Pioneers of Change Festival

Bison kintsugi, Studio Lotte Dekker

Last weekend I had the opportunity to work at Pioneers of Change, a unique design festival taking place on Governor's Island.
The event was dreamed up by Remy Ramakers, director of the design company Droog, and is one of the many NY400 events taking place this month. The festival merges together architecture, fashion, and design while showcasing a group of mostly Dutch artists. The festival emphasizes projects that discuss sustainability, reuse, and working collaboratively.

Pioneers of Change is being held in a group of yellow officer's quarters on Governor's Island that date back to the 19th century. The site itself is a perfect example of reuse, albeit with a twinge of understated irony. The whole setting makes me instantly recall family trips to tourist pioneer villages- the kind of places you find posted on brown signs along US highways. The difference here is that instead of having a pioneer village general store that sells "peasant" bread mix to tourists, the "100 Dollars or Less" store is temporarily set up to sell design books and various Dutch-designed Droog products.

I was able to spend extra time in 2 particular houses last weekend. One house holds the Tickle Salon, a project created by the partnership of Driessens & Verstappen. Any willing participant can lay on a mattress and allow a small robotic device, run by a 3-D rendering program that was written by the artists, to trace your skin for 15 minutes. As the session progresses, the robot is able to familiarize itself with the body. (pictures to come next week!)

Where the Tickle Salon space is meant to be a peaceful retreat, the Platform21 house is bustling with numerous repair projects. Platform21 encourages people to reuse objects instead of tossing them away, finding a new beauty in repair. On Sunday I learned how to patch plates with the artist Lotte Dekker. Dekker's work is inspired by the Kintsugi mending technique, popularized by a Japanese shogun in the 15th century. The end result creates a lovely seam and brings new life to broken objects that would have previously been deemed worthless.


The Pioneers of Change festival will be continuing through this weekend, from Friday, September 18 to Sunday, September 20th. More information can be found here: http://www.pioneersofchange.com/about.html
I'll be there on Friday and Sunday if you'd like to say hello!

Shows to see: 31 under 31

If you missed the opening last Saturday (it was quite the well-attended event), there's still plenty of time to check out this show at 3rd Ward.

"31 under 31: young women in art photography"
curated by Lumi Tan and Jon Feinstein
brought to you by Humble Arts Foundation
in collaboration with Ladies Lotto

The exhibition includes photographs by Amy Elkins, Ashley Lefrak, Dru Donovan, Elaine Stocki, Helen Maurene Cooper, Ka-Man Tse, Mary Mattingly, Ahndraya Parlato, Alejandra Laviada, Alana Celli, Alex Van Clief, Allison Grant, Catherine Maloney, Dina Kantor, Hannah Whittaker, Jessica Bruah, Jessica Roberts, Jaimie Warren, Kate and Camilla, Kelly Kleinschrodt, Marta Labad, Manya Fox, Molly Landreth, Nadine Rovner, Rachael Dunville, Reka Reisinger, Sara Padgett, Sarah Small, Sarah Sudhoff, Talia Chetrit and Tealia Ellis Ritter.

I'm back in nyc...

...and I am especially happy to return to my special little "castle" across the street (pictured above from my roof).
Ok, so I should specify that this building I like to call a castle is technically one of the old New York armories still existing in my area. This massive fortress-like building across from my house was once known as the 13th Regiment Armory and is currently being used as a homeless shelter. Last month I ended up photographing this particular armory, along with a couple others in my area, for a small school project. During my winter break I came to the conclusion that I need to continue photographing and researching these buildings in the upcoming months. Until then, I will post some vacation pictures from Memphis and Chicago this week.