If you’ve followed along with GG for awhile, you know we have a penchant for art and design. We love anything steeped in creativity and fueled by originality. One of the biggest sources of inspiration for us is Sight Unseen, an interior and design website that focuses on the cool and the creative. Little did I know that the co-founder of Sight Unseen was also the creator of one of my favorite cannabis accessory brands, Tetra. Monica Khemsurov might just be my dream girl. I’m so excited to dive in and share more about Monica and her creative work with you. She’s an incredible representation of what it looks like to fuse your creative passions with entrepreneurism. Let’s get to it!

Can you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?

I’m Monica Khemsurov, and I’m the co-founder of Sight Unseen, an online design magazine, as well as the owner of Tetra, a brand of design-driven smoking accessories. I studied journalism in school and began my career working at New York magazine and writing about music, but eventually found my way to design writing. I was senior editor at a design magazine called I.D. from 2004 to 2009, then left to co-found Sight Unseen in 2009, eventually carrying all of the knowledge and connections I gained through both roles into co-founding Tetra in 2015. I don’t have any formal training in design, but I’ve always been an aesthetic person, and thanks to my father, I also grew up with some nice furniture as well. When I was a little kid, our kitchen had Cesca chairs and a huge, puffy, textile artwork of a Perrier bottle that I really wish my parents had kept!

What’s your sign?

Taurus, on the cusp of Aries. But I’m pretty much a classic Taurus. I love being comfortable and at home, I love nice things, I love good food, I’m fiercely loyal and I’m super laid-back until the moment I’m convinced I’m right about something, at which point, I can be extremely stubborn and intransigent.

Where did the inspiration for Sight Unseen come from?

I met Jill when she became my co-worker at I.D., and we both left together in 2009 to start Sight Unseen. The idea came about because we wanted to continue our editorial partnership, but be our own bosses, so we decided to start a magazine together. Doing it online was not only the most cost-effective way, it was also timely. In 2009, it still felt like the online world was missing a highly curated blog about the kind of contemporary design we were interested in. Because the thing we loved most about working at I.D. had always been telling the stories behind objects, our concept when we first launched the website was to give people a behind-the-scenes view of the lives and inspirations of creatives. We wanted to show them things they wouldn’t normally have access to, like the studio of, or favorite possessions of, a designer or artist. “Sight unseen” is a phrase typically used to mean that you’re purchasing or making an opinion about something without seeing it first, but we thought it was fun to discard that meaning and use the more literal meaning of the two words—as in, things that haven’t yet been seen. These days, we focus a bit less on that and more on discovering new talents, designs and trends, but we still feel like we’re providing a viewpoint that few others could.

What does a typical workday look like for you?

I work from home, and I don’t have great work/life boundaries, to be honest. I check my email and start working pretty much the moment I wake up. I’m not a breakfast eater and I don’t drink coffee, so I kind of like jumping right in. I work pretty steadily and intensely until lunchtime, when I make myself something delicious to eat and take a break to watch a TV show or talk to a friend. Then I get back to work, and often stop on the early side to run errands or do yoga (pre-COVID) or take a walk (post-COVID). I take as much personal time as I can in the early evenings, and then I often do a bit more work at night before I go to bed because I’m so ridiculously productive at night, when I’m not being bombarded non-stop by emails. Somewhere in there, I try to make time to absorb inspiration and ideas as often as I can, either from reading other magazines or going down Instagram rabbit holes. One strategy that’s helped a lot is that Sight Unseen doesn’t really follow any personal accounts of friends and such, only accounts of designers and artists who regularly post new work. So scrolling our feed is a really focused experience.

Do you have any creative hobbies? What inspires your creative energy?

Not really. I cook, and in a pinch, I’m not bad at (very) amateur prop styling, but otherwise I don’t make things, and I don’t ever feel a need to express myself in that way. When I feel the most creative energy, the most alive and in a state of flow, is when I’m coming up with ideas and solving problems. Then my creativity is boundless. I was born to brainstorm and solve problems—that’s a large part of how I ended up as an editor, and ultimately a business owner. The only thing I enjoy more than that, I think, is shopping at flea markets and thrift stores.

Sight Unseen has curated some really incredible exhibitions and pop-ups, do you have a favorite project to date?

The one I enjoyed putting together the most was definitely the Field Studies exhibition at our 2018 Offsite show in New York. We’re always looking for opportunities to curate exhibitions, but they don’t come around too often—they’re always the first thing to go when we do Offsite, for example, and run out of space or budget. But in 2018, we finally managed to pull off incorporating an exhibition into our show, in which the idea was to pair designers with all different kinds of non-designers, from chefs to fine artists to musicians. Weirdly enough, all of the designers involved kept upping the stakes and choosing the most high-profile partners they could gain access to, so suddenly we had Seth Rogen designing a mirror with Bower (which The New Yorker wrote about, a personal high point for us), Jason Schwartzman designing a piano with Wall for Apricots and Narciso Rodriguez making a chair with Kelly Behun. The idea was to sell the resulting works and donate all of the proceeds to non-profits, so it was a big help in terms of publicity and fundraising.

“When I feel the most creative energy, the most alive and in a state of flow, is when I’m coming up with ideas and solving problems. Then my creativity is boundless. I was born to brainstorm and solve problems.”

Top 5 favorite artists or designers?

I have never been able to do lists like this. Mostly because my mind goes blank, and also because my inspirations tend to shift a lot. So without making a top list, I’ll just name whatever comes to mind: Bruno Munari, Cini Boeri, René Magritte, Mario Botta, Marianne Brandt, Ann Veronica Janssens, Thea Djordjadze, Roni Horn, Alicja Kwade, Tatiana Trouvé, Giancarlo Valle, Jonathan Muecke, Objects of Common Interest, Soft Baroque and a million other contemporary designers I can’t think of at the moment!

Can you tell us about the inspiration behind Tetra?

The idea for Tetra actually came about, in 2015, when I was at the beach in LA with two fellow art/design/fashion writers who happened to be smoking. I asked where they went to buy their “cool” smoking gear, and they both laughed and said there was no such place. Bells immediately went off in my head and I convinced them to create that place with me, combining my experience with running an online shop (for Sight Unseen) with our collective knowledge of design and style, plus the reach of our collective networks. I should also hat tip to Ben Medansky, the LA ceramicist, as shortly before this beach trip happened, I had become aware that he was making pipes, so I think that must have planted a little seed in my brain. In terms of my personal inspirations, the idea of starting Tetra appealed to me primarily for the thrill of being able to bring great contemporary design to a space in which it had been largely absent, and secondarily because I’d just gone through a breakup and needed a new project to pour my energy into. It absolutely worked. These days, I’m running Tetra on my own, as my wonderful co-workers have both moved on to other places and projects (including motherhood).

How do you handle burnout?

I’m a workaholic, and it takes a lot to burn me out. A LOT. But when it happens, I do one of two things: take an entire day where I read in bed, or I take a weekend in nature, preferably in the woods, by water. I once had a spiritual healer tell me that it was very important that whenever I felt stuck, I spend some time by moving water to regain my momentum. Worst-case scenario, if I can’t take a day off or get out in nature, I listen to ASMR videos on YouTube, which help me de-stress.

What are you currently listening to?

Christine and the Queens, Cannons, Hatchie, Yumi Zouma, DPLV, Barrie, The Japanese House, Kelsey Lu, Talos, Wild Nothing, Kamaiyah, City Girls, Stefflon Don. I’m also currently obsessed with Max Richter’s soundtrack for “My Brilliant Friend,” which is super haunting and beautiful. For a few years, I wore out his redux of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, so maybe this is my replacement.

Top 5 favorite books?

I definitely can’t do this either! I can tell you though that most recently I read and liked Killing Commendatore, Circe, The Pisces, The Tremor of Forgery, The Travelers, Disappearing Earth, Severance, Pachinko, Leaving the Atocha Station and The Great Believers. I check out books from the Brooklyn Public Library on my Kindle. Support your local library!

What is always in your fridge?

Eggs, fennel, Greek yogurt, parsley, dill, Green Dragon sauce from Trader Joe’s, and PILES of lemons, among many other things, of course.

What does your nighttime routine look like?

Staying up too late, promising to go to bed earlier the next night and staying up too late again. Usually doing some combination of working and/or listening to music and/or watching TV. Beauty-wise, it’s minimal—I’m not a products person. Wash my face with Peet Rivko, put on rosehip seed oil, brush my teeth, take some magnesium, done. I have a special talent of always falling asleep within five minutes whenever I do choose to finally put my head on the pillow.

What is always in your beauty cabinet?

Embarrassingly, my beauty cabinet is PACKED with products I don’t use. Most of them gifts or things I tried and then abandoned. I’ve never been able to motivate myself to care about beauty products or makeup. I find something I like and stick with it. So face wash and oil, and for makeup, just under-eye concealer, Bobbi Brown cream shadow stick, Laura Mercier translucent powder, Anastasia brow pencil, and Buxom mascara. Plus Guerlain Rouge G lipstick because it’s the only one I’ve ever found to actually be moisturizing, and Cactus shampoo by R+Co, which is amazing for texture, though you can’t use it every day. Everything else is just clutter.

How do you approach style? Do you have a certain daily uniform?

I have no waist and a little belly, so I don’t like wearing things that hug my stomach, but I also can’t wear voluminous things because I have boobs. So I almost always just wear dresses, because they fit well, are comfortable and don’t require too much effort in terms of coordinating separates in an edgy way, which I’ve never been that great at. I definitely know what’s stylish and cool, but I have a hard time executing it on myself. Honestly, the return of ’90s style is the best thing that ever happened to me because all those little dresses are so flattering on me, and I can get them on Etsy or at the thrift store. My secret is to pair thrifted or inexpensive clothing with statement jewelry—from brands like Agmes or Saskia Diez—to sort of trick people’s brains into thinking it’s fashion.

Anything exciting on the horizon that you can share with us?

Tetra is getting a big redesign, hopefully by the end of the year! It’s going to be major. A new identity, new website and new packaging. Not that our current one isn’t great, I just wanted some functional updates and figured, why not rethink it all? Change is good!