STYLE SELF CULTURE POWER Something s Happening in the Old Garage The nondescript brick façade of artist Leonardo Drew s live-work studio gives no
hint of what s inside. By Wendy Goodman Photographs ByJason Schmidt The studio: Drew in his ground-foor studio. He uses a giant aerial-lift platform that is parked in one corner to hang his pieces all the way up to the ceiling. is a force of nature, Brent Sikkema says of artist Leonardo Drew, who has been represented by his gallery, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., Leo since 2005. You begin to understand the force-of-nature part as soon as you enter the ground floor of the converted Cypress Hills garage where Drew s been living and working since 2007: The 30-foot ceiling can barely contain his monumental abstract sculptures, made from materials that he creates to look like things he has found. A cracked, peeling painted-wood sculpture, for example, that looks like it has weathered decades outdoors was made using his own perfected distressing method. In the studio and every other room, there s a TV on each one tuned to a black-and-white movie. As a child, there were five of us who had to share a room, he says. All boys. I need to have that excess noise. He has a collection of 3,500 films to choose from when he is not watching TCM. Drew was born in Tallahassee, Florida, and grew up in the P. T. Barnum housing project in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The views from his childhood apartment overlooked the city dump, which afected him deeply: I would watch the bulldozers troll back and forth over this massive landfill. I remember all of it: the seagulls, the summer smells, the underground fires that could not be put out. At age 13, Drew had his first solo show, exhibiting his action-hero paintings at State National Bank in Bridgeport. DC Comics and Marvel soon came knocking, and before he knew it people were paying for his art. Now he s busy working on an upcoming project, a massive wood sculpture that will cover the ground of Madison Square Park that he has dubbed City in the Grass, or Carpet Monster a nod to the neighborhood kids who told him it looked like a city. You ll be able to sit on it, move around, have an experience with it.
ADVERTISEMENT Upstairs from the studio, it s a diferent world entirely. Shoes must come of at the door before one enters his loft, painted tomato red and anchored by a giant barge of a bed layered with pillows. I wanted to be sure that when I go up there, I change my head, Drew says.
Exterior: The onetime garage was built on the site of a house that burned down. Drew s studio is an idiosyncrasy next to his neighbors rowhouses.photo: Jason Schmidt/New York Magazine
Upstairs: Drew built this massive multipurpose bed, which he uses for spreading out books, drawings, and research. (He sleeps in it, too.) He customized the black wall-to-wall carpet, insetting different colored patches and patterns to match the tiled foor in the open kitchen.photo: Jason Schmidt/New York Magazine
The dining room: A painting by Illia Barger hangs on the wall by the dining table; Barger also did the painting above the bed. The tree root on the table was brought back from Peru, where Drew went to study the Nazca Lines.Photo: Jason Schmidt/New York Magazine
A room off the main studio: Drew works on details for his larger projects here and experiments with his material-weathering techniques.photo: Jason Schmidt/New York Magazine ADVERTISEMENT
The kitchen: The cabinets were built by his friend Starling Keene, who used the root on top of the dining table as her inspiration. Drew found the tiles in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil.Photo: Jason Schmidt/New York Magazine
The dining room: A painting by Illia Barger hangs on the wall by the dining table. Drew brought the the tree root that sits atop the table back from Peru.Photo: Jason Schmidt/New York Magazine
Drew s artwork: The artist has a rule of never naming his pieces; instead, he gives each one a number. Numbering the works allows the viewer to have a full-on experience. The work becomes a mirror, he says.photo: Jason Schmidt/New York Magazine
Photo: Jason Schmidt/New York Magazine
Photo: Jason Schmidt/New York Magazine