WID Salon Series: Making and Running a Business of Design

📅 Date: Monday, September 30
🕕 Time: 6:00 – 9:00 PM
📍 Location: Turf Design Center, Chicago. THE MART Suite 1048 Chicago, IL 60654
🎤 Featured Speakers: Sculpturelandia (Olivia Juarez & Remy Bordas)

The Salon Series is a monthly gathering hosted by the WID Chicago Chapter for women and non-binary designers to come together for conversation, connection, and creative exchange. From studio tours to craft nights and workshops, the Salon Series celebrates the diversity of design voices and fosters community among creative professionals.

This month, we invite you to the third event:

What does it take to transform an artistic vision into a sustainable design practice? How do designers move from concept to creation and from creation to a viable business? This Salon night delves into the real-world journey of design entrepreneurship, exploring where creativity meets craft, and where vision becomes value.

Designers are inherently driven by experimentation, iteration, and hands-on making. But what happens after the sketch is done? How do ideas evolve into prototypes, become manufactured objects, and ultimately shape the way we live and interact with our surroundings? We’ll explore what it truly means to run a design led business from the daily realities of studio practice and production workflows to the challenges of client work, marketing, and sustaining creative momentum.

Sculpturelandia is the collaborative practice of Olivia Juarez and Remy Bordas, partners in life and art. Their work explores the tension between permanence and decay, sincerity and satire using sculptural objects to probe how meaning is formed, eroded, or reinvented. They create art objects that are sometimes disguised as chairs, tables, vases, and other functional pieces. In this talk, Olivia and Remy will share insights into their design process, how they approach collaborative making, and what it takes to run a small design business from ideation and production to navigating client work and sustaining a creative practice.

🗣️ A 15-minute Q&A will follow the talk.
🔗 Follow them on Instagram: @sculpturelandia

In addition to the artist talk, attendees will get a tour of Turf Design’s creative studio with a CNC workshop demonstration. This is a unique opportunity to see how design concepts evolve into tangible, real-world products and how designers navigate studio practice, production, and client relationships.

Whether you're a practicing designer, an emerging artist, or simply design-curious, join us for a night of inspiration, insight, and community.

🔗 IG: @turf.design

🎟️ Space is limited -RSVP now to reserve your spot!

Refreshments will be available at the event!🍕

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

THE MART, 222 West Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago, United States