SCAD alumni wrap 18th-century Paris staircase in tufted colour

Savannah College of Art and Design has covered an 18th-century staircase in tufted fabric at Design Miami.Paris, held from 20 to 25 October at the historic L'hôtel de Maisons in Paris. Los Angeles-based designer and SCAD alumnus Abel Macias created the flooring installation, using bright colours and shapes informed by the landscape of the American Southwest.

The staircase is the anchor of a wider showcase of alumni work that SCAD presented at the fair. It's a deliberate strategy: put recent graduates and established alumni in one historic setting, and let the materials do the talking.

What else is on show?

At the top of the staircase, SCAD fibres graduate Gretchen Wagner — who also serves as Associate Chair of Fine Arts — presented a suspended sculptural installation. It's built from accordion-folded paper cylinders, embellished with embroidered beading and hung from the ceiling like a chandelier.

Around it, four more graduates filled out the display:

• Evan Baker, a furniture design graduate, showed a wood-grain credenza.
• Anne Weber Callahan, also a furniture design graduate, exhibited two ceramic stools meant to mimic clay.
• Katie Hagen, a fibres graduate, designed a natural-dyed silk organza weaving.
• Marcelo Suro, an industrial design graduate, contributed six sculptural lamps.

Suro's lamps merge hand-blown glass and volcanic stone. He made them this past year during SCAD's Alumni Atelier residency in Lacoste, France — the only piece in the group with a direct production link to the country hosting the fair.

Who studied what, and when?

The graduates span more than two decades of the university's programmes. Macias completed a BFA in illustration in 2002. Wagner undertook an MFA in painting in 2023 and a BFA in fibres in 2011. Baker finished a BFA in furniture design in 2025, while Callahan graduated with the same degree in 2019. Hagen obtained an MFA in fibres and an MA in production design, both in 2023.

That range is the point of the showcase: a 2002 illustration graduate and a 2025 furniture design graduate appear in the same room, working in fabric, paper, wood, ceramics, silk and glass.

Is this a one-off?

No. SCAD is the official university partner of Design Miami, and this is the second year running it has brought alumni work to the fair. Last December, it debuted an intricate plaster-cast installation at its booth during Design Miami in Florida.

The next step comes quickly: SCAD will exhibit at the fair's flagship event in Miami Beach this December. The Paris showcase, documented in a video produced by Dezeen as part of a partnership with SCAD, functions as a preview of how the university positions its alumni network — not as a retrospective, but as a working materials catalogue.