Lauren Goodman | Green Crusade

In her Pointe-Saint-Charles studio, designer Lauren Goodman has made the transformation of waste a goal in itself. She recently reappropriated lobster traps washed up on the beaches of Maine to turn them into colorful furniture, and to chart, in her own way, the path to be followed by new wave designers.

On this sunny summer afternoon, the courtyard of Lauren Goodman’s studio in the quiet of Pointe-Saint-Charles, Montreal, evokes Brooklyn and its industrial decor. “This place, away from the city and close to the water, reminds me of Red Hook,” she says. “Since we’re at the end of the island, no one comes to see us, and there’s a very strong community spirit here too,” she says right away, a few steps from Building 7 and its row of artist and craft studios.

In one corner, lobster traps wait to be dismantled and then transformed into furniture by the young designer who is one of the driving forces of Quebec design, those bold voices who have put Montreal back on the international design scene in recent years.

Sea treasures

With her husband PJ Couture, a cabinetmaker, the former Torontonian invested, in 2022, in a former amphibious bus hangar that once made its way through the waters of the St. Lawrence. It is also thanks to wood that she got her hands on the work during a six-month stay in Scotland at the source of the Arts and Crafts movement (valuing craftsmanship), before considering metal at the Rhode Island School of Design, in eastern New York State for her practice. Then the things left behind in her environment during the pandemic, during which she spent five months in a cabin away from everything, caught her attention. “When I came back to Rhode Island, I started to be interested in what the mind wants to ignore around us,” she says.

The designer has therefore become a collector of used metal parts to give shape to sculptural furniture. In recent months, she has undertaken to give new life to lobster traps recovered from the Maine beaches she has been walking since childhood. “When there is a storm, the sea brings a lot of cages onto the beach that can stay there for several years.”

Admiring the iconic work of Harry Bertoia, she likes the rigor of the grids and their organic details shaped by the long stays of the steel structures in the ocean.

A sculptural bookcase was followed by a chair, coffee tables and mirrors that caught the eye of collectors’ item enthusiasts at New York Design Week last May.

Raw material

After dismantling the lockers, Lauren removes saltwater deposits, including rust, from the metal using an abrasive blasting cabinet, then begins welding, during which she assembles various elements “like Frankenstein,” she says with a smile. These are then unified by bright colors fixed using electrostatic paint. “This type of paint is extremely shock-resistant. You could submerge the furniture in the ocean without damaging it,” she assures us.

Light and airy, these objects can be transported according to needs or desires. With them, Lauren intends to awaken the players in the design industry to the importance of favoring the things around us to begin any creative work. “Our culture no longer leads us to repair things,” she laments, “but rather to replace them by ordering immediately on Amazon. This project is inspired by repair methods. It is, of course, more laborious, but it forces us to be curious. We should treat waste as raw materials. I want to use my practice to educate people,” says the woman who, for her clothes as for her furniture, only considers second-hand. A civic chain that she is proud to consolidate through her unique approach at the crossroads of craftsmanship and art.

On August 17, from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., the exhibition secularbringing together the work of Quebec and New York creators, including that of Lauren Goodman, will reopen its doors for a final day at 903, Bolton Pass, in a former church in Bolton-Est.

Visit Lauren Goodman’s website

Visit the exhibition page secular