Eva Menz declares she is not an artist but a ‘designer who is very artistic'. The difference, she says, is that she isn't necessarily looking to express herself in her work. And maybe, I ponder later, she is just too practical, capable and self-assured to be an artist alone.
 If you haven't heard of Eva Menz yet, you will. The German-born, London-based designer is quietly making a name for herself with her beautifully minimal and innovative chandeliers and installations. Given the visual and metaphorical poetry of her pieces, and the theatrical element to her work, Menz's pieces are highly choreographed and visually arresting. The two-part ‘Flight to Galway' features 450 hand-folded origami cranes (measuring one metre and 50cm in length respectively) placed above the spa pool and a skylit stairwell at Philip Treacy's five-star g-hotel in Ireland. The cranes are made of a high-tech felt that is both moisture-resistant and fire-retardant.
‘Sapphire Rain', on the other hand, is (or rather was) an intricately hand-carved and illuminated ice sculpture suspended at a height of 3 metres and devised to melt into a round pool below within 20 hours. Inside hangs a crystal chandelier. The whole piece weighed 500kg and presented serious technical challenges, given that metal is a heat conductor and that the piece needed to be hung using a strong supportive structure. ‘I can't tell you how we resolved the problem,' Menz smiles enigmatically, but she does say that after ‘a month of testing they created a particular suspension method that did not conduct heat'.
‘Sapphire Rain' is part of her For One Night Only ice chandelier series, just like ‘Nangijala', a 2.5m long hanging chandelier created in collaboration with New York fashion designer Sherry Steffee for the ICCF design event in 2006. Made out of 2,000 crystal pearls and trimmed with semi-precious black agate stones and black tassels, it was draped over an illuminated melting block of ice. Since the temperature of the crystal was warmer than that of the ice, the strands gradually melted, creating distinct and almost archaic patterns and designs in the ice. Menz liked that the chandelier ‘interacted' with the ice.
‘Nangijala' apparently refers to an imaginary world where good and evil appear in symbiosis (it is also  featured in a book by Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren). On her website Menz calls it ‘a piece of decaying beauty created by elements reacting to the passing of time'. And it is clear that the transience of the piece is a large part of its overall impact, forcing observers to recognise that its decaying or evanescence lies at the core of its beauty.
‘By default a chandelier is a valuable item,' says Menz. ‘But what is value? It could be the sheer amount of time that goes into making it, or the fact that it disappears.' Time is very important in Menz's world and in her artistic vision. The passing of time, recorded by the pitter-pat of the melting ice as it hits the pool below, for example, or, more significantly, the time that goes into creating these items by hand: finding the materials, sourcing them, consulting clients and having component pieces made if necessary. The assembling of many of Menz's pieces is often complex and time-consuming; one piece she made for a Reno (Nevada, USA) nightclub took ‘three months to make and seven days to hang'.
Having an impact, above all an emotional impact, is what Menz is after. ‘There is no need for objects, or to create anything new,' she says forcefully. So it follows that designers have a responsibility other than making money. ‘What they make has to mean something, influence people, enhance the sensations you have in a space.' And though not everything Menz makes involves recycled materials, she is fascinated by the possible reuses of objects or materials, turning something mundane into something unexpected.
 Last December and January she spent eight weeks in Bali with fellow designer Lena Mahr conducting a workshop with local arts students and craftsmen. The result was a permanent installation with a difference. ‘Reincarnation of the Sapi' is a 4mlong sculpture made using 3,000 bones of the local Sapi cow. These bones go unused and usually get thrown away, Menz explains. Another intriguing aspect of the project is that for Hindus the cow is a holy animal. The piece acts as a way of bringing the cow back to life, revering it beyond death. The pieces of bone were cut and polished and hung in a long, undulating wavelike shape in the gallery of the Sentosa Hotel and resort in Seminyak. Surrounded by ceilings and walls made out of local wood or glass, and with a long black glass table placed underneath it, the installation is at once harmonious and natural, otherworldly and ethereal, tactile and musical.
Menz is enthusiastic about the Bali experience, and says she would like to set up a regular workshop programme there. Though still only 29, she is very taken with the idea of education, work experience and teaching, believing from personal experience that design courses often lack these essential components in their curricula. There is also a conundrum at the heart of the way design companies work. She explains: ‘They expect people to have experience but hardly any are prepared to offer it.' Some ‘crappy internships' she had the misfortune of doing herself cemented her desire to offer something different to young designers.
For the past 18 months she has run a continuing internship programme in her London studio. Three or four young designers come in several times a week for three months initially – then there is a review – and do a bit of everything, from coming up with  conceptual ideas and sourcing materials to administration and accounts. ‘They learn how a small design company works.' While we talk in her new studio space near Farringdon, two interns and one former intern, who is now a paid-up member of staff, share the same work-table with her. Initially she saw this as a pilot project but now she is fully sold on the idea. ‘There isn't a hierarchy of people here,' she says, ‘but a hierarchy of knowledge.' In practice this means that her intern-turned-employee, Adeline Guillot, who has been there for 18 months, is often the second port of call after Eva, or the first when Eva is away. Menz insists that any idea is valuable, regardless of the experience a designer has (‘if someone is less qualified it doesn't mean they have a smaller ideas pool') and believes that practical, hands-on experience gives young designers confidence and makes them more employable.
At the moment Menz and company are working on a commission to create five chandeliers for a London townhouse. Having lived and worked in London for eight years she is excited to be doing a London-based project at last (and to be featured in a London-based magazine as well). She says that London is an ‘open-minded and tolerant' city, but also that it ‘waits a while to confirm that you're good at something'. She would love to make something for the London Olympics, maybe an outdoor piece that would ‘get in people's way' as they moved around from venue to venue. It would be ‘interactive and welcoming'.
In the future Menz expects that her team will be doing less of the hands-on labour and more conceptualising and sourcing.
She would also like to launch a diffusion line, and hopes that London will become increasingly a base from which the team travels. She is keen too to have more control over the spaces her objects inhabit. ‘We tend to leave when things are still a big building site,' she says. ‘Ours is just one feature in a space; you can't control the rest of it.' But sometimes she wishes she could, especially when it ends up filled ‘with disco lights and pink sofas'. Somehow, I don't think this will be a problem for very much longer.
 www.evamenz.com
Appeared in Sublime in March 2007
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