We recently connected with Suzanne Tick and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Suzanne, thanks for joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

My mother and father put me in every art program she could find from the age of 3 on. There was never a summer break that i was not taking art classes of all kinds.
On weekends, my father would take me to all the local artist that lived and worked in warehouses around my hometown and introduce me to them and have them show me their work that they made from my fathers scrap metal junk yard.

I was given the vision of making art out of scrap from early on.

I was raised as an artist and never thought of any other profession. They would not let me however go to an art school. They demanded I go to a Liberal Arts University. just in case.

Suzanne, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am an artist/weaver and create woven sculptures out of the detritus that we find in our everyday lives.
When I work with Architects and Designers we, through a series of meetings drill down into their clients cast offs and collaborate on collecting materials for these weavings. Through this collaboration we build a story about the work that is woven for their corporate headquarters. Both enriching and nourishing.

I’ve spend a lifetime creating recycled materials as both the art Director at KnollTextiles and at LUUM a textiles company I created. For both of these corporate textiles brands I created the first sustainable solutions for the design industry. For Knoll is was solution dyed polyester fibers in 1994 and for LUUM the first Biodegradable fibers in the industry in 2022.

Along with my collaborative vision I have created a niche within the Architecture/Design/Art and Acting community as a teacher of Vedic Meditation. A practice rooted in the study of the Vedanta. This year I will travel through a Corporate sponsorship to 5 states in the US and teach over 75 designers to meditate.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 1999 I created the first transparent fabric to be used on office systems. Which I appropriately named transparency. It was an immediate success. Knoll won the New York Times blg proj in NYC which included 4000 workstations. This would require 40,000 yards of fabric. Upon install of the first 400 workstations …. The end users at the Times didn’t realize the fabric was transparent and you could see the system through the fabric. (That was the point of the material) They rejected the premise.
Knoll DROPPED the fabric immediately and I was made responsible for figuring out how to get rid of the yardage.
I can up with a material that would embed the fabric between 2 sheet of PET and developed an entirely new business model for the use of materials.
KNOLL asked that I find a funder to support this…. as they were reluctant with my ideas… I followed the waste stream to the original of the PET plastic and called their marketing department and asked for 2 million dollars to build this new material….
It was absolutely the right time and I was in the right place……The company was Eastman, The Marketing department met me and my Knoll Colleagues and we walked out with the check. You see, it was the year that Apple launched the cell phone with magnificent camera capabilities. And Eastman owned Kodak and the film industry plummeted.. I built a 40 million dollar business called 3 Form.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Making art out of cast offs. I have spent a lifetimes creating products for the design industry.
Today my mission is to create Art out the the materials that are considered trash.
Creating trash from treasure is my mission.

Contact Info:

• Website: SuzanneTick and FIFTH FLOOR MEDITATION
• Instagram: Suzanne Tick
• Facebook: SUZANNE TICK
• Linkedin: [email protected]
• Youtube: [email protected]
• Other: Substack. Suzanne Tick

Image Credits

Martin Crook Photographer for first and last image