Christian Solorzano [00:02]

Hello, you are listening to Underscore, a show by the Chicago Graphic Design Club. I'm your host, Christian Solorzano, and today I'm excited to share my conversation with Eric Hotchkiss, an interdisciplinary designer, engineer, and educator based right here in Chicago. Eric is the founder of Made in Englewood, a design-build practice rooted in the belief that communities should shape their own spaces and tell their own stories. His work spans furniture, public installation, outdoor kitchens, all built in deep collaboration with the people who live there.

In this conversation, Eric takes us back to growing up in Englewood, making go-karts from garbage can axles, building clubhouses for— from construction site scraps, and learning early that making things was just part of life. He talks about how that upbringing quietly became the foundation for everything he does today. We get into what it means to design with a community rather than for one, and why artifacts matter more than written history, and what it looks like to give up control and let people shape something together.

It's a great conversation, and I hope that you enjoy it. As usual, if you enjoy conversations like these, we really appreciate your support when you leave us a rating wherever you listen. Thank you and enjoy the conversation. All right, here we go. How's it going, Eric?

Eric Hotchkiss [01:37]

It's going well, going well. How about yourself?

Christian Solorzano [01:40]

I'm doing good. I'm looking forward— so we're recording this on March 10th and it's about 5:10 PM. And I don't know if you've seen the weather reports, but we're supposed to be getting like flash flood and hail and all this kind of stuff. So I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Eric Hotchkiss [01:57]

Oh boy. Oh boy. I have a community event tomorrow and I was just maybe it'll happen at night and not during the day, but we'll see.

Christian Solorzano [02:05]

I just, I always find that when there's like thunder and extreme rain, I find it like super Comforting if you're inside and, it's kind of a cool vibe. But so I want to start off by once again just thanking you for the amazing presentation and the great facilitation that you gave with the Chicago Graphic Design Club a few weeks ago at one Design. We had you come and share some of your work and speak with a handful of attendees.

About your process, your work, and I'd love to hear from your perspective, how do you think it went? I think what I found really fascinating is that every facilitator had kind of their own approach to things.

And I was— and I— and as I was floating around to all the different rooms, I was mentally taking notes of things that I want to implement into any time that any time that I'm kind of running a workshop. So I want to hear from you, what— well, yeah, just how do you think it went?

Eric Hotchkiss [03:13]

It was— it went well. It was really fun just hearing everyone's different opinions, especially because everyone— most of the people there were in a similar profession, right? Graphic designers, visual communicators. But the topics were a little bit different because the topics, the questions were about community building and change, right? So hearing different people's perspective on how to do that.

Because I think a lot of people— the question is more about design in general, and to have people who are thinking about it from visual communication, which is— it was interesting to hear people answer those questions from a perspective that weren't from just their jobs, right? And how to approach this as a job, but more so how to approach this as like a person, right? These things, and these things that might mean more to them. Really interesting.

We started talking about community, and I was like, let's break down community from like the big C community that everyone's afraid to critique or talk about or be wrong about. Let's just talk about your community, like you and your friends and your family. Let's talk about that, right? And then we're able to really, we're able to dive into it a lot deeper that way.

Christian Solorzano [04:19]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'd love to hear about your, one of the questions that I always like to ask our guests is regarding origin stories. And I'd love to hear about how you got into design. And I know that your background is in mechanical engineering.

And then that transition into a master's of design at SAIC. And I want to know if you've always sort of been a creator or like a maker since a young age, like sort of paint a picture for us of what were you like as a kid and was there anything in particular that sort of— Be a path for you?

Eric Hotchkiss [04:56]

So I will say that I was an engineer because I didn't know what industrial design was. So I'll tell that brief story how I got into it. The only reason I ever became an industrial designer— I didn't know what it was— because I dated someone who was an industrial designer, and I had a lot of tools. And I'll talk about like my history of making things, but also because I had a lot of tools, I was good at making things.

I was like hooking up a legal cable in college and fixing brakes and stuff. So I had the tools to make stuff. And so I would help my then partner do that stuff. I was like, oh, what is this? Like industrial design. I never knew about this, right? Also, it's kind of one of the reasons I do the things that I do in terms of community, just because of exposure. If I hadn't met that person who exposed me to industrial design, I wouldn't be here, right?

Because I wouldn't, I wouldn't probably ever learned what it was until I was like much further in my career. And so, and I bumped into industrial designer.

But yeah, my background is just like making, and when I say making, when I was a kid, I didn't have a lot of means. I mean, my parents did a lot for us, but in terms of like, when I say as a kid, I grew up in the community. I grew up in Englewood, and Englewood is kind of block to block.

I grew up with like my— I call my cohort of friends that grew up on my block with, and we— so I say we, I'm talking about that group of people, and we made everything, right? Just because we didn't either start off with not having the means to get the stuff. And ended with us not wanting to get the stuff because we figured out how to make it, right? So, for example, a lot of people lock up their garbage cans, right?

That's probably because of us, because we learned that garbage cans had axles and bearings in it. So we used that to make go-karts, right? So there's a point when in the '90s, most people in the neighborhood probably were missing wheels on their garbage cans. So we're taking them off to make our go-karts, right?

We were building clubhouses. When they were deconstructing buildings in my neighborhood, like a lot of vacant lots. So I remember that time point, we were raiding those construction sites for screws and nails and spent like Sundays unbending nails with like a hammer, right?

And I remember growing up that way and just not being afraid of making things, right? Ninja Turtles was a big thing for us. And they sold these little Ninja Turtle sets. We got like the nose and the face and like the weapons, but they were really expensive. We figured out how to make it. You can make like the bow of a broomstick. You can make the scythe out of like coat hangers. Nunchucks is just finding a random chain and like cutting a broomstick in half.

Oh, now we gotta learn how to saw stuff, right? And realizing that when I got into high school and college, people didn't have that upbringing, didn't have that relationship with making. I was like, oh, that was a unique experience, right?

Christian Solorzano [07:35]

Yeah.

Eric Hotchkiss [07:36]

So I say that making, but also making in community has always been a part of me.

Christian Solorzano [07:41]

Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, I had a little Batman action figure, but it had no cape. And I would cut a garbage bag, a black garbage bag, and I would like poke its head through it and it would create the cape. And I thought it was like so cool. And then like I would cut the ends to kind of give it like some design.

And I, and I was, I would be so proud of myself whenever I made like a nice looking cape with a garbage bag. So I can kind of relate. To that. Yeah. So in addition to like, the things that you were making with your friends, what were some of the things that you were into? What were some of the objects that you were drawn to? Was it— I'm curious about like the culture that you were consuming, like the music, the film, the fashion.

Was there anything in particular that you felt like you were sort of gravitating towards?

Eric Hotchkiss [08:34]

As a kid, it was— yeah, I was gravitating towards the same things that everyone on the South Side was gravitating towards. I'm not sure if that necessarily had an effect on my making. I will say this, that my neighborhood is very protective of me, right? So I got to try a lot of things very early.

Probably didn't realize how weird of a kid I was because nobody ever called me weird, right? But Everyone made an effort to make sure that I got to experience things, right? So if somebody knew how to skateboard, they showed me how to skateboard, right? Working on bikes and trying to make them look flashy, right? That was a thing. There was somebody had tools and showed us how to do that. When I say someone, a slightly older kid, right?

So if I'm 12, there's a 15-year-old getting these tools. However, right? Whether they are like buying the tools, they're borrowing the tools from their parents.

Swiping the tools to somewhere else. They know that like, oh, there's like 2 or 3 kids who are interested in this. So we're gonna— and these are like 15, 16-year-olds, right? Going like, we're gonna invest in them. But yeah, it was just a culture of that, of the sharing, and, super into hip-hop, but also the culture of the South Side, just like in terms of like juke music and things like that.

And the more I think about— you asked that question, I think that did have a big influence on me because it didn't seem like this far-off thing. Everything I was connected to seems like something I could do, right?

The music of the time I was listening to, that Chicago house music, you can really see how someone would make it, right? It didn't seem like this far-off concept. Even though I was into hip-hop and things like that, the house music of Chicago was something I knew that could be made in Chicago. I knew how that process went. I understood how someone recorded a tape and went to, a mall and sold their tape or went to, the corner store.

And gave him a bunch of tapes, right? Nothing seemed so foreign to me that I could not contribute to it.

Christian Solorzano [10:25]

Yeah, I remember the house music cassette tapes, and they— some of the ones that I remember the most were the ones that had like Mickey Mouse like on the COVID And the cassettes were always really interesting because they wouldn't be like— they would be— they'd be like purple or blue. Like they were always like some kind of like different color.

And I remember my cousin My cousin had them and I would sometimes steal them just because they were like a cool thing to hold and to like experience. So I like that. Yeah.

Eric Hotchkiss [10:56]

Yeah. I even just think of even like the value of things. Really into sneaker culture. Never had the money to buy sneakers, right? I would say my entire neighborhood was really into sneaker culture. Didn't have the money to buy those sneakers, but I had a friend. He was one of my best friends. His name was Rayvon Pugh. And he would— he was really good at drawing. He was older than us, but really good at drawing.

And he would draw pictures of Jordans, and we would pay him a quarter for it, right? And he would just draw. And that's what we'd do all day. And we'd buy these pictures of Jordans, of Jordans, and like Scottie Pippen's shoes. And yeah, just realizing the value of not necessarily the shoe, but like of his talent. He was making money sketching these things that are of high value, but we just Wanted the picture of it, right? We were happy with that.

Christian Solorzano [11:40]

Yeah. Yeah. And as you were, as you were creating and, making all of these things with your friends, did you recognize that you were cultivating like this education that at some point would be able to transform into like a career and into teaching, into community building? Or—

Eric Hotchkiss [11:58]

No, I did not at all. Right. Okay. Actually, the idea of community building and me thinking about this didn't happen until later. Into my career. My father was a big influence. He made everything. He made it outside, right? So there was a time when, as a toy, we'd make these little pop guns, right? So you take a 2×4 loaded with rubber bands and you put a clothespin on the end.

And for those listening, you probably don't know what I'm talking about, but you can probably ask someone who's like between the ages of like 30 and 50, like what they look like.

And you load it up with like maybe like 50 rubber bands. You shoot a bottle cap. I remember my father going like, oh, that looks dangerous. He didn't really want us having guns. We realized what we were trying to do. He's like, okay, how about this? This is how I use a jigsaw, right? How about we make— all right, I'll let you make something in the shape of a gun, but it's gonna shoot a rubber band, maybe 2.

And you can run around shooting that, right? With the idea that it's kids who have this, have these very nice looking things, and that influenced the kids who are using like the 2×4 Basically actual rifles, 'cause they loaded up with rubber bands, to like, oh, I understand this might hurt someone, but that one looks cool. I want that one. And he just showed us how to make things. And that became important to us understanding like the value of things, not just a trade, but like value.

Like we made this one, so this is cooler, right? I didn't recognize that as something that became important to my practice until much later. Much later.

Christian Solorzano [13:21]

Yeah, I like that. So you're born and raised in Englewood and you still reside there. And you do a lot of community activation and you're really focused on, sometimes I find that people when they're like, and it happened to me, I grew up on the South Side as well. And one of the first things that like, I don't live there anymore, like I've since moved.

And I always really admire the people that sort of like stick around and kind of help uplift and like do things for their community. So I'd love to hear about some of the things that you're doing in Englewood now. I know you shared some of the projects a few weeks ago at our event, but I know that you're the founder of Made in Englewood.

And I'd love to hear you maybe speak a little bit about the origination of that and some of the things that you've been doing, because that was founded in, was it 2016 with your friend? Right.

Eric Hotchkiss [14:22]

Yeah. So a couple origin stories to it. So I'll talk about my status of like making and working with community, but I want to talk about how that formed. I actually didn't even want to call it Made in Englewood, to be honest, because I, being from there and still living there, I didn't like the idea of people basically using the value of the Englewood name, which is, at the time associated with negativity.

And to go like, oh, look at me because I'm not doing negative. That was the connotation. It wasn't really said, but, you see this a lot in other neighborhoods. Like anything that has like a buzz to it, people want to latch onto it, right? I didn't want to call it Made in Englewood, but also we were doing a little exhibition on the plaza on 63rd Street.

Where we're just showing people how to make things, right? So my partner at the time, still my friend, Andre Westhill, He was really good at making things out of wood using pallets. I was really good at making things out of concrete. We were like, oh, let's do an ex— we were talking about doing an exhibition together. And then as we were talking about exhibitions, we talked about like how much we actually love teaching.

And we were like, okay, well, how about we just not do an exhibition the way people traditionally do it? How about we just set up in our neighborhood and we show people how to— we show people cool things, then have them come back and show them how to make it, right? But we didn't have money, so we had to fund it. So we started selling items, right? We started branding Made in Englewood.

I wanted to brand Made in Englewood because I wanted to show that Similar how you see made in China or made in Mexico or made in Indonesia, that we can produce things and export them out here too. But we couldn't afford a patent. So we were like, oh, what happens if someone goes, that's a cool idea, we're going to copyright that? We discovered like, oh, we name our business that, that's free. Even if someone copyrighted it, we can still use that name, right?

So the only reason we did it was like a legal thing. But it started out that way. And we started— so we did this exhibition.

It didn't work really well. We started thinking, what else can we do? We started making things, skateboards. We were doing that for a while, making skateboards. But then this idea of employment, employing people came into picture, right? Okay, we're gonna keep making these things. How do we make it bigger, right? And we realized with employment, we couldn't keep making things, right? Because say we're making chairs and skateboards, whatever. We couldn't compete if we wanted to sell things in our neighborhood.

We couldn't compete with like mass manufacturing, like Walmarts, et cetera. So we chose to start doing larger one-off projects, right? So working on a couple of projects we've done in the cultural center, such as the learning lab or the welcome center. What's really important about these larger projects is they're one-offs, meaning we can train someone on the fly, right?

I can't train someone to make a chair each time I want to make a chair. There's no room in the budget. But things that are larger one-offs, you put in the budget a lot of margin for error. So now I can train someone to do these things, right? So that way we can employ people and teach at the same time versus having to bring someone in that has a specific skill set. That was one of the origins of Made in Englewood.

Another thing was I was the person always making things, so I had tools to fix bikes and things like that, and kids always pull up to my house like, hey, can you help me fix the bike on a random day? So I wanted to make it more— I was like, okay, let's pick Sunday, right? And we started working on bikes, and it's like, okay, I have this old motorcycle sitting around. Let's work on that, right? That's the next step. So start working on that.

And then I was like, oh, we're learning skill sets that you probably aren't learning in school, right? No, this is math. This is how we— I was telling kids at the time, as an engineer, this is the way I do math, not necessarily the math you're learning in school, right? It's like, okay, design has this— it's like a pinwheel where it touches all these different avenues.

So okay, this is a way to probably reach students who aren't maybe interested in math or the sciences, et cetera, in schools, they think of this as like art and fun. Okay, this has an educational component to it also. So those are the 2 kind of converging ideas that made Eaglewood came about.

Christian Solorzano [18:19]

And I know that a big part of your approach is designing with the community. And it seems like a lot of the programming and initiatives that you were creating were in direct response to something that you were seeing, whether it's, kids coming over to ask you to fix their bikes, and then that's sort of turning into something.

But at any point, was there like a grand vision that you had, or was it sort of like— I'm curious if you had like a mentor, like a guide sort of walk you through this vision that you wanted to put forth, or whether it was kind of like improvised.

Eric Hotchkiss [18:55]

Yeah, I would say it was planned. So as I'm doing this, right? So I'm doing Made in Englewood. And then in 2018, starting in 2017, I got brought onto the Douglas 18 Project, which is a miniature golf course located in Douglas Park. I'll talk about that a little bit more. But what I'm realizing now is this, and I'm also starting a class at SAIC. At the time, it was called SAIC Design at Home and Square. Now it's called Social Engagement Studio.

I'm realizing that a lot of the things I'm doing have value in terms of being taught, in terms of this idea of what we call co-design, which I don't use that term as much anymore.

Christian Solorzano [19:38]

Why not? I'm curious why you don't use that term anymore.

Eric Hotchkiss [19:42]

Yeah, I feel like co-design came from participatory design, which is a Dutch term. But what they were doing is— while participatory design is getting participation, it necessarily doesn't go far enough, right? Because it's fine to get participation, but what does that mean in the grander scheme of things, right? How— yeah. I— a lot of my work, and I talk a lot about my— what I talk about transformative design is in critique of those a little bit, right?

Especially with the work I do, because a lot of— I don't believe participation is enough, right? As a matter of fact, a lot of times I believe that can lead to, if you believe that's only enough, placation, right? Just have enough people in the room to participate does not mean you've actually empowered anyone to actually be a part of that design, right? And then once you look at that, how do I empower people to be a part of the design? It takes a lot more effort.

And sometimes we sugarcoat things with the idea of participatory design, which I do think participatory design has value, but we conflate them as like, Participatory design being— meaning you're actually engaging people and empowering them to do their own designs. That's not necessarily true, right? Even think about how it came about. You think about it coming about in a mono-society like the Dutch, right? At the time when they're coming about it, '60s, '70s, they're not a super diverse place at the time, right?

So you don't have a lot of the African immigration and Caribbean immigration at the time. So you're talking about a similar group of people. That doesn't work. Say, in Chicago, you have such a diversity of people, right? And it gets a lot more complicated. So you just take, say, participatory design and say, I'm gonna do it in like a Chicago or the UK. That doesn't work, right? And it's disingenuous to say that it does work so easily.

Christian Solorzano [21:33]

Yeah, I agree with you. And that's been my critique too on that particular word, just because I always ask like, well, who's participating? And I feel like if you ask that question, you can sort of— that whole concept kind of crumbles because it's— I, yeah, I agree with you. Yeah.

Eric Hotchkiss [21:51]

And a lot of my practice is thinking about how do I do that? I don't actually— I always say that even though I'm proposing the idea of transformative design, I don't have an answer because I'm doing it and critiquing each one of our projects, right? Each one of our projects is me trying it and failing. And I actually document like how it fails, right?

I know everyone thinks they go well, but in terms of how I'm actually trying to do things, I like to document how it didn't go necessarily according to plan, how it didn't necessarily live up to these values of transformative design so I can fix it next time, and being very critical of my work and honest with it, right?

But yeah, so a lot of my work— that Douglas 18 was very special because that was a miniature golf course that was truly designed by teams, right? It was a lot of— I won't go through all the people who were involved in it. It's a lot of different groups. And I don't want to forget anyone, but a lot of different people were involved in that project.

But at the end of the day, there was a dilapidated miniature golf course in Douglas Park, which is located in North Lawndale, where it hadn't been touched in years. I wouldn't say, at that point, like 15 years. Everything was ripped up. There was no actual golf course there. There was an infrastructure in terms of a landscape, but nothing there. So we started looking at, okay, how do we develop it? And we had support. One of the bigger groups, I'll say, was Lincoln Park Zoo.

They gave us a lot of financial support. And not just financial support, actually being there, which is really important. They were there every time we were there working with the students. But how do you give this agency to these young adults to develop this golf course, right? We can develop the golf course, but if we can make a really nice thing, but if we just drop it in a neighborhood, who uses it? Who cares about it, right? Who takes care of it, right?

It has to be designed by that community in the way they want it to. So it's very important that we don't just kind of give it as an assignment for students to say, okay, here's a golf course, but you just do this small portion, or maybe you draw a cool picture, but we're gonna bring this to professionals to actually do it. They were involved in the planning of it. They were involved in the idea of it.

When we first started it, we weren't even sure if we're gonna do a golf course. We said, hey, we want to educate people around birds and conservation, right? How do we do that? And they came up with the idea that, oh, maybe birds are similar to us in terms of how we are not being listened to and how we're being forced out of the community, right? Or how these spaces aren't necessary for us. I'm like, cool, we can't just pop a golf course up there.

We have to get people used to your artwork. So we, on 16th Street, we did murals, we made seating, we made tons of objects related to this idea, put up and down 16th Street in North Lawndale for people to get the idea of what we wanted to do. Once they bought into that, so they were responsible for the community buy-in. That's part of every project. So they started that, right? And there's, okay, now we have to test these things out.

There's no such thing as a professional miniature golf course designer. So we have to figure it out. So we made little mobile golf courses and we took them around to, during the summer, took them around to block parties and community events, had people play them, right? Hey, would you like a golf course? Do you even like playing golf? So we got the buy-in there. Next thing to do is start designing it.

We designed it using pool noodles and UPS boxes. We realized we can get boxes from the post office for free. And we could buy pool noodles because that's all a miniature golf course is bumpers and obstacles, right? And we made it and we invited elementary school students to come play it and test it out, right? So we did that, then just so on and so on.

Then we started designing things and making them out of wood and paper mache because we couldn't really— we didn't really have access to making things out of like some of the more sturdier materials where we were, right? But we made them realistically. And I think even on the webs, if you Google Douglas 18, you can still see those prototypes. Some of those prototypes look better than the real thing that was out there, right?

And then they got involved with architects, designers, engineers, where they're redlining drawings, right? Because they had actually made this golf course. When a professional came in and said like, oh, we need to move this 2 feet to the left for ADA accessibility, they can go, oh, we know what ADA accessibility is. We've actually made it. And no, it doesn't need to be moved 2 inches to the left because it plays playability. Move it back, right?

They were involved in the, even in the marketing of it, right? They ran a whole Instagram account and campaigned for it, right? So they were involved in every aspect of it. It was something that hadn't really been seen before, haven't seen before. It's also probably the reason it took 4 years, right? I learned that these processes are really slow, but really fruitful too.

Christian Solorzano [26:15]

Yeah. And as you're engaging in a project like this, how do you typically measure success? How do you At the end of the project, what are some of the things that let you know if it's been a successful project or not?

Eric Hotchkiss [26:31]

Some of the success I measure is, does the neighborhood know about it? That's really important. A lot of times you can drop a resource in the community and who knows about it? Everybody who's not in that neighborhood, right? And because I'm still present in North Lawndale, I get to ask people, oh, do you know about the golf course, right? Because that means if it wasn't successful, that only means the students didn't care about it and not telling people, right?

Looking at employment, do students still— do they work there, right? Because this is their golf course. Looking at, is it taken care of? If the community doesn't want it, you'll see, right? You'll see the neglect and how things get abused, et cetera. But also for the students, just looking at their journey too.

Look, and following up with those students, what are they doing now? Are they still involved in arts or design? I still keep in touch with a lot of those students. We did several, and this is through Lincoln Park Zoo, and they had their own learning goals and outcomes, is them doing interviews to see if they're meeting these benchmarks, if they're learning from the process.

But for me, it was just to see, do people keep showing up? That's the main thing for me, especially in designs. We see a lot of beautiful design. It's always photographed the first day. I'm interested in what it looks like 2 years later. That thing looks beautiful on the first day. Is it, is it all gray and rained on and dirty 2 weeks later? Right. No one ever photographs things 3 years later.

Christian Solorzano [27:51]

Yeah. No, I like that. And so with, so I want to hear if you're sometimes what I find interesting about designers is that we tend to crave control sometimes with projects. It's like we have a vision and we have like maybe a particular way of like doing something. So when it comes to these designing with projects, how do you find yourself feeling like you're giving up control when you're sort of allowing other people or involving other people in the process? Or what's that relationship like?

Because I know for me, sometimes I can struggle with that sometimes. It's like, Something needs to be a certain way and sort of it's like my vision and then—

Eric Hotchkiss [28:39]

Oh, it's so hard. Yes. And I don't think people acknowledge that, I am a bit of a control freak about things and to give up that agency is a big thing. It's necessary. Yeah, it takes so much more planning. I have— I basically have 100 ways to do that project before I propose it to anyone, even just so I can guide people through it, right? If I come through with 2 plans and you don't like those 2 plans, then what do I do now?

Either I take it away from them, tell them how I wanna do it, or I can't guide them through the process. I mean, they could get frustrated or I could fail, et cetera. So I literally, before I start a project, I plot out maybe like 100 different ways that it can go. I have to learn about all of them. So yeah, I would say like, for me to look like I'm relaxed takes a whole week of me being stressed out.

Christian Solorzano [29:25]

Yeah. I can relate. And with all these projects that involve community and specifically, in the cases where they're involving children or like, an emerging generation of people that are going to be the leaders of tomorrow. For you, what do you like? What kind of legacy do you wish to leave behind? And is that something you think about?

Eric Hotchkiss [29:51]

Yes. One of the reasons I got into design is I think about how we how anthropologists look at things, right? We don't— stories and things that are written down aren't the first thing we look at, right? Because people lie, right? I can say that— I don't know. Here's an example. I always give this example to my students as like a joke. I'm bald. I can write a lot about my hair and how luxurious it is, right? But you come to my bathroom, you'll see a shaver.

That tells you what my status on my hair looks like, right? Either I'm shaving on purpose, or, because I wanted to be bald, or because I have to, right? But it tells you what that is. That artifact tells me what it is, right? And I wonder what artifacts we're leaving behind. I wonder what artifacts my community is leaving behind to tell our stories, right? So yeah, a big part of this is the ability to create artifacts that tell our story.

And with the objects that we make, right? Example, I think about Pilsen and Humboldt Park and the changing demographics. When we talk about Pilsen and Humboldt Park, we still talk about Humboldt Park as being a Puerto Rican neighborhood. We still talk about Pilsen as being a Mexican and Mexican American neighborhood. But that's because the artifacts are there. It's because of the murals and because of the— I always blank on the name of it, but the flags, right? Those are monuments and artifacts of who was there.

Even though Humboldt Park isn't predominantly Puerto Rican anymore, we still talk about it only because the artifact is there. We don't talk about that in other neighborhoods and how they've changed because they don't have the artifacts to remind us. So I think these artifacts and us telling our story is very important, especially for my community, which I— yeah. And for us to make those artifacts, I can start making them, right?

In my lifetime, I might get maybe 10. But if I expand it towards everyone as a community, right, and we're all making these things, right, Maybe if I'm being selfish, a little bit of my fingerprint will be left in each one of them because I kind of started the movement. But at least we'll have these artifacts to tell our stories, right? So instead of it being me, if I taught 10 people, now there's 10 people making it. Now we have 100 artifacts, right?

I kind of think of it that way.

Christian Solorzano [32:01]

Yeah. And growing up, what were some stories that moved you, or what were some stories that you were interested in?

Eric Hotchkiss [32:08]

I, in terms of artifacts, one thing I was always interested in, like New York culture, right? The graffiti and the hip-hop and the things that came out of it, right? I always thought about that because we still, for shorthand, use like the Adidas shell toe when we think about someone breakdancing and hip-hop, right? The graffiti movement, how that hasn't changed as much. Well, it's changed a lot, but we still have, I guess, kind of a stereotype that we think about that.

I was really interested in that. But I was also interested in the things that we did. I knew that they had value. I didn't understand it until I got older. So I'll give you an example of how we made things. We didn't have a lot of basketball courts. No one repaired the basketball courts we had. Nobody repaired it when they broke, right? When the rim broke or whatever. We started making our own.

We take a milk crate, cut the bottom out of it, put it on like a light pole and stake it and, nail it up there. And then eventually we make a backboard to go up there to realize we're just shooting our basket, our basketball into somebody's yard. There's nothing, there's no backboard there. And I didn't really know it at the time. I did a project on this, but those— eventually the milk crate would fall down, right? Or someone would take it down.

Those backboards stayed up there. If you walk around alleys to this day, you'll see big 4×4 pieces of plywood up there, right? They're still up there because nobody can get them down. 'Cause someone took a ladder, walked it up there, nailed it up there, can't get it down. That's an artifact of how people used to shape space, like how me and my friends used to shape space, right?

Christian Solorzano [33:41]

Yeah.

Eric Hotchkiss [33:41]

So, and I think about that. I actually did a project where I was walking, I was making backboards for kids, and I would make the basketball rim 'cause I can fabricate things. I'm a metal fabricator also. It was cheaper for me to fabricate these metal rims. They take me like $5 to make a rim and the plywood. And I would tell kids, if you would paint them, paint the backboard, I will not only give it to you, I will install it for you.

We only did about— I only got like 8 of them up. But what's beautiful about those is those things aren't coming down. So in 10 years, now it's a piece of plywood up there that has a story on it, right?

And it's a painted narrative out there that says like, this is something we did, right? So I think a lot about those in terms of stories and narratives. A lot of this is stuff that I recognized as a kid and didn't place much value in it. And as an adult, as I really think about it, it's like, oh, that had a lot of value.

Christian Solorzano [34:31]

Yeah. And have you considered, or maybe you're already doing this, but preserving some of the oral history behind some of these artifacts, whether it's through recorded conversations, interviews, a publication, a book?

Eric Hotchkiss [34:45]

Yes, that's actually starting to happen now. I have a couple projects. I have a couple sculptures that are going up in Englewood this summer. I call them power stations. They're these 8-foot-tall power sculptures that have faces on them. So one thing is that there haven't been a lot of documentation or public documentation of Englewood residents.

I want to say 5— no, let's see, 6 years ago, RAGE, a resident association of Greater Englewood, did a project where they're just photographing their members and putting them up on billboards, right? So I wouldn't say that is a permanent, and that lasted for a while for whatever the cycle of those billboards are, right? And I was like, that's interesting, right?

That no one's ever done that for Englewood residents, because you go to any other neighborhood, tons of sculptures and busts of people they found important to their community. So I'm making those. The faces aren't necessarily a face of a particular person, but I have been photographing, documenting Englewood residents, and I have like— the faces are amalgamation of like Everyone's face, right? So people see it and go, I know that person, kind of. But no, you don't. That's a fake face.

But in them, I'm also starting— as I'm photographing people, they're telling me these stories I know. I'm telling you a story about the basketball rim. They're telling me other stories. I'm like, oh man, this is interesting. So now my practice is recording those stories. Those stories are going to be— because each of these power stations has power because they're solar powered, it's now going to have an audio component where it tells these stories, right? So it's now like an audible story, audible documentation of it.

Also because that's the kind of way that we document stories. They're not usually written down. They're told orally. So I'm going to keep up with this. So it's still an oral story, not necessarily a printed story, because there's no evidence of that being a way we necessarily tell stories often.

Christian Solorzano [36:32]

And there's something that oral storytelling covers that sometimes written just can't. Yeah, like the way that we, that we speak, or the way, our mannerisms or whatever. Sometimes it's hard to express that on paper.

Eric Hotchkiss [36:50]

Yeah, it's really interesting with students who, they always say like, oh, let's just make a zine. I have to tell them like, oh, you're saying a zine because you're in art school. A lot of our community doesn't know what a zine is, right? Because it's shorthand for magazine, right? But yeah, they don't know what a zine is, right? Unless you come from Either that, a like-minded community like that, typically in art school, right?

Christian Solorzano [37:11]

Yeah.

Eric Hotchkiss [37:11]

Or you come from like a punk rock aesthetic or something like that. You don't know what a zine is. And just even for people who understand like these different ways of telling stories, and not every way of telling a story is used in every community, right?

Christian Solorzano [37:24]

Yeah. And when it comes to— so, like one of the things that I've been— that I often talk about with my community and in a recent conversation that I had with the Chicago Graphic Design Club team is ways to sort of respond to the ugliness that's happening in the country. And a lot of like the division and, politics and all of those things that I think a lot of us are maybe fatigued with hearing because we see it all the time.

And I tend to be a really hopeful person. And, like when I see people like yourself that are like, uplifting communities and that to me, seeing organizations that are grassroots, that are about designing with, to me that inspires me and it sort of makes me believe that everything's going to be fine because it just— I don't know whether I'm being delusional or maybe I'm being like, blind or wrongfully optimistic, but I do get a sense that the good guys always win.

So I would love to know how you typically, if you're an optimist or just what is your overall attitude towards what's happening. And yeah, just, I'd love to get your pulse on just your overall feelings towards everything and sort of how that influences your— Whatever.

Eric Hotchkiss [38:53]

So I would say 2 things. One, with the idea of like designing for people, I would say, and I talk to students about this a lot, is that's design. So the same method I use for, say, design for community, is I used to design products for Weber. And in that, I didn't just get to make things. They had people test it out.

I forget her name now, but it was an older woman who was in charge of testing things out, and she would tell you exactly how she felt, and we had to go remake it, right?

That's kind of the way— that is designing with, right? We actually do it a lot when we're designing for, clients who pay a lot, right? But when we do it for community, it becomes special, right? I always say, play design, sometimes we, I don't know, we overvalue ourselves a little bit. We always, we say like, we're saving the world when we do this special thing. They know you're not. You're doing this thing you're supposed to be doing. It's not that special.

I don't think what I'm doing is that special either. The same way I design cast ironware for like Weber, same way I'm designing community spaces in North Lawndale or Englewood or Austin, right?

But in terms of how I feel about things, it's really interesting because I feel like there's a lot of Talk about some of the work I do now. But a lot of the work I'm doing in those neighborhoods, a lot of those community groups have been doing that work for a long time because it was necessary.

I know the term, we use the term disinvested, and there's another term I stole from someone else. It is overexploited. I always say neighborhoods like Englewood are overexploited, but we still pay the same tax because we just don't get the same resources. But in overexploited communities around the world, they've been dealing with this, they've been doing this for a long time. So I think about W.E.B. Du Bois. He was doing mapping and infographics. I'm not sure if people know that, right?

A lot of these things are not new. They've been happening in marginalized communities for, what, 100 years now? And so when I say I'm not to say optimistic. It's just the way that the history of things being made, especially— I can speak from a Black perspective, right? The way that things have historically been made have been under these same pressures, right? It's just oh, this is happening. Well, how do we fix it, right?

Marginalized communities have always had to go, that's happening. Take a deep breath. Let me figure out how to fix it for the rest of the world, right? I'm just looking at the fact that, yeah, people have been under the same type of duress, if not more, for years, and they have succeeded. So why can't we?

Christian Solorzano [41:29]

Yeah. I like that. I like that approach as well. And just that way of thinking, because I do, I do sometimes get a sense that there's— it's easy to feel sort of paralyzed or paralysis when you're confronted with problems or things that just feel like they're of such a great magnitude. And I'm just always a big believer of like, all right, well, let's do something. And if it's, and if it fails, then so be it. We can learn from it and do something else.

Eric Hotchkiss [42:12]

I'm big on history. So I went to like, I went to an all-Black elementary school, which was in Eaglewood. And one of the things I found out is that it was different from other people's upbringings. We learned a lot about African American history, way more than like the general American history. And I didn't realize that until I got to like maybe college, that I realized a lot of students didn't have the same education I had.

But some of the things I knew is just say, George Washington Carver, right? Brilliant scientist. He was doing participatory design and co-design, or what I call transformative design, is he designed the— I hope I don't get this wrong— the Jesup Wagon. Basically a wagon, a mobile wagon that he took to rural towns to teach people some of the methods of agriculture, right?

Because he realized that a lot of the— in Reconstruction, a lot of the working-class folks, former slaves, couldn't leave to go to a school to learn something, right? So, okay, but they had all the knowledge of how to do things. He had a little bit of knowledge, they had a lot of knowledge. How do I make this learning environment? So he developed the— I think it's a G-SUP or G-SUP. I'm not quite sure.

This wagon, this mobile educational wagon, right? This was like a charrette in co-design over 100 years ago, and we don't give him credit, right? So these things, none of these things are new. We just, we don't give credit to those marginalized folks that they've been doing it. So I, a lot of things I'm doing aren't new. A lot of things that people claim to be doing aren't new. They've been happening for a while.

But they do happen in these— of the idea of when you're marginalized, having to be creative with how you move, right?

The idea of that mobile educational wagon was a very creative idea, right? And we see lots of examples of that right now today, right, of these people taking education to the people, have these creative ways of doing education. But that was born out of Reconstruction, right? And I think that having those restrictions fosters a lot of creativity. And that's something I'm really interested in today is what creative inventions are we going to— are going to come out of this time period right now?

Christian Solorzano [44:24]

Yeah, I agree. I, yeah, I try to remind my students of that. That there's one of the things that the Design Club, one of our focus areas is to always be operating in this multidimensional timeline in which we're thinking about the past, we're thinking about the present, and we're also thinking about the future.

And we're sort of bringing all those 3 things together to ensure that we're learning from the past, but then that we're also being responsible stewards For something that someone else might have to care for, in the future. And I find that just like that little shift in mindset, I think to me it just feels like it elevates everything to like a higher degree of care and thoughtfulness. And I feel like that's kind of what you're alluding to right now.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'd love to know like what brings you joy? What makes Eric happy? And then I'll ask you what makes Eric mad.

Eric Hotchkiss [45:32]

What makes me happy? Food. I love food. A lot of my research and design is about food. I will never do food, make food professionally because it is a joy of mine. I think I've gotten, I think to me I've gotten pretty good at it. My friends say I got pretty good at it. That's because I cook for them. So of course they're gonna say I'm good at it. Actually, part of my project I'm working on right now is Called Provisions.

It's an Afro-diasporic community kitchen, right? The idea is I'm building it with my neighbors, so we're teaching them welding. We're all the— everything is everything. Absolutely everything in the space is intentional to talk about, kind of Black spatial theory. But beyond that, just having conversation around food, right? Because food becomes a common denominator to talk about things, right? Talk about history. So a lot of our histories are in food.

I can talk about food all day. Matter of fact, at the one design, at the, in our panel, that's— we spent— my group probably spent— once food got introduced, and it wasn't me, that was somebody else who introduced food. I was just— I warned everyone I can nerd out about food. Everyone's like, go ahead, right? But we spent probably half an hour talking about food. And actually, every conversation after that was structured around talking about design through food, right? Food makes me happy.

Christian Solorzano [46:43]

In general.

Eric Hotchkiss [46:44]

Yeah, food makes me happy. Also, Watching how people go about creating their own spaces that weren't necessarily designed for them makes me happy. Every time I see someone sitting in their front yard doing something that you wouldn't usually see, right?

I know— not calling anyone out on my block— I know right now if I go home, there's a couple people— I'm gonna fix it for them— but they have a couple of rims that they just have sitting on the sidewalk, and they're probably barbecuing because it's nice, right? I'm actually gonna go I actually have some more rims. I'm gonna weld some feet to it just to lift it up for them. But I was like, that probably looks nuts to someone driving down the street.

But I think that's awesome that they live in an apartment building. They can't barbecue and they can't have grills in their apartment building. But when they found a rim, put a grate on top, and they're right there on the sidewalk barbecuing. I was like, that's awesome. That's someone making this, making these spaces fit for them. In terms of what makes me mad, selfishness.

Christian Solorzano [47:38]

Selfishness.

Eric Hotchkiss [47:39]

I think that's how we get in these situations is everyone, the me attitude of things, right? I realize whenever I hear people talking, there's a lot of I statements and never we statements, right? And that selfishness is how we get in these situations where we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about a greater system, right? Because we all belong to a system. That's how we get into these situations, right?

I think about how I understood capitalism as a young kid when I realized I was in kindergarten. I realized I can— I would trade students nickels for dimes, right? They go, oh, the nickel's bigger. Yeah, give me your dime. And from that, I was like, this is how people make money. I get it. Until I realized that I went to grammar school in my neighborhood. Once we got out of school, we all went to the candy store. And now I trade those nickels for dimes.

I had all the money, they didn't. We still can't enjoy the candy, right? So I realized that was a system, okay, I got all the money selfishly. But then once I got exposed to the system, we all go to the candy store and the act of enjoyment is all us enjoying together. We can't because I have all the money, right?

And I was like, that was me understanding, systematically, oh, okay, maybe that wasn't— that selfish thing wasn't a good idea. I wish we could, as a collective, understand that, right? Yeah, I can work these things, but it ruins something over here, and it basically ruins the entire system. But yeah, so that's that type of selfishness. It's the thing that makes me angry. It makes me angry at design, how we talk about design.

It makes me angry in the world in general, just like the idea of selfishness.

Christian Solorzano [49:17]

Yeah. And is there anything about— I feel like every designer has like their one thing that they're a snob about, whether it's typography, color, layouts. Is there anything about you that it's like your one thing that you like really obsess about when it comes to your craft?

Eric Hotchkiss [49:35]

Oh, where do we start? I'm a snob about, in general, I'm a snob about intentionality. And I'm really a snob about intentionality when it comes to materials, right? Okay. Like doing the thing just because you like, oh, why'd you do that? Oh, because I made it out of plywood. Why? Oh, because plywood was available. There's a million materials on Earth, right?

Christian Solorzano [49:58]

Yeah.

Eric Hotchkiss [49:58]

I'm a big snob about materials and materiality, and especially with designers, because you have us designers have access to either us fabricating— when I say designers, I'm talking about physical designers— us either fabricating or paying someone else to fabricate. So I get, I get, I get really upset when the materials Materiality doesn't match the purpose.

Really irrationally upset to the point where, yeah, I don't go to a— my partner is constantly telling me to fix my face when we go and look at things in, museums or go to fairs, whatever. She's always going, Eric, fix your face. I'm, looking at it and picking it up, why'd they do this?

Christian Solorzano [50:30]

What are some of your favorite objects as a consumer? Are you into— I know you mentioned, sneakers, but is there is there anything that you're like a collector of, or what are some objects that you really appreciate and maybe some things that you like to keep around you at all times, whether it's like headphones or a pen or whatever?

Eric Hotchkiss [50:52]

Yeah, right now I'm a, I guess I'm a snob too about the tools. I really love well-designed tools. A lot of my well-designed tools I don't even use that much because I like looking at them more than I like using them. I really like well-designed tools because I think they tell a story. I'm starting to collect, starting to collect. When I say tools, I use tools for, fabrication. I also think about tools for, kitchen accessories, right?

Really well-made kitchen accessories, whether it be knives or pots, right? Even, I'm even starting to do a lot of research into that, the idea of, Dutch ovens, right? And how they different. They're different in America versus the Caribbean, right? In Caribbean, they're made out of aluminum, and here they're made out of cast iron. I'm realizing, oh, that's because of, the environments, right? And someone actually changed that. So I've been— I go back and forth here a lot. But I know I casted one 2 years ago.

But now, even in like my provision space, I think I'm gonna like just buy a ton of what they call them Dutchies, Dutch ovens from Jamaica, just because like ours are gonna be exposed to elements a lot too. But even telling those stories, right, of like this thing was made has a high amount of craft in it, and that craft tells a story. So I'm starting to collect those things now.

I have a rationally— I have a large number of cast iron skillets that I don't need, and I can't take care of all of them.

Christian Solorzano [52:16]

Yeah, well, it sounds like it'll be a pain if you ever move, like carrying all those. They're probably really heavy.

Eric Hotchkiss [52:21]

Yeah. So I'm thinking about all the complaints I get from like my partner right now. It's like where we gonna put this? Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [52:34]

So I'm gonna ask you a series of rapid-fire questions. So first one is, what are you listening to at the moment?

Eric Hotchkiss [52:44]

A lot of soca, a lot of bouillon. Big up Dominica. A lot of bouillon music. Yeah, a ton of bouillon music.

Christian Solorzano [52:51]

Okay. And what are you reading?

Eric Hotchkiss [52:55]

I am Going back and rereading a lot of people. So rereading Frantz Fanon, and because I'm realizing a lot of those, a lot of the older writers are saying a lot of things we're saying today. So just rereading them with a different lens now that I'm like in it making things.

Christian Solorzano [53:13]

Okay. And what is something that you can't live without? Like something that you keep on your desk at all times?

Eric Hotchkiss [53:22]

Speakers and headphones. I will literally go home if I don't have music. The day is ruined. Like, if I'm late to a class and students hear this, if I say like I left my keys at home, I didn't leave my keys, I left my headphones. And I couldn't, I couldn't be able to make the walk from like the train to the classroom without having music. Yeah, music is a big inspiration for me. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [53:44]

I can relate. And how do you typically decompress? How do you turn your mind off?

Eric Hotchkiss [53:52]

Cooking. Yeah, it is music and cooking. If you've ever seen anyone's been around me cooking, I hate when people are around me because I actually cook to the music. That's how I know when to be here. My cooking process looks hectic.

People say I flour the kitchen instead of putting flour in a bowl, but I have like a rhythm. It's moving to— it's moving to the music, right? So a lot of it's just I zone out. I put on headphones, I ignore everyone, and I go cook a meal or go cook something.

Christian Solorzano [54:20]

I like that. And if you had— a lot of our listeners are younger people that are just either— some of them are still in college or some of them are entering, the field. But what is your what would be your words of advice for someone that is maybe at that turning point where maybe they're feeling a little scared or Unsure about what's next for them?

Eric Hotchkiss [54:45]

You're that change. The world is changing. So I think this is a cool time to be making things because things are gonna— they have to change, right? We're in a— we're like in a crucial moment where things in 5 to 10 years are gonna be radically different than they are right now. And I think that is exciting because you now get to be that change. Go try that thing right now, right?

When we think about new inventions and new ideas, they all come out of times like this. So for me, I'm old, I'm older, right? I'm a little bit nervous. I'm like, oh man, things are gonna change. It's gonna be radically different. For someone who's new to it, this is where you get to shine, right?

Christian Solorzano [55:25]

Yeah.

Eric Hotchkiss [55:26]

And also, it's like, question everything, right? I tell students this all the time, at least for industrial design, academically, it's only like 50 years old. Maybe it's not even that. There are no real experts. Yeah, and visual communication is different, and like sculpture is different, and design— I'm kind of making this shit up. Question everything. Yeah, your experience is just as valid as your professors. Question it.

Christian Solorzano [55:51]

And at any given point, I know you were mentioning some of the projects that you're working on at the moment, but can you break down sort of like— can you walk us through like what's your typical week like? Like how many projects do you have going on at once? And I know you teach and you have a lot of other initiatives, but what's on your plate?

And is there anything that maybe you haven't shared yet that the listener, that we can look forward to seeing at some point this year?

Eric Hotchkiss [56:19]

Yeah, so I mentioned the sculptures. One of those sculptures is going to be in my space, Provisions. Those will be popping up, but Provisions is the main thing. That's located at 6129 South Main Street in Englewood. And what that is, like I said, it's an Afro-diasporic kitchen. When I say that, it is influenced by the ways that people cook and make things throughout the African diaspora.

Perfectly, let's give it a little bit of intention, because the African diaspora means, I can cook Indian food because of the diaspora in the Caribbean, right? Because people, a lot of Indo-Caribbean people, right? I can cook— well, specifically Chinese food, because there's a big demographic that, right? There's a lot of overlap. I say Afro-diasporic with us, with the African diaspora overlapping other cultures, but that's going to be there.

But also, just in terms of the objects and the space and how it's made, with me showing people how everything is made and us making it together, we're going to be seeing a lot of that. And hopefully it'll be open midsummer this year. But in terms of like the storytelling, it talks a lot about a lot of things we've been talking about today about how people have figured things out from being marginalized. So it's going to be off-grid, it's going to be solar-powered.

But that's a big thing because when I think about beyond America, this happens in the South a lot. Small rural communities in the South don't have strong access to electricity. Used to happen in Chicago in the South Side. And I know you say you grew up on the South Side. If your power went out back in the '90s, you might be without power for 3 or 4 days. So having being off-grid and having knowledge of that's very important.

So off-grid power system, which we're actually showing neighbors how to do, right? So the idea is to have like this unique space that also tells these stories, but also is growing with the neighborhood. So we're not just plopping it down. Like people who help build it can now come weld your fence or install your solar or put an off-grid water system or just make really cool things out of out of welding things, right? Make tables, et cetera, right? So we're growing with the neighborhood.

So that's what's coming up next for me. So typically my day looks like, especially now it's getting warm, is I teach throughout the week. Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays, I'm in my neighborhood working on those things, right? Because it's really important for people to see me actually out there doing it. So I always mention that. I mentioned before that I didn't know what industrial designer was. It's important for a kid to come and see me go, what are you doing? Oh, this is design, right?

Because I don't want some— I just imagine there's another 10-year-old me out there. I don't want that person to have to, date someone who happens to be industrial design to realize this world of design, right? So just for me to make it accessible and expose it to people is really important. So you'll see me out there struggling. Come help me. I'm not that strong, so I can use the help. Okay.

Christian Solorzano [59:08]

Sounds good. Well, I just want to say thank you so much for this conversation. If anyone wants to learn more about you or ask you any questions, what's the best way for someone to get ahold of you?

Eric Hotchkiss [59:21]

I'll say right now, reach out to the Instagram, that Instagram, because they all have different things. So there's made_in_eaglewood, and that's what we do there is usually we're employing neighbors or community members to make these Things. Sometimes they're in the neighborhood, sometimes they're outside the neighborhood, right? So a lot of the construction of Provisions, the stuff that's kind of tedious, will be made in Englewood, that crew doing that. Reach out to me through @flat_eric, with a K. That is my personal Instagram.

Or if you're interested in the Provisions project, there is a Provisions Instagram handle, which I want to make sure I'm telling you the right one, but it is, yeah, @provisions6129. On Instagram, reach out there if you're just interested in like, what's this space? What are we doing with the next workshops? Like when we do workshops, which it'll start as soon as the weather gets stable. It looks like it's getting warm and now it's supposed to storm tomorrow and then maybe snow this weekend. I don't know.

Once the weather gets stable for more than a week and a half, we'll start running workshops out there again. See if people get involved.

Christian Solorzano [60:26]

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much. This was super fun. And I always say that to all the guests that I just, I hope at some point we can do some collaboration or have some overlap between what you're doing and the Chicago Graphic Design Club.

Eric Hotchkiss [60:42]

Yeah, I'd love to.

Christian Solorzano [60:44]

Awesome. All right, well, thank you so much.

Eric Hotchkiss [60:47]

All right, thank you.

Christian Solorzano [60:48]

All right, recording stopped. Thank you so much for sticking around to the end. As I mentioned, if you enjoy conversations like these, we appreciate your support when you leave us a rating wherever you listen. To learn more about us, visit www.chicagographicdesign.club. Thank you, and we'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.