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Champion of Craft: Tad Carpenter

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In the September/October 2015 issue of GDUSA, we highlight Tad Carpenter, designer and illustrator based in Kansas City, MO.

When Tad and Jessica Carpenter, husband and wife team behind Tad Carpenter Creative, bought a neglected house in Tad’s native Kansas City, they went straight to drawing. The house was in bad shape—”like dead animals and holes in the ceiling bad,” Tad describes—so on paper, they conceptualized a ground-up rebuild that would become both their home and studio.

Wall Mural for Yeah! Burger
Part of the new brand identity that Tad Carpenter developed for the company
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Within its new walls, Tad Carpenter Creative is thriving. An advocate of drawing as a foundation, Carpenter begins his designs and illustrations just as he approached his home and studio: with a pencil and paper. He teaches his students at the University of Kansas to do the same, believing that “having that skill and thinking in that way will dramatically benefit your career.”

Print from the Black Bouquet Series
Limited edition, silkscreen prints. All prints are silkscreened in 3-colors including metallic gold.
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Carpenter’s inventive concepts and infectious style have garnered high-profile clients: Target, Macy’s, West Elm, and AMC Theaters among them. “That feeling, that high you get from seeing your work on a billboard or in a national commercial is hard to compete with” he says. “At the end of the day, though, developing concepts, collaborating with a client and developing strong work can be just about the same, small or big, and I like it that way.”

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As we continue to celebrate the influence of art and design on perception with the Mohawk Maker Quarterly, we’re taking a closer look at the group of talented makers featured in issue six. Today we follow up with Rachel and Nick Cope, of Calico Wallpaper, a design studio that specializes in gilded, metallic and marble wallpapers and bespoken wall murals.