ADI GOODRICH

Adi Goodrich is a Los Angeles-based artist and designer best known for her colorful, graphic set designs. Goodrich's work is consistently inspired by the history of art, color theory, and architecture, and asks the viewer to look beyond the commercial imagery and into the craftsmanship and historical references of each project.

Goodrich's portfolio is comprised of a range of multi-media work, including large-scale set design for advertising and film, site-specific murals, tour visuals for musical performances, photography, sculptures, and homewares. Alongside her commercial work, Goodrich supports educational initiatives and has exhibited and lectured in cities worldwide including, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Paris, Barcelona, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and Sydney. Goodrich herself attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and La Sorbonne in Paris. 
 

www.adigoodrich.com

On the creative process: “THERE'S NOT REALLY A MOMENT when I feel like I'm creatively blocked and must do a particular thing. Instead,  every day, every weekend, every week, every month -- whenever I have downtime,  I try to fill my brain up with things that will inspire me. It's about living a life in which I am always inspired. Books, museums, architecture, video, films, music, theater, plays, reading about art history every morning. I'm kind of obsessed with always having cultural experiences.”

On capturing moments of inspiration: “I DO THIS THING CALLED 'ICY ERY,' which is short for 'everything I see,' but backwards. My phone is filled with moments from the world -- a crack in the sidewalk, some tiles in a bathroom, or two colors on a wall that are really great together. I'm obsessed with bits of architecture; really, it's all just bits of architecture. I archive these moments, first on my phone, and then online. But I'm really into the tangible, so I also print them out. I have a portfolio of images organized into categories like 'surfaces,' 'colors,' and 'textiles.'”

“I PERSONALLY FEEL -- and I teach this in classes -- that you have to take the image off of the phone and put it on a website, and then take it off of the site and print it out, and then cut it out, and then paste it into a book. The more times you interact with an image, the more likely it is that it will come to you when you need that inspiration again.”

On success: “WHEN I FIRST MOVED TO LA, I was doing window displays during the day for Barney's and Anthropologie and at night I would work on movies with my friends. But I wasn't making enough money -- I had a ton of student loans and zero help from anyone. So I started cleaning houses. One day, this guy called me to ask if I wanted to work on this project with Michel Gondry. I was like: YES. He offered me 300 bucks a day, which is not that much in retrospect, but also a ton of money for me at the time. I felt like that was it. Working with Michel Gondry was my dream, and this meant that maybe it was going to be okay.”

"THE OTHER MOMENT WAS when I was working on the Fleet Foxes world tour. I was at the Hollywood Bowl with 20,000 people who were totally stoked on the visuals and set design we'd made and I just thought:  ads are cool, but this is baked into people's memories. Forever. There's probably nothing better than making a lot of people feel something. That was very cool."

On making better ads: "Most of the people on my sets are textile designers or fashion designers or tailors or furniture designers. I'm able to employ them so they can make a living, but I also think that it really makes a difference. I push for everything to be handmade and I hire artists because I believe there is a subconscious moment in there when people look at the set and say: 'wait a second, this is different.' And now that I'm also the photographer, we can take that even further. We can work with the retouchers to say, 'you're not cleaning this up -- I want to see the seam, I want to see the texture of this hand-painted wall.' I think that's cool. I think that's respectable. It's something to be proud of, that an ad could be made by a bunch of artists."

On keeping it fresh: "WHEN I FIRST STARTED, there weren't a lot of people doing what I was doing in the way that I was doing it. Now, it's all over the place, which is, in a way, a compliment. But that makes me want to do things differently, especially in my colors and materials. I think it's just about always finding new inspiration."

On future goals: "I'VE GOTTEN MORE INTO the photographer's role and that's really exciting, to be able to own the image completely. I'd like to do more public works, more musical performances, and more pop-up things that people can exist in, see up close, touch, and be a part of. I would love to do a kids' park -- that would be so rad, but it feels very far off. I don't speak the language of building things that are made to stand the test of time -- that's going to take more time, a different crew, and a different education. But that's a long-term goal: to make things that can really last. Not only emotionally for people, but also physically in the world."