Norman Teague on How He Keeps His Finger on the Pulse | The Slowdown - Culture, Nature, Future
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Norman Teague. (Photo: Ross Floyd. Courtesy Norman Teague Studios)
Norman Teague. (Photo: Ross Floyd. Courtesy Norman Teague Studios)

Norman Teague has a global outlook, but the artist, designer, furniture-maker, and educator keeps his work close to home. Based in Chicago, where he was born and raised, he sees his practice as a way to revitalize design traditions from Africa and the African diaspora and weave them into American design, as well as a way to enrich the South Side community he grew up in. His “Africana” furniture and homeware collection from 2021 incorporates hand-carved details that reference African tribal carvings, and includes a chair stamped with a phrase in the West African Yoruba language that translates as “Craft a Black circle of economy.” Other designs of his more subtly reference African aesthetics, employing crisscross and zigzag motifs or utilizing traditional techniques such as basket weaving.

Most recently, for the exhibition “Everlasting Plastics” at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale (on view through Nov. 26), Teague made a departure from his typical medium of wood to create a site-specific commission of coil vessels and baskets made of extruded recycled plastic. At present, in collaboration with the artist and muralist Dorian Sylvain, he’s at work on a public pavilion dedicated to Frederick and Anna Douglass at Douglass Park in Southwest Chicago. (The park was recently renamed to honor the late couple; it was previously called Douglas Park—with one S—after the former U.S. senator and slave owner Stephen A. Douglas.)

Outside of his independent practice, Teague serves as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he teaches a course called “Social Design,” which asks students to take their designs from the screen or the sketchbook into the real world and to engage with local Black retailers (past participants have included the shop and showroom The Silver Room and the streetwear brand Leaders 1354). The university, he says, “has allowed me the space to think about the ways in which academia and Chicago’s Black arts and culture can best learn from one another. A lot of my practice allows me to be in the community—in neighborhoods, at block parties—initiating moments that really bring about a level of social justice and social vibrance to a particular group of patrons.”

Teague’s community-minded output is fueled by his equally community-minded input. In large part, the media he consumes either informs him about the goings-on of his community, or brings his attention to other makers in the creative spaces he inhabits. “Media that provides platforms for voices, and sort of serves a level of justice, is crucial to us,” he says, “particularly now, because standard ways of delivering news have failed us.” In other moments, Teague averts his attention from the present day—or even the present millennium—and takes solace in historical fiction, such as the shows The Last Kingdom and Queen Charlotte (the sequel to Bridgerton).

Here, we speak with Teague about the sources he turns to for inspiration and entertainment, as well as those that help him keep his finger on the pulse.

“Re+prise” (2023), Teague’s site-specific installation for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. (Photo: ReportArch/Andrea Ferro Photography)
“Re+prise” (2023), Teague’s site-specific installation for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. (Photo: ReportArch/Andrea Ferro Photography)

How do you start your mornings?

Usually with some sort of a workout, be it a walk, run, or at the gym. Then I go straight into my coffee and think through the coming projects and week. You’ll see my first call is to my studio assistants, thinking about what needs to be done and prepared for the week.

Breakfast for me is a slice of toast and a banana. I save room for a lunch that I can appreciate.

Where do you get your news?

The New York Times, of course. I’m also a big NPR fan. It’s kind of my background noise. I flip that on in the car, or I flip that on in the headphones when I’m going for a run. I really like Car Talk. It’s the weirdest stories, but you can always apply them [to your own life] in some sort of way. Then, in the evenings, WTTW (Chicago’s PBS station) is my go-to source for the news. I feel like I’m almost cousins with the two newscasters, because they just keep it close to home, and it’s mainly Chicago-based news.

Any favorite podcasts?

I love this podcast called Material Matters. I think it’s a little biased with the interviews, because all of the people that [Grant Gibson] interviews seem to come from the Royal College of Art. Nonetheless, it’s really informative. You could listen to people like Ineke Hans, who’s a Dutch designer. She actually visited me at the School of the Art Institute [of Chicago] when I was doing my master’s. She has a lot of ideas around plastics, and this came particularly in handy when I was thinking about the reuse of plastics and preparing for the Venice Biennale show. I could go [to Material Matters] and hear really rich stories of how one or another artist or designer might work their practice around plastics, or even thinking about just the craft of turning waste wood—this brother Darren Appiagyei turns found pieces of wood into these really beautiful objects. Material Matters brings me closer to the design world. We don’t have a lot of resources or materials, laboratories or things like that in the Chicagoland area. So it’s really rich to hear about [these things] from a worldly standpoint.

Another podcast I listen to is called Culture Raises Us, hosted by a brother named Astor Chambers. It’s Black folks being very open about either their work or their thoughts around how the culture can impress upon a lot of the things that we’re doing in the way that the world is moving. It really gets to—exactly like what we’re doing now—the cusp of good, honest conversations from local artists or makers or social cultivators that are doing something special in their field. I think that it’s really nice to hear from people across the globe that are doing stuff. They really get in-depth on some of the conversations they have, like Joe Freshgoods, who’s a local designer here in Chicago, working closely with New Balance and other brands. Amanda Williams, who I just happened to run across, had an amazing interview on there.

There’s one other podcast, which is actually a story through a series of episodes, and it’s called You Didn’t See Nothin. It almost feels like it has a question mark at the back. It’s by my friend Yohance Lacour, who is an investigative journalist. He tells one story from beginning to end, and in the meanwhile goes into some other stories. He’s just a brilliant dude. He’s a leatherworker. He works with me in my studio and [collaborates on] some of the works I do. He’s a writer on top of all of that.

Any favorite magazines?

Everything from the Smithsonian magazine to Dezeen, Surface, Vibe—magazines that are visually uplifting to some extent, but also have interesting articles. Instagram might be my biggest subscription. [Laughs] But, you know, I keep it coming. Dwell would be another one. I grew up on Architectural Record. This was probably the magazine that motivated me to go into architecture, and then eventually switch to product design. Architectural Record was one of the earliest inspirations that I can remember as a young man that really allowed me to visually dream of what could be next, and pushed me into thinking further about what my role was, and how do I get into this field.

A lot of my questions were around, why are we not in this field? Why is Dwell not covering…. There weren’t a lot of cool houses in my neighborhood to choose from, but I think that if there were the opportunities to have that sort of an outlet to showcase, I think there might have been more of those homes. I think that what’s happening in the field now is that designers of color are realizing that there are other designers of color, and how do we collaborate more closely? That rich coming together of the minds allows us a sense of comfort and equitable movements. I think there’s something that allows us to move in a different fashion, due to the fact that we are a collective, or we are a group, or we are not alone in this. It feels really great. I mean, I think Lesley Lokko [the guest on Ep. 160 of our At a Distance podcast] is a great composer of that [idea] in a really beautiful way—in a very musical way—to bring that light and that attention, but also to reference a sort of open call to the future, which is needed. It’s nice to know that you’re not running this race alone.

Any favorite TV shows?

Yeah. The Last Kingdom, which I just couldn’t take my eyes off of. Most of what I’m looking at is old-world stuff. I was watching the new Bridgerton, Queen Charlotte. Shonda Rhimes is the producer and writer, just as she led Bridgerton. I just grabbed onto it. This beautiful Black queen was put into an arranged marriage, and I’m always interested in these thoughts around a different past and this sort of reappropriating what history has shown us, or given us, and then just remixing that whole thing—like throwing in my own thoughts, throwing in these new characters. I guess I reimagine pasts to help with thoughts around the future.

I did a piece with Florence Knoll, who was the head of Knoll for a number of years, and kind of got it to where it is today. I was offered one of her couches to reupholster, and I reupholstered it in my standard orange quilted material. It was just a lot of fun thinking about what it might have looked like, had I been there—had Florence and I been homies back in the day, thinking about her next pattern for upholstery. She was talking to me and I was saying, throw in some zigzag or throw in some…. So just thinking widely about the what ifs, you know, what would have been?

We just interviewed the artist Nick Cave on our Time Sensitive podcast, and he did a collaboration with Knoll Textiles. His collection brings to mind what you’re talking about—he really made the textiles come alive.

There’s a certain richness in that rethinking that satisfies my soul. There’s a part of me that can be an upset Black man, constantly. I can think back on all of the shit that we’ve been through. But a way in which I can get past that is to just, in my most humorous of ways, have fun with this new [kind of] collaboration. We know what’s out there from a design history standpoint. We’re well educated on what white men have done in the past to make the design industry what it is today—fantastic, cool, great. Can’t change that. But I can alter that shit just ever so slightly, where it just satisfies my soul. And maybe it’s not even that collaboration, but it’s just thinking widely about what we may have done as a people in that time period, or that capsule, or that canon, shall we say. [Laughs]

Absolutely. So do you have any favorite social media accounts?

A lot of it is humorous, and a lot of it is culturally driven. There’s a group called Tiny WPA out of Philadelphia. They have a number of amazing workshops where they’re working with people in the community, and they’re designing these new and interesting pieces of furniture. I just find it so inspiring.

The fact that we can turn to Instagram, and watch a small child, a toddler, take his first three steps and fall down, and that just makes our day, that’s why there’s such an addiction to it, because maybe there are some things in your life that you’re just not getting on your daily walk to work, or whatever. But you get it through this small platform that can provide you with a laugh, or with a cry—or with your next mate, you never know. It’s pretty amazing what you can get through technology, and there's this control, to some extent, that we have as designers to put out the perfect picture to display, the perfect graphic to show the step-by-step for how you made that last product. There are these optic moments that we can now share to help build and empower our communities.

Any guilty pleasures?

I watch a lot of corny stuff. Workin’ Moms is really interesting to me. You know what else is interesting to me? Shameless. It’s so raw. And it’s filmed in Chicago, so I love that.

I guess my guilty pleasure is that, when I get off of work, I’m really excited to just not work no more. I was watching my friend Krista Franklin do an interview. They asked her, “What do you do when you’re free, or to get away?” She was like, “I really love laying on my couch and watching TV.” I was just like, “Oh, my God, I’m so glad you said that.” As a designer, particularly at this moment in my career—where I’m approaching 60 years old, and I’ve been working this kind of hustle for well over twenty-five, almost thirty years—I’m looking for ways to level things out and make it real simple and have that studio that just cruises and nobody gets overworked. But when I get home from work, I want to watch TV. Just mindless TV. Sometimes I can’t wait to get back to Queen Charlotte and see what happens in that, because it’s an escape.

When I think about Africa, I think about the South and West Sides of Chicago, I think about the rougher sides of St. Louis, and all of these places, and how the idea of speculation has never been a leisure for us. So I think [about] Wakanda moments, and looking at that very surreal architecture that we see as a backdrop for Wakanda, and how that plays a role in the real world, and what a Black neighborhood would look like, if that kind of speculation were a leisure for us.

What’s one piece of media that you think everyone should consume?

You mean, besides my mama’s apple pie? [Laughs]

Well, one of the things that I’ve really been pleased and impressed with is just a walk. Not like a walk to work out things and sweat, but just a slow walk. It rejuvenates something in you—I can’t speak for the world, but it rejuvenates something in me. Whether it be a walk through your neighborhood or through a park, but literally just taking in the sounds, and the smells, and the breathing. Maybe you ask a friend to join you, but I think that is a crucial moment of reflecting and recollecting—recollecting just how great the world we live in can be, or has been. Almost a moment of thankfulness. Life in general is a little short, and we should provide ourselves the personal space of that silent walk.

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It’s a serene, bluebird-sky day, a slight chill in the air, and I’m walking with the Paris-based, Austrian-born designerSculpture Gallery, a transfixing space of light and shadow built in 1970 that’s home to works by artists including Michael Heizer, Robert

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Two winters ago, I picked up a copy of Penguin Classics’ Japanese Nō Dramas, a volume of two dozen translations by Royall Tyler I’d been meaning to read since tearing through Yukio Mishima’s Five Modern Noh Plays a decade previous. I had moved into a New York City gem (an apartment with a fireplace), and with Covid cases skyrocketi

The “Urban Sun” installation at the Solar Biennale, designed by Studio Roosegaarde. (Courtesy the Solar Biennale)

As changes in weather patterns, economic realities, and public perception have triggered a wave of climate consciousness over the past few years, renewable energy sources have enjoyed a newfound level of attention, no longer relegated to thlong-sputtering industry of solar power. Factoids like how an hour and half worth of sunlight hitting the earth could provide the world’s total energy consumption in a year have been employed to tease out the industry’s transformative power for decades. Now, with technological advances makincheaper and more efficient than ever, it seems better poised than ever to take on a greater role in weaning humanity off of its fossil fuel and coal depende

Elizabeth Dee. (Courtesy Independent Art Fair)

Since 1997, when she founded her eponymous (now shuttered) gallery, Elizabeth Dee has been a fixture of the New York artIndependent Art Fair. An elegant, tightly curated event that remains an outlier in its efforts to elevate overlooked, underrepresented, and

Courtesy Mack Books

What does it mean to revisit a photograph? When a camera shutters, it locks a moment in time, forever trapping the imageGathered Leaves, the latest book by the Minneapolis-based photographer Alec Soth, whose work has long documented lonely souls and fractured dreams in spaces across the United States. In Gathered Leaves, Soth revisits five of his previous books, including in its pages new notes, annotations, text excerpts, and even photo

Kate Berry. (Photo: Jessica Antola)

Kate Berry’s glowing personality transmits what she seems to desire most: a breath of fresh air, and time to care for her myriad plants; raise her 9-year-old daughter, Quinn; or host intimate dinner parties for friends on the garden-covered terrace of her Domino and of the food, wine, and travel magazine Saveur, Berry has interactions with media that, due to her demanding schedule, tend to be brief and light—and meaningful. She lives her work, which leaves plenty of time for creating media, but not so much for taking it in. As she puts it, “You don’t

Courtesy Thames & Hudson

Consider the flower. What image blossoms to mind? What emotion does it elicit? For centuries, flowers have persisted as Flora Photographica: The Flower in Contemporary Photography (Thames & Hudson), out August 30, editors William Ewing and Danaé Panchaud compose a selection of vibrant modern floral

The Wind and Water Bar mid-construction. (Photo: Phan Quang. Courtesy Thames & Hudson.)

Lush fruit trees bursting over a roof. A canopy of plants covering a facade. Intricate bamboo constructions spiraling frVõ Trọng Nghĩa: Building Nature (Thames & Hudson), readers get an inside look into how the celebrated architect has embraced two core themes throughout

David Wallace-Wells. (Photo: Andrew Zuckerman / The Slowdown)

The climate writer and essayist David Wallace-Wells has a knack for translating the unimaginable into the painfully realarticle for New York magazine and subsequent book of the same name, The Uninhabitable Earth, played a critical role in jolting the conversation, detailing the varied plagues and, finally, apocalyptic conditions The New York Times, who added him to their Opinion section, where he has begun a weekly newsletter to reflect on the latest in our Anthropocene Age.

The Future Library Forest. (Photo: Rio Gandara. Courtesy Helsingin Sanomat)

“A forest in Norway is growing.” So begins the cryptic text printed on a certificate for the Future Library, or Framtidsbiblioteket, an artwork by Scottish artist Katie Paterson that, over the span of a century, cumulatively builds a collection of wri

Sound installation by Devon Turnbull. (Courtesy Lisson Gallery)

At New York’s Lisson Gallery, an unfettered approach to sculpture is the driving force behind a new group exhibition. OnThe Odds Are Good, The Goods Are Odd” presents the work of 11 groundbreaking New York City–based contemporary artists. In the exhibition, sculptures are a m

“Windy” spins on New York’s High Line. (Courtesy Meriem Bennani, High Line Art, and Audemars Piguet)

Rising from a patch of spiny ornamental grass on New York’s High Line park, a 9-foot-tall tornado spins in place, whirliWindy”, a new (and first-ever) sculpture by the Moroccan-born, New York–based artist Meriem Bennani, installed near West 23rd2 Lizards” (2020), made with filmmaker Orian Barki and launched on Instagram at the start of the pandemic, depicted the bewilderi

Baratunde Thurston at the Badwater Basin in California’s Death Valley National Park. (Courtesy Twin Cities PBS/Part2 Pictures)

“We think we invent things and create things and define ourselves by ourselves, but that’s not the whole story,” BaratunAmerica Outdoors, a six-part travel series that premiered last week on PBS. Thurston—a writer, comedian, and podcaster who has advised tThe Daily Show, and authored the best-selling memoir How To Be Black—has a knack for navigating nuanced conversations around race, culture, politics, and technology, framing these discussi

Cover of “Rocky Mountain Modern” by John Gendall

The jagged spine of the Rocky Mountains is too beautiful to mar. Yet over the years, developers and builders have manageBuckminster Fuller, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Eliot Noyes, and Eero Saarinen completed commissions in the Western United States, transforming it into a hub for architectural modRocky Mountain Modern: Contemporary Alpine Homes (Monacelli Press).

Alexandra Lange. (Photo: Mark Wickens)

A recurring theme in design critic Alexandra Lange’s work is unpacking how—and for whom—objects and spaces are designed.The Dot-Com City, and surveyed how kids’ toys and physical environments impact their development in her 2018 book, The Design of Childhood. The ways in which outdoor public spaces, with their basketball courts, playgrounds, and skate parks, fail teen girls wa story she wrote for Bloomberg CityLab—one of many publications she has contributed to over the past two-plus decades.

A still from Kandis Williams’s multiscreen work “Triadic Ballet” (2021). (Courtesy the artist and the Rosenkranz Collection.)

Time standards are one of the many seemingly invisible societal constructs we interact with every day but seldom ponder.Mountain / Time,” the show is a nod to both the local time zone in Aspen, Mountain Standard Time (MST)—which the writer and critic Kylehas hailed for its “apartness” and “sense of detachment from the economic and cultural centers of the nation”—and the conceptual d

Installation view of the “Hermès in the Making” exhibition in Troy, Michigan. (Photo: William Jess Laird)

Detroit is a city of craft. Of carmakers and Carhartt. Of Motown Records and Eminem. Of iconic midcentury design (Isamu Noguchi’s Hart Plaza and Dodge Fountain, buildings by Mies van der Rohe and Minoru Heidelberg Project. So it’s fitting that, following previous iterations in Copenhagen, last fall, and in Turin, Italy, last month, the Freits latest “Hermès in the Making” exhibition (through June 15). A playful, Willy Wonka factory–like presentation of the company’s know-how, the display offers “an o not to smile while walking through it. Divided into four sections—”A Culture of Traditional Craftsmanship,” “High-Quality Msecret!” Beyond, stations feature artisans in saddle-stitching, porcelain painting, gemstone setting, glove-making, leather wor

Photo: Carlo Banfi. (Courtesy Flos)

Emerging from the pandemic, the design industry, like most of us, has changed. The past two and a half years, which havean increasingly pressing climate crisis, have formed a solemn backdrop. In March 2020, almost at once, in the locked-down lives of many, the notion of “home” a

Maria Cristina Didero. (Photo: Stefan Giftthaler)

The concept of the Golden Age was first introduced by the ancient Greek philosopher Hesiod, around 700 B.C., in a refereDesign Miami Basel (June 14–19), taking place at the Swiss city’s Messeplatz. Organized around the theme “The Golden Age: Rooted in the Pa

Cover of “The Trayvon Generation” by Elizabeth Alexander

How do the generation of Black Americans who grew up in the past 25 years reckon with the tragedies that play out in theThe Trayvon Generation (Grand Central Publishing), poet, educator, and scholar Elizabeth Alexander—who currently serves as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest humanities philanthropy in the UnEp. 52 of our Time Sensitive podcast)—explores these questions, and others, by meditating on race, class, trauma, justice, and memory, and their influences

Installation view of “Plastic: Remaking Our World.” (Photo: Bettina Matthiessen)

In the early 1860s, an advertisement in The New York Times offered $10,000 to anyone who could invent a new material for billiard balls. At the time, elephant ivory was the matercamphor, a waxy substance found in the wood of the camphor laurel tree. Though celluloid would later prove to be less than idea

Rendering of Drift’s indoor drone performance, “Social Sacrifice” (2022). (Courtesy Drift and Aorist)

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs (one-of-a-kind digital assets created using blockchain technology), have divided the art woEp. 59 of our Time Sensitive podcast), see them as pathways to a promising future, while others express concern around the sky-high price points and carbon emissions they generate.

“Between the Mountain and the Sky” by Maggie Doyne

At 35, Maggie Doyne is the mother of more than 50 children. One is her biological child, who lives with Doyne, her husbaBetween the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother’s Story of Hope and Love (Harper Horizon), out last month. Through telling her extraordinary story, she demonstrates the life-altering power of

A ramen bowl by Taku Satoh. (Photo: Hiroshi Tsujitani. Courtesy Nacasa & Partners Inc.)

Eating ramen is a multisensory experience: the fragrant steam coming off of the broth, the slurping sound of enjoying thThe Art of the Ramen Bowl” (March 18–July 5) that’s on view at the Los Angeles location of Japan House, an initiative with additional hubs in Londonburi, the porcelain receptacles in which ramen is traditionally served, and renge, the compact, teardrop-shaped spoons that often accompany them, made by 30 leading artists, architects, and designers.

Anicka Yi’s “Biologizing the Machine (spillover zoonotica)” (2022), on view at Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca. (Photo: Agostino Osio. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca.)

Anicka Yi’s intoxicatingly sensory installations don’t just surround the viewer—many of them literally permeate the body, their sEp. 14 of our At a Distance podcast), in which three industrial steel tanks saturate the air with an aroma concocted by fusing secretions from carpenter an

Integrative nutritionist Daphne Javitch

Integrative nutritionist Daphne Javitch helps people develop their versions of a healthy life—a potentially daunting tasDoing Well, Javitch, a former womenswear consultant at Theory and Uniqlo, offers private health and career coaching as well as groEp. 46 of our At a Distance podcast.)

Installation view of “David Byrne: How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic.” (Courtesy Pace Gallery)

Thick, wobbly lines branch out across a wall of Pace Gallery’s global headquarters in New York. Follow each stroke to itwomen, grandpas, and singers craning toward the ceiling, and donuts, hairs, and holes reaching into the ground. Part absurdist diagram, part heart-melting poem, and part consciousness-shifting artwork, thiDavid Byrne: How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic” (on view Feb. 2–March 19), a restorative survey of drawings the musician has made over the past two decades.

Skyscraper Page website

With their audacious, gravity-defying forms, skyscrapers have captured the public’s imagination for more than a century.Skyscraper Page, a zany website with a skyscraper discussion forum that has spread to some 100,000 threads. But what’s the point of obs