Artist Katie Stout chooses gifts to promote creativity

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We just had a baby, so I feel like our holiday traditions are about to change a lot. In the past, I’d go to other places to celebrate holidays, and now we’re going to be hosting more. I don’t exactly know what that is going to look like, but I hope it’s very festive. I love having a tree, I love the pageantry of it all. 

My favourite thing is having people over, and one of the best things about having a baby is that people want to be involved. I really appreciate just sitting with friends and family and not having an agenda except being together. 

My first instinct for gifting, always, is that I’m just going to make them something. I like the idea of it, but then the person doesn’t get the gift on time because I’m not organised — and especially because the holidays come around the [art] show season, which is a really overwhelming time.

One holiday season, I made a bunch of ornaments and sent them to people who I work with and some friends, and that was such a big success. But the ornaments were heavy; if you wanted to actually use them, they had to be on a major branch of the tree.

My favourite thing about the holiday season is supporting businesses that I really like and that I believe in — that’s a really fun thing to do, sort of like matchmaking. Sometimes it’s an excuse just to buy something I want to buy, and then I’ll figure out the person who I think would also like it. 

There’s a store in upstate New York called Available Items, and it’s run by this person named Chad [Phillips], who used to be the [retail] director of the Cooper Hewitt gift shop. He works with a lot of local people and supports them; he’s just got such a good eye, and he has a lot of unique things. My husband wants another rocking chair because he likes rocking the baby, and Available Items has these really cool Adirondack rocking chairs. I also really like this debris block kit. I think it’s such a cool idea for kids because it’s a playset, but it’s also an idea; you could just keep adding to it. 

If you don’t know what to give to someone, donating something in someone’s name [to an organisation] that they also support is always great

A gift that promotes creativity is very cool, whether it’s your own creativity or supporting someone else’s. My sister-in-law has a lot of jewellery that she got from various family members, and she’s used this service called Spur Jewelry, where they take old jewellery and they’ll make a new thing out of it. 

These little MMoody pants for children [on my list], I like that they’re pitched as something that you can grow into, and as they become more demolished, you just keep patching them up. It’s something that you can have forever, and it also makes you think about clothes a little differently — the idea of repairing them instead of throwing them out when they get a hole.

If you don’t know what to give to someone, donating something in someone’s name [to an organisation] that they also support is always great. I like The Nature Conservancy because they have a super pragmatic approach to conserving nature. They get things done, and then a lot of the land is open to the public to go hike on. 

[Sometimes] I gift art I’m into. [Gallerist] Nina Johnson once gave me a Nicola L piece; it’s called Forest, and it was from a show that Nina had of Nicola’s work. There were four of these hanging pieces, and the other three went to other people that I like. It was originally part of this performance that had to do with community, and it makes me feel like part of something bigger. That’s a very successful gift, making you feel like something bigger.

Katie Stout is an upstate New York-based artist and designer who creates lamps and other furniture using ceramics, clay, bronze and glass. Her work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Available Items

Debris Kit by Office of Tangible Space, $100, availableitems.com

Apartamento

Magazine subscription, €14.50 every six months (on sale), apartamentomagazine.com

Spur Jewelry

Jewellery renovation gift card, from $100, spurjewelry.com

Karl Fritsch

Ring (2018), $5,800, ornamentumgallery.com

Mmoody Kids

Play pants, $65, mmoodykids.com

Nicola L

‘Life and Art’, €59, apartamentomagazine.com

Jessica Rodriguez Baggu

Duck bag, $42, creative-growth.shoplightspeed.com

Quittner

Asparagus drawer pulls, £102, quittnerhome.com

Dorothy F Foster

‘Square Deal’, $1300 framed, fleisher-ollmangallery.com

Quittner

Vintage Italian conch vase, £78, quittnerhome.com