Thursday, March 19, 2009

Simon Draper: Habitat for Artists/ecoartspace

If you're in New York, there's a marvellous exhibition at ecoartspace (53 Mercer Street in Soho, NYC) featuring the shed-related art of Simon Draper. Simon, born in Wales but a long-term resident of the Hudson Valley, has used sheds as the centrepiece of his work for several years, building them out of recycled materials. More recently, he has organised the Habitat for Artists project (sponsored by ecoartspace), building 6ft x 6ft sheds to be used as studios in Beacon, NY, by other artists (see photo above) who can't afford Manhattan studio prices (pictured below is his work Private Reserve).In an excellent interview by Beth Wilson in Chronogram Magazine, Draper says:
"I like the shed form because it happens off the grid [of all this real estate speculation]. Different towns have different building codes concerning outbuildings, also often defining their specific usage. So [with the Habitat project] I’m taking an architectural form that has a myriad of uses, and we’ll start to inhabit these as work spaces, small enough to slide under the radar of permitting processes, and also realizing that perhaps you don’t need such a big space to actually create work."
Do click on the links above where there is a lot more information on Simon, his work and the intriguing ecoartspace.
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