Candy Depew featured in Philadelphia Inquirer

Making it: Candy Depew

Writen by Caroline Tiger
September 28, 2012

A few years ago, Candy Depew changed her job title from “artist” to “designer.” “I got tired of that concept of the starving artist,” she says, “and of how no one thinks they have to pay an artist — or if they do, the artist gets paid last.” It seems that small semantic shift is enough to augment the size of a bank account: According to her research, designers are paid a minimum of 20 percent more than artists for doing the exact same work.

Still, she calls her life an “art project,” and her title modifications are markers on that canvas. Depew has since added “cultural entrepreneur” to the mix, and as of November, her given name will officially change to Candy Coated, which is also the name of the center where she teaches screen printing. The center, in a third-floor loft in Old City, has multiple identities, too. It’s Depew’s studio and living room, and it overflows with her one-of-a-kind fabric, wallpaper, artwork, jewelry, screens for screen printing all of the above, and a collection of clothing in progress for a DesignPhiladelphia fashion show in Rittenhouse Square.

Depew’s work is bright, graphic, and, like that of the Spanish painter and sculptor Joan Miró, employs the same symbols over and over. These include the diamond, fish, a paint-drop form she calls a “sploosh,” skulls, orchids, butterflies, and other flora and fauna. Her inspirations are Japanese kimono patterns, personal philosophy (she considers diamonds powerful because they, like all humans, are composed of carbon), and the stray cat she found in Chinatown and named KATZ! — yes, capitalization and exclamation point are included — because he loves Jewish apple cake.

Coming from a curly redhead with a Betty Boop voice, it would be easy to mistake these revelations for pure whimsy, but Depew is an intellectual heavyweight who majored in anthropology and sociology in college, with multiple minors. Her collaborations have included figuring out how to silk-screen a building in Fishtown for Interface Studio Architects, and designing fabric for costumes for a production of the San Francisco Opera. She received a prestigious Pew fellowship in 2002 and is working on her solo exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art to open in spring 2013 — all of which makes it somewhat remarkable to find her creations for sale on Etsy.

Minima Gallery, the cutting-edge contemporary-design showroom downstairs from the Candy Coated Center, seems like a more suitable home. The gallery sells her Gilded Skulls, which she made from bone china and gold luster during a residency at the European Ceramic Work Center in the Netherlands. The ceramic center is in the town where Hieronymous Bosch, the Garden of Earthly Delights painter who is known for his fantastical imagery, was born. You can climb to the top of the tower that houses a museum of his work there and gaze upon the exact landscape he depicted in his paintings. “That’s when you realize,” says Depew, “that he was a realist, not a surrealist.”

Early influences:

Depew was a ballerina starting at age 7. She loved the outfits, and it got her into French culture — “the words, rococo style, juxtapositions of nature with social consciousness and architecture.” Going to Russia on a school trip at age 17 and visiting the Hermitage changed her perspective, too.

Magic at home:

Every room in Depew’s childhood home was wallpapered. The dining room’s combination of crystal chandelier and walls with expanses of windows and mirrors created memorable moments. “The sun would shine in and create crystal rainbows all over that room,” she says. “Sometimes, I would get up early and go stand in those rainbows. It was like being inside a crystal.”

Her work is about …:

“... mixing the historical and the contemporary, and seeing how one influences the other.” Her work is also about “domesticity, the home, the heart, and customizing your immediate surroundings.”

Another potential job title:

“I’m thinking maybe ‘decorator,’” she says, “since what I do is decorate the surface.” She doesn’t dye fabric; she prints on top of it. “I’m just enhancing the beauty that’s already there. I’m just saying, ‘Look, there’s a rainbow.’”