Q&A: Sunroom Brings Creativity to Life Through Print
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SOPHIE GRAGG ☆
IN THE HEART OF CHICAGO, a creative duo is breathing new life into the art of print. Clare Byrne and Jacob Stolz, the minds behind Sunroom, have cultivated a vibrant platform that celebrates the beauty of analog aesthetics and fosters a deeper connection with the world around us. Born from a shared passion for music and design, Sunroom has evolved into a thriving community, offering a refreshing antidote to the digital age.
Through their captivating projects, most notably the beloved Monthly Flyer Club, Jake and Claire explore themes of nature, seasonal change, and the human connection, inviting subscribers on a monthly journey of visual discovery. Each carefully crafted piece, from vibrant prints to thoughtfully designed matchboxes, reflects their deep appreciation for handmade objects and the enduring power of tangible experiences.
In this interview, we delve into the inspiration behind Sunroom, the challenges and rewards of building a creative platform in the digital age, and Jake and Claire's vision for the future. We also explore their creative process, their sources of inspiration, and their advice for aspiring creatives seeking to build their own unique online presence.
LUNA: Can you tell us a bit about the story behind Sunroom? What inspired you to create this project?
CLARE & JAKE: Sunroom started back in 2018 as a vessel for our collaborative projects. We wanted a platform to house our joint ideas, most of them stemming from our backgrounds in music and design. Over time, the risograph printer became a throughline in most of our projects. Our longest lasting project, The Monthly Flyer Club, started during the postal crisis of 2021 as a way to connect with others via snail mail during those long pandemic years.
LUNA: How do you decide the projects featured on Sunroom, in particular for the monthly flyer club?
CLARE & JAKE: Our work is often inspired by nature and the shifting seasons. We experience an extreme spectrum of weather in Chicago, and attempt to visually catalog the feeling of each shift. There’s definitely a diaristic element to the flyer club. We also love to explore new methods of making nearly every month, and to see how the risograph printer’s voice affects the outcome.
LUNA: What impact do you hope Sunroom will have on the creative community?
CLARE & JAKE: We hope that Sunroom allows people to connect with printed material in a very tangible way, bringing a bit of color, comfort, and inspiration to their home spaces. Ideally our work can show the longlasting rewards of physical media and its ability to resonate with others near and far on a much slower, more human, analog level.
LUNA: Why is it important to bring digital media to the print format?
CLARE & JAKE: The digital media ecosystem can be such a hollow space, yet we all really crave connection with others more than ever. We applaud attempts to take any power away from the large corporations that control our attention, feed us misinformation, and commodify creativity. We would love to someday not have to rely on these platforms to run our small business, and thankfully the printed format gets us halfway there. There’s also a much more satisfying longevity to producing physical work that goes on to live in people’s homes.
LUNA: What are some of the challenges and rewards of running an online creative platform like Sunroom?
CLARE & JAKE: It’s absolutely amazing to connect with so many people around the world. We’ve been afforded so many opportunities and met tons of kind, supportive, and creative people just by sharing our work online. That said, we experience a lot of imposter syndrome, along with the struggle to keep up with our email and live a life largely online. Earlier in our careers, we never thought we’d have to operate so much as social media managers, business managers, and customer service representatives all to live as artists and curate a platform like Sunroom.
LUNA: What advice would you give to aspiring creatives who are looking to build their own online presence?
CLARE & JAKE: Make artwork for yourself first. Develop your own voice through self directed projects, and trust yourself by submitting to the process. You won’t love everything that you make and that’s ok! Share the work you're proud of over time. The time we can afford to make work is so precious, so make it for something longer lasting than algorithmic trends, and that will ultimately resonate to an ideal audience that appreciates the work for its singular voice. Social media is impermanent, but the relationship you have with your own art is forever!
LUNA: You’ve expanded from prints to match boxes, magnets, totes and more. What’s been your favorite item to bring to life?
CLARE & JAKE: Our favorite projects are usually the zines. They are such a fun vessel for any collection of ideas and imagery. We love to use the zine format to introduce interactive print elements and explore more narrative subjects we typically wouldn’t dive into with a singular print.
LUNA: Where are your go-sources for inspo?
CLARE & JAKE: Our main source of inspiration is our natural environment, usually the Midwestern landscape and all the seasonal change it sees. We love going on photo journeys around Chicagoland, visiting the lake, our mothers’ gardens, the forest preserves, and generally drawing from our outdoor surroundings. We also find inspiration in vintage magazines, collected photo slides, artbooks, & matchboxes - and of course Pinterest.
LUNA: What are your long-term goals for Sunroom?
CLARE & JAKE: Our one true goal is to do the flyer club or some form of chronological artmaking for the rest of our lives, and to eventually have this visual diary of our experience on earth. We’re also continuously striving to be bolder and stranger with our work, and to develop the use of language and narrative storytelling more often in our projects.
