These days, interior designer and ceramicist Jonathan Adler is making news not only for crafting fancy toilet-paper rolls or fancy votives, but for contributing a video to the excellent and moving It Gets Better Project, aimed at inspiring LGBT youth who "can't imagine a future for themselves." The YouTube-based campaign was created in 2010 by columnist Dan Savage as a response to the ever-growing crop of national news reports about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender teens committing suicide, and has grown to include endorsements from such famous folks as Neil Patrick Harris, Ellen DeGeneres, and Kathy Griffin.
In a 1:20 video, Adler—by Curbed's count the first major design-industry player thus far—recounts the bleaker parts of his childhood: "When I was a kid, I felt like a freak," he says. "I felt like there was no hope, and I would never, ever, ever be able to be who I wanted to be and reveal my true self. And so I was depressed, and so I took a lot of salvation in my pottery studio. I was obsessed with making pottery, and that was my sort of dream fantasy world." He encourages viewers to pursue a "life of creativity": "Follow your passion, make art, be creative, learn to draw, and it will get so much better." Here, watch:
The Video:
· It Gets Better: Jonathan Adler in New York [YouTube via @JonathanAdler]
· It Gets Better [official site]
· All Jonathan Adler coverage [Curbed National]
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