Jennifer
Slepin shows off her signature design: a martini lamp,
created out of a martini shaker. Photo
by Pamela Gerard
Noe Valley craft artist Jennifer Slepin remembers
the moment she
became fascinated with illumination. It was 2003, and she was
painting in her
North Carolina home while treating herself to a martini in a
beautiful blue
baccarat glass. She noticed the way the light shone through
the blue glass and
said to herself, Wouldn’t it be cool to make a lamp with a
glass as a shade?
She sketched out her idea of a martini shaker topped by a
martini glass–shaped
lampshade, took it to a stainless steel manufacturer, and had
a batch of about
25 martini lamps made up. She sold almost all of them.
The idea that just about anything could be turned
into a lamp got
Slepin intrigued. Her older brother Jon, whom she describes as
“very, very
mechanical,” became a part of her new company, SouLighting
(pronounced “soul
lighting”). “I started designing and he started creating,”
said Slepin, walking
around her Sanchez Street house, which is filled with
SouLighting creations.
For years, the siblings worked together, but in
2008, Jon passed
away. Slepin, who is also a registered nurse, was offered a
nursing job in San
Francisco and accepted. Although she spent her formative years
in the South,
Slepin, 53, was born in San Francisco. Her family moved when
she was 10, after
her mother’s death. Still, she’s always called herself a San
Franciscan. “San
Francisco is home.”
She’s been married twice but is currently single,
and her son
Justin lives in New York with his wife. Slepin’s 15-year-old
miniature
Pinscher, Lily, made the move across the country with her into
a house that is
a neighbor to Décor Galore at Sanchez and 24th. After settling
into her new
home, Slepin set up a studio in the garage and continued
experimenting with
light.
“I started with cloth shades, but that’s a lot of
sewing and it’s
laborious.” She switched to playing with paper and taught
herself a process for
creating paper lampshades. “I give most of them away, but
friends told me I
should try to market them.”
To that end, she opened a store on Etsy.com in
the fall (www.etsy.com/people/soulighting),
where she sells her lamps and lampshades. The company’s tag
line is “Lamps for
Your Life.”
“These aren’t just lamps. Each one is different
from the other,
and it’s clear they’re handmade,” she says. She can take
custom orders and is
always on the lookout for new and exciting paper and lamp
bases. The shades can
run anywhere from $50 to $100, depending on how much labor
goes into them.
To find her raw materials, Slepin scours flea
markets and garage
sales. The bases are often old vases or small
sculptures—there’s even one made
out of an intricate glass seltzer bottle. “There is that
element of reusing
things,” Slepin says of her lamps. For the shades, Slepin is
particularly
excited about using topographic maps and NOAA (National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration) navigation charts, which she purchases from
West Marine, a
boating supply store. Slepin can make custom shades out of a
particular place
on the map. Once she created a shade for a 49ers fan out of a
nautical map that
featured Candlestick Point. She also uses beautiful Japanese
paper and antique
celestial charts from the 22nd Street shop Press: Works on
Paper.
Holding up the paper to the light to see how it
will look when lit
is key to Slepin’s creative process. “The secret to a
beautiful shade is how
the paper illuminates, not just if it’s pretty,” she says.
Slepin often works on her lamps with her garage
door open and
music playing. She invites people to stop by, say hello, and
check out her
latest creations. To learn more about her lamps, visit her
Etsy site, call
919-744-6095, or email jslepin@gmail.com.
Shades
of all shapes and sizes—some made from nautical charts
and topographic maps—populate Jennifer Slepin’s busy
home workshop. Photo by Pamela
Gerard
