An Original Conversation: Designer Suzanne Tick and Charlie Rizzo of Skyline Designs
Have you heard the great news? Now through November 2021, Skyline Designs will donate a portion of sales from their new Obscura Collection, designed by Suzanne Tick, to help fund programming and operations for the 2022 Be Original Americas Student Fellowship!
To celebrate this partnership, we asked Charlie Rizzo, Founder of Skyline Design, and designer Suzanne Tick to share what inspires them, tell us about how they got their start in the design industry, and reveal what being original means to them now.
Obscura Collection by Skyline Designs
You are both members of Be Original Americas--through Skyline Design and, Suzanne, you’re an individual member as well. What motivates you to be original?
TICK: [At my studio] we are driven by making new materials that don't already exist in the marketplace. We not only develop glass and patterns for Skyline, but also create our own fibers on the textile side and woven structures for the floor covering side. We strive to use new manufacturing techniques and we support the companies that support our foundation of original design.
RIZZO: Our business has been guided for almost four decades by a few simple principles: respect for creativity; commitment to quality and innovation; local responsibility; and work-life balance. Creative collaboration is the heart of Skyline Design, an ethos that extends from our business to our building, a 150,000 square feet warehouse we share with creators of all types: artists, designers, photographers, and architects. In the 1980s, these artists were etching patterns onto sheets of glass; now, in the 2020s, we count among our collaborators the estate of Alexander Girard; photographers Bonnie Edelman and Henry Domke, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec; Nick Cave and Bob Faust; Knoll; Maharam; and, of course, Suzanne Tick.
Pictured above: Charlie Rizzo surrounded by glass, a material that would come to define his design career; Suzanne visiting the Skyline factory in 2017
You are both original thinkers and design explorers! What about your background aided the development of your creativity?
TICK: I grew up as an artist in central Illinois and spent my weekends and summers at the family scrap metal yard, observing artists coming and retrieving materials to create their own art. That experience fueled my creative indulgence to constantly come up with new, different, and unique ideas. Once I started doing intaglio prints of textiles in college, I wanted to weave my own original textures to then print. I’ve always worked in sequential order in creating things so that's how I started weaving. I found that once I started weaving structures for commercial textiles, in a cyclical fashion, printing once again came into vision with my work with glass and LVT.
RIZZO: I founded Skyline Design In 1983. By that point in my life, I had run a clothing store in Chicago and worked in the US Virgin Islands as a carpenter, but when I returned to Chicago in 1985, I became fascinated with glass. At first, Skyline specialized in thematic fabrication—sarcophagi for a casino in Las Vegas, an enormous bagel for a Chicago bakery, a giant baseball player for a stadium. But I became concerned about the environmental impact and health hazards of working with fiberglass and wanted to experiment with more environmentally conscious materials, processes, and products.
These experiments resulted in Greenplay, a line of children’s furniture composed of non-formaldehyde plywood, recycled plastic bottles (HDPE), and low-VOC coatings. We may have been ahead of the curve on this, because Greenplay struggled to find a market, but we nonetheless shuttered our fiberglass-heavy thematic fabrication division and turned our attention to decorative glass, perhaps the most sustainable industrial material as it is infinitely renewable and fully recyclable. We have now produced over 1 billion square feet of decorative glass in the last 40 years.
Pictured above: Charlie Rizzo at work; Suzanne Tick in 1983, image by John Naar
What inspired the Obscura collection, designed by Suzanne Tick for Skyline?
TICK: Necessity for safety and privacy were the root causes primarily. And secondarily, my glass patterns were constantly being knocked off in vinyl. Instead of duplicating what I had done in glass, we came up with a low-waste way to use non-PVC polyester film in connection. Obscura has two simple, natural patterns that emulate the horizon line: one called Horizon, and its coordinating, more architectural version called Perspective which gives you a peek in between the gradated band of color going across the substrate.
RIZZO: For years, our clients have been requesting our patterns to be printed on film that is adhered to glass in the field. We waited until we had something special to offer to the market, and on a material that is true to our ethos. We now see a demand for flexibility in this transitional time. Obscura is PVC-free, unlike the majority of the film products available today. Film will never replace designed glass, but we recognize the practical need for film when using existing glass or for severe budgetary restrictions. Ultimately, we are responsible for the stewardship of our planet, and we take that responsibility seriously.
We have worked in collaboration with Suzanne Tick since 2008 on several collections, so it was a no-brainer to team up with her on this new product. We appreciated her thoughtful and minimal approach to a relevant and sophisticated product.
Pictured above: Inspirational views courtesy of Suzanne Tick; Charlie Rizzo finding inspiration in the built environment
You two have a long history of collaboration. What inspires you, individually?
TICK: Nature, technology and strategic plays with new materials.
RIZZO: We all know that inspiration thrives in the natural world, but it also lives in the man-made world. We are so fortunate if we understand that. Inspiration surrounds us every day, everywhere waiting for us to look and see and feel the beauty.
A portion of sales from your Obscura collection will support Be Original Americas’ Student Fellowship program, which offers unprecedented access behind-the scenes at leading design companies and supports the development of student designers. To close, what advice would you give your 20 year old self?
TICK: Learn to meditate. Stop the internal criticism. Have some fun and laugh a lot.
RIZZO: Find a great mentor: In life there are always a few people that you meet on your journey, at a young age, whether it’s a professor, your parents or a co-worker who deeply inspires you. This is someone who you find incredibly interesting and find yourself longing to spend more time around them; they have that special charisma. Their inspirational presence speaks to you and you become inspired to emulate them. Ask them as many questions as they can tolerate and then be a good listener when they answer. People love to share knowledge with others but only when they like you and see that it’s not falling on deaf ears. Never hesitate to offer a compliment to them, find something you really like about them and tell them; that act alone goes a long way in building a wonderful relationship. Last, never be a quitter, stick with something that you start and see it through.
Visit skydesign.com for more information on Obscura and to find a local retailer. For more information on the most recent 2021 Be Original Americas Student Fellowship, check out our dedicated page for Fellowship news.