SpaceCraft Joinery

Page left: Gail and Rob’s country-industrial inspired kitchen features wormy chestnut open shelving and profile doors with frame detail. Photography by Jonathan VDK, Stylist: Emily O’Brien. Above: David & Verity’s contemporary curves kitchen features American Oak v-panelling with a feature splashback of hexagonal tile in muted colour tones. This kitchen won Kitchen Design of the Year at the 2019 HIA Awards. Photography by Josie Withers, Stylist: Emily O’Brien.

SpaceCraft

Story by Petra de Mooy.

I have a confession to make: I have been known to swoon over the kitchens created by SpaceCraft Joinery. Their bespoke modern kitchens and joinery are superbly crafted with standout style. Founders Ellen and Nathan Wundersitz have formed a great partnership – both as a couple and with this company – and the many awards the business has received both locally and interstate are just a part of their success.

At the heart of the business are Ellen and Nathan – risk takers with an unerring eye for design and detail.

When they met, Ellen was working as general manager at Parallax Design in Adelaide. Nathan was working as a cabinetmaker and had started to take steps towards building his own business by taking on what they called ‘homies’ – cabinetry jobs that he undertook in his spare time. The work kept coming and so in 2007, with their first son on the way, the couple decided to take the plunge and set up their own workshop. Ellen’s intelligent brand development skills ensured the fledgling business had a strong identity from the start. Their physical presence, however, took a little more work. ‘We saw this shed,’ says Ellen, referring to the current home of SpaceCraft, ‘on Christmas Day 2007 – but it was very grotty.’ After some deliberation, it was decided that her father would buy the building which is conveniently close to the main road in the heart of Strathalbyn. Nathan and Ellen cleaned it up and quickly set up shop and over time worked hard to pay back Ellen’s dad.

From these humble beginnings, the business has steadily grown. ‘We’ve pretty much employed one new person every year since,’ says Nathan. With their current team now at twelve, they have expanded beyond this original space, moving their assembly area into another building across the street. They’re also in the midst of planning a new purpose-built facility in Strathalbyn’s commercial precinct.

‘We were initially unsure whether being in Strath was a deterrent for potential clients,’ says Ellen. But after doing some extensive market research, they found that it wasn’t a barrier and today fifty per cent of their business comes from the Adelaide metropolitan area. ‘What we discovered was that people who are local love having us here but even more surprisingly, people who live in the metro area see it as a kind of ‘discovery location.’ They like going for a drive, making a day of it, going for lunch and doing a bit of antique shopping >

Top left: Nathan and Ellen’s eco-scandi inspired kitchen features hoop pine plywood internals, open shelving and laminated bench tops. Photography by Jonathan VDK, Stylist: Emily O’Brien. Bottom left: Terry and Gerry’s shaker-industrial inspired kitchen features solid wormy chestnut timber with a gorgeous tiled splashback. This kitchen won New Kitchen up to $35k at the 2019 HIA Awards and a Commendation for Kitchen Design of the Year. Photography by Josie Withers, Stylist: Emily O’Brien Right: Nathan and Ellen Wundersitz at their showroom / workshop in Strathalbyn.

while they’re here,’ she says. Certainly it works for them personally. ‘We love this town,’ says Ellen. ‘Our kids are at school and it’s such a nice place to live.’

The business works with reputable builders both locally and closer to the city. Over the years, these relationships have become an important part of SpaceCraft’s story. ‘We started out working for a few builders who have also expanded their operations and so with their growth we have grown too,’ says Nathan. These relationships continue to provide one of their two main sources of work, the other coming from private clients who are renovating.

In the twelve years they’ve been operating, the business has evolved faster than Nathan and Ellen imagined it would. It’s been challenging at times but despite a few growing pains they’ve gone from strength to strength, learning much along the way. Both partners put a strong emphasis on the ethos of the business both inside and outside the walls of their workshop and showroom. ‘We’ve worked out the importance of having people with not only the technical skills but also [a] good cultural fit,’ says Ellen. ‘Right now I would say that we have that perfect skill set and perfect team.’

If the accolades are anything to go by, it’s a winning recipe. The team swept the awards in every South Australian category they entered in the 2019 Kitchen and Bathroom Design Institute Awards (four in total, including Kitchen Designer of the Year). They also scooped a prestigious national award at the Australian Cabinet and Furniture Association Awards in Sydney. The awards are about boosting brand awareness and trust but they’ve also been a good platform for marketing the designer specs of the business and for building morale within their team. Good branding, quality workmanship and design are at the core of these achievements, but it’s Ellen’s years in the graphic design industry and Nathan’s work ethic that provide the foundation. ‘I guess that early grounding is where my marketing bent and my appreciation of good design comes from – I developed a real appreciation for the strength that a brand can have if it is positioned well and if it’s considered and all of the marketing collateral is consistent,’ says Ellen. ‘Nathan’s design expertise is where we meet halfway – it’s kind of like I work on the business and he works in the business.’

One thing they’ve come to understand about their clients, is that they seek out Nathan’s design work to help create a point of difference in their homes. Ellen elaborates, ‘our clients want to make their space personal and special so they come to us for something that is a bit quirky. They want to be a bit brave and do something a bit different.’ While SpaceCraft does do provincial, shaker and more traditional styles, they’re best known for their mid-century Scandi style. ‘Our clients come to us to create something special for themselves and their family and their home. And at the end of the day it comes down to the experience of our clients,’ they both concur.

A quick visit to the testimonials page on their website reveals words like ‘meticulous,’ ‘vision,’ ‘aesthetic,’ ‘pleasure,’ and ‘happy.’ And while those first few descriptors speak to quality and design, it’s the last word that really captures what Ellen and Nathan create for their clients through SpaceCraft. ‘Happy’ is certainly a good word to end on when it comes to design.

Rebecca McEwan Story by Petra de Mooy

Above and page left: Rebecca McEwan in her studio in McLaren Vale. Images by Rosina Possingham.

Rebecca McEwan spent the first fifteen years of her working life as a critical care nurse and came to her career as a professional artist later than most. Along the way, however, she maintained a lifelong practice of being creative in her spare time, influenced by her mum who was ‘always making.’

Perhaps signalling the direction Rebecca’s artistic life would eventually take, her creative diversions would come to blur the line between ‘spare’ time and ‘work’ time. In addition to the rigours of full-time nursing, Rebecca produced a line of children’s clothing, while a course in millinery led to a short stint in hatmaking. Life apace with nursing and these sidelines, Rebecca also married, moved states and had children – eventually ending up closer to ‘home’ near the beach at Port Noarlunga. Despite a full life, she began to identify that making art was something she wanted to put more time into. She launched into more artistic study and quickly realised that this was where she really wanted to be. So in 2013 she enrolled into a full time program at the Adelaide College of the Arts graduating in 2016 with a Bachelor of Visual Art and Design with an Award for Excellence.

The life experience that Rebecca brings to her practice seems to sit well with her. Although she describes herself as an emerging artist there’s an assuredness to her work that one would usually expect to see in an artist with many more years of practice. This confidence has seen her work her way from group shows to her first solo show quite quickly, winning accolades and taking opportunities as they have presented themselves. >

Top left: Work in progress. Photo by: Lee Walter. Right: Nagalingum. Pastel, pencil, gouache, oil, encaustic on board. 90 x 60cm. Bottom left: Pockets 10. Pastel, ink, encaustic and acrylic. Right: Pollen Landscape. Pencil, pastel, charcoal 100 x 80 cm.

One of those opportunities came in the form of a mentorship at the State Herbarium. As an avid gardener (and with her nursing background), this mentorship married together plants and science in a perfect union that also enabled her continuing interest in insects and the natural world to evolve. During her exploration she was able to draw on the expertise and knowledge of the resident botanists as well as the vast collections in the adjoining Museum of Economic Botany.

The chance to examine pollen under a scanning electron microscope – its patterns, shapes and textures magnified to extreme close up – was a unique source of inspiration. The experience prompted Rebecca to begin a series of drawings of pollen grains and one of those drawings was selected as a finalist in the Heysen Prize for

Landscape. ‘Being able to immerse myself in the Herbarium and talk plants and look at plants – it has given me a visual catalogue of museums and the way they present their work and the materiality of it,’ Rebecca explains.

The whole experience was a catalyst for Rebecca, taking her deeper into her interest in bringing science and art together and leading her to look into historical science. This study shaped her work while she was an artist in residence at Sauerbier House in Port Noarlunga during 2018, where she created a body of work looking at the history of bees and beekeeping on the South Coast. This in turn evolved into an exploration of the folklore and mythology related to beekeeping and a growing interest in the intrinsic connection between humans

Top left: The sea is ritual. Pencil, pastel, ink, acrylic, encaustic wax 90 x 60 cm. Right: Ritual Plunge #1. Ink, pastel, pencil, encaustic wax, paper on wooden panel 40 x 60cm. Bottom: Work in progress. Photo by: Lee Walter. All other images courtesy of the artist.

and the natural world. The finished work was visually diverse, taking the form of drawings, paintings and 3D work using a range of materials including encaustic wax, honey and pollen. A large chandelier made from a mass of tiny vials of honey formed the centrepiece of the exhibition.

Rebecca continued to explore the connections humans form with the natural world in her 2019 exhibition titled ‘We are not strangers here’ for Hill Smith Gallery in Adelaide. This time, her work honed in on how humans connect with water and our physiological and psychological responses to it. ‘There is a space you go into with water, it’s quiet and meditative,’ Rebecca says. In her artist’s statement she elaborated further on the tangible and intangible effects of water on the body and psyche: ‘The experience of immersion has been scientifically proven to slow the heart rate, reduce blood pressure and calm the mind. But there are other unquantifiable responses elicited in us as humans by water, especially the ocean, that have a profound effect on our state of being.’

Rebecca draws on all of her experiences of making by creating eloquent, visual connections between her concepts and the physical work. There is a delicate and ephemeral nature to her art and the viewer is treated to these beautiful, quiet and thoughtful works created by the deft hand of this talented artist.