Photo by ShaghoJoin us for a series of events hosted by @_shagho (she/her) artist and community facilitator, exploring Ernest Batchelder's ornamental legacy through nature's hidden patterns. Eucalyptus seed pods crack into star forms, California live oak acorns nest in textured caps, and Anna's hummingbird throats flash ruby coin-sized patches—patterns waiting for hands working clay, paper, leather, and found materials.
Working with local museums and heritage sites, participants will translate nature's geometries into relief and surface design, encoding collective wishes about a more harmonious, abundant world. Each repeated motif becomes anticipatory consciousness—active projections reshaping reality through patient ornamental work.
This series of events is hosted to bring the community together to help Pasadena History Museum in compiling a registry of Batchelder tile installations throughout the United States and Canada, asking for assistance from the public to document for the first time the scope of the business and distribution of the tiles throughout North America. Learn more!
Guests
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Gina A. Sookias is a Los Angeles–based Armenian artist and designer, born in Tehran, Iran. She studied interior architecture at Center D’Etudes Classique in Geneva, Switzerland and at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA. Her current work centers on hand-carved ceramic tiles that explore motifs inspired by the intersection of her diverse cultural influences. Gina runs Sooki Supply in Frogtown, a supply store adjacent to Sooki Studio, a ceramics studio operated by her daughter, Natalia Ira Sookias.
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A Los Angeles–based interdisciplinary artist and educator. Her work explores perceptions of the environment through the lenses of environmental history, climate change, and sensory experience. She holds an MFA in printmaking from the University of Iowa, and degrees in biomedical engineering, religion, and art history from Case Western Reserve University, University of Minnesota, and Harvard University. She currently teaches at UC Santa Barbara.
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A multidisciplinary design leader, artist, and cultural practitioner who works at the frontiers of innovation and community. As founder of Folk Lounge, she facilitates cultural programming to study the grammar of ornament. Born in Vladivostok, of Armenian and Russian heritage, she holds a BS in Fashion Design and an MFA in Human-Computer Interaction from California College of the Arts. She believes in the power of collective making to weave new connections between past wisdom and future possibility.
Pasadena Heritage is a preservation organization that protects the city's architectural and craft legacy through advocacy, education, and community engagement. Pasadena Heritage is a hands-on, community-driven experience that welcomes everyone to step behind historic buildings and into the studios, gardens, and neighborhoods where Pasadena's design traditions were born and continue to thrive.
* Explore their annual programming including Craftsman Weekend and year-round celebrations of the city's design culture.
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