New York, piscinapiscina.com
Piscina is the wide-ranging project of Natalie Shook, a Cuban-American artist who originally came to New York to study painting but soon discovered her love for carpentry and furniture-making. Shook runs a studio and storefront out of Red Hook in Brooklyn, where she works alongside and showcases the talents of her wood-working, ceramic-firing, and metal-smithing friends. At last year’s ICFF, she won Best New Designer and Best in Show on the merits of a ceramic side table and a modular shelving unit built around a grooved spine. But to our mind, her most interesting work to date is a collection of ceramic and wood sconces, whose decorative wood tenons can be daisy-chained to form an endlessly inventive wall-mounted unit. 

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?

Thinking about what defines the American design community — and specifically our practice — the word accessibility comes to mind. In our outer orbit, there’s all of NYC, which gives us access to some of the greatest art, design, and talent in the world. Focusing in, I consider what it means to have our studio in Brooklyn, where we have access to almost any material or service, at almost any time, delivered to our doorstep. Piscina occupies half of a 10,000 sq.ft. building, and my husband runs his architecture practice, Camber Studio, out of the other half. I share Piscina’s studio with quite a few other artists and designers, so we’re fortunate to have access to a community of exceptionally talented individuals who I also happen to love working alongside. We built a caretaker apartment in the back where we live with our two kids and easily transition between studio life and home life. To me, the duality of this experience feels a little wild west and very uniquely American, with accessibility as a strong defining quality.

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?

We have a small showroom directly around the corner from our studio, and I’ve been working on curating a few shows for this coming spring. I’m looking forward to working closely with the artists on those exhibitions and working on some collaborations for Piscina as well. We’ll be getting our e-commerce site up and running in the early part of next year, so my work and the work of the 20 or so other artists we work with will be available to view and purchase online.

I’m personally looking forward to rounding out the body of work I’ve been developing. I’ll be working on a couple of exciting column commissions, some new lighting, as well as plans for wall pieces that relate to my new functional works. I’m starting to think about what a show of my own work would look like and what I’d want to see in it.

What inspires or informs your work in general? 

If I’m totally honest, I’m mostly driven to enjoy myself. I feel really lucky to be inspired to make things and I’m pretty determined to get a lot out of myself. I love to problem solve; I relish in the familiar and pleasurable place of a mind searching for inspiration. I think about everything that calls my attention, my love for painting, the impact of architecture, tattoos, book cover art, a friend’s earrings, my kids drawings. I have strong convictions about craftsmanship and how things should be made. I dislike relying on glues and mechanical fasteners and enjoy joining distinct materials with elegant and creative joinery. I can’t say that I always enjoy the process of making from start to finish, but I do really love standing back and feeling pleased by what I was able to accomplish. I love working alongside close friends and am inspired every day by the joy it brings me.