La Passegiata/Studio Visit 3: Designing Serendipity/Andrew Coates

La Passegiata: Red Hook
Vasca 2
June 08 [2nd trip], 2010. Past the Holland Tunnel entrance, and into Red Hook. Huge cumulous clouds; very much a perfect June day.

First leg of walk: Dwight Street to X Street, near Dafonte’s Sandwich Shop.

Location: Large industrial building, all studios/living spaces.

Andrew Coates' America

Narrative: “The foundation of art should be design,” says Andrew Coates. Or, at least, I hope I’ve got that quote close enough to please him. Coates is an incredibly easygoing and talented guy. I was introduced to him via his neighbor, Hannah, and am grateful for the connection.

The intercom that ostensibly buzzed me in. (No site unworthy of bettering here.)

Right now, he seems to be shimmying constantly between his graphic art projects and his works of ‘fine art’ and, after visiting with him, I’m convinced that drawing a hard line between the two just isn’t important. It’s all one big thing.

Coates' business card holder (his creation, of course)

Coates makes compelling (3-D, standalone) objects in multiple, like snow globes that take the famous Milton Glaser (?) I [Heart] NY logo and use it as backdrop for garbage bags blowing in the wind. (How often have we Urbanites seen that sight?). He makes plastic signs of nonsensical texts that play perfectly off the most typical, and easily overlooked, signs you’ll encounter just a few blocks away from his studio. And there are also coasters that look like tree trunk sections, made out of cork. Everywhere.

snapped in the bathroom

snapped outdoors, on the walk back, but simply must include it here.

“The difference for me,” Coates says, “is that design needs to be absorbed quickly. It should communicate effectively. That’s why you see a lot of irony [in design]. Irony also works well in gallery art,” he continues, “where people only spend 10 or 15 seconds. Art, I’ve heard, is about making something you can’t write about or tell about. Well,” he adds, after looking at me, “maybe, you’re a writer, so that’s not a definition that really works for you.” That said, I pretty much agree. Even though I do spend a lot of my time talking about art, it’s actually much more fun to talk about its boundaries, like with the sorts of object lessons Coates has scattered around here, in his incredibly neat, and jam-packed, yet well-organized studio. You get a sense of a life in art. Um, I mean, design. And that’s what it’s all about.

Coates coaster, and desk

The “Bear Attack” images you see here are culled from found books on, you guessed it, bear attacks, that Coates has amassed, and is now pinning up to the wall in sections, altering them here and there, as needed, with red paint and such.

in progress, pages of books of bear attacks, culled and separated and organized by Coates

His fascination with things bear-attack-ish began innocently enough, when his Mom had told him one day that she saw a bear in her front yard. He did some Internet research on the nature of such encounters, and bam, he was hooked.

Incidentally, we’re gonna do a show of his work, much of it Bear Attack-related, at O’Barone in Red Hook in July, as part of this hifalutin’ (well, grassroots) “La Passegiata” series of mine in conjunction with Contaminatenyc.com. So stay tuned.

Coates shows me some work by others whom he admires

Says the artist, “I’m not a specialist; everything I do is new to me.” I know what he means. You sense a kind of compassionate, and, in his own words, “lazy” naturalist at work. I mean that in the best possible way. He’s not trying to obsessively archive his topics of interest (like oh-so-many artists I’ve seen working compulsively in another Brooklyn neighb); he’s not trying alter his materials/found stuff in major ways in order to manipulate his audience into seeing things his way. He’s more…designing the experience, and enjoying pursuing it himself. It’s about a thought process, not about directing [a thought process],” says Coates. “It’s more of my life, serendipitous, instead of chasing life down.

The Walk back: Down Dwight Street. Day still amazing. The R still stands.

What i learn: That graphic design is the new fine art. It’s all we’ve got time for. What’s more, it’s got some amazing and caring practitioners who want to break the new(s) to us, gently.