Upon entering the lobby of the Museum of Arts and Design, the visitor is met with unusual visual and aural stimulation: flowers fashioned out of tissue paper and metallic ribbon bloom along the stairway banister, bronze-hued metallic ribbons completely cover the elevator landing, and a sound work plays in the background. The foyer offers a dislocating experience — the unexpected vestibule display establishes an immediate break with Columbus Circle, just outside the museum’s doors. Upstairs, on the fourth and fifth floors where “NYC Makers,” MAD’s inaugural craft biennial that runs through October 12, is on display, the show nearly transplants the viewer to Brooklyn.
Many of the craftspeople and designers included in the survey of New York City’s craft community are indeed based in Brooklyn, and their contributions highlight the sheer variety of production undertaken in a borough that has become noted, derisively at times, for its artisanal chocolatiers and other such “hip” makers. Here, the borough’s representatives are less expected. For example, Flavor Paper, a company that manufacturers scratch-n-sniff wallpaper, has its wares pasted to the staircase shaft walls. But the participants are not limited to Brooklyn — there’s even an artisan from Staten Island in the show. “It was very important for us to include makers from all five boroughs, to make this a survey of all of New York City,” said Glenn Adamson, MAD’s new director, who oversaw the conception of the biennial.
More interesting, however, are the Manhattan-made products on display. In 2014, it seems unlikely that manufacture is still taking place in Manhattan. Yet the Manhattan makers in the show are all small-scale and often boutique producers, highly skilled craftspeople who rely on the quality, not quantity, of their work to operate businesses in the infamously expensive borough. Take, for instance, Miriam Ellner, who specializes in verre eglomise, a glass production process that dates back to pre-Roman times. Her 2014 screen, called “Fata Morgana,” is a vision in paint, gold leaf, and glass — otherworldly, but made nonetheless on West 26th Street. Interesting, too, are the clothes designed by Eckhaus Latta, displayed via fantastical collection videos directed by filmmaker Alexa Karolinski.
There are a great many objects on view in the MAD biennial — produced by nearly 100 makers from across the city — and at times the display appears overcrowded and the objects unrelated to one another. Yet unexpected gems appear throughout “NYC Makers,” and they offer a reminder that, for all the hype about Detroit, Los Angeles, and the like, New York still has a creative energy (and industry) to call its own.
Click on the slideshow to see highlights from MAD’s “NYC Makers” exhibition.
