The sprawling industrial building at 544 Park Avenue in Bed-Stuy was buzzing with activity on Sunday afternoon (Dec. 15) as two dozen artists opened up their studios to curious art lovers.
I first visited the 544 Park Avenue back in September when a handful of artists participated in Bushwick Open Studios. Check out my article about Christina Pumo and Vega Collective here. Eager to see more, I was excited to learn that several more artists in the building decided to host an event of their own this past weekend. Read about two of my studio visits below.
Andrea Caldarise in her studio with her painting "We Avoid That Corner At All Costs"
"There’s Something Here From Somewhere Else" by Andrea Caldarise
I kicked off my tour on the third floor with painter Andrea Caldarise who moved to 544 Park just over a year ago. She had previously worked from Trestle Gallery in Sunset Park. Originally from New Jersey, Caldarise studied painting and art history at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia and received her Masters in Arts Administration from the University of Pennsylvania before moving to Brooklyn five years ago. “I think Philadelphia has an amazing art scene and New York is different,” she said. “They both have different things to offer and I particularly love the neighborhood that I live in.” Along with Caldarise’s Crown Heights neighborhood, Prospect Park, Green-Wood Cemetery, and her local park—Brower Park—influence her work which focuses on “urban environments and city landscapes” as well as the "psychological connection between places and people."
“I think that there’s a psychological reaction we have to spaces and I think that the way in which we remember things obviously changes, depending on our experiences,” she explained. “It also changes [depending] on what’s happening in the space as you walk through it, and I think that parks specifically, and urban environments, have been designed by us to create and elicit certain reactions. I’m interested in where my experience taps up against a collective experience of public space.”
“It starts with an experience,” she said of her process. “It could be me talking with someone, it could be me witnessing something, some kind of reason why this space…draws you in.”
Her series titled Like a Walk in the Park features scenes of Brooklyn’s backyard. “They are all actually of Prospect Park and they are of different relationships I’ve had with the park and different experiences,” she said of the oil paintings. One painting in the series, There’s Something Here From Somewhere Else, features a bleak look at the park, with abstract, murky green meadows and a single red balloon caught on the bare branch of a twisted tree. The painting is based on different experiences Caldarise has had at the park as well as a drawing she made to commemorate David Buckel, an environmental activist who set himself on fire in Prospect Park in April 2018 to bring attention to the climate crisis.
“I was in the park that day with my family and my dog,” Caldarise recalled. “I read about it later and I remember thinking it was...such an intense experience to know that that was happening maybe a half mile away while I’m enjoying a day in the park with my family.” She said the fact that such disparate events could take place simultaneously in the same space “is worth exploring,” noting that her painting allowed her to “work through some of the feelings” she has about climate change and “wanting to protect natural spaces and wanting to make sure that communities have access to those spaces.”
"After Sargent, At The Luxembourg Gardens" by Andrea Caldarise
Works on display in Andrea Caldarise's studio
Caldarise said her Urban Landscapes series “float[s] between different places that I’ve been or walked through…they are combinations of experiences.” The painting We Avoid That Corner At All Costs depicts a street corner that the artist passes daily, and though she’s never had a bad encounter there, the intersection gives her an uneasy feeling. “I never feel good about it. I was like I should make a painting about it and that space and why it just feels very uninviting to me,” she said. “There hasn’t been any particular negative experience…. That particular corner does not feel like a space that I want to spend time on.” The chaotic crosswalks, streets, and sidewalks she painted, as well as a tilting lamppost and a mysterious cage-like structure, fill the street scene with an ominous vibe.
Caldarise says she paints with a “common language that everyone understands” with the intention of sparking memories of familiar places in viewers. “I want them to interpret it on their own,” she said. “Maybe they don’t see Prospect Park, maybe they see another park that they grew up next to. Maybe they don’t see the [same] corner, maybe they see a corner that they’ve spent their whole life on. I think that’s an interesting reality.”
Learn more about Andrea Caldarise and see more of her work at andreacaldarise.com.
Upstairs on the fifth floor is installation artist Sarah Philouze’s spacious, sunny studio. Originally from France, Philouze moved to New York three years ago and worked from a studio in Bushwick before relocating to 544 Park Avenue in July.
A set designer by trade, Philouze creates intricate, large-scale sculptural works inspired by the natural world. “I like to collect elements I find in nature,” she said, pointing to one work, Reef No. 2, featuring hundreds of blood-red cacti shapes formed in wax.
Sarah Philouze in her studio with an untitled work on the left and "Reef No. 2" on the right
Detail of Sarah Philouze's "Reef No. 2"
“I always do the same process,” she explained, “I mold the element and create a silicone mold. Then I cast with the material I choose many, many times, and then I compose the actual piece.” Some of the materials Philouze works with include plaster, wax, resin, concrete, and even sugar. “I like to try different textures and effects,” she noted.
She creates replicas of items plucked from nature in multiple sizes, creating clusters of varying density across her installations. “I like to work on a big scale so you have a view from far away [where] you can just see an abstract landscape or shape, and when you get closer you can really read what it is for real.” An icy blue piece, Reef No. 1, suggests aquatic life from afar, but closer in, the viewer sees the surface is covered with mushroom shapes. Philouze said she initially tried the work in various colors before settling on the cool blues which reminded her of a jellyfish.
Reef No. 1 by Sarah Philouze
Detail of Sarah Philouze's "Reef No. 1"
Another piece (pictured above with the artist, left) made with plaster-cast quartz crystals features thousands of jagged fragments jutting out from the base like stalagmites. “I’m always inspired by the fractal and the more organic stuff we find in nature," Philouze noted. "I like to create an imaginary landscape.”
Learn more about Sarah Philouze and see more of her work at sarahphilouze.com.
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