In our newest interview series, we introduce you to the people who inspire us most: creatives, educators, activists, community leaders and the everyday super-humans who keep us on our toes. We’ll take you inside their day-to-day lives, homes and workspaces. We’ll talk motivation and inspiration and of course, all things style.
Meet Windy Chien, San Francisco punk-rock goddess, Silicon Valley sweetheart, neo-nautical fiber sculptor—and our very first Monthly Muse. In this new series, we’ll introduce you to the people who inspire us most: creatives, educators, activists, community leaders and the everyday super-humans who keep us on our toes. We’ll take you inside their day-to-day lives, homes and workspaces. We’ll talk motivation and inspiration and of course, all things style—and it all starts right now.
Windy is best known for her 2016 work, The Year of Knots, a spellbinding exploration of 366 unique knot types. But we’ve been on to her since back in her heyday as owner of legendary music shop and hangout Aquarius Records in S.F.’s Mission District. Having paid decades of dues in music business and production, Windy’s now committed full-time to her larger-than-life sculptural fiber arts (and her greyhound). Read on to learn more about Windy in her own words.
IT’S NO SURPRISE YOU’RE OUR FIRST MONTHLY MUSE—YOU’RE LIVING THE DREAM! WHAT GUIDED YOUR CAREER PATH?
I always make decisions about what to do next based on the most interesting, coolest, compelling thing that I’m drawn to. Life is short, we're all gonna die and we should do the things that we're most driven by. In the ’90s, that was music. Music was my whole world. After owning a record store for 14 years, I needed change. I had been fascinated with Apple computers since I got my Apple IIe in high school, so it was an easy decision when they asked me to join as a producer to help get iTunes off the ground and then the app store.
But as I was sitting at my desk one day, I realized that my work here and at the record store had been around other peoples’ creativity. I had never given myself permission to focus on my own. When that light bulb went on, I was in my mid-forties and realized: If I wanted to create for myself, I had to quit my all-consuming job in tech and strike out on my own.
Life is short, we're all gonna die and we should do the things that we're most driven by.
WE LOVE YOUR FASHION SENSE, EVEN OVER ZOOM. HAVE THESE WORK-LIFE TRANSITIONS HAD ANY AFFECT ON YOUR STYLE OVER THE YEARS?
IS THERE ANYTHING IN YOUR CLOSET YOU'D NEVER PART WITH?
YOU SELF-IDENTIFY AS AN “ARMY BRAT” AND “OUTSIDER.” WHAT DO THOSE WORDS MEAN TO YOU?
When you’re an Army brat, you're moving around all of the time. You're responsible for yourself. You don't have best friends from kindergarten, because you have no idea where they are. So you create your own world. And in that way, you're an outsider all of the time.
For me, especially as a Chinese American, being an outsider means total freedom. It means that when someone looks at me, there's very little they can assume about the kind of person I am. And that’s meant that I can self-define. When you’re an outsider, the weight of society's expectations isn’t on you. And that's freedom.
When you’re an outsider, the weight of society's expectations isn’t on you. And that's freedom.
WHAT’VE YOU BEEN WORKING ON WHILE WE’VE BEEN CHATTING? IT LOOKS AWESOME.
I'm making a star knot out of rope. I make a lot of them as a way to reduce my waste. So whenever I have short ends—all I need is about two feet of rope, times five—I can make a five-strand star knot which makes a great gift.
About half of my commissions come from the interior design and architecture worlds, which are notorious for creating huge amounts of waste. I recently joined an organization called The Good Future Design Alliance, and one of the commitments we make is to reduce our waste. And so I’m doing that...in a very cute way.
When I see women who’ve made pieces that are 10-stories high, what I hear them saying is, it's okay to go big and it's okay to take up space and it's okay to have a vision that is much larger than the room that you're standing in.
WHO WOULD YOU CALL YOUR GREATEST MUSE?
I’m really into the fiber arts movement of the ’60s and ’70s and the ultimate godmother of that scene, Sheila Hicks. She, along with a handful of other fiber artists from America and Eastern Europe, pioneered the idea of textiles and fibers as a legitimate art form. Before them, fiber was seen as craft, or at best, decoration, but not really fine art.
Sheila is my idol. When I see women who’ve made pieces that are 10-stories high and made out of thousands of pieces of rope and thread and line, what I hear them saying is, it's okay to go big and it's okay to take up space and it's okay to have a vision that’s much larger than your physical body or the room that you're standing in. It's as if they're giving me permission to go as big as I want to. And I think this is an issue for many women right now: taking up space. I want to be there for other artists like Sheila was for me. We all need that permission.
ASIDE FROM SHEILA, YOU SEEM PRETTY OBSESSED WITH GREYHOUNDS.
I did a lot of research about what kind of dog to get. I wasn't sure what I wanted, but I know I'm superficial so I knew it had to be beautiful. My neighbor had a greyhound and the first time I met it, it was like seeing a spiritual ghost. They're so silent, they just stand there full of grace. And when you walk down the street, every person stops to gawk and talk to us.
LASTLY, WE HAVE TO ASK: WHY KNOTS?
Knots sit at the intersection of cultural history, science and math. So my practice isn’t merely visual, it’s also a deep dive into history. One of the most commonly accepted definitions of a knot is any complication in a line. Almost every artist makes use of a line at some point. And I really latched onto that. It’s beautiful. It can go anywhere. I’m also really influenced by vintage ’70s graphics of parallel lines traveling together. There’s something so poetic about that.
You can look at a lot of my pieces and use your eyes to travel with the lines. That visual journey that your eyes go on is a metaphor for the journeys that we all go through in life. And we each have a different journey. So your line is unique from my line and there’s something beautiful about that, too.
