“When I moved to Chicago 12 years ago, I certainly didn’t imagine that one day I would see my artwork up in the city skyline. There is something so exciting—and a little surreal—about seeing a piece that started at my desk become part of the city I now call home.”—artist Başak Notz.
If you have been by the corner of LaSalle and North in Old Town this month you will have had a taste of Turkish artist and illustrator Başak Notz’s work. On a Colectivo coffee billboard Chicago flag stars float invitingly out of an orange coffee cup, redolent of the playfulness and romantic nature she creates.
In her studio nearby overlooking Lincoln Park and Lake Michigan, Notz’s worktables display everyday items like coffee cups and bagels drawn with detail and often illustrated with her distinctive handwriting. They are juxtaposed with Cartier’s iconic panthers done for Cartier’s pop-up boutique in Bodrum, Turkey held during summer months for the past three years.
The Cartier Boutique at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Bodrum’s five-star Paradise Bay resort, is all about entertaining clients from Dubai, Russia and the Middle East for which Notz designed not only menus, hand drawn maps, gazettes and invitations but also a book, Into the Blue of Bodrum, illustrating panthers amidst jewelry and creatures from the sea using an Apple Pencil on her iPad creating her artistic style digitally.
One of the challenges in her assignment was drawing a breathtaking panther bracelet, showing us on her iPad the 20 layers she added, removed, then re-did to capture the shine and the light and dark of the incredible stones. “How do you make color shine is a question I kept asking myself,” she remembered.
“Cartier very much values working with locals, and I knew Bodrum. It is a beautiful seaside town and I knew its castle, its food and its history. I was born in Ankara and studied environmental engineering. I dreamed of working in Istanbul but international experience is almost always a requirement to work there so I went to Berkeley to study business. When I met my husband John in my first week of school I knew I wanted to stay longer. During these early years in the Bay Area, inspired by the creative atmosphere, and because art had always been my passion, I started taking drawing classes. I eventually worked with a letterpress printer to design cards and invitations including the one to our wedding.”
As Notz moved to Chicago with her family, she was trying to decide whether to go back to her corporate career or transition to a creative one.
“Shortly after settling in Chicago, I had the opportunity to work with a very senior executive coach to help me re-enter the technology field. I was struggling to articulate why I was choosing that career. One day she asked why I wanted to do this, and it just came out that I didn’t want to, it didn’t feel like me.”
That was the day her new path started.
“Being born and raised in Turkey, and then moving to and living in the US gives me a different perspective for what I observe in both countries. These memories become my stories, my anecdotes. Drawing and writing them down gives me a better understanding of my experience as a foreigner living in this country and as a native visiting my home country. Over the years, I have had many exciting firsts in the US, many hard firsts in the US. There have been many moments of intertwining my life in US with my Turkishness, connecting to Turkish diaspora, and nostalgia over what is back at home,” she said.
Notz has worked on sketchbooks, some of pocketbook size, expressing these thoughts in drawings and key words. “I love food, cooking and trying, and an illustrated book of favorite Turkish dishes and others is in the works,” she commented.
Notz’s studio reveals favorite things. Walls show small drawings by Andrew Wyeth and Old Masters as well as her own images like coffee pots or the nearby farmers market which she says make her smile. A gently used antique chair combines as a thinking place and illustration in a sparsely furnished smaller room, a suitcase which once belonged to her father-in-law John Notz rests near a red tricycle, given to her by her mother-in-law Janis Notz. Beautiful fashion magazines such as Cabana stand by to inspire as Notz illustrates a room, prints illustrated by Ruby Wright are there for joy.
On her website Basak describes when she first became involved with Cartier:
“I was asked to illustrate the Into the Blue of Bodrum book and printed materials for the opening of the new Cartier boutique in Bodrum. It was one of the most challenging and the most rewarding projects that I have worked on. It included a big team through multiple continents and time zones; me in Chicago, my liaison in Dubai and the Cartier team providing feedback from different cities around the world. I pushed myself further to create the world that they envisioned, through my lines. Every choice had intent, every color had reason. I am so happy with the final work.
“We created a set of illustrations for the invitations and then started working on the book. We settled onto scenes after trying different ideas. I loved being able to create whimsical scenes with Cartier icons and Bodrum’s natural beauty. I have looked and seen the impeccably thought details that make the iconic Cartier pieces. I have studied the color of sea and sky at every hour. Dark blue to light turquoise, light blue to golden pink.
“I was lucky enough to be invited to the opening of the boutique because of my work: Turkish and Arab celebrities, the fashion world, and me.”
“I do love bright colors which pop from the paper and, for example, to emphasize the eyes of the panthers. I put in details but it is a simplified version of reality. What I want to do is to capture the beauty of what I see. Joy, surprise, shine might be some of the words I would use about my art. When I start on a drawing I often have a storm of ideas and feelings.
“There is so much information coming at us all the time now. I think we are beginning to forget what stillness feels like.
“If we drink coffee while simply drinking coffee, maybe we notice the way the steam moves, the sunlight passing through it, the shadow falling across the table, even the pattern of the rug beneath it.
“That’s really what I hope my work does too — makes you pause for a moment, look a little more closely, and notice the beauty that was already there.
“I love the tactile feeling of touching paper with pens, pencils and brushes, the sound of the line, and seeing the final composition come together. And I love those very ordinary moments that can become quite beautiful when you actually stop and look at them: light and shadow, colors changing throughout the day, my cats turning up somewhere unexpected, a note one of my daughters has left on my desk, the shadow of a coffee cup, a few crumbs on a plate, a home on a distant island.”
Notz seeks a balance between fine arts and products as she expands her horizon. “I would like to continue illustrating client work, but also focus on creating art for myself.” She is considering expanding to a variety of materials, stemming from her Turkish heritage like cross-stitching, fabrics and also to larger notebooks.
“Drawing is my way of not letting moments and memories disappear. Many of my ideas come from living between two cultures. Being born and raised in Turkey and then moving to and living in the U.S. gives me a particular lens on what I observe in both countries.
I draw my grandfather’s Turkish coffee ritual, my mother’s gardening shoes, Eid celebrations—but also sushi, coffee in America, places I travel to and things I discover here. Living away from where you grew up does something interesting: you miss familiar things, but you also begin to look at them differently. And at the same time, you are constantly learning how to see a new culture.”
Her Instagram account is a joy to behold and reflects the authenticity of the artist. “And I am not letting Instagram rush me,” she notes.
She works with several private clients as well as companies and spends reflective time at her studio considering how to further develop her work. “In addition to Cartier and Colectivo, I’ve been fortunate to create work for clients including Penguin, Vogue, Town & Country, InterContinental and Haremlique Istanbul, as well as brands and private clients both in Turkey and the U.S.,” she told us.
Inspired by her time at her French residency and reassured by the visiting friends, Notz has new ideas on how to utilize her studio space. “One of my goals is to have little salons in my studio to invite friends and artists to come over for deep and warm conversations.”
I wish you the joy of joining one of Notz’s salons.
For further information, visit basaknotz.com
Photography by Erika Dufou with creative director Brenda Bergen.
