The Artist Next Door: Elin Lundman

An active member of Beacon’s upcycling community, Elin Lundman is always on the prowl for castoffs around town, along with ephemera at flea markets, garage sales and vintage stores. Her house continues to absorb artifacts, some of which have been transformed into artworks.

Though chill and soft-spoken, Lundman’s bold fashion style declares artist: she sports a military-grade hairstyle with skin-tight sides and a patch of peach fuzz atop her head that is maintained monthly and could be dyed any vibrant color in the rainbow. “It’s my mood ring,” she says.

Her journey into creativity began with hats, jewelry and other fashion accessories under the brand Super Happy Ghost, but she disdained all the plastic.

She picked up the brushes after discovering an acrylic paint designed for leather. When her first work offered for sale, an old black leather trench coat, zipped off the hangar at her premiere pop-up in the city, “I took that as an omen,” she says. “It’s so great that these reused boots, bags and jackets are circulating out in public and being used.”

That early coat of many colors inspired the creation of a bunch of malleable and not-too-scary monsters. Over time, she whittled the group down to four characters that shape-shift and change the colors of their leopard-like spots: Abby, Baba, Darren and Scout.

Lundman also unleashes the customizable creatures on canvas, some of which she exhibited in past shows at Super Secret Projects.

In her basement studio, a cluster of boots, a pile of handbags and a clothes rack filled with about a dozen jackets await special treatment. “I can work with anything leather, no matter what it is,” she says. “Everyone asks me, ‘What if it rains?’ There is nothing to worry about, this is durable artist-quality acrylic.”

She also interacts with other found surfaces. Now, in a reclaimed painting of a medieval-looking church courtyard, an orange and a green monster serve as inadvertent focal points that snake around the buildings like sea serpents in old maps and splash the drab frame with color.

Another piece adds a similar motif to a bald eagle painting. Amidst clashing colors, the monsters grin and their long tails form ribbons around the main image. 

“I found it on the street in the city,” says Lundman. “A kid did it and even signed it, so it has a story and an effort to love it, so I wanted to bring it back to life.”

Influences range from “trolls, cochina dolls, Mexican alebrije, creatures in the woods, Norse mythology,” says Lundman, 36, who moved to Brooklyn from her native Sweden in 2014 and landed in Beacon four years ago. 

Her monster quartet is “cute and cuddly, not spooky or angry,” despite their sharp teeth. “They’re dog-like extensions of me and over time, I’m getting to know them, though people interpret them in lots of different ways. Someone said they’re singing and others think they look terrified.”

Lundman snags online commissions (including clients in Idaho and California), along with shoppers at Hyperbole boutique on the eastern end of Main Street, a de facto art gallery that sells her one-of-a-kind line. 

In part, her adopted artistic medium keeps trying to close the upcycling loop: “There is beyond enough clothing out there that there is no need to ever create another shirt or skirt, so I do what I can,” she says. “But clients often buy their own boots because the fit of footwear is very personal.”

Growing up on a farm with horses, she worked extensively with leather boots, reins, bridals and saddles to extend their longevity. Vegan leather, she says, “is made of petroleum products and will fall apart in a couple of years, but if you take care of a quality secondhand jacket or handbag, it can last a lifetime.”

To see more of Lundman’s work, visit superhappyghost.com.