Museum of Arts and Design Open Studios

Last week I traveled to NYC to visit friends and see some art.  I ended up making my way to the Museum of Arts and Design, looking for installation ideas for my upcoming show in October and looking forward to visiting MAD since I had never been there.  MAD's Open Studios program is a program I became interested in last spring and I was eager to see the type of work that was being made there as well as get a first hand view of the studio space the work was being made in.  The building itself was odd, an unusually small and awkward footprint in the center of town, which created 4 floors of equally odd space.  The studios looked more like offices, but had cases of work made by artists in the program.

While I was visiting, there were two artists from Taiwan working in the space.  Chen Shao-yi who was delicately painting ceramic doll heads with intricate floral patterns that, according to her postcard, she later composed into freaky wall installations...

And Su Su-jen who was weaving bamboo into a lamp-like sculpture.  Su-jen's postcard was proclaiming the benefits of working with bamboo, a renewable material with infinite shaping and manipulation possibilities.   And while she was forming a long oval like shape, her postcard imaged a couch-like shape composed of several formed spheres.

I'm glad I visited and saw the work being produced there.  If I ever end up applying for this program, it's helpful to know what the space looks like.  Here are some images of past work that was made in the open studios.

Patrice Yourdon sews together small wearable objects of nylon mesh then pierces the nylon mesh with dozens of drywall screws.  A process she considers to be both masculine and feminine.

Li-Rong Liao designs and constructs furniture from origami folds.  All those folds must make these pieces pretty strong, right?  The grey piece has glass resting on top of it.  I wonder how much weight can sit on top of it??