In Focus: steven john clark

We get to learn a lot about some of our favourite customers over the years but nothing beats an informal probing to really drill down into specifics. We visited him in his warehouse on a drizzly morning to find out a bit more.

Photography by Luke Pownall with words by Ben Martin

Few people will tell you as interesting stories as Steve does, nor will they deliver them with such aplomb. There are many stories that are not valid for this particular edition but I’m sure he’d be more than willing to tell you in person, should you get the pleasure of his company in real time.

I won’t bore you with trying to explain his work myself, the pieces speak for themselves and I’ll let him do it for you.

Born in Jedburgh on the Scottish borders, he was a keen footballer & played for Berwick Rangers until the chemical carrot dangled aloft pulled him into burning the candle at both ends – as it did for a lot of us. Trips to Ibiza suddenly seemed more attractive than turning up to frost-bitten practise every weekend.

When further education wasn’t appealing either, Steve’s parents told him he couldn’t leave school without a trade. Narrowly escaping a job as a plumber, his dad got him an apprenticeship as a bricklayer / stonemason where they now lived, in Denholm. That firm turned out to be the best one around he later found out, and systems of working involving the meticulous nature of masonry, have stood him in good stead for how he teaches others & keeps his own business today.

  • Ben: Where did your relationship with clothes start?  

    Steve: Going to raves. At festivals people would have these outfits on and I was hoping they would tell me some shop where they were sold but of course there wasn’t, they made them. So I got my Gran’s sewing machine and started making pieces to wear.

  • B: What sort of stuff were you making?

    S: It was mega avant-garde, really structural, sculptural even then.

  • B: After first being lambasted for wearing this DIY couture you had fashioned at home, your mates soon saw the attention it garnered (from women mainly) and you were soon making outfits for them as well? In six months he went from being a mason to signing up for a fashion course in Glasgow and this was now the path you'd chosen. What did your parents think about that?

    S: Er, they weren’t very happy. My dad thought I was gay and that I was doing too many drugs but only one of those was true.

  • B: Ha! what happened after that?

    S: After completing the course in Glasgow, I got into Central St. Martins but couldn’t afford the three years and so my second choice was an embroidery degree in Manchester, which was also Robin’s second choice after Edinburgh. We met in Glasgow and had been together for two years already. We would have separated, not separated but lived apart, but ended up at Manchester together eventually. It’s our 20 year anniversary in October.



  • B: Congratulations, that’s amazing. How about the loop back to Masonry?

    S: Well, we were going to move to London but I didn’t fancy it and then an opportunity to come over here (Melbourne) to play football. My physio after hurting my knee had been living out here and suggested I come or a holiday. Within three months we made a decision to not come back and touch fashion, we stayed. I worked on building sites here and I liked it, the sunshine. I ended up getting a really good job and did that for 5 years, got sponsored. That’s a much longer story as the sponsorship ended up falling through… anyhow I ended up making a stone plinth for one of Bob’s mates (Robin) and that’s how it started.

     

  • B: For a while at the shop you only used to buy white off-white garments from us and I joked that it was to match your artwork, that you’re the living embodiment of your masonry, Interesting as I meant to ask about the choice of colour in your work as you’ve only started using colour recently. Why was it white originally?

    S: Ha, I rarely wear that stuff anymore actually as I found I felt like a cleaner and there was no divide between work and clothes. It’s a question of form, if you can make anything in terms of form in white it will be beautiful, due to the shadow.

  • B: So why colour now?

    S: Boredom really, some people love colour. Bobby is all about colour but for me it was uncertain territory. I’m all about form. But you get to a point where you’ve looked at something so long and you can only reinvent so much, plus from a business sense it gives you more diversity.

  • B: The business has taken you as far as Miami in more recent years, how was that?

    S: That was cool, it was an interesting experience. The most important thing overall is self-worth. Everyone thinks that getting in a magazine, getting in that or being part of this is important, but it doesn’t really mean anything



  • B: The business has come a long way since it was yourself and then George as your first apprentice, plus a dalliance with a business partner and countless other obstacles and challenges, how many are you now?

    S: It depends what we've got going on, sometimes it can be as many as ten, working on multiple projects at once.

  • B: What does the future hold?

    S: More of this. I want to have a showroom, I’ll keep on dreaming.

  • B: Thanks for being so candid as always, lastly, If you could have one of your pieces anywhere in the world, where would that be?

    S: I’d like to have something back home in Denholm somewhere. That would be nice.

  • B: And whose home would you love to see a piece of yours in?

    S: Max Lamb. Check him out.