Just as the feel of fall was rolling in, fans of HELM Boots convened on a Sunday night at Easy Tiger to watch “Hard Work,” a film series by Ryan Scheer that featured six mini-docs on Austin-based creatives who reflected on their inspirations from their respective work spaces. I was particularly taken with art director Chris Bilheimer’s film. He started doing design work for R.E.M in 1994 and has since worked for Weezer, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Beck, among others. As Bilheimer worked in his studio, he said: “If you want to do something, you just have to go and do it because that’s the only way you can find out if you can. And then that’s the only way other people will find out you can…no one is going to make you do it…” Everyone featured in our first ever Makers Issue didn’t just talk about doing something; they worked with their hands and became experts in their craft—building furniture, welding or making pâté.
