Urban Agenda Magazine - June 2016

uRban agenda magazine

Cory Booker: Advancing the Common Good Andrew Bolton Fashion At The Met Baltusrol Welcomes Back PGA Championship Richard Clarkson Studios Brooklyn-Based Textile Designer Elodie Blanchard a real “boardwalk empire” Your Summer Starts Here: Pre-College Programs

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MANA CONTEMPORARY OFFERS ALTERNATE WAYS OF VIEWING ART

June 2016

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june 2016 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Lynn Adams Smith CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jorge Naranjo art DIRECTOR Jeffrey Edward Tryon GRAPHIC DESIGNers Matthew DiFalco Erica Cardenas CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Ellen Gilbert Donald Gilpin Linda Arntzenius Bill Alden Ilene Dube Sarah Emily Gilbert Taylor Smith photographer Kelly Campbell www.kellycampbellphoto.com ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Robin Broomer ACCOUNT MANAGERS Jennifer Covill Kendra Broomer Monica Sankey Erin Toto OPERATIONS MANAGER Melissa Bilyeu URBAN AGENDA magazine Witherspoon Media Group 4438 Route 27 North Kingston, NJ 08528-0125 P: 609.924.5400 F: 609.924.8818 urbanagendamagazine.com Advertising opportunities: 609.924.5400 Media Kit available on urbanagendamagazine.com Subscription information: 609.924.5400 Editorial suggestions: editor@witherspoonmediagroup.com

Urban Agenda Magazine All rights reserved. Nothing herein may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher. To purchase PDF files or reprints, please call 609.924.5400 or e-mail melissa.bilyeu@witherspoonmediagroup.com. ©2016 Witherspoon Media Group

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contents

6 Mana Contemporary Offers Alternate Ways of Viewing Art

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By i lene dube

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Cory B ooker: Advancing the Common Good by donald gi lpi n

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Andrew B olton Fashion Gets Serious At The Met

by Li nda Ar ntzeni us

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Your Summer Starts Here: Pre - Col lege Programs BY taylor smi th

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B oardwal ks of the Jersey Shore

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BY i lene dube

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A Major Return: Baltusrol Welcomes Back P GA Championship by bi ll alden

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Sew in Demand: Brooklyn-Based Textile Designer Elodie Blanchard

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by sar ah emi ly gi lbert

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Richard Clarkson Studios Taking Industrial Design By Storm by sar ah emi ly gi lbert

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Retro B each Products 36

A Wel l-Designed Life 42

Calendar 22

Cover Image: Installation view at Mana Contemporary, Eugene Lemay: Strata, January 2014.

Artwork pictured: Eugene Lemay, Untitled: Strata, 2013. Photo by Kendall Tichner.

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ARTISTS WORK HERE

MANA CONTEMPORARY OFFERS

ALTERNATE WAYS OF VIEWING ART BY

ILENE DUBE

Installation view, Eugene Lemay: Strata, January 2014. Artwork pictured: Eugene Lemay, Untitled: Strata, 2013. Photo by Kendall Tichner.

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Installation view, All the Best Artists Are My Friends: Part 1, at Mana Glass Gallery, May 2014. Photo by Sam Deitch.

J

ersey City—sometimes called New York’s sixth borough, or the new Brooklyn—has become a highly desirable place to live, and among its cultural draws is Mana Contemporary, a 35-acre collaborative community bringing together dance, art and music in a sprawling red brick complex that once housed a tobacco warehouse.

Founded in 2011, Mana Contemporary’s cluster of warehouse and factory buildings, originally built in 1890, offers artists highceilinged studios, a supply shop, framing, packing, conservation, restoration and storage services. The “hive structure” encourages the exchange of ideas between painters, sculptors, filmmakers, dancers, recording artists and others. Plans call for a 1,400-seat theater, four restaurants, several more art exhibition spaces and studios for 250 artists, as well as studios for architects and interior designers.

Mana was started by Israeli-born moving magnate Moishe Mana—“the man with a van” who had a plan bigger than Moishe’s Moving & Storage, one of the companies he still owns. Mana dropped out of law school in Tel Aviv and, coming to the U.S. in 1982, slept on a bench in Washington Square Park while washing dishes.

A true life rags-to-riches character, he moved into in an abandoned Brooklyn building selling socks, gloves and scarves on the street, and by 1988 was grossing $12 million a year, with branches of Moishe’s Moving & Storage

across the country. Soon he added real estate development, media, and wine, fashion and document storage to his empire, before realizing the potential in art storage. Some of Mana’s clients were art collectors, and the former tobacco facility could offer ideal storage conditions while also making the artwork available for viewing. Art storage clients include major museums as well as the collection of the Milton Resnick and the Pat Passlof Foundation.

On a recent visit I parked next to a vehicle that looked as if it was covered with a hard, crinkled aluminum foil—even in the parking lot you know you’re in for an art treat. A vintage water tower is perched atop the main building, like a crown atop a hipster industrial complex.

In an explosion of stimuli reminiscent of Ridley Scott’s vision of the future in the 1982 film Blade Runner, video screens throughout the building display behind-the-scenes views of creative types working within Mana’s walls.

During my visit, hallways were filled with Carole Feuerman’s lifelike bathers, sculpted in resin. One in a pink latex cap is pregnant; another, black like onyx and wearing a gold cap, stands on her hands. One sat on a diving board, another hugged a beach ball, her eyes closed and mouth in a frown. Droplets of water on their surfaces make the figures hyperrealistic. Speaking with a thick New York accent, Feuerman describes how she casts the figures on human models, and then exaggerates the pose. “You have to get the emotion right,” she says. “You can sculpt the detail but you cannot sculpt the emotion.”

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The petite, long-haired septuagenarian began the bathers series in the late 1970s. “The biggest challenge is to sculpt the strength of the human spirit,” she says. “That’s what makes it art, not just a man jumping off a diving board.”

With artist studios, exhibition galleries and performance spaces, Mana is what many contemporary museums are striving to become. Unlike museums, however, it is a for-profit enterprise, with space rented to nonprofit foundations. All exhibits and programs at Mana are open to the public at no charge, thanks to this business model.

Armitage Gone! Dance company practices daily on Mana’s fourth floor behind a glass wall, allowing visitors to observe the rehearsal process. The dancers are silhouetted by light coming in the eight-paned warehouse windows. “My work is about taking the classical tradition and moving it forward into our time,” says Karole Armitage, who danced in the companies of George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham, and has been called the “punk ballerina” by Vanity Fair. She uses fractal geometry—clouds, mountains and seashores, rather than the lines and angles of Euclidian geometry—and likes to incorporate visual arts. Mana is a perfect space in which to do that, she says.

“Incorporating for profit and nonprofit, Mana is the future. It’s like a kibbutz, with the sharing of ideas, dialogue and finances.”

In the 15,000-square-foot model museum of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier on the second floor, visitors see artifacts, a research library and exhibitions, revealing the design process of the New Jersey native.

There are 400 architectural models, including the Smith House, part of a series of now-iconic houses Meier designed at the start of his practice, and large-scale study models of the Getty Center. Meier’s personal studio is here.

An open drawer filled with papers for collage alongside a box of oil pastels makes it seem as if the artist will step out at any moment and create before

your very eyes. His daughter, furniture designer Ana Meier, has a showroom next door.

Richard Meier designed the interior of Mana Glass Gallery, a 50,000square-foot exhibition space with towering ceilings and clerestory windows.

Among the largest exhibition spaces in the United States, it can display monumental works and installations.

Also on the second floor, in the studio of painter and printmaker Gary Lichtenstein, are shelves of shiny metal paint cans with pigment dribbled down the sides—a case of art supplies becoming the art. Lichtenstein has collaborated with Marina Abramović, Bob Gruen, Robert Indiana and Jessica Stockholder, among others, on screenprint editions. What he likes about being located in Mana Contemporary is having the ability to exhibit as he is working, and to explain the process to visitors cruising through. “It develops an appreciation of the process that you don’t get by just looking at art on the wall,” he says.

The International Center of Photography opened a branch at Mana in 2015 as an extension of its Manhattan campus, housing a state-of-the-art collections facility and a media lab, which allows visitors and scholars access to its images. The Center’s collection of more than 150,000 works includes daguerreotypes, gelatin silver and digital chromogenic prints, as well as American and European documentary photography from 1930 to 1960. The archives of major photographers Robert Capa, Cornell Capa and Weegee, among others, are housed here.

Complementing locations in Italy and Sweden, the Florence Academy of Art has a branch at Mana, where it makes use of the copious light coming through those magnificent paned windows. The studio is purportedly an exact replica of the original academy in Florence. And on Mana’s ground floor,

Installation view: Made in California: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, at Mana Contemporary, 2016. Featured works, L-R: Jack Goldstein, Untitled, 1988. Acrylic and metallic pigment on canvas, 100 x 96 x 6 in. (2 parts); Gisela Colon, Oval Melt Glo-Pod, (Iridescent Black Blue), 2014. Blow-molded acrylic, 90 x 30 x 11 in.; Jack Goldstein, Untitled, 1983. Acrylic on canvas, 96 x 96 in.; Ned Evans, Surfboard, 2013. Sliced surfboard and paint, 74 ½ x 18 x 4 ½ in. Photo by John Berens.

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Installation view: Made in California: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, at Mana Contemporary, 2016. Photo by John Berens.

bookdummypress, a publishing company and online bookstore, specializes in artist publications with a goal of keeping the traditional book dummy intact.

Workshops are offered on the history of book construction, editing and design.

A separate building on the campus houses the Keating Foundry led by master sculptor Ben Keating, who promises to help anyone create the sculpture they envision. Visitors can watch the age-old process of lost-wax casting, where a wax model of an object is placed inside a metal flask covered in plaster and fired. The wax is obliterated in the kiln, leaving behind plaster filled with molten metal.

Keating’s own work, surrounding him in the studio, is especially interesting.

There’s a cast metal antique clock and a wing chair with its back torn away. If these look like furnishings from Miss Havisham, it may be because they are based on his grandmother’s. Part of an installation, “The Piece of Her That’s Missing,” Keating created these distorted representations of all the furnishings that remained in her Brooklyn home after she died. Keating, whose soft “r”s lend credence to his Brooklyn roots, continues to live in her Park Slope house.

He and his assistants are suited up in fire-retardant cloth and wear helmets with glass shields while they work.

A poet who studied forestry at SUNY Oswego before spending eight years at the Johnson Atelier in Trenton, Keating ran a foundry in Brooklyn, doing casting, fabrication, restoration and installation for clients such as the George Segal Foundation, Kiki Smith, Tom Otterness and Julian Schnabel. When Hurricane Sandy flooded Keating’s operation, Eugene Lemay, Mana’s chief

executive, invited Keating to move his studio to the collaborative campus.

Lemay, an artist and photographer, was once a driver for Moishe’s Moving & Storage. He is known for a series of large-scale, abstracted photographs composed of digitally altered layers of Hebrew text. One of the first artists to have a studio at Mana Contemporary, Lemay realized artists need a place to eat and added a one. The café is also intended to be a gathering place where artists can share ideas and give birth to new ones.

Today Mana’s Jersey City complex is almost 1 million square feet—the equivalent of five Walmarts. Following the success of Mana Contemporary, Mana created a similar facility in Chicago and an art fair in Miami to coincide with Art Basel.

There’s a modus to his method. As a real estate developer seeking to create “Tribeca West” in Jersey City, Mana knows that a large arts complex is just the thing to draw potential new residents.

Among the artists in the Eileen Kaminsky residence program is Witches of Bushwick, a gender fluid collective from Brooklyn. As part of their experimentations at Mana, they are recycling some of their own body materials, and an installation included live models, wearing nothing but latex caps like those on the Feuerman bathers. The Witches performers are covered with a greasy substance and some are suspended from the rafters wrapped with animal pelts.

All that the cast aluminum vehicle in the parking lot promises and more are here to stimulate the imagination at Mana Contemporary. U

On view at Mana Contemporary, 888 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, through August 1: The T’ang Horse: artwork by and from the collections of Anthony Quinn—yes, the actor was also an accomplished visual artist; and Made in California: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, including work by Ed Ruscha and Ed Kienholz. Hours Monday-Friday 10AM-5PM and Saturdays, NOON-6PM Admission is free. www.manacontemporary.com

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Cory Booker: Advancing the Common Good

by donald gilpin | portrait by kelly campbell

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images courtesy of booker.senate.gov Senator Cory Booker speaks about the Smarter Sentencing Act that he and a bipartisan coalition of senators introduced to reform the nation’s criminal justice system and reduce the number of nonviolent offenders in prison.

A

n excited crowd was packed into the basement of Labyrinth Books on Nassau Street in Princeton on a Monday evening in late March. More than 250, standing-room only, a wide variety of ages and backgrounds, chatted, consulted their smartphones, browsed through books laid out on shelves and tables around the room.

You might have thought that at 6 p.m. these busy, tired Princetonians would have been eager to move on—home to families and dinner or out to whatever activity they had planned. You might have thought that the announcement that the speaker had been delayed on Route One coming from Newark would have been met by a certain consternation, maybe groans, annoyance, perhaps even anger as the clock slid past the designated start time to 6:15, then 6:30.

You might have thought that, when the speaker finally arrived about 40 minutes late, the crowd would have been a bit irritable, reserved, difficult to warm up.

You might have thought all these things, but you would have been wrong, and you would have been underestimating the relentless charisma of the awaited speaker, New Jersey’s junior senator, Cory Booker, coming to Princeton to promote his new book, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good.

Loud applause greeted Booker’s arrival, as he descended the stairs and approached the speaker’s platform, 6’3” tall, in dark suit, white shirt and bright green necktie.

Booker, the former mayor of Newark (2006-2013), only the fourth African-American in the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction, the second Rhodes Scholar (after Bill Bradley) to be elected senator from New Jersey, has become something of a pop culture icon.

A graduate of Stanford University, then Oxford, then Yale Law School, he has been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee and is widely rumored to be on Hillary Clinton’s short list for vice presidential running mate.

“And I would dare to say that’s just the beginning,” stated in his introduction Princeton economics professor Alan Krueger after presenting a long list of Booker’s accomplishments. The hearty applause from the audience indicates that they too foresee a bright, busy future for the popular 47-year-old senator.

Oxford studying history, he went on to earn his law degree at Yale.

During his final year at Yale, Booker moved into Newark’s Central Ward, where he still lives during the part of the week when he’s not in Washington, D.C. “I was searching for a community in struggle,” he recalls. “I wanted to be in the thick of it, and I wanted to be a lawyer who fought for the rights of those who didn’t have access to the law.” After years of schooling in the most elite settings, Booker suddenly found himself in an unfamiliar environment. His book describes in detail his coming to terms with the danger, the despair and the rewards of life in Newark’s Central Ward.

From the time that he moved into Newark almost twenty years ago, Booker’s life seems to have been a quest to find common ground with people from the most widely diverse segments of American society, to advance the common good, as he says—and, of course, to advance his political career. Newark was a much more difficult fit for him than the privileged worlds of Stanford, Yale and Oxford, but Booker was nothing if not driven and determined.

A year after moving into Newark, he pulled off an upset victory to win a seat on the City Council. He proceeded to try to implement a flurry of changes, but most often found himself the lone vote against all of his fellow Council members. Undaunted, Booker went on a 10-day hunger strike, living in a tent and later a trailer to draw attention to problems of drug dealing and violence in the city.

After losing the 2002 race for mayor of Newark to longtime incumbent Sharpe James, Booker continued his quest and ran again four years later. He won easily and was re-elected in 2010. Facing vast problems in Newark during his seven years as mayor, Booker sought to reduce the city’s crime rate, increase available affordable housing, shrink the budget deficit, eliminate corruption and increase transparency in the city government.

In 2013 he won a special election to fill the vacant Senate seat of the deceased Frank Lautenberg and the following year won a regular election to secure the U.S. Senate seat for a full six-year term.

Super Hero?

The Journey Booker’s parents both worked for IBM, and he was raised in the northern Jersey suburb of Harrington Park. A high school all-American football player at Northern Valley Regional High School, he received a football scholarship to Stanford, where he played tight end, majored in political science, was elected senior class president and led a student-run crisis hotline. After his Rhodes Scholarship year at Queen’s College,

Booker has had his many fans and detractors as well, both of whom he vividly describes in United, but there has been little disagreement that he has been dedicated to his mission. As Newark mayor, he frequently patrolled the streets with the Newark Police Department. “I was arrogant enough to think that I would be elected major of Newark and that crime would just stop,” he recalls, “and I was taking every assault, every murder in the city very personally.”

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images courtesy of booker.senate.gov Senator Booker introduces panelists at his Small Business Roundtable for women-owned small businesses at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

His legend grew as he responded to a constituent’s Twitter plea by showing up himself to help shovel out her elderly father’s driveway; joined the Newark fire department and suffered burns in saving a woman from a house fire; invited Newark residents without power after Hurricane Sandy to stay in his home; rescued one dog from freezing and another who was abandoned in his cage.

Booker makes frequent TV appearances, has starred in a documentary series focusing on his efforts to reduce crime and bring about an economic revival in Newark, is friends with a long list of Who’s Who celebrities from Hollywood to Washington and has established a significant presence on social media with more than 1.6 million Twitter followers.

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound—is this heroic figure too good to be true? Who would be surprised that Booker, avid reader of comic books as a kid, chooses Superman as his favorite fictional hero? In a phone interview the week before his Princeton appearance in March, Booker admits, “I got a chance to sneak away last Sunday night to the premiere of Batman and Superman. I strongly recommend it. It’s fantastic I’m a bit of a movie addict. I love it.” Is Booker the long-awaited antidote to the squalor, rancor and pessimism of our current political climate?

In his book, his interactions with the crowd of Princeton followers and his comments over the phone, Booker presents himself as more of a fellow-struggler than a hero, an earnest, idealistic motivator with a powerful message of unity rather than an ambitious politician. And whether it’s calculated, genuine or a combination of the two, the selfdeprecating, warm sense of humor can win over even the most skeptical listeners.

“Where are our federal infrastructure dollars when I need them?” he lamented in apologizing to the Princeton crowd for being delayed in Route One traffic. There were no visible detractors in the audience.

Failure and Success

Promoting Togetherness In our phone interview, Booker talks about the challenges implicit in the title of his book, the difficulty in finding common ground in this era of anger, divisiveness and partisan politics. “Many people think we’re more divided than we’ve ever been,” he says, “and I want them to understand that’s not the truth of who we are. America has made incredible advancements in every generation when we came together as a nation and overcame obstacles and injustices and strove for greatness. My experience in my lifetime has been to be inspired and encouraged by those who were uniters who awakened us to our interdependence, and that’s going on in neighborhoods, towns

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and cities all across our nation.”

He goes on to discuss his work in the divided U.S. Senate. “I set out not to be the Democratic senator, but to be the senator who could deliver, who could get things done. This is a divided body, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to establish relationships with people on both sides of the aisle. I feel that’s become very fruitful for me being able to deliver for New Jersey, whether it’s with Ted Cruz, passing legislation to help our public radio stations, or getting the rail tunnel under the Hudson back on track, or providing access to brain injury centers, I feel very blessed that working across the aisle we’ve been able to get a lot of things done.”

Booker talks about the need to summon the country’s “collective will” to address the issues that he sees as the biggest tests of our time. “Can we persuade politicians to help raise the minimum wage, to have paid parental leave, to have a tax policy that’s more fair, to create more opportunity programs?” he asks rhetorically. “We can do a lot more to grow our economy and to give people a fair shot at the American Dream.

These are policy decisions.”

In emphasizing a theme of his book, Booker addresses the question of how to respond to the frustrations of the current political landscape. “There’s a lot of things we’re not doing in Washington,” he said. “You can either surrender to the criticism or you can decide to change that. Despite divisiveness, despite the challenges and partisanship, I hope to inspire others, reaffirm my values and recommit myself. This is what we have to do. We have to fight for common ground.”

Sounding part-preacher, part-politician, Booker observes, “It’s not just about Washington. Washington follows where the nation is. It’s about who we are as individuals and the spirit we bring to our lives. That’s something I don’t just talk about in the book but actually show.”

In his book and in his conversations, Booker talks frankly and humbly about his missteps in pursuing his idealistic goals, particularly in his early days in Newark. ”A lot of the book,” he relates, “is me writing about mistakes I made, being a jerk. A lot of the mistakes I made really helped me learn very valuable lessons. A lot of my mistakes there really showed me a better way to make change as I go about my work in the Senate.”

Krueger, in his introductory remarks at Labyrinth, described United as “a beautifully written book. It is told with passion and compassion. The book tells the story of Senator Booker’s journey and it’s a remarkable journey, and it’s one that brings our nation together.”

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images courtesy of booker.senate.gov

Senator Booker meets with students at Bergen Tech in Paramus, N.J.

Booker’s warm, often self-deprecating sense of humor is strongly evident in the book as in his speech. “My dad was a comedian,” Booker says. “He got by on his quick wit and his gift of gab. And yet he had a tough childhood.” And, except maybe for the childhood part, Booker could say the same about himself—both father and son, adept practitioners of the comedian’s art.

The memoir is rich in both light and dark tones. “I hope my book is inspiring,” he says, but I also hope that I didn’t pull punches and that I told the truth” And that truth is full of brokenness and failure and death, as he talks about the death of his father, and of close friends in his community in Newark, including a young man who lived downstairs from him in Brick Towers. “I found that the best things to talk about in the book were either moments when I was getting my comeuppance or moments when I was broken by this country, by circumstances in this nation.”

But Booker’s unwavering response to the darkness is optimism, as he urges, “We must use our lives with courageous love. Every moment we have a choice—to accept things as they are or to accept responsibility for trying to change them.”

Elections 2016 In discussing the primaries, Booker, who has made a number of campaign speeches for Hillary Clinton, once again embraces the positive, at least on the Democratic side.

“I celebrate the primaries we’re having. It’s a wonderful engagement of ideas between the candidates. It’s been a good contest,” he says. “Unfortunately what we’re seeing in the Republican Party now is disappointing and often discouraging.”

He emphasizes his support for Clinton, “I’m campaigning very hard for her. I’m a believer. She’s somebody who’s proven herself over decades and her commitment to serving the less fortunate, the marginalized in our country. She’s somebody I trust who can make a difference for our country on the issues that matter.”

Expressing his admiration for Bernie Sanders and predicting a unified Party after the convention, Booker goes on to state, “We have two great candidates, and I think that Senator Sanders, whom I’ve served with, understands the urgency of what’s at stake, especially if Trump becomes the nominee. The urgency is there for Democrats to win in this election, and I’m confident they will come together.“

Call for Action

and growth,” he states. “The Democratic Party has shown time and time again how the economy recovers and grows strong under a Democratic president and is often driven into a ditch with a Republican President.” But, despite the fact that the two baby boomer-generation Democratic candidates are aging and he is a generation younger, Booker is unwilling to address his own political ambitions, vice presidential or otherwise.

“Absolutely not,” he says. “My next election isn’t until 2020 for the Senate. I feel really blessed to be where I am and to focus on the job at hand for New Jersey. The focus for me is regaining the Senate for the Democrats and seeing Hillary Clinton get elected.”

In summing up his thoughts about the difficulties and opportunities in the 2016 election season, Booker invokes Martin Luther King, urging people to get involved. “For a lot of people who don’t like what’s going on,” Booker says, “the way to combat that is not just to condemn it, to be stuck in a state of what I call sedentary agitation, but to get up and do something about it, to match their negativity with your political action.

You have to match their darkness with your light.”

He continues, “I have often said that our nation needs more poets. We have to find a way to prick the moral imagination of our country. I hope this will be an election when we don’t give in to the demagogues and the derision and instead rise to more engagement, more activism and strive towards justice.…There’s no presidential candidate who’s going to ride in and solve the challenges we have. There has to be an expansion of our moral imagination of who we are, followed by a courageousness of action that we’ve seen at so many points in our history.”

In the conclusion to the chapter of his book titled “Ms. Virginia Jones,” Booker talks about the lessons he learned from Ms. Jones, the 68-year-old president of the tenants’ association at Brick Towers in the Central Ward of Newark, where he lived for eight years: “For Ms. Jones, hope was relational. It didn’t exist in the abstract. Hope confronts. It does not ignore pain, agony or injustice. It is not a saccharine optimism that refuses to see, face or grapple with the wretchedness of reality. You can’t have hope without despair, because hope is a response. Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word.”

Wherever his future leads him, Cory Booker, pursuing his mission to find common ground and advance the common good, means to make sure that despair does not have the last word.

Eager to promote his positive message, Booker reflects on the future of the Democratic Party. “Our party has a stronger message for our economy, for education, for innovation

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ANDREW BOLTON FASHION GETS SERIOUS AT THE MET

Andrew Bolton, Curator in charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Photo by Pari Dukovic.

When the Metropolitan Museum of Art held its annual fundraising bash launching the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, Manus x Machina, all eyes were on the glittering celebrities hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour and newly appointed Curator-in-Charge Andrew Bolton. Behind the glittering gala, however, lies the serious purpose of elevating the study of fashion to an academic discipline. In recent years, clothing has been getting the highbrow treatment—think sociological and anthropological aspects of—but don’t be put off, it’s still okay to go gaga over the designs.

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ARNTZENIUS

FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICHOLAS ALAN COPE

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Ensemble by Iris van Herpen

ccording to costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis who curated Hollywood Costume at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum in 2013, the stakes have been raised for today’s museum curators: “The role of the curator has evolved to that of an artistic director” who seeks to create a “kinetic production rather than a static exhibition; active engagement rather than passive spectatorship.” No one exemplifies this more than British-born Andrew Bolton who succeeded Harold Koda in January. Commenting on Bolton’s “extraordinary creativity and scholarship” Met Director Tom Campbell called him “a visionary curator and a great collaborator.”

While Bolton worked closely with Koda on a number of high-profile exhibitions, he brought his own stamp to such shows as AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion in 2006, Poiret: King of Fashion in 2007, and Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy in 2008. But it was in 2011 that he rocketed to critical acclaim with Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. And he broke all previous Costume Institute records with last year’s China: Through the Looking Glass.

Bolton has said that he hates the term “blockbuster,” but these two shows are surely that. China: Through the Looking Glass drew 815,992 visitors to the museum in just four months; Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty drew 661,509 in a little over three months. Both are among the museum’s ten most visited exhibitions with China at number five, Alexander McQueen at number nine; the museum’s 1976 Tutankhamun exhibition remains number one with 1.3 million visitors.

In a TedxMet talk, Bolton—disarmingly youthful with a charming schoolboy demeanor—described his surprise at seeing crowds lined up for hours to view Savage Beauty in 2011. Since then he’s been lauded for bringing a form of showmanship to museum exhibitions. His 2013 Punk: Chaos to Couture presented fashion through the prism of punk rock; his 2012 Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations created an unusual feminist dialogue. “I really believe clothing carries all kinds of narratives,” he says. “And it’s up to the curators to make them legible.”

Even though his shows have been noted for “whimsy,” it’s clear that Bolton is out to place fashion in historical and anthropological context. His exhibitions demonstrate the rigorous scholarship expected from the author/co-author of more than a dozen books and numerous scholarly articles. His awards include the Best Design Show from the International Association of Art Critics for Poiret (with Koda) and for Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. His Superheroes catalogue received both the AIGA Design Award and the Independent Publisher Book Award.

He’s been called “The Met’s Storyteller in Chief,” and his work on China: Through the Looking Glass gave more than a nod to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Besides a life-size bamboo forest of illuminated Plexiglas and film selections by the Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, it featured movie costumes from the silent film era as well as imperial robes and a contemporary dress with a bodice of blue-and-white porcelain. Twice the size of any of his previous shows, it earned Bolton the Vilcek Foundation’s $100,000 Prize in Fashion, an award specifically for contributions by foreign-born individuals to American culture.

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Dress by Iris van Herpen

Dress by Nicolas Ghesquière

“Kaikoku” Floating Dress by Hussein Chalayan

“Vilmiron” Dress by Christian Dior

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Dress and glove of printed silk satin; underskirt of duck feathers by Alexander McQueen.

Dress of black leather; collar of red pheasant feathers and resin vulture skulls by Alexander McQueen.

Dress of nude silk organza embroidered with silk flowers and fresh flowers by Alexander McQueen.

Dress of red and black ostrich feathers and glass medical slides painted red by Alexander McQueen.

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Dress by Iris van Herpen

Wedding Ensemble by Karl Lagerfeld

CLOTHING AS ART With a collection of more than thirty-five thousand costumes and accessories from five continents and seven centuries of fashionable dress, regional costumes, and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present, the Costume Institute’s goal is not only to acquire, conserve and exhibit, but also to promote fashion as an art form and a serious academic discipline.

“The artistry of clothing as an aesthetic medium is just as important as painting and sculpture, to offer new ways of looking at clothes and new ways of interpreting clothes through the lens of history and aesthetics, but through trends of culture or psychology,” says Bolton, who has suggested that Wonder Woman may have been as influential a style avatar as any fashion editor.

Although he doesn’t claim that all clothing reaches the elevation of art, he does say that: “There can be certain design achievements that are so conceptually and technologically rich and innovative that they approach the standards and criteria of an artwork.”

What began in 1937 as The Museum of Costume Art became The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan in 1946. In 2009, the collection expanded when the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection, including the definitive collection of Charles James material, transferred to the Met. In 2014, the space occupied

by The Costume Institute was named the Anna Wintour Costume Center, a completely redesigned and renovated complex of exhibition galleries as well as library, conservation laboratory, research areas, and offices.

LOVE POEM TO McQUEEN Bolton was a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum when he attended his first runway show by the late Alexander McQueen, who was famous for presentations that were more performance art than fashion. “Nothing prepared me for the emotional intensity and the sublime, almost transcendent beauty,” Bolton recalls in his TedxMet talk. “I left the show almost in a state of shock.”

After McQueen’s 2010 suicide, at age 40, Bolton suggested the Costume Institute mount a show in his honor. “I wanted people to experience the same powerful and visceral emotions that I had experienced when I attended my first McQueen runway performance.” The curator had just ten months to pull off what he thought might be the first of several exhibitions devoted to McQueen. Savage Beauty, which made an icon of McQueen, was obviously an emotional journey for Bolton who has described it as a “love-poem” to the artist/designer. “It’s a myth that curators treat the subjects of their exhibitions with cold-hearted objectivity. Curators can’t help but let their personal feelings and judgments creep into their exhibitions and I’m the first one to admit that the exhibition was deeply subjective.”

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Evening dress by Yves Saint Laurent

SPRING SHOW AND GALA The Costume Institute’s spring 2016 exhibition, Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, will be on view through August 14. As its name suggests, the exhibition will explore the relationship between the primarily hand-made haute couture as founded in the 19th century and the machine-made mass production introduced in the 20th century; examining ways in which designers respond to the dichotomy of hand and machine.

It will contrast and question the long-held distinction between haute couture and ready-to-wear in galleries replicating a traditional maison de couture with traditional tailoring and dressmaking ateliers and more than 100 examples of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear from an 1880s Worth gown to a 2015 Chanel suit.

“Traditionally, the distinction between haute couture and prêt-à-porter was based on the handmade and the machine-made, but recently this distinction has become increasingly blurred as both disciplines have embraced the practices and techniques of the other,” says Bolton, who suggests that the spring exhibition will “propose a new paradigm germane to our age of technology.”

Just before the opening, the Museum held its annual ball. It was attended by celebrities in the latest high fashion designs and followed by paparazzi and mobs of reporters. This year’s co-chairs included Idris Elba and Taylor Swift; Nicolas Ghesquière, Karl Lagerfeld, and Miuccia Prada are the honorary chairs.

The ball has been a tradition since 1948, when it began as a midnight supper. Vogue magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, a long-serving Met trustee and active fundraiser (credited with bringing in an estimated $125 million for The Costume Institute) has been co-chairing the Met Gala since 1995 (save for 1996 and 1998), during which time it has become one of the most successful and most visible of charity events. Past co-chairs have included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1977–1978) and Patricia Taylor Buckley (1979–1995). The “party of the year” draws celebrities from fashion, film, society, business, and music industries. Last year it raised a record $12.5 million for the museum. U FOR MORE INFORMATION Andrew Bolton describes the challenges of curating the Alexander McQueen show in his TedxMet talk: www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/lectures/tedx-met-andrew-bolton The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website provides information on the spring 2016 exhibition: www.metmuseum.org/ManusxMachina

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calendar highlights Tuesday, May

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Friday, June

The Atlantic Cup presented by 11th Hour Racing arrives at One 15 Marina in Brooklyn Bridge Park. See the boats as they prepare for the second leg of their race. You may even get the chance to meet some sailors! The Atlantic Cup is a three-leg race with stopovers in Charleston, SC, New York City, and Portland, ME, sailing a total of 1,008 nautical miles. www.atlanticcup.org Englewood Hospital and Medical Center (EHMC) is offering “Using Foods to Fight Pain,” a 4-part nutritional counseling series devoted to the use of nutrition to combat chronic pain. Robin DeCicco, holistic nutritionist at the Graf Center, will host the counseling sessions with the goal to empower patients to feel better and stronger with dietary changes. www.englewoodhospital.com

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Saturday, June

Thom Browne Selects at Cooper Hewitt.

The exhibition is the 13th in an ongoing series in which prominent designers, artists, and architects are asked to mine and interpret the museum’s collection of more than 210,000 objects (through October 2016). www.cooperhewitt.org Governors Ball Music Festival at Randall’s Island State Park. This year’s lineup includes Kanye West, Beck, The Strokes, Elle King, Father John Misty, and many more (through June 5). www. governorsballmusicfestival.com

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Thursday, June

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2016 Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. This highly anticipated annual event is made even more dramatic by the Manhattan skyline. www.veuveclicquot.com

Theatrical performance of Where the Wild Things Are at Two River Theater in Red Bank (through June 12). http:// tworivertheater.org

Go Green Greenpoint! This annual event offers Greencycle Swap to recycle used clothing, shoes, books, toys, and more. There will also be a sustainable marketplace, live music, dance performances, wellness yoga, and educational events. www.nycgovparks.org

Friday, June

Farm & Home Exhibit at The School Museum in Ridgewood, NJ. See what life was like in Ridgewood hundreds of years ago by examining agricultural and household artifacts from the 18th and 19th centuries. ridgewoodhistoricalsociety.org JerseyFest Food Truck Mash Up at the Meadowlands Racetrack. Celebrate the best that the Garden State has to offer in terms of music, food, entertainment, and horse racing. playmeadowlands.com

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At Relay For Life Paramus, people come together to honor cancer survivors and fight back against the disease. Relay For Life teams take turns walking or running around a track. The event is 24 hours long and each team has a participant running/walking at all times. www. relayforlife.org

Saturday, June

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Butterfly Bonanza at Pyramid Mountain NHA in Montville Township, NJ. Discover NJ’s fabulous butterflies and other regional pollinators. www.morrisparks.net

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Installation view of “Thom Browne Selects.”

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Wednesday, June

Photo by Matt Flynn © 2016 Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

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Greenmarket Four-Course Wine Dinner at Tocqueville Restaurant. Each course is specially crafted by Chef Julien Wargnies with seasonal ingredients and exotic wine pairings. www. tocquevillerestaurant.com

Thursday, June

Tuesday, June

Wednesday, June

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Join Audubon Young Members for the annual benefit at the Marlborough Gallery. The evening will include drinks, hors d’oeuvres, silent auction, and fine art. http://ny.audubon.org.

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Japanese Garden Centennial Gala at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. www.bbg.org

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Solo East Resort in Montauk hosts a 3-day yoga and meditation retreat with guru Jessica Bellofatto. The extended workshop includes guided walks through nature preserves, yoga classes, and nutritious meals. www.jbyoga.com

School’s Out 2016. Join Hetrick-Martin for its signature event at the home of Lisa and James Cohen. The silent auction offers the opportunity to bid on one-of-a-kind life preservers designed by famous artists. www.hmi.org The 32nd Annual Puerto Rican Day Parade and Salsa Festival at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Dance to tropical rhythms and performances by Eddie Santiago, Tito Rojas, Jerry Rivera and more. www.barclayscenter.com Jazz Age Lawn Party at Governors Island (also on June 12). www. jazzagelawnparty.com

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Hoboken Spring Arts & Music Festival in downtown Hoboken, NJ. www. hobokennj.org Newark Boys Chorus Annual Spring Concert at Newark Museum. www. newarkmuseum.org

Photo by Erica Cardenas

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Saturday, June

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Join the Boys & Girls Club of the Bellport Area of Long Island for the annual Beach Ball at the home of Alexandra Lebenthal and Jay Diamond.

The theme of the live and silent auction is “The Art of Summer.” www. bgcbeachball.com Navy SEAL Foundation Kickoff Cocktail Party. Enjoy live music, great drinks, and delicious tastings at the 4th annual Navy SEAL Foundation celebration at the Navy Beach in Montauk. www. navybeach.com

Sunday, June

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Saturday, July

Comedian Amy Schumer performs at Madison Square Garden www. thegarden.com

Join the Hope for Depression Research Foundation as they depart on their 5K Walk of Hope to Defeat Depression and to fund the advancement of depression research. The walk starts at Agawam Park in Southampton. http://give. hopefordepression.org

Psychic medium Kim Russo conducts an evening of live readings at Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, NJ. www. countbasietheatre.org

Monday, July

Art Exhibits:

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Saturday, August

July 4th Ice Cream Social at Red Bank Battlefield and Whitall House in National Park, NJ. 856.853.5120.

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Vintage North Jersey Wine & Food Festival at Four Sisters Winery in Belvidere, NJ (also on Sunday, August 21). www.vintagenorthjersey.com

Monday, August

Shakespeare in the Park presents The Taming of the Shrew (through June 26). www.publictheater.org

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Eileen Fisher Fall 2016 Fashion Show at the brand’s East Hampton locations.

Preview the latest knits and styles over light refreshments. 613.324.4111.

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“Activist New York”; The Museum of the City of New York “Agitprop!”; Brooklyn Museum “Artistic Furniture of the Gilded Age”; The Metropolitan Museum of Art “Behind the Screen”; Museum of the Moving Image “Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey”; The Jewish Museum “Panorama of the City of New York”; Queens Museum of Art “Picasso’s Le Tricorne”; The New-York Historical Society “Pixar: The Design Story”; Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum “The Secret World Inside You”; American Museum of Natural History

Theatre Performances: Hamilton; Richard Rodgers Theatre A Doll’s House; The Theater For a New Audience Aladdin; New Amsterdam Theater An American in Paris; Palace Theatre Blackbird; Belasco Theatre The Book of Mormon; Eugene O’Neill Theatre Finding Neverland; Lunt-Fontanne Theatre The King and I; Vivian Beaumont Theater School of Rock; Winter Garden Theatre Waitress; Brooks Atkinson Theatre Tuck Everlasting; Broadhurst Theatre

Photo by art-southampton.com

Monday, June

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Photographs courtesy of shutterstock.com except as noted

Ring in the Summer Solstice with a yogic experience in Times Square. www. timessquarenyc.org Blue Note Jazz Festival at locations across New York City (through June 30). www.bluenotejazz.com

Tuesday, June

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Start of New York City Pride Week at locations across the city (through June 26). www.nycpride.org

Wednesday, June

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2016 Camp SoulGrow Benefit at The Palm in East Hampton. The event includes a silent auction, open bar, and complimentary menu by the restaurant. www.campsoulgrow.org

Thursday, July

8/22

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ArtSouthampton 2016 returns to the Nova’s Ark Project from July 7-11.

The annual event in Bridgehampton showcases paintings, photography, prints, drawings, video art, sculptures, and design in both an indoor and outdoor curated setting. www.artsouthampton.com

Saturday, July

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Chefs and Champagne at the Wölffer Estate Vineyard. Chefs and Champagne is the James Beard Foundation’s annual summer tasting party, featuring flowing Champagne and culinary offerings from a select group of more than 40 celebrated chefs, many from JBF Award–winning restaurants.

The 2016 honoree is multiple James Beard Award–winning chef, author, philanthropist, and restaurateur John Besh. www.jamesbeard.org

7/4 Photo by @eileenfisherny

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image courtesy of shutterstock.com The High Line (also known as the High Line Park) is a 1.45-mile-long New York City linear park built in Manhattan on an elevated section of a disused New York Central Railroad. The High Line has been redesigned and planted as an aerial greenway and rails-to-trails park.

YOUR SUMMER STARTS HERE: Pre-College Programs

by taylor smith

See what life is like as a university student at one of these outstanding pre-college programs.

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alented students from around the tri-state area choose pre-college programs during the summer months to better prepare for success and to experience the challenge of college-level academics. They can follow their passion by studying a subject they love or discover something completely new. Academic advising, access to university learning resources, and college admission workshops are also frequently provided. Some students may be able to earn college credit for coursework completed, as well.

Whether a student decides to attend a four, six or eight-week program, they will gain the experience of learning alongside peers from around the world. In addition, stimulating co-curricular activities take students beyond the classroom and into New York City. Resident directors, advisors, and professors will help students to navigate the many sights, sounds, and experiences of Manhattan through educational group outings.

In order to apply, most students must be in high school, have completed their sophomore year, and be 16 to 18 years old. Applications are available online (most forms require high school transcripts and other forms of documentation).

Below, Urban Agenda Magazine has selected some of the most distinct (and unusual) summer academic coursework opportunities at a variety of New York area universities.

MANHATTAN New York University (NYU) www.nyu.edu Department: Drama (Tisch School of the Arts) Course: Directing Practicum Description: This class introduces students to fundamental directing tools: stage composition and visual storytelling, script analysis, directing theory, applied viewpoints, and theatrical conceptualization.

Columbia University www.columbia.edu Department: Architecture, Design, and Urban Studies Course: Sustainable Urbanization: New Designs for the Future City Description: This course is designed for students interested in the fields of sustainable development, design, and engineering. Students are exposed to emerging trends in urban sustainability in an interdisciplinary workshop environment in which they explore new solutions for sustainable cities in the context of a real-world project.

Barnard College Barnard.edu Department: Religion Course: Religions of New York Description: Religion is and has always been central to the diverse historical and social worlds of New York City. Students will make twice-weekly visits to “religious” field sites both expected and surprising, such as the Guggenheim Museum, yoga studios, the American Museum of Natural History, traditional ritual sites, and religious street festivals. Students will gain facility with religious concepts from a variety of traditions including Judaism, Islam, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Native American traditions, and contemporary spiritualities.

Fordham University www.fordham.edu Department: Business Course: The Business and Ethics of Sports Description: This course is an introduction to the business and ethics issues that govern professional and amateur sports in the United States and internationally. Students will learn about the structure and governance of business

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models, revenue generation, facilities, and international competition. Ethics issues like doping, race and gender discrimination, and amateurism will be a centerpiece of the course.

and rhythmic structures through recitation and dictation. At the most advanced levels, students apply aural skills to performance repertoire. Also, score reading, clef reading, and transposition.

Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) www.fitnyc.edu Department: Fashion Design Course: Costume and Couture Rendering

Pratt Institute www.pratt.edu Department: Art & Design Course: Jewelry/Metal Arts

Description: Feathers, fur, velvet, taffeta, sequins, plaid, and the list goes on.

Learn how to design and render many fabrics and discover how costume design leaves the imagination and comes to life. Students will learn the techniques of applying shadows and shading and how to render and understand the purpose of costume design and the characteristics of specialty fabrics.

Description: Jewelry has a rich history, from the earliest examples of personal adornment to the thriving world of contemporary jewelry. This course is an introduction to basic, direct metal, fabrication techniques for jewelry and smallscale metal objects. Students will research and develop design concepts and execute finished pieces using non-ferrous metals combined with alternative materials and current technology.

The New School in New York City Department: Parsons The New School for Design Course: Interior Design

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Description: Students will work with a professional designer to complete an interior design project, from initial concept to final presentation. They will develop skills in freehand sketching, manual drafting, collage, and model building to test spatial and material ideas. Students learn to consider clients’ needs and aesthetic preferences as they design a functional interior and choose appropriate finishes.

Manhattan School of Music Julliard www.julliard.edu Department: Vocal Performance Course: Ear Training Description: Ear training is a vital component in the development of a musician. The various activities aid the student in perfecting pitch and rhythm performance skills. Students learn to recognize and react to harmonic, melodic,

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Stevens Institute of Technology www.stevens.edu Department: Engineering & Science Course: Creative Coding Description: Ever had a good idea for an app? Whether you have coding experience or not, teachers will help students to design their own app and to learn about the art and beauty of computer programming. Creativity is welcome! You’ll learn more than logic and problem solving, you’ll learn ways in which coding can change lives and make a difference in the world.

Drew University www.drew.edu Department: Economics Course: Wall Street and the Economy Description: This program will explain the financial history and ethical dimensions of Wall Street and its relation to macroeconomic policy. This program also delves into the practical

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day-to-day operations of the financial markets and institutions located in New York City. Central to the program are talks by guest speakers drawn from the finance industry itself, as well as from corporations, government regulatory agencies, and institutional investors, shareholder activists, academics and nonprofit agencies. The class will also go on visits to securities firms, the New York Stock Exchange, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and non-profit organizations. Speakers, field trips, and student projects explore recent issues, such as the impact of derivatives and other financial innovations on the housing sector and the economy.

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) www.njit.edu Department: Computer Science Course: Roadmap to Computing

in dance. Students attend ballet and modern technique classes and meet with staff on learning goals and career aspirations. Dancers work in intimate repertory groups with professional choreographers and create their own choreography, which is performed in two fully produced, end-of-session showcases. Prospective participants must complete an online application, an audition (video or live), and have their primary dance instructor complete an online recommendation form.

NEW YORK STATE Sarah Lawrence College www.sarahlawrence.edu Department: Creative Writing Course: Writer’s Village: A Creative Writing Intensive

Description: An introduction to programming and problem solving skills using Python or other very high level language. Topics include basic strategies for problem solving, constructs that control the flow of execution of a program and the use of high-level data types such as lists, strings and dictionaries in problem representation. The course also presents an overview of selected topics in computing, such as networking and databases.

Rutgers University www.rutgers.edu Department: Dance Course: Rutgers Senior Dance Conservatory

Description: This summer, immerse yourself in the craft of creative writing. Led by members and guests of Sarah Lawrence’s celebrated writing faculty, you will participate in a fiction workshop and a poetry workshop.

Participate in readings, craft talks, and free writing periods that are designed to supplement your learning. Students are asked to submit a five-page manuscript (this is used for placement only and is not used as a consideration for enrollment). Due to the popularity of the program, students are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Description: Rutgers Senior Dance Conservatory is an intensive, pre-college program for experienced dancers who seek to build artistic acuity and technical endurance while learning about pursuing college study as they work toward a career

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Boardwalks of the Jersey Shore

In the words of Junot Diaz, it’s where all of New Jersey comes together

by Ilene Dube

Whether made from Brazilian hardwood or recycled soda bottles, chances are a boardwalk will be making contact with your feet in the coming months. Boardwalks are about mingling: people-to-people, of course, but also a place where the scent of sauerkraut and mustard meets the sea air; the screams from carnival rides mingle with the crashing surf; and the steady rumble of pedestrians, cyclists and skateboarders overlaps with the serenity of those sitting on benches. At night, the peaceful dark sky is lit up with neon letters hawking cotton candy, Creamy Nut Hut Fudge, Philadelphia cheese steak and saltwater taffy.

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photos courtesy of the Greater Wildwoods Tourism Improvement & Development Authority (GWTIDA)

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onstructed pedestrian walkways overlooking beaches and the ocean can be found all over the world, but most are on the East Coast of the U.S. and some of the best known are on the Jersey Shore. The very first boardwalk was built in Atlantic City in 1870, in an area once frequented in summer by the Lenni Lenape. Beautiful beaches, fresh sea air, luxury hotels, restaurants and shops, as well as a railroad line from Camden, drew visitors from all over the world. The original boardwalk was constructed for housekeeping reasons: to keep sand out of railroad cars and hotels.

That first, with boards placed in a herringbone pattern, was only intended to be temporary and made to collapse for storage after the season, but it became the beach’s most popular attraction and an amusement pier was added. Build it and they will come—soon the boardwalk was rebuilt as a raised platform.

The first boardwalk built on pilings in Ocean County was at Point Pleasant Beach in the 1890s. Permanent boardwalks were also constructed at Seaside Park, Bay Head, Lavallette, and Beach Haven.

By the early 1900s many shore towns had planked walks, boardwalks or promenades. What had once been a practical means of getting to and from the beaches became a place to stroll, watch people and congregate. Women and men in the latest fashions, who wanted to see and be seen, knew the wooden walkway was the place to do so. Saltwater taffy, that sticky chewy gooey mixture of sugar, cornstarch, corn syrup, butter and salt, was invented in Atlantic City, and the first skee-ball tournament was held there in 1932.

As it became the entertainment mecca known as “America’s Playground,” some of the famous feet to tread AC’s boards belonged to Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Durante, Ed Sullivan, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Bing Crosby. The Beatles ate Atlantic City's famous subs on the boardwalk, and Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon opened a bowling alley.

Interestingly, to film the TV series Boardwalk Empire, set in Prohibition-era

Atlantic City, a section of the boardwalk was re-created in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Boardwalks evolved to become a commercial enterprise, carrying tourists from hotels to vendors. Economic downturns and hurricanes played havoc with leisure time at the Shore, but America’s romance with the boardwalk was renewed in 1964 when the Drifters were the first to record the classic “Under the Boardwalk.” After Hurricane Sandy, boardwalks at Seaside Heights and Belmar were rebuilt, and others at Tom’s River and Lavalette were restored.

Long Branch was the last to reopen, in April.

Both the Atlantic City and Wildwoods boardwalks made National Geographic’s top 10 list. From Sandy Hook to Cape May Point, there’s a boardwalk to fill your needs.

It’s come a long way since it was a 150-foot platform in the 1890s. Today, at 2.5 miles, the Wildwoods Boardwalk is sensory overload. There are three amusement piers with more than 100 rides and attractions, including worldclass roller coasters, wet-and-wild beachfront water parks, carnival-style midway games, flashing arcades, retail shops and enough food stalls to satisfy the craving that beach air seems to stir.

The refrain you hear ad nauseum, “Watch the tram car, please,” was recorded in 1963 by North Wildwood resident Floss Stingel, and the trams are replicas of five original electric trains custom built for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Operating in the Wildwoods since 1949, the rebuilt trams can run for up to 12 hours on a single charge from 2,000-pound electric batteries.

Throughout its 100-plus year history, the Wildwoods Boardwalk has twice scooched closer to the ocean with the changing shoreline. It has been replicated in both Disneyland and Hershey Park, Pennsylvania.

Among the dizzying attractions planned for the coming season are the Grand Prix Raceway on Morey’s Adventure Pier—the largest go-kart track in the Wildwoods—to a new whimsical store filled with carousel horses and decorations

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Among the events scheduled: New Year’s in North Wildwood, Friday, June 10, and Saturday, June 11, with the top Mummers Brigades and Mummers String Bands, kicking off Friday night at 7 p.m. with a pub-crawl.

Latin Heritage Festival, Saturday, June 25, a culinary extravaganza with a Latin flair and including music, entertainment, an artisan area and children's activities.

Wildwood Crest Sundown Celebrations, every Thursday, July 7 through August 18, with live music, children's activities, street performers and stunning sunsets. www.wildwoodsnj.com Ocean City’s boardwalk attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. From May to October, families have made it their tradition to flock here for wholesome alcohol-free entertainment—even smoking is restricted to designated areas.

Amusement parks offer thrill rides, go-karts, water parks, movie theaters and high-tech arcades. Miniature golf theme parks feature fantasy island adventures with pirate folklore, such as Gillian’s Wonderland Pier at Boardwalk and 6th Street and Playland’s Castaway Cove at Boardwalk and 10th Street—both are jam-packed with rides.

Spanning 2.5 miles, the Ocean City boardwalk offers cycling, walking and jogging.

(Cycling is limited to 5 a.m.noon from May 15 to Labor Day.) Restaurants and snack bars offer everything from pizza, ice Wildwoods Convention Center cream and fudge to fine dining, and for those who love to shop, there are art galleries, apparel and novelty shops.

What to do at night? Every Thursday in July and August is family night on Ocean City’s boardwalk, with free live entertainment including music, magicians, yo-yo demonstrations, parades and face painting. www.oceancityvacation.com In 2012, Superstorm Sandy devastated the Asbury Park Boardwalk, but it has been rebuilt and when you visit today, it’s as if the storm never happened. Although many of the historical buildings and landmarks such as the old casino have closed, Asbury Park still evokes feelings of nostalgia.

AP was developed in 1871 by Manhattan brush manufacturer James A. Bradley. Soon after, the boardwalk was constructed and featured an orchestra pavilion, public changing rooms and a pier extending into the ocean.

Today, visitors enjoy views of the beach and rock out at the Stone Pony, known for launching legends Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen.

The Kiefer Sutherland Band will appear May 24, followed by Slightly Stoopid on August 19.

The 3,600 seat Convention Hall has hosted the likes of Frank Sinatra, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder and the Boss, with its state-of-the-art stage, spacious floor space and location right on the boardwalk.

At one-mile long, the boardwalk—an ideal day trip, 60 miles south of New York City and 90 minutes north of Atlantic City—offers something for the entire family, with Asbury Splash Park and the Silverball Museum Arcade. www.apboardwalk.com

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Even amid casino closings, the four-mile-long Atlantic City boardwalk remains an attraction, extending 1,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean at its Steel Pier, with kiddie rides, a family-restaurant and a separate bar. Here you can climb the 228 steps in the Absecon Lighthouse, one of the oldest lighthouses in the country, also the tallest lighthouse in New Jersey. From its top you gain a whole new perspective of Atlantic City.

Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville is located inside the Resorts Hotel Casino where you can get nachos, cheeseburgers, “Jimmy’s Jammin’ Jambalaya,” and a vegetarian and gluten-free menu, along with the signature cocktail in numerous permutations (“Last Mango in Paris, “Feelin’ Hot Hot Hot”), live entertainment and a tiki bar.

Fralinger’s, the original saltwater taffy maker, is still in business. Too gooey?

Try the fudge and macaroons. www.atlanticcitynj.com Sandy destroyed about a third of Ocean Grove’s one-mile boardwalk. The ultimate rebuilding was called a “miracle project” after FEMA funding was twice denied, on the grounds that it is a seaside community whose oceanfront is owned and maintained by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a nonprofit religious organization. FEMA was finally swayed when a group of federal and state lawmakers unearthed documents saying the boardwalk has been recognized as public property and a public roadway since the early 1900s.

In Ocean Grove you will find arts and craft shows, mega flea markets, guided historical walking tours, free concerts in the Boardwalk Pavilion and performances in the legendary Great Auditorium. www.oceangrovenj.com/ events.html

Photo Courtesy of the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Bureau.

from rides past on Mariner’s Pier. The family can bounce like kangaroos on the Kang’ A Bounce on Surfside Pier, and if you’re into repurposed shipping containers, you’ll ogle the 11 here, brightly painted by artists and now making up the new ticket office at Morey’s Adventure Pier. One of its many features is the "the Great White," the tallest and fastest wooden roller coaster on the East Coast.

Cycling is permitted along the 2.5-mile stretch until 11 a.m. weekdays, 10:30 a.m. weekends. If your trunk is stuffed with beach chairs, umbrella and sand toys, you can rent bicycles, including tandems and surreys, throughout the Wildwoods.

Jenkinson’s Boardwalk in Point Pleasant is home to many fun rides and games. Featured rides include the carousel, Crazy Bus, Dizzy Dragons, Boardwalk Bounce and more. At Jenkinson’s Aquarium you will find everything from lizards and fish to starfish and penguins.

The mile-long boardwalk at Seaside has the Funtown Pier and the Casino Pier which features a merry-go-round built in 1913. A year after Sandy, Britain’s Prince Harry paid a visit. Seaside’s boardwalk suffered a fire in 2013 and is still rebuilding.

If you like to stroll, the boardwalk at Avalon Beach is seven miles long. The boardwalk at Sea Bright, on the other hand, is short and sweet at 170 feet long. It was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy and rebuilt by volunteers from the New Jersey Fireman’s Mutual Benevolent Association and the Foundation to Save the Jersey Shore.

Looking for something quiet? Try the boardwalks at Avalon, Avon-by-theSea, Cape May, Lavallette, Sea Girt or Sandy Hook.

Many of the boards are built these days from materials more sustainable than wood, often from recycled plastics such as Trex and Timber Tech, and some are made of asphalt or concrete pavers. In colors with names like Winchester Gray and Spiced Rum, and without the smell of creosote and the splinters, they have a hollow sound and have been called soulless. On the other hand, towns that even think about using Brazilian hardwoods have been called far worse.

An Asbury Park a mural reads: “The boardwalk was where all of New Jersey came together, where New Jersey, for better or worse, met itself.” The quote is from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and New Jersey native Junot Diaz. “I would never have become the person I am as an artist if it hadn't been for New Jersey and specifically if it hadn't been for those 127 miles of shoreline that make New Jersey so special,” he said during Sandy recovery.

For more boardwalks, directions, hours of operation, amenities and attractions, visit www.visitnj.org

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photos courtesy of the Greater Wildwoods Tourism Improvement & Development Authority (GWTIDA); shutterstock.com

The 250-year-old Sandy Hook Lighthouse. The Lighthouse Keepers Quarters next door, built in 1883, is currently serving as the Sandy Hook Visitor Center.

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Visitors to Atlantic City stroll the Boardwalk in front of Bally’s Wild West Casino.

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PRODUCT SELECTION BY SARAH EMILY GILBERT

RETRO BEACH PRODUCTS

American Beach Towel, Dot & Bo, $29; www.dotandbo.com

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plan your spring or summer golf getaway STONE HARBOR’S ONLY YEAR-ROUND, LUXURY BOUTIQUE HOTEL

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photos courtesy of pga of america.

A Major Return Baltusrol Welcomes Back PGA Championship

by bill alden

The northern Jersey town of Springfield has the feel of a typical upscale, leafy, east coast bedroom community with impressive homes, well-manicured lawns, and quiet neighborhoods.

But tucked into 474 acres in the northwestern part of town, off of Shunpike Road, stands one of the iconic sporting venues in the world, the Baltusrol Golf Club.

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photo by james n. lum/baltusrol golf club. wikimedia commons.

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Mickelson's Second Major: Phil Mickelson clinches 87th PGA Championship – 2005. PGA returns – 2016.

he club was founded in 1895 and famed golf architect A.W. Tillinghast completed his “Dual Courses” project in 1922 which he built two championship courses side by side and boosted Baltusrol’s status in the golf world. It has hosted 16 major championships, including the U.S. Open, the U.S. Amateur the U.S. Women’s Open and the PGA Championship.

This July, the eyes of the golf world will again be on Baltusrol as it hosts the 98th PGA Championship on its Lower Course, the traditional fourth and final major of the season which has a field including 136 top pro stars and 20 club professionals, whose slots are determined by a separate tournament.

Having held the PGA in 2005 to rave reviews from players and spectators alike despite some stormy weather that pushed the tourney’s completion to Monday, the club was primed to hold the event again.

“The championship we helped host in that year was a huge success, especially in light of the planning time frame which was not as long as it usually is,” says Rick Jenkins, a longtime Baltusrol member and the 98th PGA Championship General Chairman.

“I know that Baltusrol definitely wanted to do it again and obviously the PGA of America did as well.

We talked about it and got behind an agreement pretty quickly and the agreement for 2016 was signed in 2008.”

From the PGA’s perspective, returning to Baltusrol was a no-brainer. “Baltusrol Golf Club is just a treasure in the history of the game of golf at the highest level and the membership is willing to make Architect A.W. Tillinghast the commitment and to share that with everybody else,” notes Ryan Cannon of the PGA of America, who is serving as the Championship Director of the 2016 PGA for the organization. “We are just all fortunate that that is the case.”

Having been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since

2005 and recently gaining National Historic Landmark status, the club boasts a rich tradition.

“I think we have a wonderful place in golf history, not just from all of the championships we have hosted over the 120 years but from our original architect, A.W. Tillinghast, who was just inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame last summer,” says Jenkins of the club which was named after Baltus Roll, who was murdered in 1831 in his farmhouse on the land that would later be transformed into the golf course. “We have a membership that supports it and wants to be part of it.”

The stately clubhouse, a Tudor revival style stone and stucco structure designed to emulate a British manor, brings that history to life.

“It is very historic in its own right as well as a living museum,” adds Jenkins.

“We have a very active archives and history committee and they have brought alive all of our rich history; most of it is on display on the walls in the locker rooms and the main floor of the clubhouse.”

For Scott Bertoli, the Princeton Day School boys’ hockey coach and avid golfer who has played four rounds on the Lower Course, walking through the clubhouse took him back into the lore of the game.

“I really appreciate the history of a place like that; I think the locker room at Baltusrol and the hallway that leads down to the locker room is really, really neat in that they have pictures of all the champions from all of the big events,” says Bertoli.

The 7,400-yard layout of the Lower Course, which is normally par 72 but is reduced to 70 for majors, also made a big impression on Bertoli.

“I just remember it being long,” said Bertoli with a knowing laugh, noting that he has played such other famed courses as Pine Valley, Merion, Pebble Beach, Congressional, and Oakland Hills.

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“The first hole and the seventh holes are shortish par 5s that are theoretically scoring holes. When they are hosting those major events, those are converted into long par 4s and they are probably stretched out close to 500 yards. To me, it is just unfathomable. What I take away from experiencing it like that is just an appreciation of how good these guys really are. You stand on the tee just hoping to make a bogey.”

Pursuant to a master plan adopted after the 2005 PGA, which was won by Phil Mickelson with a four-under 276, a number of changes were made to the course to make it even more challenging, including the deepening of bunkers, stretching two par 4s, Nos. 13 and 15, by 25 yards and re-styling No. 18 to convert a creek into a pond, making it a significant water hazard.

“We have done master plans periodically throughout our history but probably the biggest one we have done and have ever undertaken was right after the ’05 championship and it was really implemented between 2008 and 2012,” explains Jenkins, adding the club’s range and practice facilities have also been upgraded.

“A big piece of it is just keeping the championship caliber standards that we have been used to having for so many years and keeping the courses updated for the changes in the game brought about by technology and player conditioning. A lot of it has to do with restoring parts of the Tillinghast design, remembering that we are 125 years old and the Tillinghast courses themselves are almost 100 years old. It is something that we take seriously.”

A serious challenge involved in hosting the PGA revolves around the logistics of transportation, crowd control, and security, dealing with the hordes of people descending on the normally sleepy neighborhood.

“I think you learn a lot from every event and the championship is a constant evolution and improvement on itself,” says Jenkins.

“The logistics alone are enormous to try to plan and execute. While Baltusrol is a world class venue to host this championship, it was not designed and or intended to host all the logistics that come along with a major championship. It is not Met Life stadium.”

As a result, nearly 500 members of Baltusrol and 3,500 members of the community are involved in the effort for the 2016 event, which

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will take place from July 25-31, with practice rounds the first three days and the tournament slated to begin on July 28.

“To figure all of that out and put forward a plan that really hits all the metrics of convenience, security and hopefully delver and exceeds everyone’s expectations takes an enormous effort by a lot of different people, entities, and agencies beyond even the PGA and Baltusrol,” says Jenkins. “It is really a community regional effort to put this together.”

Viewing the PGA of America as a partner with Baltursol, Cannon appreciates what club brings to the table, both as a venue and in terms of its enthusiasm for the event.

“Across the board, it really is an ideal host venue for a championship of this significance,” asserts Cannon, noting that one can go the website, PGAChampionship.com for information regarding volunteer opportunities and tickets, including a package which allows juniors 17 and under to be admitted free into the Championship grounds when accompanied by a ticketed adult.

“It starts with the golf course itself; it is one of the classic venues in the sport around the world. To have that as the backdrop to test the best players in the world is going to be really exciting to watch play out.

As you start to go beyond the golf course, as it relates to the membership and their support of the endeavor, it is tremendous.”

For Jenkins and his colleagues at the club, it is a labor of love that comes naturally. “It is more or less in our blood, we have done it for a long, long time,” says Jenkins. “It goes all the way back our early days. We have hosted something major in almost every decade over the last 100 years plus. It is part of our culture and part of our heritage.”

And this July another proud chapter will undoubtedly be added to that heritage.

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“Cut Out�: Inspired by the paintings of Franz Kline and Barnett Newman, Blanchard created this pattern by painting a black and white abstract expressionist composition, cutting the painting into rectangles, and shuffling the pieces until she found a good balance between positive and negative space.

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Sew in Demand

Brooklyn-based textile designer Elodie Blanchard shares her whimsical work with Urban Agenda Magazine by sarah emily gilbert

Grenoble, France native and innovative designer Elodie Blanchard found her artistic niche in New York City thanks to young love, a visionary eye, and well…curtains.

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ith a degree in fashion and sculpture, Blanchard began in the Paris fashion industry designing clothes and organizing runway shows. Merely 23, Blanchard won the prestigious young designer prize at the International Arts Festival of Hyeres, which allowed her the opportunity to sell a clothing line at the popular French mail order company, La Redoute.

In 2000, Blanchard received a grant to study at California Institute of the Arts, and her focus shifted towards large-scale installation products, performance art, and a boyfriend who urged her to move with him from California to NYC. Wanting to break from the fashion industry and begin a career that complemented her carefree attitude, Blanchard agreed to relocate to the Big Apple. With limited English and small funds, Blanchard had to put her artistic performance work on hold in order to make a living, but little did she know that her living would heavily depend on curtains.

Blanchard decided to jumpstart her career by designing textiles for large corporations like the Work Architecture Company (Work AC). After her work for one of their projects received substantial press, Blanchard unexpectedly became known for her curtain designs. As a result, she began doing custom work and curtain installations for respected architects and interior designers.

The widespread appeal of Blanchard’s curtains largely stems from their unconventional look and whimsicality. Blanchard mixes unusual textiles like outdoor material, mesh, and felt to create graphic curtains with hidden surprises. Grommets and punched holes in her “Raw Edge Accordion” curtains look like a constellation of stars when light pours through, and her “Always Kiss Me Good Night” curtains feature adorable oversized animals that meet, or “kiss” when they’re closed at night.

When she’s not draping curtains, Blanchard works in a more conceptual role as a designer for HBF Textiles and constructs products for her personal line

Elodie Blanchard hard at work designing textiles in her studio.

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“Peak”: A pixelated modern interpretation of landscape wallpaper found on a typical computer screensaver,

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Textiles from Blanchard’s 2016 Winter Collection.

“Gravel” covers the wall in this interior space.

“Peak” textiles in multiple colorways.

Blanchard’s FiestaWare.

of soft goods and home accessories. It’s because of this combination of work that Blanchard says she is able to consistently produce new work, as “every activity feeds the other.”

“I will make a textile installation for an architect in their office. From there, I’ll find an idea that I use to make the upholstery fabric for an engineer’s textile, which might lead to me making a pillow with a butterfly on it because I made a huge butterfly installation for a client. It all varies, but at the same time, it is very much related.”

A constant thread in Blanchard’s projects is the use of her personal aesthetic, which she describes as, “modern and colorful, with some humor in it.” Arguably, it’s Blanchard’s small, quirky products from her Etsy shop, Elastic Co., that best represent her artistic eye. With playful items like rubber band vases and poodleshaped pillows, it is Blanchard’s hand-embroidered butterflies that first caught the attention of Urban Agenda’s Editor in Chief, Lynn Smith. Featured in Urban Agenda Magazine’s April/May 2015 issue. Blanchard’s textile butterflies possess a breathtakingly airy quality.

In order to create the unconventional wall decorations, Blanchard prints a largescale coloring page of a butterfly, places a piece of paper on the canvas, pins it, and sews it to the side of the template. Then she removes the paper so that she can “draw with her sewing machine.” Blanchard fills in the butterfly like she’s coloring a picture, frequently changing the thread type and color, alternating the designs, and adding in lines. The result is a series of arbitrary thread patterns that somehow mesh into a perfectly symmetrical butterfly.

Although the detail in her textiles can take hours to complete, Blanchard’s continued success proves they’re worth the effort. In 2014, she developed a line of upholstery fabric for HBF Textiles that won the esteemed NeoCon gold award.

Blanchard’s Winter 2016 Collection for HBF, inspired by American Industrial Designer Russell Wright’s organic modern architecture, is equally impressive. The six patterns and 43 colorways in the collection celebrate elements of the natural world like clouds, beetles, pebbled seashores, and Blanchard’s beloved butterflies.

Blanchard’s work has been featured in the New York Times, New York Magazine, DWELL, and ELLE Décor, and she has been invited to teach at Parsons and the New School for Design. Despite her impressive list of accomplishments, the ever modest Blanchard is just beginning to feel the rush of “making it.”

“For the first time in my life I feel like, yeah, maybe I’m on my way.”

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To see or purchase the Elodie Blanchard collection for HBF Textiles, visit hbftextiles.com.

Blanchard’s hand-embroidered textile butterfly featured in Urban Agenda Magazine’s April/May 2015 “Well Designed Life” product spread.

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RICHARD CLARKSON

STUDI S TAKING INDUSTRIAL DESIGN BY STORM

BY SARAH

EMILY GILBERT

Designer Richard Clarkson surrounded by a group of Cloud Lamps at his studio.

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S Rain Lamp, which brings water and electricity together to form a unique piece of lighting (LEFT). Originally designed to mimic the effect of a baby's mobile, the Mobile lamp uses dynamic movement as a design element. (RIGHT).

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othing is better than snuggling into your own bed during a thunderstorm: the distant rumbles and flashes of light bring peace and calm when you know you’re safe and sound. Perhaps no one appreciates this feeling more than industrial designer Richard Clarkson, founder of Richard Clarkson Studios and creator of the Cloud, a $3,360 smart lamp that brings thunderstorms into your home. Made by felting hypoallergenic fiberfill to a sponge casing that holds the device’s speakers and componentry, this interactive lamp looks and sounds like a real thunderstorm. Luckily, though, it does not produce real rain.

According to the Studio’s press kit, the Cloud uses motion sensors to detect a person’s presence; the result is a unique lightning and thunder show.

A powerful speaker system enables the user to stream music via any Bluetooth compatible device. Users can program the Cloud to make lightning flashes—in various color options—to the beat of the music playing from that device, or have several smart Clouds communicate with each other.

The Cloud is just one of many novel products coming out of Richard Clarkson Studios. Using his “constant imaginative curiosity” for how things work, Clarkson and his team have developed everything from a tongue-incheek urban survival kit aptly named “Protest,” to “Rain,” a lamp that uses a pump system to circulate water through a glass globe, creating a ripple effect on the floor. Like the Cloud and the Rain lamp, several of Clarkson’s products are inspired by nature.

“Many of the studio’s recent creations are interpretations of natural systems,” explains Clark. “They are recreations, abstractions, and adaptations of natural forces. Initially, this wasn’t intentional, but rather a subconscious direction. I was fortunate enough to have the creative capacity to explore projects in such a way that I was able to draw inspiration from what I personally found inspiring, which for me, are moments of awe and wonder of various weather systems and natural phenomenon.

“The studio’s main objective is to create oohs, aahs, whoahs, and wows; to

make objects, products, or experiences that inspire wonder,” observes Clark.

“I still remember how amazing it felt the first time the Cloud flashed lightning and thundered, and my classmates’ heads spun. Someone switched off the lights and said, ‘do that again!’ That reaction is what Richard Clarkson Studios aspires to.”

At 25, Clarkson is a recent college graduate, and his classmates were the first to experience the Cloud. While many early 20-somethings are trying to find their life calling, Clarkson’s career was finding him while he was still in school. Initially interested in art and economics, Clarkson turned to furniture and lighting as an Industrial Design major at Victoria University of Wellington.

He was then accepted into the Products of Design Masters (PoD) program at the School of Visual Arts in Brooklyn, and it was during his two years there that Clarkson began to work on the Cloud. It generated so much press that shortly after graduation he was already filling orders and looking to open his studio.

Clarkson may have come from a sheep and beef farm in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, but he has fully embraced what he calls his “little cloud factory right in Brooklyn.” Constantly mulling over new inventions and innovations, he insists that this is a “very exciting time to be involved in lighting and furniture.”

Clarkson is a part of an influential group of designers blurring the lines between lighting, furniture, and art. Like his major inspiration, Industrial Designer Lindsay Adelman, Clarkson’s creations are just as worthy of a spot in an international art museum as they are in someone’s home. One of his most recent releases, the Mobile, is no exception.

“The Mobile specifically is a project that I think will encourage a shift in the way we think about lighting, moving from static to dynamic using additional elements such as motion, sound, and materiality.”

With decades ahead to continue to bend our notion of lighting and design, it’s only a matter of time until Clarkson is the one inspiring students to find their own “little cloud factory” somewhere in the world.

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The Cloud is an Arduino-controlled, motion-triggered lightning & thunder performance, as well as a music-activated visualizing speaker. As an interactive lamp and speaker system designed to mimic a thundercloud in appearance, The Cloud employs embedded motion sensors to create unique lightning and thunder shows.

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JUNE 2016

5/27/16 10:56:16 AM

an artist’s & designer’s studio WOODFORM CONCRETE DESIGN AND FABRICATION www.jmlifestyles.com

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