink and polka-dotted paper; explosions of glitter) serve to underscore the Sisyphean punch at the end: the gifts are never revealed. The viewer remains stuck in a purgatory- loop of almost psychotic expectation.

Eddie Villanueva’s witty Guitar Ride reengineers a staple of American childhood, the kiddie ride, swapping in a classic symbol of American manhood, the electric guitar, in place of the pony. Drop 50 cents in the slot, and the guitar shimmies out the famous droning chord from “Tomorrow Never Knows” on the Beatles’ Revolver. Both curators work closely with the artists on the installation, which often becomes part of the art-making process itself. One of Smith’s early GRIN pieces, Strips, was actually created on site. “He came one day when we were de-installing the previous show,” explains Oberlander. “We were taking down a partition wall, and he asked if he could have it. ‘Sure, but it’s broken into pieces already.’ He was installing the next day, and I left for lunch. When I came back, the wall had been tipped on its side so it was a big diamond, and there’s a big 2 × 4 that’s been drilled into it. It turned into an additional piece—his reaction to the space—and it served perfectly for his show.”

That ability to “take risks and try weird ideas,” as well as collaborate outside the glare of the mainstream art world, gives the tight-knit Olneyville community its big advantage.

“As neighbors, we’ve developed what I call a ‘Spirit of Coopetition,’” notes Yellow Peril director Vanphouthon Souvannasane. “Besides aligning our opening nights, we share competitive intelligence on the international art market, specifically art fairs and other opportunities to extend the reach of our represented artists.”

Now that Stapleton and Oberlander are more enmeshed in the greater Providence arts community—including the Rhode Island School of Design, where the curators regularly sit in on portfolio reviews—they have come to appreciate the city’s long-term value for artists, particularly how it can help support more organic artistic growth. They’ve seen far too many students jump directly from graduation to a big city like New York or Boston without realizing that they may be leaving opportunity—and affordable incubator space—behind.

“When [such migration] comes to our attention, it’s like, Could you think about this?’” says Oberlander. “[Providence is] really close, and you can still access that New York scene or Boston—especially with the way that social media works.”

He and Stapleton say they have “a million different ideas” about how they can grow GRIN in the near future using the momentum they’ve built. Oberlander smiles: “It feels like we’re building a team.”

GRIN

Top image from the installation Gibberish: Sapient Fool’s Gold, 2015 | artist Jeannie Lynn Hulen | Image courtesy of GRIN Gallery

The post GRIN Reapers appeared first on Take Magazine.

Hot wieners, including New York System wieners, gaggas, destroyers, and belly-busters. But one thing is constant – the only way to order it is “All The Way,” and that NEVER includes ketchup.

Traditionally, the thin wieners made of veal and pork are served in a steamed bun and topped with celery salt, yellow mustard, chopped onions, and meat sauce. The dogs are typically served with salt-and-vinegar french fries and another Rhode Island original, coffee milk—milk flavored with a sweetened coffee concentrate.

Ask a Rhodean who owns the title of best or oldest operating hot wiener shop, and you’ll get conflicting responses.

Probably the most widely known of the bunch is the Olneyville New York System, which opened in Providence in the late 1930s. Their Website boasts “R.I.’s Best Hot Wieners,” an accolade which is backed up by Yelp.

David Byrne, lead singer and guitarist of the Talking Heads, actually worked at the Smith St. New York System while he attended RISD. (Sadly, the story that the chopping gesture along his arm seen in the video for “Once in a Lifetime” was inspired by lining up hot wieners on his arm and covering them with condiments has been debunked.)

Olneyville New York System Restaurant – Providence RI | Image by Alcinoe via Wikimedia Commons

Byrne is just one of Olneyville’s many claims to fame. TV food personalities like Guy Fieri have visited this classic diner, giving the joint national recognition. Additionally, in 2014 they won the James Beard Foundation America’s Classics Award.

While Olneyville might be the most widely known to out-of-staters, locals continue to have their personal favorites such as Cosmic Steak and Pizza, Sam’s New York System, Baba’s Original New York System, Rod’s Grill, and Moonlight House of Weiners.

As you can see, preference in taste isn’t the only thing locals can’t seem to agree on. The spelling of weiners vs. wieners is also up for debate.

But whatever you think should be the spelling, or the best, or the oldest, there’s one thing that no one disputes…these belly busters are damn delicious.

The post Don’t Call it a Hot Dog appeared first on Take Magazine.

The Steel Yard is located in Providence Rhode Island. Better still, name-check their neighborhood, Olneyville; the area has done such a thorough job of creating and defining its own identity seems like an insult not to. The aptly-named non-profit arts center was founded in 2001 by Nick Bauta and Clay Rockefeller with the purpose of creating a local workshop for area artisans to have a place to work and share their knowledge with like-minded art machinists. Nailed it.

Photo by Russ Jennings

This is where artists, students, teachers, neighbors, movers and shakers come to heat things up, bend bars and sit down at them. It’s a campus for the industrial arts; forging, blacksmithing, metalwork, and ceramics. ‘Yardie’ Mandara MacKinnon, the communications and volunteer coordinator, explains the interior space is “broken into three sections” for each discipline, but it’s essentially one continuous workshop. Those who rent here enjoy “working in a community shop, there’s an artists residency program, and anyone who’s taken classes can rent studio time” in addition to thrice weekly open studio time. It’s a place where people work together; they’re making their own art, they’re working collaboratively on public projects, they’re hired to make various architectural details, they make the coolest bike hitches, and then they teach you how to as well.

Photo by Howie Sneider

All of this would be enough for this award-winning community center to hang it’s hat on, but they go one more. The building itself sits on nearly four acres of what was originally a severely busted up brownfield but is now one of the most popular event spaces around. 2016 was their most booked year yet and they’re already filling up 2017. Designed by the Klopfer Martin Design Group, out of Boston, the space is multi-level, creating unique and natural seating areas, there’s a vertical structure of crossed I-beams and accessible pathways throughout for pedestrians. It is somehow remarkably cozy and intimate for such a large area full of industrial remnants and distressed metal objects.

Photo by Mark Agerholm

The Steel Yard will be utilizing their campus this October for their 11th Annual Halloween Iron Pour on October 22nd. This theatric display of the industrial arts attracts a huge crowd. Per MacKinnon “People come back not only for the sparky performance and the numerous steel and iron props that we build in house, but also for the phenomenal local music and food. For this event, artists harness the power of the Steel Yard’s custom built, iron pouring tilt furnace to pour over 2,500 pounds of molten iron.” We can’t wait for this and look forward to witnessing the next great phase.

Top photo by Christian Philips Photography
All photos courtesy of The Steel Yard

The post It’s Hot and Heavy and It’s Here appeared first on Take Magazine.