New Artists Do Home Work

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HOME/designNew artists do home workBy ALMA E. HILLPublished on: 09/21/06

This week, Home & Garden profiles two emerging Atlanta artists whose work is on display in homes and businesses around the area. Both have Web sites where their work is sold, and both bring innovative designs to traditional home accents.

Bita Honarvar/AJC Staff
(ENLARGE)
Lee Hannah Jr. has a studio behind his home in AtlantaÕs Inman Park. He works in clay as well as fused glass.

Keith Hadley/Staff
(ENLARGE)
Adiclere HunterÕs suspended tables can support a considerable amount of weight. She has sold some to local restaurants and bars.
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Who says a table needs to have legs?
Adiclere Hunter's obsession about keeping her home neat led to a fledging business: designing tables. Suspended tables, to be exact, that hang from the ceiling and don't require legs to stay balanced.
"I just didn't like a lot of things on the floor," recalls Hunter, 28, who lives in a loft in downtown Atlanta.
"So I hung my table, and it looked a lot cleaner, a lot more open and modern."
A political science graduate from Georgia State University, Hunter believes her invention is both stylish and functional because it eliminates the space taken up when chairs are grouped around a table.
"You can hide the chairs underneath. You can put a wine rack under there and pull it out when you have guests over," she explains. "If you use it at work, you can hide file cabinets or bookcases, and it just looks like a cleaner, more space-efficient area," she says.
Hunter says her suspended tables can be hung from drywall, a concrete ceiling or a lighting grid, and can hold the weight of a conventional table. But don't attempt to stand on one; like any object suspended from the ceiling, it could fall.
Hunter, who has a patent pending on the design, uses metal fixtures to hang the tables and covers the metal with something more attractive such as bamboo, circular tubes or whatever material her clients request.
Prices range from $300 for a small table to about $3,000 for a large dining table made of glass or metal.
Contact her company, Suspension Designs, at 1-866-245-0672 or online at www.suspensiondesigns.com.
Colorful glass takes graceful shape
Lee Hannah Jr. is as practical as he is creative.
He satisfies his creative appetite by designing table settings, serving dishes, centerpieces and wall art from fused glass. He also makes ceramic objects out of clay from his neatly organized studio behind his Inman Park home. Inside he has four kilns, work tables and a smattering of his collection.
But when business is slow, Hannah's practical side takes over. That's when you might find him under a kitchen sink or in a bathroom. "When there are shifts in the buyer's market ... I'm a plumber," Hannah says, smiling. "It allows me to keep my flexibility since I can't punch a clock."
Although the 36-year-old Hannah came from a creative family — his mother Tonye is a local interior designer — the thought of working in a creative field didn't hit him until he was pursuing his education at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
"I've always loved working with my hands and being creative. One day in college I said, 'I want to take up pottery,' and it took off from there," Hannah recalls. "It allowed me to be free, to work outside of the boundaries."
He's been firing glass and clay for the last 10 years creating abstract objects that are either colorfully painted with food-safe paint or monotone. His trademark is making graceful shapes that seem to float on surfaces.
While many of his clients come to him word of mouth, the bulk of his pieces are custom-made. Hannah's jazzy tableware and wall art can be found online at www.leehannah.com (404-446-8122).