Depicting Design - May 12 - Sept 29

Please join Omer in this exciting exhibition, “Depicting Design”, hosted by the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC), opens on May 12th; 2006 from 6-8 PM at 111 Front St. Suite # 218 in Dumbo – Brooklyn; NY 11201. You can also enjoy the Open House event during the Brooklyn Design weekend on Saturday May 13th; from 1-5 PM. If you can not make it on these days, the show will last until September 29th 2006; Monday – Friday from PM. After the images below, you will find a detailed description of the show.

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From the Brooklyn Arts Council page - www.brooklynartscouncil.org

Design is a part of our everyday life, from the clothes we wear, to the spaces in which we live and work, to the dishes we eat off. Designers and architects have fast become a large portion of the creative workforce driving our economy. Depicting Design, an opportunity for the community to see a piece of what goes into and comes out of this ever diverse creative process, was inspired by Brooklyn Designs, a showcase of the borough’s top established and emerging designers.

BAC Gallery put out an open call to designers and architects on Brooklyn Arts Council’s Artist Registry for a juried exhibition curetted by Robert M. Scarano Jr. and Scarano Architects PLLC. Brooklyn based designers and architects, Nielsen Amon, Brad Ascalon, Glenn Bennett, Susan Bowen, Caleb Crawford, Renee Ferguson, Mark Fitzgibbons, Justin Garrett Moore, Danny Glix, Natalia Gomensoro, Daniel Harper, Kim Holleman, Kit Kaplan, Ed Kopel, Sarah Morgan, W. Douglas Romines, Daniel Rossi, Omer Sazir, Carrie Solomon, and Corey J. Willis present drawings, prints, digital renderings and photographs that depict design and their personal design process. This exhibition gives unique insight into the mind of the designer, allowing us to see where ideas begin and how a product potentially develops.

Depicting Design explores the broad range of design, including product and industrial design, stage and lighting design, graphic design, jewelry, textile, and fashion design, as well as architecture, interior architecture and environmental design. Product designers Nielsen Amon, Brad Ascalon, Glenn Bennett, Daniel Harper, Natalia Gomensoro, Omer Sazir, Sarah Morgan, and Carrie Solomon each take different approaches to their form and function. Amon’s Ball and Cross Cube is a design for a sculpture composed of porcelain tiles wrapped around a three dimensional geometric form. The furniture system inherent in Ascalon’s Echo Chaise completely transforms its personality to suit its user. Consisting of individual alternating bolster cushions and spacers that slide over a simple steel frame, combinations of cushion and frame shapes, along with a wide variety of colors and fabrics, give the consumer free reign to customize a chaise to match their personality. Inspired by Non-Euclidean geometric forms, Bennett creates what he calls a metafive piece place setting for the table top. Harper engages the viewer in his folding exercise chair blueprint by illustrating all the facets of the design process, including his inspiration, concept drawing, exploded view, and instructions on how the chair works. Using sterling silver, jewelry designer, Gomensoro creates one ring made up of five stacking pieces inspired by topographic maps and another ring consisting of a rail and free-moving ball-bearings that symbolize the dynamic nature of freedom. Sazir’s Hi Risk combines organic leather with vinyl to produce a high contrast shoe and a strong fashion statement. In contrast, M & C, standing for Milk and Cookies, is part of a table top design, which rethinks the comfort and rituals of food and beverage by taking the liquid container (cup) and the food container (cookie jar) and marrying them under one umbrella. Morgan’s Aurora Borealis is a lighting fixture design inspired by the organic forms of icicles and the machinery of cars and motorcycles. Solomon incorporates graphic with product design by including images of bark from the trees lining McCarren Park in Greenpoint into her Brooklyn Blinds. The window blinds are perforated, allowing small inlets of light to pierce through into the space.

Graphic designers include Corey J. Willis, Danny Glix, W. Douglas Romines, Kit Kaplan, Daniel Rossi, and Susan Bowen. Willis portrays humor through large scale “wallpatterns” of nostalgic treats like popsicles and FruitStripe gum. Inspired by philosophy and jazz, Glix creates a psychedelic poster of a hand, while Romines’s three pared down depictions of our urban landscape are delicately painted with watercolor. Using his signature rhythm of colors and forms, Rossi creates graphic portraits of the classic literary characters, Don Quixote and Dulcinea, originally intended for the minute and hour hands of a clock. Bowen’s public art proposal is a graphic bus wrap composed of overlapping multiple exposures from a single roll of film shot on historic Freemont Street in downtown Las Vegas. Kaplan’s photo illustrations of pedestrians passing an urban storefront emulate photography styles of the 1930s-1950s through a process of manipulating multiple images and hand coloring techniques.

Architects and designers have long grappled with concepts of space utilization. Confronted with the problem of a wall, which also functions as a bench, architect Caleb Crawford relates architecture to the form and practice of yoga by linking the wall to yoga poses. Since there is no stasis or being in yoga, rather, a constant state of becoming, the piece is titled Becoming Wall/Becoming Chair. Justin Garrett Moore explores the territories of social and economic difference while developing innovative approaches to the spaces we share in common through architecture and urban design. Roth Residence by Ed Kopel is the joining of two small apartments for a growing family. Kopel uses the linearity of the space as a method for organizing the architecture by including a continuous overhead storage element running the entire length of the apartment that links the spaces with a full length glass transom. A witty and thoughtful approach, Trailer Park, Kim Holleman’s concept for a sustained, mobile, natural park environment is housed inside an 18' x 6' x 7' mobile trailer. Trailer Park is a site of paradox, complete with a fully planted, designed "real" park with planting beds and a stone wall fountain. It’s technically nonfunctional, yet completely functional in its repurpose.

Renee Ferguson and Mark Fitzgibbons demonstrate that the theater is a place stage designers thrive on fantasy. Ferguson designs a five act play within a site, creating five stages the audience moves through as the story progresses. Lighting is used to summon the audience through the labyrinth. Using the clock atop Grand Central Terminal as inspiration, the drawings of stage sets designed by Fitzgibbons for the Staten Island Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker depict early twentieth century New York City and the Literary Walk in Central Park after a freshly fallen snow.

Brooklyn Arts Council Gallery is located at 55 Washington Street, Suite 218 (between Front and Water Streets.) Regular gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

Contact Sally Sturman (ssturman@brooklynartscouncil.org) or Courtney Wendroff (cwendroff@brooklynartscouncil.org) by phone, fax or e-mail for further information including artist resumes, bios and images.

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ICFF

From May 20 - May 23 New York City will be the host of hundreds of exhibits, openings, shows and parties that together make up the New York Design Week. Anchored by the ICFF show at the Javits Center, this is the pre-eminent U.S. design event for the year.

Find out about ICFF parties at www.core77.com

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Israeli culture in NYC

Come and discover Israeli cultural events in New York, at the Israeli Consul home-page: www.israelfm.org

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Omer Sazir © 2006