James Cherry designed his first light fixture on a whim. It was 2019 and he was living in a cramped New York City apartment with three roommates, having recently graduated from the Studio Arts program at Bard College. “I needed a lamp,” recalls the artist. “I had these boxers that got a tear in them, so I made a little clay armature and wrapped the fabric around it.”
That illuminated work would launch Cherry’s practice, which, six years later, is best known for ethereal lamps with a handmade feel. “They’re a bit embryonic,” he says, inspecting the specimens that have covered his worktables since he opened a studio in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, this past summer. A spiraling partition table lamp, a pyramid-shaped pendant, and assorted amoeba-like forms are all made using variations of that original ad hoc technique, wherein Cherry stretches everyday fabric (early experiments were made using discarded packages of pantyhose scored from a Walmart dumpster) over some framework before hardening it with coats of resin. Recent iterations incorporate small cedar balls—the kind used to keep moths off clothes—as the joints.
Cherry at work in his Brooklyn studio.
Material specimens on the worktable.
The view of Cherry’s airy workspace from the loft.
Cherry, who was born in Chicago, also maintains a home and studio in Los Angeles, where he moved during the early days of the pandemic. There, he might use found shells in a piece, or mix sand into the resin. But in Brooklyn, his material palette has expanded, incorporating piano wire scavenged from the street or twigs collected in Central Park to make the interior skeletons. “There’s a whole new world of stuff here that inspires me,” explains the artist, who captured the local design scene’s attention when he debuted a series of lamps at Tiwa Gallery last winter. “But no matter where I go, I work with what I’m seeing.”