Tanya Aguiñiga's Bright Dreams

~ (L-R) Forest Roll, Tray Seats, P Tree ~

It's one of the first hot days of spring. Sitting with furniture and accessory designer Tanya Aguiñiga in the backyard studio of her Atwater home, one feels as if the sun just might shine on this particular spot all the time.

"I grew up with this huge, loving Mexican family," she says, her eyes shining. "So, for me, everything is like a little mini party. I eat, and I'm like, 'Woo! We're all going to eat!'"

Aguiñiga's good cheer bounces all over her small workshop, filled with stacks of brightly colored and printed fabrics, rings of Formica, and baskets of notions. The walls display experiments with woodblock prints, stenciled animals, and bulletin boards with swatches and mementos, including an "I (Heart) Tijuana" sticker and an "I (Heart) Craft" button. Around the room are handmade felt purses, pillows, and jewelry items, plus a chunky stool cleverly upholstered in several colors of a weatherproof fabric to look like a tree trunk. A matching - at least in materials and scale - green mound sits nearby.

"Things just keep happening and falling into place," Aguiñiga says, surveying the countless projects in progress. "I have to think that it's not just luck, that part of it is talent, and part of it is that I dedicated myself to trying to help other people, and keeping that at the heart of my work."

It may sound clichéd, but if there was ever a case of good things coming from good works, it's this young woman's fledgling design career.

At 28, Aguiñiga has already led a tremendously ambitious and productive life. Born in San Diego, she grew up living with her family in Tijuana and crossing the border every day to attend school in the U.S. As one might expect, the routine proved formative. "I have a really weird duality in me, because I lived in two countries on the same day, every day, for 18 years," she says.

The experience also made her acutely sensitive to the visual world. "I got used to how clean San Diego was and how everything is just perfectly paved. In Tijuana, it's all cobblestones, and I'd be, like, 'I can't roller-skate in my street!' I became a really, really visual person because I was getting so much stimulus from both sides."

In time, Aguiñiga grasped the extent of those discrepancies, learning about the social, economic, and political reasons behind them, and the myriad disadvantages for people living on the impoverished side of the line. In addition to being visual, she became highly vocal. "The town I grew up in is next to the border fence," she says. "Having to live with a lot of inequalities made me really want to help other people, really expressive, and really outspoken."

So, why furniture design? Even she isn't sure, especially since she's the only artist in her family. But she's always been artistic, drawing and making small things, such as the wildflower necklaces she'd sell for 10 cents as a kid. When it came time for college, she enrolled at San Diego State, a nearby school she could afford. Uncertain of her direction (for perhaps the last time), she decided to try art.

As it happened, San Diego State has a highly respected furniture-design department. "I took one furniture class and was like, 'Oh, my god, I totally love it,'" she says, again with party-time enthusiasm. She was mentored by Wendy Maruyama, the program director and a highly celebrated craftswomen in what remains a male-dominated field, eventually receiving her bachelor's degree in applied design with an emphasis on furniture.

"I wanted to be able to create beautiful things, to create beautiful works, but I want it to also serve a function," she says, explaining her course of study. "Because I come from a place where trash is used, reused, to do other things, so I didn't really want to waste anything. If I'm going to put so much effort into doing anything, it should be something that could serve a purpose."

Her creations are buoyant, yet her efforts to use art and design to promote positive social change are unquestionably serious.

While pursuing her degree, Aguiñiga became increasingly involved in using art for community activism. She worked for six years with the Border Art Workshop, a San Diego- and Tijuana-based collaborative, creating art installations for human and migrant rights campaigns, as well as developing and teaching art and education programs for struggling maquiladora communities.

Despite the intensity of the community work, in particular, the budding designer pressed on. "I was going to school full time, working at the museum full time, and then doing all of these community projects and married," she explains. (She was 19 when she got hitched to husband Todd, a musician and store designer for Crate & Barrel.)

In 2003, Aguiñiga left the geographical region to which she was so emotionally and creatively tied and attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). The decision was guided primarily by her commitment to community work. "I thought, if I can get an education to help other people express themselves ... I don't care how much it's going to cost."

Relocating to the East Coast had an instant and dramatic effect on her work. "Before, my furniture was my therapy," she says, comparing it to her activist art, "my escape to pure functionalism. It wasn't anything personal, it wasn't anything about me, and it wasn't anything that had a narrative behind it.

"But as soon as I was cut off from all of my community work and installation work," she continues, "the emotional and the functional became one."

During her first week at RISD, she created her "embrace" lounge, a narrow bed that first appears hard and cold, given its simple steel frame. Then you lie on it and find yourself nestled in a hidden cutout that holds you in a gentle curl. "I just thought of this piece and thought, 'I miss my family. I want to be hugged by something,'" she says.

She also began responding to nature differently in Rhode Island, and incorporating its sensuality into her practice. Her "p tree" (short for plastic tree) was one manifestation, a branchy chair carved from foam and sprayed with white automotive lacquer. ("Kind of like how they make Ronald McDonald," she says without a trace of sarcasm.)

When she began writing her thesis, she realized how much living in border cities had informed her work. The embrace lounge, for example, sank half the body below the frame so it appeared divided in two. So, too, her "shadow chair" - a half-chair that functions only when set against a wall (a border, sort of) where, when the light hits, it can also reveal its other, "shadow" side.

Double-sided qualities are still present in many of Aguiñiga's designs. Her "qubee" table uses opposing q- and b-shaped legs, and her pod pillows have double-sided pieces you can remove. Portability is also a related and pervasive theme, found in her "modular" lounge (a set of three "nesting" pieces that line up to make a chaise); stackable trays that also serve as seats and their storage device that doubles as a table; and her "forest roll," a sewn and texturized chartreuse foam roll-up mat that lets you rest your head on a "log" amid fallen "leaves" anytime, anyplace.

Since she graduated and moved to L.A. in 2005, business has been going well. "I've just had overwhelmingly enthusiastic reactions to my work," she says with faint disbelief. Last year, she became one of the first 50 United States Artists fellows, winning a $50,000 unrestricted grant. (Other winners included L.A.'s Catherine Opie, Sam Durant, and Mark Bradford.) She's saving the money for perhaps her biggest project yet: using her design talents to teach and employ artisans with production methods that are environmentally sustainable and safe. (Her fiberglass days are over.)

She's also been commissioned by the San Diego Children's Museum to create a tactile, forest-like space for toddlers. The funny tree stump and green mound in her studio are part of that project. With this undertaking, she's exploring her current obsession with texture and softness, as well as ways of maintaining her aesthetic of artificiality and playful surprise.

Currently without a wood shop, she's "in a big accessories mode," even making outfits for balloons - a jolly consequence of an exercise involving inflatable forms.

Perhaps she'll dress them anew for her upcoming birthday, given her delight about closing in on 30. "If this much has happened so far, I've been able to help so many people, it's just going to be awesome, because I'm going to be that much smarter," she enthuses, smiling as if confetti were falling all around her. "I plan to do a lot with anything that comes my way."

For product information: Aguinigadesign.com.