{"id":39344,"date":"2025-11-14T13:13:48","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T13:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/39344\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T13:13:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T13:13:48","slug":"inside-the-brooklyn-studio-where-james-cherry-crafts-his-embryonic-lighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/39344\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Brooklyn Studio Where James Cherry Crafts His “Embryonic” Lighting"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Cherry<\/a> 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. \u201cI needed a lamp,\u201d recalls the artist. \u201cI had these boxers that got a tear in them, so I made a little clay armature and wrapped the fabric around it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That illuminated work would launch Cherry\u2019s practice, which, six years later, is best known for ethereal lamps with a handmade feel. \u201cThey\u2019re a bit embryonic,\u201d 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\u2014the kind used to keep moths off clothes\u2014as the joints.<\/p>\n

\"Cherry<\/p>\n

Cherry at work in his Brooklyn studio.<\/p>\n

\"Material<\/p>\n

Material specimens on the worktable.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The view of Cherry\u2019s airy workspace from the loft.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cThere\u2019s a whole new world of stuff here that inspires me,\u201d explains the artist, who captured the local design scene\u2019s attention when he debuted a series of lamps at Tiwa Gallery last winter. \u201cBut no matter where I go, I work with what I\u2019m seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Cherry designed his first light fixture on a whim. It was 2019 and he was living in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,1472,9,24,63,5687,15424],"class_list":["post-39344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-magazine","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-splitscreenimagerightfullbleed","tag-storytypedeep-dive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}