The Artists Behind 1 Hotel Central Park

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Ceramic lobby installation: Stilliani (Stella) Moulinos

Stella was running a four-year old studio called StillClay, where she was running regular workshops, throwing pottery and inventing glazes and clays. The studio was located at an amazing warehouse-converted building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Last September, Stella decided to focus solely on her art and is now working out of Tribeca Potters, a shared space for ceramic artists in Long Island City, Queens. When we started discussing lobby projects, we knew Stella would be the right fit. She draws on her Greek descent in making her pottery – its organic, whimsical and earthy (literally and metaphorically).

Video Projections: Joanne Howard

We were lucky to find Joanne through Jennifer McGregor, our art consultant and head curator at Wave Hill who is also helping us with 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge. Joanne is a sculptor, painter, video artist and set designer. From the minute we discussed making an ambient, ethereal video that celebrates nature, Joanne wanted to use the ivy leaves and bring the outside in. It started out with 4 little ivy pods from the greenhouse that was growing our façade ivy. Joanne took the leaves and painstakingly shot them as she moved them inch by inch (in stop motion form), ultimately creating fluttering, swirling, dancing patterns. Joanne started shooting the ivy in the fall of 2014 and was worried that the leaves might shrivel from the cold, so had them covered with blankets during the cooler months.

Door artist: Charlie Baker

We met Charlie through our landscape architect Damien Harrison. Charlie works out of his studio, Baker Structures in Long Island City Queens. Charlie works at the intersection of art and architecture, and is a magician with found natural objects – twigs, branches, logs, rocks. He spends a lot of time scavenging the beaches of shelter island for driftwood and other treasures, and also uses a lot of disposed materials (branches, etc) from landscaping projects around long island. For the doors at 1 Hotel Central Park, Charlie used 1600 found locust branches. His studio is packed with beautiful objects from nature with new gems to be found every visit. Charlie also collected the birch trees that, together with Damien’s design, make a forest on the 3rd floor setback of the building. 

Feature art walls on each guest floor: Surface and Architecture Workshop (SAAW) 

While they strictly wouldn’t call themselves artists, the guys from SAAW have a really keen eye and great taste. I met Scott Stewart, one of the partners at the Architecture Digest show last year and loved the plaster samples they had displayed. SAAW has a library of hundred of plasters and can pretty much custom make any surface application. They immediately understood the look/feel that we wanted at the corridors and found some amazing reclaimed wood, corrugated metal, fire doors to make some beautiful compositions and of course incorporated their plaster work. SAAW initially started out in Philadelphia, in a part of the city that is now up and coming. This summer they opened a second studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.   

Glass Terrariums: Brooklyn Glass & Dan O’Shea

The terrariums in the guest rooms are hand blown and provided by two artists, one being Brooklyn Glass. They were brought to us by our interior planting partner, Sprout. Our contact there, Alan Iwamura describe their terrariums as follows: “The pieces we are producing are inspired by traditional off-hand glassblowing techniques and ‘happy accidents’.  A combination of traditional practice and contemporary design, each piece is curious and unique.” Another set of terrariums was created by Dan O’Shea, an independent glass blower practicing out of Michael Davis Glass Studio in Long Island City. The idea for his terrariums was self contained dimpled shapes with a hole large enough to fit a hand for planting. We refer to those ones as the “jellyfish terrariums” because of their resemblance. Dan introduced us to the wet folded newspapers that glass blowers use to shape hot gathers of glass. These pieces of newspapers are each unique with burn marks. We loved them so much that 4 of his wet folded newspapers make up one of the framed art pieces at the Baccarat bar. 

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