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Art is a cathartic form of healing in that it is a universal language which brings many cultures and identities together upon common ground. It is an equalizer, even for those who may not seem to be on parallel paths or vibrations — every euphoric high and devastating low is validated by the shared release that the ritual brings.

But for a form that is so invariably understood and so widely practiced, there are still barriers to entry, whether that be proper access to wide open spaces, access to a menagerie of professional tools, and adequate funding. That’s where WORTHLESSSTUDIOS comes in. Contrary to the organization’s name, the goal is to actually prove that all artists and their endeavors are worthy — worthy of support, resources, and a community with which to share it all.

WORTHLESSSTUDIOS fuels the flame in every artist. The Brooklyn-based not-for-profit was founded by artist Neil Hamamoto, who gained clarity through his own experiences, realizing that there was a pressing need to bridge the gap between accessibility and realization in the art world. WORTHLESSSTUDIOS provides artists tools and space to bring even the most fantastical and ambitious projects to life.

Although diminishing the hurdles that artists must navigate is imperative to a flourishing art community, perhaps the most resonant aspect of WORTHLESSSTUDIOS is the close-knit family that it created and continues to build upon. This family and their progress thus far was celebrated this past month upon the stunning backdrop of The Reform Club Inn in Amagansett with the studio’s second annual Summer Social, a night that honored the enigmatic creative community.

The night began with a panel in partnership with Fairchain, where Allison Glenn of Public Art Fund, Charlie Jarvis of Fairchain, Stephanie Dockery of Bloomberg, and artists Eric Fischl and Kennedy Yanko discussed why it is important to fund artist’s projects and inspire creativity, even amongst the madness of the contemporary world. “We exchange materials for time and creativity,” stated Neil Hamamoto, and it is through fostering this unbridled creativity that we can impact the world on a profound level.

The commemoration was well-deserved, as the past year has given WORTHLESSSTUDIOS a lot to be proud of. The organization spearheaded the fourth edition of its “FREE FILM” project earlier this summer, which began in 2019 after Neil journeyed on a road trip across the United States handing out free rolls of 35mm film to creatives and developing them in an Airstream converted into an on-the-go dark room.

A year later, as mass protests struck out combating institutional and systemic racism, the project continued as “FREE FILM: JUNE 2020,” giving photographers and artists an opportunity to document these turbulent times and provide visibility to the issues at hand. Simultaneously, during these times of unrest, WORTHLESSSTUDIOS facilitated the “Plywood Protection Project,” collecting leftover plywood from boarded-up businesses and redistributing it to artists who transformed them into beautiful pieces of public art.

This time around, the “FREE FILM” project will take to the streets of New York City, once again allowing those who may not have proper access to film, cameras, and development the chance to step behind the lens. WORTHLESSSTUDIOS will also be expanding upon their brilliant milestones with their brand new 10,000 square foot warehouse, located in East Williamsburg, which will host its first exhibition, 1-800 Happy Birthday, this September. “By making our home here, we can support more artists through fabrication, technical assistance and other resources, while continuing to challenge and engage the public with major projects,” says the organization’s Executive Director, Marcia Santoni.

1-800 Happy Birthday is being produced in collaboration with creative production studio Even/Odd Films and it is co-founded by filmmaker Mohammad Gorjestani. The large-scale exhibition honors Sean Monterrosa, Oscar Grant, Philando Castile, and Sandra Bland, along with the many more Black and brown lives who devastatingly fell victim to police killings and systemic racism. To celebrate their lives and legacies, the team worked closely with contributors, curators, and the families of the celebrants themselves, to bring in upcycled New York City payphones that will play voicemails left for the celebrants on their birthdays. Visitors will have the opportunity to leave their own voicemails as well, and there will be an array of support resources available for families and visitors — “One of the hallmark programs for 1-800 Happy Birthday will be Family Meeting, an open discussion with mothers and families who have lost loved ones to police violence. The design of the exhibition itself provides space for visitors to take it in and then process the experience,” Marcia explains.

1-800 Happy Birthday is still in the works, as WORTHLESSSTUDIOS is an ever-evolving entity, but you can take a look into all of the groundbreaking work that they and their wildly gifted collaborators have accomplished in past projects, below.

Since the 1980's, photographer David LaChapelle has been making an undeniable impact on the creative world — one seen across fashion, arts, and culture. 

His bold and unapologetic style has held its own in a competetive industry and garnered a dedicated, well-deserved fanbase for its unique aesthetic: each piece drips with deep-set religious references, highly saturated color schemes and hypersexual visuals.

Without forgoing tongue-in-cheek attitude, LaChapelle has proven over the years he has an inherent and unmatched ability to turn a celebrity portrait into a challenging, erotic, exciting, political and sociological statement as much as a beautiful work of art.

Though his work is anything but a stranger to the gallery setting, aptly during NYFW, Fotografiska New York opens the most extensive retrospective of DLC's career to date. Touching on the wide range of themes and techniques the artist has approached throughout the 40 years he's been in practice, highlighting in particlar the religious under- (and over-) tones his work has become both fervently beloved and criticized for, the exhibition titled Make Believe will present to the public over 150 works created by LaChapelle between 1984 and 2022.

From his prolific 90's portfolio featuring everyone from Tupac and David Bowie to Britney Spears, to more current portraits of Kim Kardashian, Travis Scott and the like — the historic, and ironically church-like Fotografiska building in Midtown has dedicated its entire space to the exhibition. 

Check out a preview below, and be sure to head over to the show yourself, opening September 9th. 

Los Angeles based artist Angela Nguyen makes the floor pop, scream, laugh, smile, and brood. Completely self taught, for the past five years she has honed in on the nuances of a process called tufting to create phenomenal rugs that contain an abundance of stylistic flares unique to her work.

These giant creatures that she calls “rugs” ooze with energy, pairing together chaotic imagery with a minimalist color palate fit for both a living room or gallery floor — she is adamant that her works be shown on the floor rather than hung on the wall.

Maybe it was because we sat on her newest rug for the interview, but as we talked I became instantly immersed in the crazy and monopolistic world of tufting, a world to which she hesitantly belongs.

How did you intitially get involved in tufting?

I started in late 2018 with a friend of mine and have been self-taught through trial and error. The renaissance of tufting in general is very DIY and completely self-taught, and something I find really interesting about it is that there’s a “new age” of it and an “old age” of it. This practice has existed for ages, but there was kind of a halt to it because there was a lot of criticism from people who worked in rug manufacturing. And I’ve spoken to a lot of rug manufacturers who have criticized the practice because 1. the threads get loose, 2. it’s cheaply made — it’s the cheapest way to make a rug — and 3. it takes super long for these rugs to be finished, much longer than finishing a woven rug. With the new age of tufting I think there’s sort of this disconnect between the practices and the criticisms. Part of what’s really important to me regarding tufting is just understanding ways I can improve so I can challenge those critiques.

When you first got into the practice were you met with that backlash?

I was actually very unaware of it until I took my first rug to get outsource finished with a rug manufacturer, and he was like “what the fuck is this.” I brought him my rug which is very untraditional to what old age tufting is. Old age tufting is really just like square, rectangle, and circle rugs. Something easy to get done. So I was met with that criticism, something that they’re not used to. It’s apparent when you’re talking to people who are aware of the old age tufting styles or traditions of rug manufacturing. A majority of the people in the new age saturated market of tufting aren’t aware of those criticisms. . New age tufting trends reflect quick cash grabs. You can buy very cheap material from JOANN, you can build a frame in one day, and you can have someone commission a piece of whatever their logo is and get paid 300-400 bucks for it. That’s not the way I’d like to approach what I do, but that’s kind of the reality of it.

Do you think it’s a form of elitism? 

Part of me isn’t really sure if it’s elitist as much as it’s just about traditionalism. I think it takes people challenging that notion by making crazier pieces, sourcing better material, and doing things that are very untraditional when it comes to tufting.

Have you found there to exist some sort of a community within the niche of tufting?

I think it’s a little bit hard to navigate because it’s such a saturated market. So it’s really hard to find people who are working on the trade as an artistic practice. There’s someone named Tori Wheeler who’s a good friend of mine, we started tufting around the same time, and that’s somebody I adore and love their work. Jabari as well, he’s a textile artist but he learned how to tuft with me over the summer. He actually helped tuft parts of the rug that we’re sitting on. There’s also this guy named John who does this thing called Juicy Rugs, and he makes very lovely rugs of iconic faces and stuff. So those are some people that I like who tuft, but other than that I find it kind of difficult because the tufting community is very monopolized. There is this one guy who bought the rights to a tufting gun from China to sell domestically and had marked up the price dramatically, and that's what sucks. The community is kind of based in this guy’s world. He runs the tufting forum, he charged me 250 dollars for the tufting manual, and he also has his own line of wool that everyone buys from. I refuse to buy any of it.

God, that’s crazy. So you’ve only been doing this for 5 years, which is absurd, did you work in any other mediums before this? 

I guess I was in a creative field before this, I worked in the music industry in A and R.

I know right. They fired me! But my dad taught me a lot about home goods and stuff. He’s not so much of an interior designer as he is a manufacturer of goods. Now my aunts and uncles say they see the correlation between me and my father. But yeah I just kind of picked this up, I’ve always wanted to jump into more creative work than being in A and R, but it ended up working out the way that it did and I’m stoked.

Do you consult your Dad about your rugs at all? 

He loves to feed me advice. My dad is an immigrant from Vietnam so there’s a cultural disconnect in the way that we view art, but he gives me suggestions and I’m like “thanks dad, but no.” But a huge role that my dad has played in me and my art is the way that I grew up. He loves popular culture, but he also loves talking about politics. Literally every single day of my childhood my dad would constantly talk about anything political, even when I was like 12. 

But his tendencies have definitely rubbed off on you, I mean look at the images we’re sitting on right now.

Yeah it has, now I’m just making fun of whatever he talks about.

Would you consider all of your pieces to be political?

Yeah I’d say so. All of my rugs are inherently political. I worked on this basketball rug and I even found that was a bit political too. People immediately resort to iconography of players and people of fame who are icons of the sports world, but less of the working class people and the fans that really create what that iconography exists because of. So I felt that piece was inherently political because I wanted to represent the other side of sports fandom in its community rather than its icons.

What you’re describing plays into the notion that perhaps everything, not just art, is inherently political, is that something you’d agree with?

There I am, my suppressed child-self. My eyes are closed. I can depict the imagery of youth.  As I imagine, I can feel grass scratching the skin of my exposed ankles and the mosquito bites decorating my calves. I can see a bright sun and its last sheds of extended daylight saving. There are clouds, and there are laughs, and I have an aftertaste of fruit rollups on my tongue. There's a wrenched Caprisun withering on the ground. Then, I open my eyes. I am an adult. I have matured in many ways yet my brain clutters with the fogginess of nostalgia. Hues of yellow and blue fill my consciousness, and I am filled with warmth from the inner child that sits within me.

Do you know what that feels like? Does this happen to you? Eve, an artist from Vancouver and Rhode Island, knows of this experience. As a painter, she cherishes it—harvests it. Eve uses it as the centerfold of her work. The heavy streams of nostalgia and childhood are river flows into Eve's canvasses. 

When we get older, we all experience this 'pick me' phase of betraying our younger selves for the licensed maturity and respect of adulthood. We forsake our senses, sensations, and wildest imaginations for a seat at some stupid grown-up table. By the time we've reconciled with our inner child, the memory of those times leaves us joyfully melancholic. It's difficult to actualize that feeling, and Eve does so gracefully. With ease, her drawings, sculptings, and oil paintings fractionalize the motifs of home, comfort, joy, and imagination. Through the usage of furniture, open windows, and childlike beings, Eve builds on those ideals and meanings. Anyone who views her work takes something home to think about. Eve's creations are the goody bags that we needed. 

In an office interview, Eve discusses the Studio Ghibli influence, a how-to tutorial for drawing on Procreate, and the relationship she has built with her inner child. 

What forms of media influence your art?

I watched a lot of Teletoon Retro growing up, and while it never seemed to influence my work until recently, I've carried a deep appreciation for its fluidity. The movement and designs of each characters are an inspiration that I use to convey more fluidity in my own work. I also loved watching anime in middle school—still do—and I am inspired by the vibrancy of the landscapes that can be found in slice of life and shonen anime like, 'One Piece.' I think in terms of direct reference, I'm inspired by maximalist aesthetics that can be found in a lot of Ghibli films like "The Secret World of Arrietty," "Spirited Away," and "Howl's Moving Castle." I actually have that image of Howl in his bedroom as my laptop screen. Other beautiful shows and films that I derive inspiration from include "Tatami Galaxy," "Houseki no Kuni," and "The Handmaiden."

How would you describe your art in three words?

When did your love of art begin?

A very common answer, but I think I've always been interested in drawing. For as long as I can remember, I've always enjoyed it. Growing up, I kept to myself frequently which meant most of my time was spent drawing and participating in arts and crafts. While I always enjoyed art, I think I started taking art more seriously around when I was 15 years old. That's when I decided I wanted to pursue it as a career rather than a hobby. 

What is it about light pastel colors that you enjoy?

I think my gravitation towards light colors stems from a desire to chase a feeling of nostalgia. I often view memory as submerged in light, and wish to convey that fogginess and light through my work. Similar to a filter. I do want to experiment with darker palettes though, so I expect my work to undergo many transformations in terms of overall contrast and color.

Who are the artists you're inspired by?

I've been a big fan of James Jean for a long time. I adore the fluidity of his line work along with his inclusive color palettes. Recently, I've been interested in objects and glasslike materials in intricate compositions and have been looking to old manuscripts, art nouveau, graphic designers, 3D artists, and ukiyo-e paintings as inspiration. There are a variety of artists that inspire me but immediately I think of Edmund Dulac, Shahzia Sikander, and Kenshi Ozaki.

Eve's work is a product of intention. As shown in her virgin black and white samples, the usage of her pencils creates lines and shapes with so much divisive detail. The process of turning her work into the colorful pieces representative in her portfolio takes precision, attention, and imagination. Eve's perception and thought process is saturated with creativity and her technical skills are the artistic cherry on the top. She takes her time on her work. This artist builds on the chosen colors, and no piece of hers goes unfinished without evoking the need for emotion. 

In many of your pieces, the motifs of furtniture are often utilized. What is the purpose behind these depictions?

I used to work exclusively with the human figure as the main subject, but after speaking with fellow artists working with objects as symbolic references, I began taking interest in objects as primary subject matter. I am very interested in furtniture that gives off feelings of home and comfort, as well as objects that feel fragile and intricate, hence my interest in glass and lattice structures.

You've done sculpting, oil painting and drawing— what's your favorite art form?

I really enjoy all of these mediums very much. I hope to continue working with them in the near future. I am currently most interested in drawing, as I am able to achieve a lot of intricacies even within a small surface area. Most of my drawings don't exceed 9x12", but because of this, I can explore many compositions and concepts in smaller amounts of time. Especially, without losing detail. This fast-paced tone has been incredibly helpful in my style exploration.

What is the process of turning your black and white sketches into it's full colorful works of art? How do you choose which colors to use?

I use mechanical pencils on sketchbook paper to create the base drawing, and then scan or photograph my sketches. From there, I import my images into Procreate and use the direct selection tool to lasso out areas of the drawing and use the gradient maps tool to color. Procreate has a few default options but I usually make my own or tinker with pre-existing ones. I usually have a very vague idea about the general atmosphere of the drawing and use a gradient map to tinge the entirety of the drawing to that color. Then, I pick out certain objects that I have an idea of a color for. I never really know what a drawing will look like until I'm finished with the color picking so, it is a process of trial and error. From there, I paint on top of the drawing, or play with layer blending modes and other settings like bloom, gaussian blur, or noise until I'm satisfied with the results.

There are so many child characters throughout your work. How does childhood and child fun enhance your work? Would you ever use motifs of adulthood?

Indeed! I think when I depict childlike figures, I really am harkening back to a younger version of myself, and in doing so, I feel like I am able to work out some of the knots and tribulations of my child self. I consider my work to be very highly encoded, and I strive for many pieces to instill calmness, or a sense of peaceful melancholy. I've been playing with the concept of authority figures and higher powers in my work, and enjoy the idea of a figure that is much wiser than my current and child self. I'm unsure of what an adulthood motif would entail, but I would like to expand my visual vocabulary to possibly more mature themes. Ultimately, I hope to preserve a sense of dreamscape and childlike whimsy in my work— at least for the time being.

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