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Things We're Happy About: Chalkboard Skulls

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Stopping into Renegade Handmade on Division yesterday with full intention to talk shop about this coming year's first Renegade Craft Fair in London, we notice on the front table a product that we're happy Renegade is selling: Chalkboard skulls made by Iamhome.

Iamhome, was started by Sarah and Joseph Belknap who make simple modern housewares and home decor with a colorful and slightly quirky twist. As best said by the husband and wife team, through the use of monumental sculptures and spectacular imagery, they hope to pinpoint moments in life that are unbearably beautiful and uneasy and provoke a conversation regarding survival in the world.

Working with the concept of catastrophe as a living thing that is always on our present mind, Sarah and Joseph make objects that are reminiscent of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, plane crashes, falling off of your bike. The two artists say that the actual timeline for those moments is so short but the image of them lasts forever and the feelings that filled you the first time stay with you and erupt when you think of that moment or see an image of that moment.

These $34 skulls that we're happy for are casted out of plastic and painted with several coats of porcelain enamel chalkboard paint to make a flawless surface that is easy to doodle on. The skulls are currently available in raspberry, red, black, garnet, periwinkle, grape fizz, schoolhouse green, teal, blue, peapod, moonstone, coffee and latte.

Iamhome was born in 2009 in the home of when they decided to work off of their fine art practice to create pieces of art that were affordable, well crafted and sometimes useful. They utilize the Rebuilding Exchange, found objects and leftover material to make objects.
· Renegade Handmade [Official Site]
· Sarah and Joseph Belknap [Official Site]

Renegade Handmade

1924 W Division, Chicago IL