Industrial materials taken out of context
In Colin Schleeh’s world, a good day is finding time to see what comes of a failed experiment.
His materials of choice are wood, aluminium, paper, cement, resins and even 35-millimetre film.
“I make a lot of mistakes and I’m not afraid to blow things up,” Schleeh said. “In what doesn’t work there’s the seed of something that can be used.”
After starting out as a furniture designer and builder in his teens, Schleeh now runs a Montreal company – Schleeh Design – that turns out vases, sculptural objects, furniture, bowls, jewellery and desktop items.
Recently, his handmade items have caught on in the corporate gift market, boosting his business and making him one of a tiny group of artisans making a commercial success out of their work.
But here’s the rub: Growing popularity means increased administrative demands and less time for tinkering and dreaming up designs. It’s a balancing act Schleeh finds a constant challenge.
Schleeh Design is housed in a scruffy industrial building on a stretch of the Lachine Canal that has so far resisted gentrification. The company has a spacious 7,000-square-foot workshop filled with scraps of material, tools and worktables.
