Press

Surface Magazine

https://www.surfacemag.com/events/puffy/

Founded in 2008, the artist-run design studio Fort Makers made a splash when it opened a showroom last fall on New York’s Lower East Side. Its inaugural exhibition featured sofas and chairs with upholstery that Fort Makers’ cofounder Naomi S. Clark covered in her characteristic motif: large, messy hand-painted shapes. (Most of them were blue, in homage to Yves Klein). Since then, every month or so, the studio devises a new installation. The current one, “Puffy,” is everything its name suggests: visitors are invited to explore, and reconfigure, a psychedelic playground filled with a forest of Clark-painted pillows.

The New York Times Style Magazine

Design for a Surrealist Dinner Party

As Nana Spears, a co-founder of the New York design studio Fort Makers, was thinking about what the collective’s second show at its new concept shop on Orchard Street might look like, it occurred to her that her preferred way of making work — with an eye toward collaboration and play — was in some ways analogous to the custom of having friends over to share a meal. “The Dinner Guests,” which opened Thursday night, centers on a Noah James Spencer-designed walnut table whose legs — straight on one side and curvy on the other — are among the subtler clues that the stage is set not for an ordinary gathering, but for one that celebrates the askew and nods to the eccentric parties thrown by Salvador Dalí.

Image: Naomi S. Clark’s “Anne Mind-Meeter” mask.Credit...Joseph Kramm/courtesy of Fort Makers

Domino Magazine

This story originally appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of Domino, titled “Coastal Cool.” Subscribe to be the first to receive each issue!

It may not look like it from the primary-hued woven wall hangings and lemon yellow velvet couch, but according to textile designer Aelfie Oudghiri, decorating her house on Long Island’s East End was an exercise in restraint. “Our home in Brooklyn is madness. There’s color everywhere,” says Oudghiri, who founded her eponymous home goods company in 2012. “I wanted this house to be colorful but peaceful.”…