Ep. 225: Norman Teague on Cultural Storytelling Through Design
Designer, craftsman, artist and educator, Norman Teague, grew up in Chicago absorbing the sounds, colors, textures and vibes of his “hood,” fancy cars, and Auntie Aretha’s painting. A high school Drafting elective was his first real step into the design field, which he then traversed with aplomb through an MFA at SAIC, to the Venice Architecture Biennale, to MoMA, to the design team of the Obama Presidential Center. At the helm of his namesake design studio, he’s built a storied, critically acclaimed career, and a powerful legacy of challenging the design canon, cultural storytelling, and educating generations of future designers.
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Norman Teague: if you can get a thing that’s useful or takes up space within your home or an institution and it tells a story that could outlast you, you’ve done the work.
Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. We’re kicking off a new season here at Clever with the wise and wonderful Norman Teague, a Chicago-based designer, educator, artist, and Founder of Norman Teague Design Studio, a contemporary design/build studio specializing in space, furniture design & fabrication, design consulting, art & objects, and custom millwork. He’s known for his mastery of craft, and creates furniture and objects that blend daily use with cultural storytelling. At the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, he participated in Everlasting Plastics, which explores sustainability through innovative plastic design. And recently presented a solo show called A Love Supreme, at the Elmhurst Art Museum along with an accompanying group exhibition at the McCormick House, exploring mid-century Black art and design practices through cultural expressions alongside the music and rhythms of John Coltrane and various other black genres. He curated Designer’s Choice: Norman Teague—Jam Sessions at MoMA, using AI to challenge the design canon and highlight the contributions of people of color and women. He’s also a member of the design team for the Obama Presidential Center, contributing to its community-focused vision. With nearly two dozen museum acquisitions, including pieces in MoMA’s collection, Teague’s work continues to shape contemporary design discourse…And also as you’ll hear in this conversation…he radiates joy, oozes a deep love for his family, community, and Chicago, and just warms your soul with his charm and wisdom… here’s Norman.
Norman Teague: I am Norman Teague and I am a designer in Chicago, as well I’m an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago School of Design. And I do what I do because I love design and I love the power of changing through finding problems and coming up with solutions based on the audience that will be using that thing and how they plan to use it, thing can sometimes be a tangible object and sometimes be a space filled with objects or people. I love the idea of interaction and being a part of that from a foundational standpoint is what we get the biggest thrill out here.
Amy: Well, that is evidenced in your incredible body of work. By way of introduction, I think, I’d like to start by diving into a piece you did in 2016, your Self Portrait. I think that might be a fun way to start to know Norman Teague.
Norman: Absolutely! Way to go back. Man, what a moment in my career where I actually started to consider storytelling and object making and how this particular piece, this Self Portrait, which most people look at as this spinning top like object, over-sized. And I thought about past, present and future, mainly consideration to past was like… my mom never stopped migrating. (Laughs) So we lived all over, from Bronzeville to Inglewood to Roseland, South Shore. And one of the few things that I would sit around with friends and do, is we’d look at fancy cars and we’d be like, ‘that’s my car!’ and whoever could see it first would point that out and that thing… that’s ours. And it was due to the fancy wheels or the loud music you could hear a block away, the paint job on the car. So rims were a really big thing, 22s, and so literally looking at this oversized wheel became the inspiration for the face of the object. Later I studied architecture and started to understand certain relief patterns and architectural design details.
And so this particular colonial column coming out of the rear of this spinning top became a thing that at this point I was like, I’m in art school, but I’m in design school, so I can actually start to break the rules through these designed objects. And designed objects to me didn’t have a scale. And so I could play in these larger moments, I could play in things as small as a bowtie. And that, for me, was like a great way to just start to think about bringing in my story, no matter who would take a look at this piece, who would view it in a gallery. It was my chance to talk about where I came from. And these stories of where a young black boy that might be doing the same thing today over his whatever, Tesla’s and fancy cars are still a thing to a young child. And so that that message became crucial to tell, but also finishing this piece and allowing it to sit at an angle and not like every other bookcase that you see, was really crucial to the finishing components of it. And so I had this interior where you could actually put books, that talked to this present time that I was in academia. And so how that was also influencing me. So I’ve always sort of battled with almost this double consciousness of, I’m an architecture student and I’m also a kid from the south side of Chicago. And so how these two stories play closely with each other.
Amy: Well, from a spectator point of view, I’ve seen it in images, what strikes me about it, first of all just to describe it to our listeners. It is a sort of enlarged, wooden, fancy rim that is also… so it’s a circular bookcase with a central column coming out of the back. It is not your typical bookcase; it’s not meant to be built in or pushed against a wall. It has a very specific kind of capacity and scale and the craftsmanship is super intentional and tight and very precise. To me it feels like a delightful understanding of who you are and an insertion of that into the design discourse. And a proud proclamation of, okay, this is me and my voice and my story and I have participated and I belong here and here’s what it looks like.
Norman: It was very much that at my time at the Art Institute, doing my master’s in object design, it was opening a new chapter for making things, where I could literally… bank on the one thing that I’ve always know the Art Institute to do and that was to document, archive or record moments of majority of their students. And so I really wanted this moment to be one that opened doors for telling stories that were less told. And I hate to over-use that phrase, but in actuality, in the field that I’m in, I’ve done all my homework. I’ve learned about the Mies van der Rohe’s, the Eameses’ and I appreciate that, richly, I do. However, my point was to see where do I fit into the story? Where do people that look like me, as I start to push the ideas of filling the cannon with new faces that might promote more black and brown people in the field, in this industry. I knew for a fact, from working in small companies and large companies, that there was ways to make a living as designers. And they were all over, all over, but they just were not on the South Side. They weren’t on the West Side. They weren’t in neighborhoods that looked and felt like mine and I thought about how rich would that be to that sort of become a part of the cannon.
How do we record and document more faces of color, doing things in communities that I essentially knew could use a designer? We have all sorts of careers in our neighborhoods, but I didn’t see designers designing the playgrounds, designing a new house for the vacant lot in my neighborhood. And I think that’s the only push that I’ve kind of gone for, is to become the face on the cereal box that says hey, this a pretty cool feel. You get to touch a lot of people and be touched by a lot of people. And so I was really pushing for that as I began to sketch. At this point I was sketching inflatables; I was trying to do all these things I knew I probably wouldn’t get access to unless I was a student at the School of the Art Institute.
Amy: That was at the culmination of your master’s degree, right?
Norman: That’s correct.
Amy: So almost 10 years later you have been the face on the cereal box in a lot of ways. You have established yourself…
Norman: Yeah, I’m sorry for that people. *Laughter)
Amy: It’s a good face, you shouldn’t be sorry for anything. (Laughter) It’s a good face. I’m just wondering if you were to do another ‘Self Portrait,’ what elements might be included now? How have you evolved and how might it show?
Norman: I mean I think more than anything I’ve learned to respect the things that I need in designing a project, or working on a project or just fabricating a project. And a lot of that recipe becomes learning something new, so that book component might still be there. But I think there’s a lot of this learning that’s coming at a more vernacular level. I’m learning more from people in my community to work from a garden standpoint, to work at a musical level. I think that book might still be wood, but it might take on a different form now. I have a serious love for the people that I work with on a daily basis and so that’s a new thing for me. I’m becoming more of a director and delegator, which I’m happy with on days, but I for surely love working with my hands and the idea of having to rethink that process has been a real challenge. I’m getting older, so I’m not as agile as I once was. You know, that piece is going to say a lot of things. But I think I still would have this strong wood component that would lead the object itself. It might float now; it might not sit on the ground. (Laughs) My vision has changed a bit and so I’m working with a lot of found materials and doing really rich projects alongside other artists in collaboration with people like Alex Chitty who is a phenomenal sculptor and female artist here in Chicago. Bernard Williams, I’m learning from a lot of the people that I’m just hanging out with.
Amy: this might be a good time to unpack some of your recent collaborative and exhibition endeavors, like maybe Jam Sessions or A Love Supreme, you said something about knowing what you need now in a project, and I think if you’re willing to share those needs, that could be really helpful for people listening to kind of give themselves permission to build those projects?
Norman: Yeah, that’s an interesting thing. For us, we’ve learned to do so much with so little, and now with the growth of the studio and our visions grow along with that, and so we want to create a brand that we can showcase at Salone del Mobile and we really want to be able to mess things up in the studio. We want to be able to make mistakes and not feel burdened by those mistakes, but look at them as research moments.
Amy: Yes!
Norman: That’s research, right? Literally trying to do something, getting it wrong and then going back to the drawing board and doing it again until you get it right.
Amy: If you get it right every time, you’re only doing stuff you already know how to do.
Norman: Exactly! So how do we do the new? How do we introduce that to a larger audience? And then some of these projects are just from a care standpoint. And one of the biggest projects that I think me and Dorian Sylvain are working on is to create a pavilion. We have very few pavilions in Chicago that are not done by Starchitects. And I reward those highly. But I feel like to create a pavilion for Anna and Frederick Douglass in Anna and Frederick Douglass Park is sort of a no-brainer for the majority of people that understand literature, writing and civil rights fights, from a historical standpoint. Anna and Frederick Douglass probably, they hold the GOAT title. And so that project, we’re hoping to get feedback and approval from city officials, and then we hope that we can raise the funds to build this, which is seven figures, but it’s a beautiful use for seven figures, to add an amazing pavilion in Douglass Park to celebrate the couple, and the family.
Amy: This is going to happen, right?
Norman: Yes. Yes, this is going to happen, we hope to be done in 2027 and hope to break ground next year in 2026.
Amy: Oh man, that’s so exciting.
Norman: I don’t even like to think of it as a monument either, I just like to think of it as a respectable place to honor a very amazing couple, a fearless couple, who did things at a time when it was detrimental to a particular movement. And so that is the biggest thing that we have on our deck right now, but we are also completing a very big commission project for the Obama Presidential Center.
Amy: Damn! What can you tell us about this! When can I see it? When I go visit it in person?
Norman: It’s really pretty. (Laughter) I’m kind of under NDA for this, so I can’t talk in detail about the project. But I will say it’s the biggest honor in building a thing that I have ever had a chance to be a part of.
Amy: I wish the listeners could see this glow behind your eyes and this big 100 watt smile, it’s genuinely joyful… it makes me joyful and just give us the milestones then so we can keep tabs on the project.
Norman: I think currently March 2026 the space will open to the public.
Amy: What are you going to wear to the opening, do you already know what you’re going to wear?
Norman: I already got my outfit picked out. I do, yeah, and take my mom. So to be associated with the project is the top of my career. I wouldn’t have to do another project ever. I think the one thing I just want to see is just how the piece is used, how people will come in contact with it. How their response is to it. And then what it looks like after the character starts to kick in. There’s something really great about a piece of furniture that has the wear and tear of 10 years of ass’s jumping on it and off of it. (Laughs)
Amy: Yeah, the patina of use. If you think of objects, like you’re imbuing it with your energy and your character, through the very creation of it. But then everybody who visits it and interacts with it also leaves a little deposit of their energy and character. And so the object itself just expands exponentially in terms of the energy it exudes and that’s so exciting.
Norman: Yeah.
Amy: But also what it represents to people who will come in contact with it, young designers or young children who maybe get introduced to that work and decide they want to be somebody who makes stuff like that.
Norman: I like to think of my work as somewhat educational, be it from an inspiration, but also any museum or even store that I might visit. I’m always lifting the piece up to see how it was constructed and so even that intellectuality that you find in the mechanics of a piece of furniture becomes important.
Amy: Because it’s all there for discovery.
Norman: The best way to learn design is to take apart a piece of furniture. (Laughs)
Amy: Agreed! (Laughs)
Norman: It’s so much fun. So many discoveries. It’s like being a car mechanic, you learn how to fix an old Oldsmobile by going under it and taking it apart and then trying to remember how you took it apart and put it back together. Nine times out of 10 you probably get a new car when you’re all done, completely different from the first time. (Laughter)
Amy: With everything that you take apart, you’re also going, “Oh, look at the shape of this, I wonder what this does and why is it here? Oh, see how that locked together, I see now how that helps to increase the structure, support a live load.”
Norman: Very valuable learning in that.
Amy: I want to talk about Jam Sessions and A Love Supreme, but I also want to talk about your childhood and it’s up to you which order we do all that in.
Norman: Oh man!
Amy: But you already mentioned your mom twice, so…
Norman: Yeah, I’ll start at the younger years. Growing up in Bronzeville was really rich and just walking down the street there was such an aura of places to be, clubs to go into, bodegas to stop into. And so that for me, it also had a particular closeness to it. We all lived with my grandmother on 45th and Vincennes and when I say ‘we,’ there were five adults, probably between 9-10 children, my grandma, my grandpa, all in a three bedroom apartment.
Amy: Wow!
Norman: Until grandma decided (laughs) to kick everyone out. And so my first apartment, or that I remember my mom getting her first apartment was around the corner from where I had my very first solo show. So 45th Street, across the street from Mollison Elementary. This might have been some of my earliest interactions with art. My auntie Aretha had painted a painting on the wall at our living room. It was simple, it was black and white lines that created a rectangle that got smaller and smaller and smaller. And this piece, I mean most people might have looked at this like a Bauhaus painting. It played with perspective, it had this really interesting way of taking all of your attention to this wall. And of course we didn’t have a lot of furniture at the time, so this was a masterpiece. (Laughs) But I think these things became influencers towards A, being a creative, because I watched my aunt put this painting together. But I referenced that to coming back to my own neighborhood after getting my master’s and having a show at Blanc Gallery a half a block away. It was just a really emotional way to go full circle and come back to where we started.
Amy: Yeah, it’s like…
Norman: Very, very interesting moments growing up in Bronzeville. And then we moved around. My creativity kicked in at high school, I went to Tilden Tech and I had to choose a subject to be a part of and I chose drafting. And I really excelled at drafting, to the point where the teacher would make me be the example in front of the room. He would take my images. I think it was mainly my penmanship, my lettering was really great. So this is foreign to most people because drafting with your hands is almost unheard of today, everything is on the computer, in AutoCAD. And so learning AutoCAD at Harold Washington College, after high school and becoming good at that where I was teaching evenings to groups of Helmut Young employees because these were older gentleman that had to come back to school to learn how to keep their job by using AutoCAD. And that also got me jobs to work for places like Eva Maddox and The Environments Group. All these large firms where I was very much a speck on the wall.
There was another brother that was inspiring to me, his name is Obi Nwazota, he’s pretty well-known for Orange Skin, he ran a great little well-known furniture gallery space near the Merchandise Mart. But all of these were early influencers. And then from a young man standpoint, I moved to Wicker Park where one of my earlier units was. I met Eric Williams. Later in my 20s I met Theaster Gates and Faheem Majeed and all of these became long time friends, but also inspirations from a very cultured place. Eric Williams starting the Block Party, but also Eric Williams being a client, an early client of mine and allowing me to design within his storefront. And so storefronts, there’s so many places on the South Side that I’ve had a hand in designing or designed and built from scratch.
Amy: So already in this story you’ve described being a kid and walking through Bronzeville and there’s so many things… bodegas and storefronts and things, it sounds very textured and there were a lot of people and storefronts for you to absorb. To full circle and now you’re fully contributing to those storefronts and you are part of the language and vernacular of the city that you grew up in. You’re contributing to that.
Norman: Yeah.It feels like a real thing now, when I look back on it. These are definitely my contributions, but I love doing it so much that I overlook the idea that it’s titled ‘work,’ because I enjoy it so much. But to know that I can walk in a few different places around Chicago and know that I’ve had the opportunity to add texture to that space is really great. It’s something I will always enjoy doing and I highly advise other people to think about how they can be an asset to their communities. So yeah, I’ve jumped from designing in the hood to… and when I say ‘hood,’ some people might look at that as a negative, but I’m highly honored to call my hood my hood. But to go from there to Venice Biennale is quite the shock in a lot of ways. And then once you’ve over the shock, you’re more contemplative of how will this be accepted or will this be accepted. And then you get to the point where, I really don’t care how it’s going to be accepted, I’m trying to get a point across.
Amy: Yeah!
Norman: And so reviewing the brief from Lesley Lokko, who is the curator of that year, and thinking deeply about how she’s saying that ‘Africa is the laboratory of the future,’ or thinking about laboratories of the future. I felt like plastic was a phenomenal direction to approach based on my team and associates, thinking through what could we do with plastics in a small woodshop on the South Side of Chicago. And then thinking through how we could come into contact with a partner, so Cody Norman allowed us to be students, or residents within his space and showed us how to use an extruder to extrude these forms that were motivated by African baskets and basketry. Really looking closely at crafts people on the continents. And how we could sort of replicate that through this plastic extrusion kind of process that we were working with in Cody’s studio. And so we created these amazing vessel-like objects over a very short period of time to replicate what might feel like a market that you’d run across as you’re taking a trip through Senegal and how do we replicate that not only through the weaving process, but this accentuation of colors and almost exaggerating those to some extent. But it was a super fun process that in the beginning was quite stressful. But I think in the time of making mistakes and trying to figure out new processes and ways to do this we started to have fun. And I think I might even say we got the hang of what (laughs) we were trying to do by the end of it.
Amy: Why plastic as a material?
Norman: The title of the proposal was Everlasting Plastics. And the collective that I was brought in to work with were already doing the research and crafted the proposal around plastics. As much as it was a challenge, it was really refreshing to get away from our normal process of working in wood. We also do some ceramics, but this was a completely new direction and I think the pivot was really great to dive into this new way and then put it on a very rich pedestal instead of the United States Pavilion. The artist that was there before me was Simone Leigh and Martin Puryear and two of my favorite artists… before any of this came up I was already a slave to these two artists. And so to be able to be inside of the rotunda was just gratifying. I got to meet Simone Leigh afterwards, she gave me a call and that was so… you’re working in your studio and you see your phone pop-up and it says ‘Simone Leigh,’ and I’m like, stop the world! Everything! (Laughter) She was just so sweet and she just said, ‘I’m sorry I missed the show but I really wanted to call and congratulate you.’ That was an awakening for me, my studio would probably say I jumped six feet off the ground when I saw the phone. (Laughter) Martin Puryear I have yet to meet, but I’m very much a fan.
Amy: I’m hopeful you get to meet him. I’m very much a fan too. I want to talk about this awakening that you just mentioned. The Venice Architecture Biennale now means you’re contributing your commentary to the cultural world stage. And makes you think really hard about what you have to say.
Norman: Yeah. I also align this with being able to explore the idea of showing this work, the imaginative speculation around how do you turn a material that’s quite hard to recycle, we’ve had some issues with recycling it. Can we turn it into art projects or art pieces and they carry the value of a marble sculpture? Can we look at waste in ways in which they can become… and I think artists have answered that question in a number of ways. And this was just one response. If we had more time, or if we could concentrate a level of research towards more of this, then it would probably get better. Or maybe it would get worse, I don’t know, but we need room to try that shit out. (Laughter)
Amy: Yes! Yeah.
Norman: It’s awakening to even be welcomed to be a part of these particular high level exhibitions because if we don’t, then how do you become a part of a speculation? I applaud Venice for opening up a stage that allows millions to come to. But I feel like an exhibition like it, or at least the idea of hundreds of speculative exhibitions around people and from people that we haven’t heard from, I want my grandma to do a show at the Venice Biennale. What would she talk about and how people take things away from that opportunity? Because we get to hear from people that are rehearsed and practiced to do these exhibitions, but how do you get to hear from the other audience? There’s a learning that we can take from the carpenter, from the anthropologists and from the cake maker down the street.
Amy: But isn’t that you? Aren’t you the one listening and learning and synthesizing all of that
Norman: To some extent, but to hear it from the mouths of that particular audience would be really fantastic.
Amy: Maybe this might be the beginning of another exhibition that you’re planning in the future.
Norman: Ooh, let’s do it. I have enjoyed curating, which takes me to the MoMA. That was a really interesting pivot.
Amy: Can you describe the exhibition real fast.
Norman: Oh sure. So it’s a designers choice, they give the opportunity to select a designer to come in and select from their collection and they have a specific room that is right on the ground floor of 53rd Street, so everyone that’s standing in that long line to get in are forced to look at the space. And so you’re given the opportunity to choose from the design collection as many pieces that will fit and can be shown in a MoMA like way. And you get to curate that space and how those pieces are shown. And so I went through the collection and it was so rich to walk through the warehouse where they house all these amazing pieces. And it’s like somebody threw-up your history book (laughter) into the space. You’re like, oh my god, I can touch this thing, it’s right here in front of my face.
Amy: I love the back rooms where things are just… the untold stories are all just spread out and they’re fragments.
Norman: It’s an amazing opportunity. They have some amazing people that work there. So I got to work with Paul Galloway, such a gifted… I was going to call him a ‘gentleman,’ but we had a couple of whiskies together…
Amy: (Laughs) He’s no longer a gentleman. (Laughter)
Norman: We’re friends, I have to call him a ‘gentleman.’ (Laughter) He was so great to work with, so patient and his knowledge is just amazing. But he was very pushy about me being pushy. He’s like, “You have to go against the grain, I’m going to support you to go against the grain.” And so at every opportunity that I had to go against the grain, he supported until somebody said no. My first idea was to…
Amy: That’s how you expand the universe.
Norman: Exactly! My first idea was to stack all of these pieces on top of each other as though they were just… as informal as I could display them.
Amy: That would have been cool to see.
Norman: Yeah, I drew it up so many different ways and I was just like, this is the way I want to talk about this. Eventually that got kicked out. But just working in a space where you’re trying to say so much. I didn’t feel like I could pull the right objects. And so the idea of AI and this sort of imaginative posters that allow us to re-think what if that history had black folks in it? What if it had Hispanic folks in it? And so really imagining the canon and icons and historical hierarchy and sort of minimizing that through a poster that say, John Coltrane and Mies van der Rohe were homies, and they used to kick it all the time and all the ideas. And these are some of the outcomes of what that might have looked like in a particular chair or how the Harlem Renaissance might have been an influence to a particular piece of furniture. And sort of placing that into a poster became one, relaxing and humorous, and allowing us just this other way to dismiss the way that we were dismissed, was scary at first. I was like oh god, I’m going to have to conversate with all these people because they feel that I disrespected Mies van der Rohe, oh my god, how could you… (Laughter) And then after a while I was like fuck it. (Laughter)
Amy: I hope that wasn’t the reception. I mean when I saw it, it felt so refreshing, I was like, yes, you know this influence was here originally, it just got scrubbed clean from the canon.
Norman: Yeah, what if Frida Kahlo designed the Orange Juice, the little juicer?
Amy: It felt like a speculative fiction that was more truthful than reality.
Norman: Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s what you have to pull from it, it’s like just how true could this be?
Amy: Yeah.
Norman: Because it’s literally just systematic racism that kept it from being this level of truth.
Amy: I love that you also, sort of, in bringing visual representation to people, to be able to see, perceive and discuss, to the discourse. You essentially made these invisible pathways or these invisible constraints visible. And it reminds us by extension to continue looking at our world for all the ways that perspectives are being thwarted and not being represented. And all of the ways in which the color or harmony, preposterousness, flamboyance and vibrancy of our world can be expanded with all of those perspectives.
Norman: Yeah, and so to imagine that is phenomenal, but through the help of Firefly and AI, we could actually take away these visual nods to that. And yeah, why can’t that be a poster? Why can’t that be another way to load our canon with new graphics and things that might eventually start to feel like a more true historical take.
Amy: Yeah.
Norman: Something that might feel good to everyone. And so yeah, we went through hundreds and hundreds of ideas that were almost either too blunt or they were graphically so close that we were just like, ah? And then some of it was just using inspirations and aesthetic categories that brought about things that were so close to either the people we were thinking about, that we almost had to pull back just a bit. So it’s almost a poster to see the amount of posters that we went through…
Amy: Wow. And what was the reception? Did you have to deal with a lot of people who were offended on behalf of Mies van der Rohe?
Norman: I dealt with a lot of feedback. I think there are some people that have personal opinions about AI.
Amy: Sure.
Norman: But I really thought that not using AI for a way of looking into the future, but looking into the past would be a more acceptable thing. And then after a while I was just like, you know what, people were against Photoshop when it first came out. People were against AutoCAD when it first came out, which, I’ll just do this by my hand. And so everyone will have an opinion. I did battle with it, to begin, as a direction. But once I became comfortable with it, I had to imagine that people would eventually be okay, because everybody has their own opinions.
Amy: I mean you are a provocateur on some level as well?
Norman: Yeah, not intentionally, I’m a sweet guy…
Amy: Not to start fights. (Laughs) But you are… you’re trying to provoke thought and discussion.
Norman: Yeah, absolutely.
Amy: And an expanded viewpoint.
Norman: Yeah, I think history classes have fed us enough bullshit.
Amy: Correct. Truth.
Norman: Whereas truth is key right now, particularly in an exhibit like this. So I hope people enjoyed it.
Amy: I hope so too, but I also hope it makes them think and stretch their ideas of what design is and who got to make it and who gets to show up in museums and why.
Norman: Yeah. Yeah, I hope the MoMA is considering the collection and diversifying it. Blatantly, I should say that. (Laughs)
Amy: You have had a storied and prolific career, working in all kinds of spaces, in terms of exhibition, installation, interiors, objects, furniture design. You’re also an educator. Talk to me about how being an educator is actually… I mean I can kind of extrapolate the value to the students, I’m an educator as well and I know the value to me is huge. What are you getting from being an educator, in terms of being in this space of knowledge sharing and exchange with the next generation of talent?
Norman: It’s one of the most gratifying things ever. I didn’t have a designer to educate me. I was educated by draftsmen and an architect. I’ve worked with some teachers that were actually practitioners as well. Today I’m very excited that young people have such a different level of education than what we got growing up. And I think there are opportunities in design are much wider. You’ve got architects going off and being fashion designers and when you give that kind of freedom, because I’ve always said I’m a designer, I’ve never said I’m an industrial designers, I never put any kind of subject in front of that ‘designer,’ because I love the freedom of redesigning the penny, give us a chance to design an airplane. We’ll make some mistakes, but we’ll get it right eventually. (Laughter) And so I think with young people and I started teaching when I was pretty young, I was in my 20s, teaching architecture at a high school. So just imagine that at 30 I get students that have graduated, gone on to college and now they’re working in architecture. There’s no better way to bless a teacher than to know that the students have gone on to do… even if you’re not designing like Karim Rashid or some of our starchitects, you don’t have the big name, but just to know that that has created a place where you go every day and you make a living at this particular discipline is just the most gratifying thing a teacher can get. Your past student came and said, “Thank you for what you did back then because I’m doing this thing now.”
Amy: Yeah.
Norman: Is the best way to get back what you put into your career.
Amy: That’s a really beautiful…
Norman: I had a student here earlier today and she was telling me just how happy she is, that she took my class two years ago, because she didn’t understand that the stories that she has from her childhood should make it into conversations of the objects that she’s creating today. And I was like girl, you better listen to yourself. (Laughter) You better take that and run with it. Like yeah, it’s the best teacher ever, if you can get a thing that’s useful or takes up space within your home or an institution and it tells a story that could outlast you, you’ve done the work. You’ve done the work.
Amy: Yeah, I can see the pride on your face.
Norman: It’s a stunning thing. I think that’s why teachers teach. I never considered the ideas around being a professor outside of the fact that A, I didn’t know professors made six figures, I didn’t know that. But I was happy to find that out!
Amy: Yeah, not if you’re parttime, parttime professors don’t make that! (Laughs)
Norman: Yeah, that part, we’re still working on that one. But it’s really the best feeling ever when your students are in the field, they’re doing things that better their own neighborhoods, some kids know a lot now. Some kids come into the classroom and they know a lot. But I think it’s our jobs to allow them to use it. I’m one of those teachers who allows students to have a lot of freedom, moving around the city. I don’t want to teach you in a classroom, I think four walls is the oldest way to get anyone to sit in a chair or at a computer to try and learn. I want you out… particularly in Chicago there’s so many great teachers from the local café, which was designed from head to toe, to visiting the manufacturer who was on the very next block. And so that for me has become a really rich way to engage them first.
Amy: Sure.
Norman: Because they’re really like, oh, okay, that’s how that’s made. To giving them opportunities to use their hands and make those mistakes and learn from those mistakes.
Amy: And as we both know, so much of even just learning the craft of woodworking is learning to fix your mistakes. (Laughs)
Norman: Oh my goodness, I think architecture students should have to build a house before they can graduate.
Amy: I think they should too.
Norman: If you have not built a house, then how are you going to tell me how to draw it? (Laughter) Come on, cut a piece of wood. Understand what happens to a 2x4 when it warps. How many do you need to estimate that? You figured out an entire budget. Yeah, I just feel like we have places like Haystack Mountain and Anderson Ranch and these places where you can go and emerge yourself for weeks and months at a time. And I just feel like ah. So yeah, I think we’re growing though. I think educational systems are seeing it and it’s starting to happen a lot more. But to be able to make an actual product as opposed to the imaginary presentation, it’s definitely a much more enticing way to learn a thing.
Amy: Yes. I agree. And I think there’s so much about realizing something at your own hands and full scale that can live in the world and form a relationship with others, that informs your designs, whether they’re speculative or just renderings. But it informs them in very real ways that you can’t get unless you venture into that space of full-scale 3D. And learning the materiality through your own hands, it’s its own kind of language and embodied understanding of the world around you that I think really shapes your creative agency and confidence in the world. Okay. I want to get granular with your creative process. And in particular, I understand that you’re a crafts person and that you’re comfortable working with your hands and wood being a primary material, but also you’ve talked about plastics and generative AI, and you’re comfortable working across scale and utility. So much though of what expresses through your work are these concepts of storytelling and community and collaboration and listening, or musicality. And so it makes me want to ask you, where in your process does the invisible start to show up? When you work intuitively, when flow comes in and decisions start being made from a place that doesn’t feel quite so premeditated?
Norman: Yeah. It’s literally living and growing up in a city that is high on spirituality. It’s high on music. It’s high on making. It’s high on making something out of nothing. And I think for me those are characteristics that I’ve sort of grown to know and love. I grew up in the city that looked a particular way and I accepted that one side of the city is going to look like this and the other side is going to look like that. But there’s a certain kind of feeling that you can take away from being in a community that you love, and that loves you. And so I had another interview and they asked, what is it about Chicago that keeps pumping out orders like it’s a damn machine. And I couldn’t explain it, but I think that it’s a certain soul. It’s in the food, it’s in the struggle. I think even house music and spirituality are another one of those unexplained things that just… it just takes off and you can’t put a true meaning to it. You ask 10 people and you’ll get 10 different answers, but there’s something about this city. New Yorkers might say the same thing about New York. Philly might say the same thing, Oregon might say the same thing. But it’s something about the city that makes you feel kept.
Amy: You know two things came to mind as you’re describing this to me. One is that I was born and raised near Detroit and Detroit has a bit of… what you’re describing to me, it resonates with me in terms of the spirit of Detroit. And I lived for 20 years in Los Angeles and it does not have that same spirit. It has other things going for it, but not that. So part of it is maybe a Midwestern scrappiness, resourcefulness. But the other thing that really came to me is the idea of a root system. A network, underground and above ground, that really weaves in and ends up supporting each other and communicating, almost non-verbally…
Norman: Yeah, non-verbally, yeah.
Amy: Just the collective energy has a chance to ferment and expand and become something without anybody really needing even to name it or put language to it until it’s already born into house music or something.
Norman: Yeah. I’m going to ride with that. I find it hard to put a finger on exactly what it is and so feeling like there’s a higher spirit, feeling like there is a culture of community that is support, no matter where you are, no matter what you’re doing, you just feel it. And you almost have to walk with a certain stride. Because it can feel lonely. It can feel like you are one in a few in the design field. But how different is that from DJ’ing, how different is that from being a soul singer? You’ve done your homework, you’ve done the work, you’re willing to try anything to be there and you’re really focused on bringing some friends with you. I want to bring my cousin to the gala, that’s an important piece. If they don’t see you do it, then how do they know you actually did it? (Laughs) Like all these students I’m working with, I feel like it’s part of it. How do I get you guys to come along, understand my story, I don’t care what color you are, I just care that you understand that there are many different ways to industrially design a thing and you can impact as many people or as little people as you want along the way? Can design more than just create an orange juicer. (Laughter)
Amy: Yes, the answer is yes. But I also think that there is a certain faction of society, maybe it’s a generational thing, who used to feel like they had to leave and disconnect from community in order to do something that was different, or do something that maybe wouldn’t be as well understood. But the idea of not leaving community, but actually bringing community with you as you open those doors and widen them, is a very intentional way of being in the world.
Norman: No doubt.
Amy: And I salute you for that. I think that’s an act of generosity, but also an implicit acknowledgement of, you’re the people who made me who I am and this is the field in which I’m operating and I’m not excluding you from that, I’m bringing you with me.
Norman: Yeah, my mama… (Laughs) She went to Venice Biennale with me.
Amy: She did?
Norman: She came later. But my mom ain’t never ever left the country, ever been on a flight besides to Atlanta.
Amy: Oh, that’s amazing!
Norman: And she came to Venice, with my aunt, and for them to get off that plane in Venice was the most…
Amy: The pride in her heart, it must have exploded.
Norman: Yeah, it was so great. And she probably won’t ever get on another plane unless I ask her to come to Salone del Mobile. But the support that I get from my family and friends is unexplainable. I wouldn’t want to do it ever without them. I have two sons that are designers.
Amy: That’s amazing, wow!
Norman: One is a digital communications… Noah, and Elijah studied business… strategic business for design. He works at Gensler.
Amy: Wow.
Norman: And he loves it. And he is excelling and it’s really great to see them at the right ages that they are, under 30, and in a thing that feels like I have a career ahead of me. And so I’ve been teaching since they were born. Thanks to Waldorf, Waldorf had a lot to do with that. But it’s just been a dope experience that I never would have expected would lead to, because I’m not done yet. I was about to say, ‘end with,’ but lead to the MoMA or anything that… Venice Biennale…
Amy: Or the Obama Presidential Center.
Norman: Or the Obama Presidential Centre. That’s going to be my homie before this is over with. (Laughter) Me and Barack, or Mr Barack are going to share a beer or something. (Laughter)
Amy: Yeah, I want that for you.
Norman: Yeah, that would be great. That would be a good, satisfying way to say we’re all in this together. Yeah.
Amy: You exude a kind of joy and I feel infected by it and that is wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for the smiles, but thank you for sharing your story and being so candid and telling me the ins and outs of all that you do.
Norman: It’s such a pleasure to talk with you. Much appreciated.
Amy: Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you like Clever, there are a number of ways you can support us: Complete our listener survey at the link in the description. Share Clever with your friends, leave us a 5 star rating, or a kind review, hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app so that our new episodes will turn up in your feed. For a transcript of this episode and more about Norman, including links and images of his work, head to our website. Cleverpodcast. com. While you're there, check out our resources page for books, info, and special offers from our guests, partners, and sponsors, and sign up for our free sub stack newsletter, which includes news announcements and a bonus Q and a from our guests. If you like clever, we could really use your support. You can share Clevver with your friends, leave us a five star rating or a kind review, support our sponsors, and definitely hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app so that our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X. You can find us Us at Clever Podcast, and you can find me at Amy Devers. Clever is hosted and produced by me, Amy Devers, with editing by Mark Zurowinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anoushka Stefan, and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is a proud member of the Surround Podcast Network. Visit surroundpodcasts. com to discover more of the architecture and design industry's premier shows.
Young Norman
Norman at work in his studio.
Norman Teague’s Self Portrait
Designer’s Choice: Norman Teague—Jam Sessions at MoMA
A Love Supreme at the Elmhurst Art Museum. Credit: Siegfried Mueller Photography
Norman and his Self Portrait
Designer’s Choice: Norman Teague—Jam Sessions at MoMA
A Love Supreme at the Elmhurst Art Museum. Credit: Siegfried Mueller Photography
Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.
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