PAREd Talks: Recent Episodes
PARE LLC
Hosted by Peter BG Shoemaker and Steffany Hollingsworth, PAREd Talks is a bi-monthly audio salon, featuring essential conversations about the ideas, practices, and trends influencing design that nurtures a sustainable, meaningful, and resilient human experience. From the provocative and radical to the unnoticed and impactful, from blue sky possibilities to data-driven certainties, you’ll hear it all, and from some of the most interesting people in the business. Expect information, insight, humor, and more than a little bit of attitude.
This episode is our favorite so far, and features Santa Fe fine art photographer (and client) Natalie Christensen. A trained psychotherapist turned picture-maker, Natalie brings a particular perspective to the places and moods she captures. We talk about the power of perspective, of framing, of getting what you need and nothing more, the fecundity of liminal spaces, finding beauty in sparseness, what’s captured and what’s not, audiences and the audience, respite, and how process is sometimes unknowable (although we know it when we see it). If you’re interested in any of these topics and ideas, this 45 mins is for you.
Pandemic comms means there are some weird audio artifacts here and there, but nothing that distorts the conversation.
Relevant call-outs (all of which will make much more sense after listening):
Coco Chanel said, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” Which is, of course, fine advice. She also said, "I only drink Champagne on two occasions, when I am in love and when I am not."
It’s worth noting a few hundred years before Coco, Michelangelo talked about some of his work by saying, “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block…It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
Steffany’s paean to Donald Judd can be well understood by taking a look at any of the four major collections of his writings, but start with the essay that arguably started it all: Specific Objects [pdf].
For an overview of the Jungian universe, check out the source itself: Man and His Symbols. (Amazon has it, as does probably every other bookseller in the world).
Finally, to find Natalie:
For Instagram: @natalie_santafe
For the web: https://nataliechristensenphoto.com
And, she is represented by: Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe, Nordic Art Agency in Malmo, Sweden, Susan Spiritus Gallery in Newport Beach, and Galerie Minimal in Berlin.
Intro music by: JNGS
Recording by: Various internet elves and bits of wire and tubing
Get to know us! This episode of PAREd Talks is all about PARE principal Peter BG Shoemaker—the guy who clients discover is often asking the sort of difficult, awkward, and occasionally out-of-left-field sorts of questions that catalyze strategic coalescence, ensure product differentiation, bake-in customer-thrilledness (a real term, at least at PARE), and every once and a while change everything. In a wide-ranging interview, Steffany Hollingsworth poses a series of questions, the answers to which, offer listeners insight into how and why the PARE team is the way it is, and what that means for our clients.
More than a biography (or an autobiography), these thirty minutes also make clear why PARE enjoys the sort of unique combination of talents and personalities that make the studio what it is. But even more importantly, it offers a clear and distinct perspective to those interested in design as a deeply-rooted and often transformational undertaking.
Send your comments and questions to studio@parestrategies.com. And thanks, thanks, thanks for listening.
In this inaugural episode of PAREd Talks, PARE founder Steffany Hollingsworth and principal Peter BG Shoemaker take a running leap into the deep end of a very big and very deep pool: good, relevant, transformative design. But, as a principle-driven rather than trend-driven studio, we're soon frolicking like a pair of dolphins on the surface. This was supposed to be a video, but, well…things happened, so you’ll have to use your imagination for what that might have looked like.
The PARE principles—Respite, Journey, and Legacy—guide the firm’s work on behalf of all of our clients. Through these lenses, we do product and interior design that delivers uniquely powerful results. Subsequent episodes will go even deeper—although (thankfully, I'm sure) without the dolphin imagery.
Here’s how we explain the themes—specifically:
Respite
We believe that in the face of a global ideology of speed, change, and common culture, humans yearn for respite. Not a running-away from what we are and are becoming, but a place and a way to regain the ability to participate intentionally, think deeply, and develop and reinforce a sustainable approach to living fully.
Legacy
We believe that the past offers more than a benchmark for how far we’ve come. That we are who we are now because of a great and varied legacy that far from being a thing of the dead past, offers lessons on how to live well in a world dedicated to a timeless present. That by honoring our individual and shared legacies and finding a place for them in the present, we live a fuller, more nuanced, and more resonate life.
Journey
We believe that the greatest benefits in almost all human undertakings are realized not in where we end up, but in how we get there, in the journeys we undertake. That what we learn, and what we discover, feeds not only our self-knowledge but our understanding of the world and a place in it that is unique and transformative. That despite the common human desires found in all cultures and times, it is in their unique expressions that we realize a greater sense of worth and enduring value.
Thanks for listening! Please rate the podcast on whatever magic podcast platform you use to subscribe to podcasts, and your comments are ALWAYS welcome at studio@parestrategies.com.