Jean Pelle
Jean Pelle is Co-Founder/Creative Director at PELLE, a New York-based lighting and furniture design studio that she started with her husband, Oliver, in 2011. Born in South Korea in 1976, Jean grew up in Los Angeles actively working in the art studio of her father, a professional and commercial sculptor. She earned her Bachelor of Art in Architecture from U.C. Berkeley in 1999, and worked for several years at the architecture firm of Joseph Esherick/EHDD in San Francisco. She received her Master of Architecture from Yale University in 2005. Upon graduation, she worked for her professors at the architecture firm of Tod Williams Billie Tsien in Manhattan. In 2008, Jean left to establish her own design studio to pursue a career that combined her lifelong passion of fine art and product design. That year, she created and authored the “Do-It-Yourself Bubble Chandelier”, a publication that started her career in lighting design. Jean and Oliver met while pursuing their Masters in Architecture at Yale University. The PELLE studio is located in Red Hook Brooklyn, and is structured to support creative experimentation and active making. Driven by the exploration of new ideas, the 10,000sf studio space currently includes a lighting fabrication studio, a research and prototyping studio, and a dedicated showroom gallery to display finished pieces. The space is continually evolving to meet the needs of PELLE’s output, and is regularly restructured to accommodate new methods and materials. Led by Jean and Oliver, the studio team handcrafts each of PELLE’s products to order.
www.pelledesigns.com / Instagram @pelle______
Jean Pelle, Pool Portrait, Oil painting on canvas, 30" x 40"
I wanted to create a painting of my mother, based on an old photograph that I’ve always loved to look at. My intent was to meld the image of her, my Korean mother, within the context of a western painting tradition, because it’s so unusual for me to see that in the paintings I’ve come across. I think the contrast is interesting. Last year, I visited Claude Monet’s home in Giverny France and I became intrigued by the depictions of his family members in his paintings. The figures were as natural of a subject as the trees and sky. I wanted to create something like that so I chose my mother to be depicted too - painted into a glistening pool of water, looking and feeling joyful.