genspace

[I’m counting down to the release of the Brooklyn Spaces book by doing one mini-post per day, sharing teasers of some of the places you’ll find in it.]

neighborhood: downtown brooklyn | space type: community biolab | active since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter

There’s a lot more to DIY in Brooklyn than underground music shows and bike-powered washing machines. Genspace, the first-ever nonprofit community biotech laboratory, aims to demystify scientific experimentation. “Members are free to experiment with whatever they want, as long as it follows biosafety guidelines,” says molecular biologist Dr. Ellen Jorgensen, the Executive Director and cofounder of the space. “It doesn’t have to make money; it doesn’t even have to make sense. This is a truly innovative space.”

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pix by Kit Crenshaw

Housed in a corner of the huge old Metropolitan Exchange building, the lab, which is compatible with CDC’s Biosafety Level 1 standards, is constructed from salvaged glass doors and metal restaurant counters, and most of the equipment was donated or bought secondhand. Genspace members are working on a range of open-source projects, from liquid-handling robots to super-hardy plants that can survive on other planets. The space also hosts talks, workshops, and classes to engage people who are new to scientific experimentation. “Doing this has really restored my delight in my field,” Ellen says. “Watching people realize how awesome science is—that’s very uplifting.”

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Want to learn more about Genspace, and 49 other incredible Brooklyn Spaces? Buy the book!

pioneer works

space type: nonprofit, skillshare, gallery | neighborhood: red hook | active since: 2012 | links: website, facebook, twitter, wikipedia

Pioneer Works is huge. It’s around 27,000 square feet with 40-foot ceilings, which is just truly, absolutely enormous. The building dates back all the way to 1866, and for more than a century was home to Pioneer Iron Works, one of the largest machine manufacturers in the country.

Prominent Brooklyn artist Dustin Yellin bough the building in 2010. As he told the New York Times, “My crazy dream is to create a kind of utopian art center.” And Pioneer Works is something pretty close to that dream. The nonprofit has several elements, including a massive exhibition gallery and event space (one of the biggest in the city), classes and workshops, a science lab with a powerful photographic microscope, artist residencies, institutional residencies (currently the Clocktower Gallery), a radio show, and a modern art periodical called Intercourse Magazine.

all photos by Maximus Comissar

The events range from open studios to lectures (“How to Fake Your Own Death” is popular and recurring), from Hackathons to concerts, with musical acts like Spiritualized, Ariel Pink, and Omar Souleyman. And the classes are equally varied—some recent examples include “Physical Storytelling,” “The Alchemy of Light,” “From Tesla to the Transistor,” “Homebrew Kimchi,” “NY Theremin Society Workshop,” and “Lock-Picking and Open-Source Security.”

So get out to Red Hook and learn something! But first read the Q&A with David, Pioneer Works’ Director of Education.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a bit about the history of this building.
David: Okay! I know this because we had a Red Hook history class here recently. It was built in 1866, then in 1871 it burned down, and it was rebuilt in 1872. It was originally Pioneer Iron Works, one of the biggest iron works in the country. After that it was a tobacco-drying warehouse. Then they were doing something manufacturing until the 1950s; whatever they were making was super heavy, so they had this system to move it all around in here, and rollers set into the floor to roll it out the door. And then since the 1960s it was used to store financial records. When Dustin bought it, there was no heat, no running water, minimal electricity. The windows were all bricked up, the floors were wrecked, the staircases were terrifying. It took about a year of heavy work to get it into shape.

brooklyn spaces: I love that uniquely artist vision of walking into a completely decrepit space and saying, “I can see what this is going to be.” It’s like that quote about sculptors, how they look for the piece within the marble and then let it out.
David: Exactly. Dustin was like, “All right, this building is my next piece of art.”

Dustin Yellin sculpture

brooklyn space: How did you become involved?
David: I was teaching high school and really wanted to quit, so when Dustin presented me the opportunity to start a teaching program here, I thought I’d give it a shot. So we started, and it went really well in the summer, and then it went really well in the fall, and then Hurricane Sandy happened, and it just totally knocked us out. This whole building was like shoulder-deep in water. We tried to keep doing classes even though we had very little power and no heat—I bubbled in the classroom, like in ET, just encased it in plastic curtains, and we put in as many heaters as we could without blowing the circuits, but it was still so, so cold. We didn’t get heat until March, so that’s when we finally started doing classes again. Since then, we’ve just been growing and growing and growing.

brooklyn spaces: How would you classify the different kinds of classes offered here?
David: They’re pretty different, but it’s basically stuff that’s either really new or really old. We do cutting-edge stuff like microcontrollers and 3D printing and upgrading the firmware in your camera; those are for artists, designers, software developers, to demystify the process of new technologies that everyone wants to know how to use. And then we do old stuff, like paper marbling, or wet-plate or tintype photography, which is Civil War era. It’s to a similar aim as the newer stuff: giving artists a new vocabulary and a specialized practice.

brooklyn spaces: Do you come up with an idea for a class and then go out and find a teacher? Or do people bring you ideas?
David: Both. The lock-picking class, which is super popular, came about because I saw a lock-picking tent at Maker Faire—although tracking down someone who picks locks for a living was really hard. Then on the other hand, a woman came by the other day who wants to do a bread-baking class. We were like, “But we have no ovens, we have no flat surfaces, we don’t have anything.” And she was like, “It’s okay, we can make it work. How about we cook the bread on sticks over a fire?” We’ll try basically anything if it seems cool and the teacher seems competent.

brooklyn spaces: There seems to be a strong movement in Brooklyn for these kinds of classes and skillshares, as evidenced by the extreme popularity of places like 3rd Ward and Brooklyn Brainery. Why do you think that is? Do people just want to have more hobbies?
David: I think it’s deeper than that. Demystifying processes is so enabling. There’s a huge movement of open-source hardware and software in the tech world, and I think part of that is because we’re so controlled by the companies that make the technology we use. The fact that you can’t just open an iPhone and replace the battery is a conscious choice on their part. It’s not because oh you might do it wrong; it’s to keep you under their control. The open-source movement puts the power back in the hands of the individuals, and I think people are used to that idea now, so by applying that model to education, we’re unlocking it a bit. And I think it’s going to continue to grow.

brooklyn spaces: With so many choices, do you think they’re beginning to overlap? What makes Pioneer Works’ offerings unique?
David: I mean, maybe there’s some overlap with what 3rd Ward was doing, but we have something that they didn’t have.
brooklyn spaces: Integrity?
David: Oh yeah, well there’s that. But also we’re a nonprofit and they were a for-profit, which makes a huge difference. We’re an arts institution; it’s just a very different kind of space. Plus we have the nicest building. Once people come here once, it’s not hard to get them to come back.

brooklyn spaces: Do you think being in Red Hook has had an influence on how the space has developed?
David: Sure. There’s such a strong community here, and a real neighborhood feel, like I’ve never experienced anywhere else in New York. We’re trying to find ways to use this space as more of a community center. At the end of April we did a twenty-four-hour hackathon that was Red Hook themed. Business owners from the neighborhood gave us challenges, and all the tech people competed to make apps to address those issues. Pizza Moto catered the event. I love those guys—after the flood they came down to Van Brunt Street when nobody had any power and just started cooking pizzas for free, out on the street under the police lights.

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your future goals for the space?
David: We’re building a lot of relationships with terrific groups like Invisible Dog and Generally Assembly and Fractured Atlas. We don’t know what we’re going to do with them yet, but we’re kicking around ideas. We’re also starting to collaborate in a bunch of ways with Brooklyn Museum, which is perfect because they want to be linked to a gallery and we want to be linked to an institution. Obviously we don’t want to be a museum, but the way they’re organized and the integrity they have, I think it’s a really great model for us.

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Like this? Read about more skillshares: Brooklyn Brainery, Exapno, Time’s Up, Ger-Nis Culinary Center, Lifelabs, UrbanGlass, 3rd Ward

acme studio

space type: photo studio & prop house | neighborhood: williamsburg | active since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter, tumblr

Listen, I’ve been to a lot of wacky spaces through this project, but Acme is one of the wackiest. It’s just teeming with the wildest array of things—figurines and furniture and statues and taxidermy and instruments and tchotchkes of all shapes, sizes, and hues. Even the bathrooms are like tiny stuff galleries! And the most amazing part? It’s the most organized chaos I’ve ever seen.

photos by Maximus Comissar unless noted

Acme is a one-stop shop for your film and photo needs: run by industry veterans, they can do everything from designing and custom-building a set, to supplying a dizzying array of props, to shooting the whole thing. And they certainly have done all that, for increasingly high-profile clients, from Missy Elliot to Zac Efron to Heidi Klum. They shot the David Cross cover for Brooklyn Magazine, hosted the secret premier of season two of Girls with HBO and Flavorpill, and throw fabulous fundraisers for the Burning Man camp A Cavallo. And they also hold benefits, parties, lectures, classes, and more, and are always open to new ideas for fabulous uses of this fabulous space. So hit ‘em up with your ideas, and go check out an event or two! But first read my interview with operations manager Brian Colgan.

"Girls" screening, photo from Acme's tumblr

brooklyn spaces: How did this all come about?
Brian: It was started by Shawn Patrick Anderson, a set designer and prop stylist. He had a storage and workspace down by the Navy Yard that was full of all this crazy stuff, and people kept wanting to do photos and videos there. He had a series of kind of high-profile shoots there, like Sonic Youth and the band Chairlift, and finally he was like, “What if this could actually be a thing?” Most studios are just a big empty white box with a cyc, that big curved white wall that you do the photo shoot in front of. They’re totally sterile and boring, and you have to bring everything in with you. So the beauty of Acme, what Shawn realized people were responding to at his studio, is why not have a crazy amount of stuff in the studio that people can use in their shoots?

brooklyn spaces: So are you guys actively amassing more stuff?
Brian: We’re always amassing more stuff. There’s so much stuff! It’s really a question of deciding what makes sense to keep, which is always tough.

brooklyn spaces: Especially when you’re trying to impose order on such an eclectic collection.
Brian: Exactly. For instance: we have a lot of taxidermy, which is hard to get in the city, because it’s really expensive and fragile. So we were like, “Okay, let’s be the taxidermy people.” Now we’re always looking for more. There are definitely holes we can fill in the New York City prop world.

brooklyn spaces: I had no idea there even were prop shops, let alone so many that you have to make an identity for yourself among them.
Brian: Oh yeah, there’s a bunch of places. A lot of them specialize in modern, clean, white stuff, because so many people want that. We’ve decided we want to have the most unique, weird things. When someone’s like, “Where can I get a furry armchair?” someone else will tell them, “You’ve got to go to Acme.” I get the craziest requests. Like, “Do you have ten person-size Mountain Dew cans?”

brooklyn spaces: What?! Do you?
Brian: No, but I usually know who does. The film and photo community in New York is small but growing, because the city seems to have realized that there’s a lot of money in this. If you go out to LA, there’ll be a guy whose entire operation is, like, John’s Life-Size Mountain Dew Cans. But in New York, with real estate at such a premium, no one can afford to store all that. Someone called the other day to see if we had a log cabin. An entire cabin! It’s definitely a wacky world.

brooklyn spaces: If a band comes in here and is like, “We want to use the life-size disco ball, that taxidermied deer head, and the paint-covered inflatable baby,” would you be like, “Ooh, Sonic Youth used those same props”?
Brian: Nah, we’d just let it go. Even if things get reused, the application is going to be different or the lighting is going to be different or whatever. And anyway, if you brought twenty people in here and had them pick the coolest object, they’d pick twenty different things. We’re all inspired by a different taxidermied animal.

dressing room

brooklyn spaces: Who are some of your favorite clients you’ve had or favorite projects you’ve worked on?
Brian: It’s always fun to travel, which we do a fair amount. We just did probably our biggest job ever, a Diet Coke commercial down in Nashville with Taylor Swift. As for things we’ve done here, one of our most ambitious projects was building a huge multi-level snow cave for a Heidi Klum fashion project. When Heidi got here, she was like, “This place is crazy!” She made her mom come, she told her friend to cancel her flight, and they all just stayed and hung out. All types of people come in here and are like, “Whoa, this is so amazing! You have the coolest job ever!” and I’m like, “Oh, right, I do.”

Heidi Klum set, photo from Acme's tumblr

brooklyn spaces: And you guys have other kinds of events here as well, right?
Brian: We do. We have this awesome space, and so many people need space, so I’m really excited to share it. We’re open to anything, for the most part. Well, I do get a lot of calls where people are like, “Okay, we’re gonna have sixteen DJs, five bars, and six thousand people!” Which: no. None of that. But we’re pretty open to reasonable things. We had a writing group in here recently, like fifty folks writing in total silence. We’ve had swinger sex nights, we’ve done underground dinner parties, we had a big Ethiopian coffee ceremony with Bunna Café. After Hurricane Sandy, Observatory, the event space in Gowanus, got flooded, and they called and were like, “We’ve got this lecture coming up, the speaker is on a plane from London right now, and we don’t have a space.” So we had that here, which led to Observatory scheduling other things here, including some taxidermy classes. Basically, we have this cool space, so why the hell wouldn’t we share it?

wood shop

brooklyn spaces: I love that! That seems like such a Brooklyn ethos. What are your thoughts about Brooklyn these days, especially this hyper-gentrifying part of Williamsburg?
Brian: When we first opened Acme three years ago, we got a lot of resistance from people about shooting in Brooklyn, but now celebrities want to come here, sometimes more than Manhattan. Not to knock studios in Manhattan, but why would you want to shoot there? Just trying to load things in is impossible. And this is such a thriving area; right on our block we’ve got Mast Brothers, the Brooklyn Art Library, About Glamour, and there’s new stores opening all the time. I definitely love being in Brooklyn. The creative class has absolutely moved over here, so it seems like a natural place to do creative things.

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Like this? Read about more film industry spaces: Film Biz Recycling, Running Rebel Studios, Factory Brooklyn, Bond Street Studio

broken angel

neighborhood: clinton hill | space type: living space, maker | active since: 1979 | links: facebook, flickr

This article was written for Hyperallergic. See the original here.

Most of the coverage you’ll find about the Broken Angel, a handmade architectural marvel in Clinton Hill, begins the story in 2006, when there was a small fire that started all the trouble. That’s the year the tale switches from one about brilliant bohemian artists building their crazy dreamhouse to one about an eccentric old man overwhelmed by legal troubles, shady business partners, and the strangling bureaucracy of the city.

Before I delve into a little history of this incredible space, here’s the time-sensitive part: there’s a block party tonight to say farewell to the Broken Angel, which was originally organized as a small, ten-person gathering but has ballooned to an enormous, two-part spectacle, with over 900 people planning to attend. The festivities begin outside the house itself (4–6 Downing St.) for a family-friendly fête, and will then move to the Irondale Center for a fundraiser turned Brooklyn underground extravaganza, filled to the brim with dancers and performers and tall bikes and DJs and many, many surprises.

And now please read on to learn more about the mad genius whose work is being celebrated.

Arthur Wood has been likened to an American Gaudí. The Broken Angel has been compared to LA’s Watts Towers and Austin’s Cathedral of Junk. Borough President Marty Markowitz called it “a Rubik’s Cube of a spaceship.” It’s been termed vernacular architecture, folk art, outsider art, and—naturally, by some—a frightening eyesore. In its heyday, the Brooklyn Angel was surely the most strikingly unique sculptural works in all of New York. Tragically, much of it has been dismantled in the past decade, and what’s left is not likely to last much longer.

Arthur Wood (who is now 84) and his wife Cynthia (who passed away in 2010) bought the former Brooklyn Trolley headquarters at a city auction in 1979. They paid a mere $2,000 for the four-story, 10,000-square-foot building. And then they began to turn it into art.

Cynthia & Arthur in 2005

According to Shannon Kerner, a close friend of Arthur’s, the Woods began by tearing out the walls and floors and creating many different-sized rooms, some four sweeping stories high, others only five feet. The main staircase was a series of ladders and bridges. Most of the wood and other materials used were salvaged from the streets and garbage dumps, and the space was filled with handmade stained-glass windows Cynthia created from found glass and bottles. In the basement Arthur built a hot tub with a waterfall. And the best-known element of the Broken Angel was on the roof: the Woods constructed a spectacular forty-foot wood-and-glass sculpture on a mirrored platform, which made the whole structure seem to be floating in the clouds.

Shannon describes the rooftop sculpture:

The roof structure branched into two towers. The front one had a huge camera obscura which gave a 360º view of the neighborhood (seven flights up!). You could see blocks and blocks in great detail on a huge white linoleum table scavenged from the street. There was a sweet wooden deck up there too, for stargazing (Arthur loves inventing star-gazing equipment) or hanging out or making art. The back tower was a cool sculpture; you couldn’t hang out on it so much, but you could tangle yourself in its branches (I use the term “branches” metaphorically). In the back there was also another deck that was all stucco, it was like being in the Southwest U.S. The house was an amalgam of all kinds of amazing environments!

Brandon Stanton from Humans of New York, who interviewed Arthur in 2011, said, “Arthur’s sparkling ideas were built with other people’s trash. The concepts were towering and glistening. The realities were made of plywood.” The Woods spent decades creating their masterpiece, finishing major construction in 2002. On their son Chris’ Flickr page (from which all the photos in this post are taken), he said his parents “creat[ed] a home which brought mystery, magic and magnificence to a small cul-de-sac in Brooklyn.” The Village Voice deemed it the “Best Urban Folly” of 2001. In 2002 the New York Times wrote: “Depending on the angle, Broken Angel may resemble a blimp impaled on a church or a laboratory from which some mad scientist might launch a pedal-driven flying machine.” In 2004, Michel Gondry used the Broken Angel as the backdrop for Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. It represents the kind of fantastic treasure that revitalizes your excitement about your neighborhood, that renews your faith in art triumphing over everything—up to and including reason.

And then in 2006 there was a fire. It was small, on one of the top turrets. There was minimal damage and no one was hurt, but that was the point when things began to go downhill. The firefighters on the scene deemed the building unsafe to enter, and the Department of Buildings was notified. They immediately ruled the place unfit for occupancy and evicted the Woods, who were arrested a few days later when they refused to leave. To bring the building up to code—including tearing down the forty feet of additional structure on the roof—would cost around $3 million.

The community rallied around the Woods, including Pratt architecture professor Brent M. Porter, who, along with seven of his students, tried to prove that the building was, in fact, structurally sound. When that didn’t work, the Woods partnered with real estate developer Shahn Andersen to bring it up to code and convert it into condos and art studios. This was a hopeful moment, where it seemed that Arthur’s full vision for the Broken Angel would finally be realized, saving the fantastical space and even opening it up to artists and the community.

On Brownstoner, a commenter named phyllyslim recently talked about having considered joining the project, and the plans Arthur had for it:

The building was [going to be] transformed into a “museum of light” as he termed it… There was to be a parabolic dish in the cellar where light from a prism in the then existing cupola would be directed… There was to be the “cathedral of light” in the front addition where schoolchildren would come to play with interactive exhibits in light, and much more.

In addition, Brownstoner reported at the time that Arthur planned to cap it all off by creating a huge whale out of an old helicopter and hanging it from the building.

Arthur's blueprint for the finished project

After the fire, the Chris Woods wrote, “Many of you wonder what the hell my parents are doing with that building. They have always been building an outline of a dream.” And sadly, as with most such spectacularly unlikely dreams, this one was not to be. There followed three years of complicated legal and financial troubles, with loans defaulted on, trusts broken, promises unkept, and money gone missing. Shahn and Arthur went from collaborators to litigious enemies, and the property was foreclosed upon by the lender, Madison Realty Capital, in 2009. By then Broken Angel had been mostly gutted, the majority of its superbly unique elements removed. Shortly thereafter, in 2010, Cynthia lost her long battle with cancer. Arthur has been in and out of the building ever since.

Many feel that Arthur has been unfairly treated by the city and its emissaries. Arthur himself believes the Department of Buildings started the fire in order to come in and condemn the building. In 2007, Brownstoner noted “the intense level of scrutiny and apparent lack of straight dealing [Arthur and Shahn] received from both DOB and the courts,” and Chris wrote: “The department of Buildings and the City of New York should drop their campaign of harassment and recognize that Brooklyn wants the building that Arthur Wood envisioned, not another boring box of bricks. Why is our building under such scrutiny while other buildings in NY have actually collapsed?”

And the fight to goes on. Says Shannon, “This type of structure belongs in New York, in Brooklyn. We need places like this! Instead of tearing it down the city should have worked with him to preserve it, make it safe to their standards, sure, but make it better.” Shalin Sculpham, another friend of Arthur’s, told the New York Daily News, “It’s one of the weirdest, most beautiful buildings in New York—and his life’s work. And it’s being taken away.”

Now the city has given Arthur one more final notice, so barring another stay of execution, March 30th, 2013 will be Arthur’s last day in his home of nearly thirty years. Shannon says they chose to have a block party to give people a chance to say farewell to Broken Angel, “to wish Arthur well and maybe sing him a song or dance him a dance or do something to show their support of the situation. They could bring all their favorite memories of the space, shake his hand, share some cookies…” Chris has said that they would like to put together a time capsule to hide in the building, so people can bring something small to contribute to that. Ever hopeful, friends have put out an open call for (pro bono) legal help (contact brokenangelbk@gmail.com to get involved!), and a donation page has been set up, in the hopes of raising $50,000 to keep on fighting.

the Woods' stove

So this could really be the end of Broken Angel, but people have been saying that for nearly a decade—if not longer. Arthur is old now, and tired, but he’s still feisty, and he has support from many different corners. And after all, for someone who created the miraculous Broken Angel out of salvaged bottles and boards, would it be so unreasonable to hope for a few more years to keep creating miracles within it?

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Like this? Read about more historic buildings: Brooklyn Lyceum, Brooklyn Historical SocietyBushwick SchoolhouseBreuckelen Distilling Co.South Oxford SpaceTrinity Project

the illuminator

space type: maker, activism | neighborhood: ft. greene & all over | active since: 2012 | links: website, facebook, twitter

For many involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, the two-month anniversary last November was a galvanizing moment. As tens of thousands of activists marched over the Brooklyn Bridge, light projections suddenly appeared on the Verizon building nearby: things like “99%” “MIC CHECK” “#occupy,” and more. I was on that march and it was absolutely electrifying to see. We screamed and clapped and chanted, and the people driving by beneath us honked and cheered out their windows. It was an incredible moment.

image from Boing Boing

In the wake of that action, Mark Read, the one who pulled it off, decided that had been just the beginning. He talked it over with Ben Cohen, a longtime friend of the movement, who eventually agreed to fund the construction of a customized vehicle for mobile guerilla projections. The guy tapped to construct the unit was Chris Hackett—one of the rulers of the Brooklyn maker scene, and cofounder of the art combine Madagascar Institute. Unsurprisingly, Hackett built a formidable machine, and the Illuminator was born.

Mark put out the call and amassed a merry band of activists to bottom-line the project. The Illuminator has been a smashing success, riding through protests from OWS actions to Occupy Town Square performances, partnering with community groups like rent-strikers in Sunset Park and workers’ rights activists in Midtown, projecting slogans and pictures onto the Russian Consulate, the British Embassy, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the Williamsburg Bridge, and on and on.

The Illuminator is at a crucial stage in their journey right now, because they’re about to lose their funding. So this is the last week of their Kickstarter campaign, which, if successful, will allow them not only to keep this van, but to build more for use around the country. You should absolutely donate to their fund, but first read my interview with some of the activists involved.

clockwise from top left: Lucky, Talia, Annabelle, Grayson, Mark, Dan

brooklyn spaces: What was the first outing and the first projection?
Mark: The debut was March 3rd, for Low Lives, a virtual online performance-art project. We went all over that night: Zuccotti Park, the Whitney Museum where we projected the cheap art manifesto from the Bread and Puppet Theatre, down to Cooper Union, and then to Chase Bank.

brooklyn spaces: Do you plan the art before each action? Do you make it yourselves? Where does it come from?
Lucky: We produce a lot ourselves, but the great thing about this is it really is a Occupy resource, and more than that, it’s an activist resource. We reach out to lots of groups around the city, like the Sunset Park rent-strikers and the Hot & Crusty workers, and the messaging always comes from the people we’re supporting.

brooklyn spaces: How do you decide what projects the Illuminator will get involved with?
Annabelle: Well, it started with the 99%, and anything that could fit into that. We did that first projection two days after the eviction from the park.
Talia: I think it has to come from a positive space, people have to be happy about it. There has to be that exciting kind of antagonism.
Lucky: I think this goes back to the collective way we’re run. When we want to do something, there’s automatically a dialogue. We all come from very disparate backgrounds—I’m a biologist, Annabelle is a union researcher, and Mark does media, just to name a few—which really enriches the project, because we bring so many different perspectives.

image by jenna pope photography

Mark: Here’s a funny example of something we wouldn’t do. We were contacted by Woody Harrelson, and he wanted us to do some marketing for his upcoming Off-Broadway play, Bullet for Adolph. We’ve done work for hire before; we do have to keep the van in gas and parking. But what he wanted us to project was “Adolph is coming.” He was willing to pay us ten thousand dollars, which of course we could have really used, but we just couldn’t do it, it was too awful.

photo by athena soules

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the site-specific projections.
Lucky: When we do site-specific stuff, it’s more to do with the people who are rallying around the cause, or the cause itself. The van sort of becomes the hero, popping up and supporting causes, so when students go on an education strike, or renters go on rent strike, we’re part of those actions. There was the action with Occupy Tape, which was an action against Spectra, and we did a “Free Pussy Riot” projection on the Russian Consulate.

Mark: I think the first site-specific one was at Atlantic Yards. There was a mic check, a call-and-response thing about what had happened with the Barclays Center, and a piece that was produced by our community partner in that case, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. The police were all over us that night and we sort of had to outwit them, which has been the case several times since. It was like a cat-and-mouse game.

brooklyn spaces: So the cops are not too fond of the Illuminator.
Dan: Like with the rest of Occupy, there’s a pattern of repression. The police want to disrupt people coming together, and the Illuminator rallies people and gets them excited, so we’re the last thing they want. Often they shut us down by making things up. I got a summons for disorderly conduct that we went to court for, and they didn’t even prosecute it because they knew it was bullshit. Another time they came out with a ticket already written and then asked “How is this projector mounted?” I said, “It’s bolted to this steel bar which is welded to the frame of the vehicle.” And they were like, “Um, this is a danger to pedestrians. It might fall off.”
Lucky: It’s about claiming contested space. In Zuccotti we were occupying a physical park, but the Illuminator is after the advertising space, the commercialized space above our heads and in our eye-line. So it’s predictable that that same sort of repression would happen, because we’re doing something powerful by subverting the order of things, the way society is constructed in a corporatized way.

brooklyn spaces: What’s been the most meaningful part of this project for you all?
Mark: For me, getting away with things is pleasurable, and getting people excited in an action context is awesome. There’s also the pleasure of talking to strangers, having conversations about the state of affairs in this country and the world, the kinds of crises we’re facing, what it’s going to take to solve those problems. Once these young kids came up to us, totally excited, and said, “Are you guys with the revolution?” I was like, “I hope so!”
Lucky: One of my favorite moments was Independence Hall in Philly, because that was totally spontaneous, and it often feels better when you don’t overwork yourself with planning and details. We were driving down to D.C. and saw Independence Hall to our left and figured, “Why not?” and went and projected “99%” onto the building. And as it happened, there were a bunch of Occupiers right there who took pictures and tweeted it all over. This is sort of a media machine, and a critique of mainstream media is that it privileges special interests in voice. Occupy has done a lot to use the power of modern technology to amplify important stories, and the Illuminator does that really well.

Talia: For me the best is feeling like a part of this well-oiled activism machine, and in Philly it really gelled for me how powerful this is, doing that projection and then seeing our image bouncing all around the internet afterward.
Dan: It’s the most re-tweeted thing we’ve ever done, I think. But for me it’s also about the one-on-one stuff. One of my favorite Occupy chants is “Occupy will never die / Evict us, we multiply.” This is like a manifestation of that, because we can spread all over the city and even the country in a totally different way.
Talia: And since the Illuminator 1.0 is going to be shut down, the idea of multiplying, of 2.0, is awesome. One van is great, but it’s limiting. A broader, more mobile fleet all around the nation? That’s really exciting. There’s this brand new energy fueled by all our ideas for what we’ll do next.

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Like this? Read about more activism: #OWS art show, No-SpaceTime’s Up, Brooklyn Free Store, Books Through Bars, Bushwick City Farms, Trees Not Trash

pickett furniture (pier 41 workshop)

space type: coworking maker space | neighborhood: red hook | active since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter, tumblr

Pickett Furniture is huge. The massive coworking space—in an old import / export warehouse right on the water—is home to a dozen woodworking companies, a couple of industrial designers and prototypers, and the screenprinting company Lunacy Design. In addition to “machine alley,” the vast corridor filled with all manner of industrial saws and giant sanders and other baffling tools, there are individual “bays” for each company, finishing rooms, a full photo studio, and offices. It’s an incredible space.

The whole thing is presided over by Jeremy, owner of Pickett and landlord to all the other small companies. He told us to arrive in the early evening so we could catch the sunset over the water from his window, which was excellent advice. In fact, I kept getting distracted during the interview by all the ships floating in and out of view, as well as the great weird music Jeremy played for me (an eighties record called “Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat“) on the incredible stereo console he built himself.

brooklyn spaces: What’s the craziest thing you’ve built lately?
Jeremy: Probably this stereo console. There’s a company in Chicago called ECP Audio, they build high-end equipment for the audiophile community out of tubes, and I’ve been doing their casework for the last few years. Last summer we started talking about doing one of those old fifties-style retro stereo consoles but with audiophile equipment. We created the tube amp together, the tube phono stage, the speakers, and the digital stage, so you can stream your iTunes from anywhere in the room. I also worked with Planet 10 Hi-Fi on the speaker design. The really great thing about the console is it’s only got a five-watt amp. Modern stereos, they all have are like 5,000 watts of power. The really muddy way to create sound is to give it a lot of power but not pay attention to the circuitry or any of the parts and components, which are usually all solid-state. So we took the Pickett Furniture philosophy of really simple furniture and applied it to the electronics, and we were able to create something that outperforms just about any modern stereo.

brooklyn spaces: What are some other crazy things you’ve built?
Jeremy: There are a lot of things that were hard but don’t look it, like the chair you’re sitting on. It looks like an art project, but it’s incredibly comfortable, which took a lot of trial and error. These stools weren’t hard to build, but the wood is from the Staten Island Underground Railroad, so that’s pretty crazy.
brooklyn spaces: Whoa.
Jeremy: Yeah, a friend of mine has a carriage house in Staten Island, which was a safe house in the Underground Railroad, and these black locust trees in her backyard were part of it too. They had little markings in the bark that indicated “danger,” “safe house,” whatever. The trees fell down in a big storm a few years ago, so I went out there and brought back as much as I could.

brooklyn spaces: Does that kind of thing happen a lot?
Jeremy: We do try to be very conscious of the materials and processes we use, and we like to be able to tell the story of our wood, from where it grew up to where it was harvested and reused. The oak for the coffee table we’re building right now came down from the John Jay Homestead property up in Westchester, and it’s the same story: these 230-year-old trees fell down in a storm. I used to be in the music business, and I toured Japan quite a bit, so getting exposed to shintoism and the Japanese way of life has really shaped my business. We try not to waste. A lot of our furniture is made out of solid, local woods, and everything’s hand-cut and assembled here. There’s a book called The Art of Japanese Joinery that’s like our bible.
brooklyn spaces: Is it okay to share the name of the book? I don’t want to give away your secrets.
Jeremy: Oh, it’s fine, it’s totally unprofitable to do it this way. But we want to make products that will have a really long lifespan, heirloom pieces that will be auctioned at Christie’s or bequeathed in people’s wills. We think that’s one of the best ways to be green, to create products that won’t wind up in a landfill. People in mixed-use neighborhoods usually don’t like manufacturers, they feel like it decreases property values, pollutes the water, the land and air. But I want to be able to make and manufacture our products here, in the neighborhood where I live, and the only way to do that is to be a good steward of the neighborhood. We donate our sawdust to community gardens for mulching, we sponsor a night at Red Hook Flicks film series, we really try to let people know that we value the neighborhood and aren’t a threat. There are a lot of areas, like Gowanus and Greenpoint, that were plagued by industries that didn’t care what they did to the neighborhood. The factories were owned by people who lived somewhere else, and they trashed the neighborhood and then left.

brooklyn spaces: And we’re still cleaning up their messes.
Jeremy: Right. We try to do things carefully, and hopefully that comes through in the furniture, hopefully people who seek out our pieces would rather have a something built by a local craftsman than something made by Ikea robots in a far-off factoryland. My family ancestry is a long line of craftsman, weavers and woodworkers. So there’s a lineage I want to honor.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Jeremy: I just want this to be a place where small companies can continue to work and manufacture. This is such an expensive city, but by all of us pulling together, we can afford to do it. And it’s really nice having other people in the shop and seeing other projects. It adds a real energy and perpetual motion.

brooklyn spaces: Does being in Red Hook impact your business?
Jeremy: Oh, I love it here. We share this building with Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies, which is amazing because the smell always comes in. There’s other great businesses in the neighborhood, like Stumptown Coffee, Baked, Red Hook Lobster Pound. The Dustin Yellin galleries just opened up in an old record storage warehouse. The Red Hook Crit is out here. Often small tours come through; yesterday like fifty people came by with Open House New York, and once in a while Made in Brooklyn brings groups in. There’s very little housing in Red Hook, so you get to know lots of people in the neighborhood. It really feels like a village, and everybody partakes in activities as a village. It’s a fantastic community. Once you find this place, you never want to leave it.

sunset off the pier

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Like this? Read about more makers: Twig Terrariums, Ugly Duckling Presse, Metropolis Soap, Gowanus Print Lab, A Wrecked Tangle Press, Breuckelen Distilling, Arch P&D, Bushwick Print Lab

twig terrariums

neighborhood: gowanus | space type: makers, commercial | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook, twitter, flickr, pinterest

all photos by Maximus Comissar

Yet another amazing maker shop in Gowanus, Twig Terrariums—the brainchild of Katy Maslow and Michelle Inciarrano—sells tiny gorgeous worlds. Their terrariums are housed in mostly found glass—like vintage gumball machines, cake stands, light bulbs, pitchers, and pendants—and they’re filled with lush mosses and other plants, complete with quirky little scenes. These include sweet things like wedding couples, hiking groups, zoos, and people reading or golfing or swimming, as well as more adult fare like naked sunbathers, fornicating couples, graveyards, zombies, graffiti artists, and axe murderers.

Michelle & Katy, photo by Lauren Kate Morrison

Katy and Michelle are a couple of seriously busy crafters: in addition to running their shop and offering lots of terrarium-making workshops, you can catch them at tons of fairs, like Bust Craftacular, Renegade Craft Fair, and Brooklyn Flea. Their amazing work has been featured all over the place, including NY1, New York Times, New York Magazine, Urban Outfitters, WNYC, Design*Sponge, and more. And they’ve even have a book: Tiny World Terrariums.

brooklyn spaces: Give me a brief definition of a terrarium.
Katy: It’s really just plants enclosed in glass.
Michelle: Terrariums were started back in the 1800s by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. He wanted a fern garden in his yard but he couldn’t make it grow because there was a lot of pollution where he lived in London, but he noticed that inside this little case where he was experimenting with moths, a fern spore had somehow taken hold and grown. So he started coming up with different types of cases and seeing how different plants did. And he experimented and got it right, and it actually changed the course of history. It’s the reason we have tea, coffee; it was indirectly responsible for penicillin and things like that, because they were able to take plants much farther than they had before.
brooklyn spaces: Wow! Did you know all that before you started making terrariums?
Katy: No way.

brooklyn spaces: So how did this all come into being?
Michelle: Katy and I were childhood hooligan friends, we used to hang out all the time and be crafty. We lost touch for several years, but then we met again about five years ago and went right back to making things together. And one day I pulled a cruet jar out of my kitchen cabinet and said, “I want to make a terrarium out of this.” Before we knew what happened, we had terrariums all over our apartments.
Katy: We got addicted so quickly! We had to choose between giving them to everyone we knew or trying our hand at selling them. When we went to the Brooklyn Flea for the first time we had an amazing response, and we were picked up by the New York Times. The first day! The second time we went we got picked up by Country Living. Third time it was something else, and then something else, Rachel Ray and Real Simple and all these awesome things. It was definitely a surprise.

brooklyn spaces: Did you think five years ago that this was going to be your lives?
Katy: Not at all. We were just presented with an amazing, unexpected, very charming response, and this became our livelihood. We’re hoping that it’s not a passing phase. I mean, terrariums have been interesting for 200 years, and most likely they’ll be interesting for 200 more. And we’re always challenging ourselves, looking for ways to make it bigger, better, cooler, more intricate, more elaborate.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of your favorite terrariums.
Katy: My personal favorites are the graphic horror: axe-murderer scenes, post-apocalyptic scenes, wheelbarrows full of body parts, mass graves, zombies. One of the ones I have at home has a guillotine on a hill and heads rolling down. There’s an irony to it, this kind of fun, expansive space that can be filled with quirky little characters and inhabitants. One of our popular ones is a big beautiful terrarium with a little park, and then off in the corner there’s a couple doing it in the bushes. Of course, we also do a lot of unicorns and fairies. We really just go with our weird tastes and bizarrely varied interests and whims.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the specific moss. Which are the funnest to work with or look the best?
Katy: Well, there are like twelve, fifteen thousand types of moss in the world, so there’s a lot to work with. When we were researching, we found out that NASA was actually considering terraforming the moon with moss because it’s so hardy and adaptive. But we each have our obsessions. We love the sphagnum buds that happen in their juvenile form, and they grow in bogs, like six feet of mud, right alongside streams and ponds. Sometimes when we go mossing, we really suffer for our art. Michelle lost a shoe once.
Michelle: I took a wrong turn and sunk a foot and a half down in the nastiest, stinkiest bog you can imagine. And I lifted my foot up and my shoe was gone. I had to go home with a bag over my foot, and it stunk.
Katy: She reeked. And I laughed and laughed!

brooklyn spaces: Do you do your mossing in and around New York?
Katy: We have freelance mossers all around, and we’re always looking for more. If you guys ever want to go mossing—
Maximus: Oh my god, I want to do that. Can we do that?
brooklyn spaces: Yes!
Michelle: Okay, just don’t go to Central Park. You can’t take from public land or parks or anything like that.

brooklyn spaces: How does being in Gowanus affect you as artists and small-business owners?
Katy: We love it here. We’re both Brooklyn natives, and I think this is one of the best neighborhoods in the borough.
Michelle: Our neighbors are absolutely amazing. Ben, who runs Gowanus Your Face Off, he came in and introduced himself the second he saw our sign go up. Proteus Gowanus picked up some glass from us to house weird objects for an exhibit. There are so many cool things in Gowanus. We’ve got Film Biz Recycling, 718 Cyclery, and Littleneck right down the street. Everyone’s got such great ideas.
Katy: Everyone’s been really welcoming and supportive and really into what we do. We just love it here.

brooklyn spaces: Having grown up in Brooklyn, what do you think about being here these days?
Katy: I love what Brooklyn’s become. When I was growing up it was still grungy, and I do kind of miss the seedy underbelly of New York, which doesn’t really seem to exist anymore. But I very rarely go into the city, I rarely leave Brooklyn. I get my rugelach in Midwood and my latte in Gowanus and I’m a happy camper.
Michelle: I’ve always loved Brooklyn. Even though it’s stinky and smelly and all the trash and traffic, it’s still so charming.
Katy: Last time I had out-of-town guests, we didn’t even leave Brooklyn. We went from a barge museum in Red Hook to the best pizza in Bay Ridge to Green-Wood Cemetery, and it was the coolest. There’s so much here, it’s so quirky and fun. I fall in love with it every time I think about it.

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Like this? Read about more makers: Metropolis Soap Co., A Wrecked Tangle Press, Breuckelen Distilling, Arch P&D, Urbanglass, Ugly Duckling Presse

ugly duckling presse

space type: nonprofit press | neighborhood: gowanus | active since: 2000 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Ugly Duckling Presse is a nonprofit letterpress printing and bookbinding studio with a pretty long and fascinating history, which you can read about over on their site here. In the late nineties the Presse was a zine called Ugly Duckling, and in 2000 the group started 6×6, which was put together in various living rooms and printed at a tiny Manhattan Valley letterpress shop whose primary business was making church newsletters. Since then UDP has lived in three states, four countries, the Nest Space in Dumbo, near a pier in Red Hook, and now at the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus. They’ve got twelve editors and have printed over 200 beautiful handmade books, not to mention dozens of broadsheets, tons of chapbooks, and all kinds of paper ephemera. They’re beginning to explore ebooks too, and they even have a podcast!

this & all photos in this post by Maximus Comissar

One of the cool things about a volunteer-run press is the amount of opportunities to let the community in. If you sign up for the UDP mailing list, you’ll get invited to their headquarters every couple of months for bookbinding, hand-stitching spines, letterpressing covers, and all manner of classy, functional arts and crafts. Maximus and I went by for a visit to help bind copies of the chapbook “Mr. Z., Mrs. Z., J.Z., S.Z.” with thick twine, met some lovely interns and volunteers, got to see the antique-looking machines in action, and hung out with Matvei, the Presse’s founder.

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?
Matvei: When I moved to New York in the late nineties, a bunch of my writer friends started making one-of-a-kind books for each other, little artist projects, simple things. Then we started to print larger runs of things like chapbooks, hand-bound books, zines, stuff like that. We started 6×6 in 2000, and just before that, we’d started putting Ugly Duckling Presse on the spines of all our little books, even though Ugly Duckling Presse wasn’t a place, it was just our living rooms. But it stuck. We wanted to publish our peers and poets we admired. There was a lot of labor involved, hand-stamping and rubber-banding and binding, so we already had that sense of making stuff, of zine culture and collage and hand-pasting and book arts and things like that.

brooklyn spaces: When did it become more a more formalized press?
Matvei: In the early 2000s, we moved in with a bunch of other arts organizations in a large space in Dumbo called Nest Space for eighteen months. We all got to be there practically for free; all we had to do was clean it up and build some walls. It was one of the early Two Trees buildings, and of course it was part of their plan, to bring in arts people to make the neighborhood more desirable and drive up the real estate values. Now there’s a crazy expensive boutique where our little workshop was.

brooklyn spaces: That’s so depressing.
Matvei: Well, it was fun. And there were lots of other arts groups there, some of whom we’re still in touch with, like Collapsible Giraffe, NTUSA, Paul Lazar Big Dance Theatre, Brooklyn Underground Film Festival. We had a huge common space that we used for events and performances and crazy parties, which was really inspiring. It helped people to know who we were and also helped us bring a certain kind of energy to poetry. Poetry’s really versatile, you can listen to it in a library in a stiff chair or you can go to a reading in some underground place and have it performed with crazy music. It was a very vibrant scene at the time, and that really influenced the way we wanted the to press work. It wasn’t just a publishing house, it was a place for people to come together, and to learn how to make books.

brooklyn spaces: Was it hard to leave that scene?
Matvei: In Red Hook we were holed up in one of the buildings near the Coffey Street pier, and it was a little lonely. But that’s when we were really making the press into something serious, so maybe we needed that kind of focus. And then we came here and became part of the Can Factory community, which has been really great. Issue Project Room is here, Rooftop Films is here, there’s a letterpress studio upstairs, Swayspace, they do beautiful work. There’s other publishers here too, One Story, Archipelago, and Akashic. There’s great energy, it’s a wonderful environment for us.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any favorite books, or books that were a particular pleasure to make?
Matvei: We’ve done some very labor-intensive accordion projects, like 5 Meters of Poems, which really is almost five meters long. There have been a number of projects that I’m really proud of, like The Drug of Art by Ivan Blatný. He’s a multilingual poet who wrote in a lot of languages at once. Ana and Veronica, who edited that book, they put together pretty much a critical edition, with solid editorial backing, annotations, footnotes, all of it. It’s something that even a university press isn’t necessarily going to take on these days. And then on the other hand, we just did a chapbook called “Surprised by French Fries” by Joe Dailey, which is totally irreverent and funny, it just sings in a particular, ephemeral, non-serious way.

brooklyn spaces: I also noticed one called “Get the Fuck Back Into That Burning Plane.” That’s a great title.
Matvei: Yeah, I love that one, that’s Lawrence Giffin. We’ve working with him for years. We published his work in 6×6, then we did a chapbook of his poems, and we’re going to do a full-length book of his next year. That often happens. We like to have longer relationships with writers.

brooklyn spaces: Is there any overarching artist statement that unites all of the Ugly Duckling Presse books?
Matvei: Aesthetically we’re very eclectic, but some of that has to do with the structure of the collective. Each editor really has to want to do whatever they’re going to publish, and also it’s their choice; it’s not democratic, we don’t vote on which books to do. But we all come from similar sensibilities. We all want to publish books that no one else is doing. And there’s of course the handmade aspect. We’re not luddites by any means; sure, we’re a letterpress shop, but we also have two computers and we’re doing online books, exploring things that you can’t do in a print book. We just really believe in the book as a technology that works and that hasn’t been exhausted yet, one that is still interesting and immediate, and that it’s important how you make the book, not just what’s in it. I think we’re okay with the idea that we publish things that aren’t commercially viable, but we’re still engaged in cultural activity. It’s possible that our books will be read fifty yeas from now, and it’s possible that they won’t. But it continues an idea of culture that probably isn’t part of the general American or even global notion of what culture is anymore.

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Like this? Read about more books and book art: A Wrecked Tangle Press, Central Booking, Books Through Bars

gowanus print lab

space type: print studio | neighborhood: gowanus | actice since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter

The Print Lab is deep in the bowels of Gowanus. It’s a nice stroll from the train, unless you happen to visit during a freak blizzard Halloween weekend like I did, in which case it’s kind of a cold, wet slog. But totally worth the trip! The space is huge and comfy and inviting, with great art on the walls, studio members hard at work at the many tables and machines, and incredibly friendly teachers and staff. I was invited to take the Intro to Screenprinting class, which (thankfully) covered all the basics, and though I’ve got no drawing eye whatsoever and had never even touched a screen before, I totally made a shirt that I’m not at all embarrassed to wear.

all photos by Maximus Comissar

The intro class is only one of many offered at the Print Lab; there’s printing classes for skateboards and posters and stationary, digital classes on Photoshop and Indesign and website-building, there’s classes for kids, classes for DIY weddings, they even had a class on how to jailbreak your iPhone. Of course, they could also do everything for you, offering all kinds of large-format and specialty-ink printing services for fancy projects. Or if you already know what you’re doing and want to DIY it, you can become a member, gaining access to all the tools, paints, supplies, computers, machinery, and anything else you could possibly need. So go print something! But first click through for my interview with Amy, the lab’s marketing director.

screens

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your more unusual classes?
Amy: There’s lots. We have one on printing in repeat, for making fabric or wallpaper, we have a specialty inks class where you get to use flocking and foils and glitter, we have digital classes that are geared toward helping you make your designs appropriate for screenprinting, all kinds of things.

sinks

brooklyn spaces: There are also events here, right?
Amy: Yup. Last weekend we had a Halloween event, where kids got to have characters screenprinted on their clothes. We also do collaborative events; we did a party with Sobe and a craft night with Etsy. About once a month we have an opening reception for the new art exhibit.

screens

brooklyn spaces: Is the art done by Print Lab members?
Amy: Sometimes, but this one was curated by the art collective Six Betweens. Next month we’re doing an exhibit with the Graphic Artists Guild, and after that is a student show called “The Art of Rebellion.” Screenprinting lends itself to protest so well, because it’s really affordable, you can make multiples easily, and you can really deliver a message.

paints

brooklyn spaces: What’s the screenprinting community like? Do you guys get together and talk shop?
Amy: Sure, we’re friendly, we’re fun, we like to get along with everybody. We’re buddies with USA Tees, we have a good relationship with The Arm, a letterpress studio in Williamsburg, and also with the Brooklyn Artists Gym, which is just down the street. It’s really exciting to be in Gowanus right now, part of the growing artist community.

oven

brooklyn spaces: Who are some of your exciting clients or members?
Amy: We worked with one Brazillian designer doing specialty printing, glitter and things like that, and we do some contract work with the fabric designer Scott Hill, who runs Old Village Hall. Two of our long-term members, Anthony Graves and Carla Herrera-Prats, are part of Camel Collective, and they were featured in Mass MoCA’s “The Workers” show. Some other great members are painter Jeremy Penn, illustrator Erin Gallagher, graphic artist Norm Ibarra, and printmaker Andreas Ekberg. The artists here do really amazing things.

our instructor

brooklyn spaces: What’s the best part of working at a printshop?
Amy: I just think it’s exciting to be a part of a space that encourages people to make things, and to work in a way that they might not be able to on their own. I mean, you can screenprint at home, but it’s certainly very difficult, especially in New York with tiny shoebox apartments. So I love being able to facilitate people having the space they need to work and create.

me with my screen

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Like this? Read about more makers: Pickett Furniture6 Charles PlaceWerdink, Bushwick Print Lab, A Wrecked Tangle Press, Metropolis Soap, Arch P&D, Gowanus Ballroom, Urbanglass, Better Than Jam, 3rd Ward

a wrecked tangle press

space type: art press | neighborhood: prospect heights | active since: 2007 | links: website, facebook, myspace

There’s no doubt that Brooklyn is a literary utopia. We’ve got writers winning all the most important awards, we’ve got a massive annual book fair, and we’ve got some of the hardest-working, most innovative small presses in the world, like Akashic, powerHouse, Soft Skull, Archipelago, Melville House, and Ugly Duckling Presse.

Alaska & Jessica

Another thing we’ve got is artists’ books. At the intersection of DIY crafting, zine culture, writing, and art, artists’ books are limited only by the imagination of the maker. I covered artist-book gallery Central Booking several months ago, without realizing that gallery assistant Jessica was one half of the artist-book micropress A Wrecked Tangle. In their Prospect Heights apartment, Jessica and her partner Alaska make tiny editions of gorgeous books of poetry, prose, and photographs, using a crazy amount of different materials, from dirt to teddy bear eyes to hair to eggs. Their books have been exhibited at Proteus Gowanus, Dog Eared, The Extra-Illustration Project, 139, The Human Book ProjectRutgers University Book Arts Symposium, and more. Unsurprisingly, they’re smart, fun, engaging women, with lots of ideas about books and art and the way Brooklyn makes it all possible.

[all photos by Maya Edelman]

brooklyn spaces: What made you decide to start making art books?
Alaska: We both spent a ton of money going to Pratt for creative writing and then realized that we were doing nothing with it, so one day I brought over a typewriter and all this scrap paper, and we just made a book. It was called Objects Hiding Access to Sanctuaries. We made seven copies and mailed them to people whose work we liked or who we felt were kindred spirits. Each book had the same pages, but we used different materials for certain elements, and they all came with an engraved skeleton key.
Jessica: There’s always a souvenir with our books. It’s supposed to be an experience that you take something away from.
Alaska: The first year or so that we were making stuff it was for fun, just to make the world a more beautiful place, that thing D.H. Lawrence said about how artists create a world for each other that’s fit to live in. But eventually we decided it’s not selling out to be in galleries, and also we wanted people who love books to see our books. So we started trying to find more people in the book community who were interested in seeing our work.

Beginning

brooklyn spaces: How many books have you done?
Jessica: I don’t know. We’ve done a lot of really small editions, and there are books we’ve made that we haven’t kept any record of.
Alaska: If I had to ballpark it, I’d say thirty.
Jessica: Working in book art also makes you question what really qualifies as a book. One of the things we did is called The Bee Does Not Keep the Honey, which is a honeycomb made out of packaging and stuffed full of rolls of paper. Is that a book?
Alaska: We just went through a really book-object-y phase, where things got kind of sculptural for a while, and I think that that still affects how I look at making books or just what a book is. We did this book Beginning that’s a dozen eggs with poems and objects inside that all relate to kinds of beginnings, and you have to break them open to read them. That has chapters that relate to a theme, but it’s not a book exactly.

brooklyn spaces: So what would be your definition of what makes a book?
Jessica: It’s funny but we’ve never actually been asked that.
Alaska: I feel like I’ve been avoiding that question.

brooklyn spaces: Okay, well what unifies all of your books?
Jessica: We try to have the form and the concept and the text all working off of each other to express the idea. So if we’re making Tremblement, a book about an earthquake, we want the title to be off-kilter, and we want a book that is about beginnings to be inside eggs. It’s the interplay between those elements that makes it successful to me.
Alaska: We’re both really into the idea of making moments or making memories, and experience-based work, so we try to add elements of that to all of our books. We want the book to be an experience that changes with you as you change it.

Loosies

brooklyn spaces: Do either of you have a favorite book you’ve done?
Alaska: Winter is one of my favorites. That one was one of those books that was sort of painless, sort of cathartic. We wrote it in winter, basically dealing with that winter sad where you’re like, “This is hard and awful. Where is everyone?” It’s sort of a little attempt to reach out and be like, “Hey, I’m here. Hope you are too.”
Jessica: I think that’s what a lot of our books do. One of the ones I really love is called Loosies; we did for this zine festival at the Brooklyn Lyceum that was put on by Susan Thomas, a really awesome librarian from Pratt. We brought this 250-pound cigarette machine and filled it with a series of “loosies” that were letterpress poems rolled up to look like cigarettes. You could put in a quarter and dispense a poem.

brooklyn spaces: Do you think making art books in our internet age is an important rebellion?
Jessica: I feel like artists’ books are becoming much more popular as a result of the way that publishing is going; books are now more precious because there’s not going to be as many of them.
Alaska: A lot of our work is in celebration of the book as something awesome that you get to hold and smell and flip through and spill stuff on, and I think that means more now than it used to.

brooklyn spaces: Is there a community of art book people that you’re inspired by, or does living in Brooklyn affect the way you make your art?
Jessica: I don’t know a lot of people who do what we do. In the niche of book arts, which is itself a very small community, writing collaboratively is really rare.
Alaska: But we are surrounded by a bunch of really talented people, so I make books and send them to my friends in the band Toothaches, and they send me their music in return, or they’ll send me music to make books to. There are a lot of really culturally and artistically rich things happening in Brooklyn.
Jessica: There’s a grassroots artistic movement here that’s very unironic. People plant and cook and do things because they love them, because they think that it makes the world a better place. People are getting past the idea that the artist has to be this suffering lonely person slaving away in their hovel. You don’t have to be miserable to be a writer, you don’t have to isolate yourself in order to be passionate.
Alaska: We’re writers, so we obviously think too much and become depressed about the world, but our books always end up having this hopeful note, partly because the actual process of making things is so empowering. I remember reading Deleuze & Guattari, they had this thing in Capitalism and Schizophrenia where they talk about how everything is so messed up in the world that being able to make stuff and create is the only way to be in control and process our own lives. I see a lot of that in Brooklyn and in the people I know. Everyone is using what’s around them in creative ways.

brooklyn spaces: What are some projects you’re planning to do in the future?
Alaska: We want to do more projects for strangers. We’re going to make little blue nests and hide them around Brooklyn. It’s sort of a shout-out to this book Bluets, where she talks about these birds that build blue nests. I read that and thought, “I would shit my pants if I saw a blue nest!” We want to do things where someone who doesn’t know us can find it, just random acts of beauty. I love the thought of someone sitting down on a subway bench and seeing this little blue nest and being like, “What? Is this for me?” There aren’t enough things like that, and when you do find them it’s so exciting.
Jessica: I think we’re scared to use the word “magic.” But you grow up thinking that maybe magical things could happen, and when you realize that’s not true, it’s pretty much soul-crushing. So making that magic for people is just so incredibly rewarding.
Alaska: And making those things is just as good as if they were spontaneously created in the universe. It doesn’t matter if your friend who has keys to your apartment is the one who left the awesome thing in your kitchen, it’s the fact that you came home and it was there. I feel like nothing is too small to make someone a little bit happier.

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