For Bec Brittain, designing lighting and products is the logical evolution of a lifelong interest in form, materials, and technology. She grew up surrounded by creative people: her mother is an artist; her father had a woodworking business; and her paternal grandparents (as well as her step-grandfather) were architects. After deciding that her initial interest in studying fashion design would lead to a career that was too trend-focused, Bec studied product design at Parsons before exploring the philosophy of design at NYU and the concepts behind architecture at the Architectural Association. An early job making custom door hardware led Bec to the realization that she loved the process of making things in metal, and a subsequent job as design director for Lindsey Adelman, the noted lighting designer, affirmed Bec’s view that lighting embodied not just the challenges of engineering and technology, but also the playfulness of form and the richness of materials. By 2011, Bec had opened her own studio in Brooklyn and designed the critically-acclaimed SHY light, named for the initials of her grandmother, the architect Sarah Hitchcock Yerkes, one of the first women to receive a master’s degree in architecture from Harvard.

After studying art and women’s studies as an undergraduate and then earning her Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in 2004, Bari Ziperstein worked primarily in studio-based sculpture and experimental public art. At CalArts, Bari studied with revered conceptual artist Michael Asher, whose method of engaging directly with the physical environments and socioeconomic structures through which artworks circulate was a profound influence. As Bari’s work grew more ambitious, she sought an alternative to the myth that the only viable career path for an artist is through teaching. BZIPPY was conceived as a way to circumvent prescribed notions of success for working artists and is built on Bari’s innate creativity mixed with ideas inspired by conceptual art and intersectional feminist principles.