You can’t think about New York City and not think about the incredible history of artists that have defined and redefined art through the ages. This year Kevin and I are cohosting the Brooklyn Artists Ball after-party, so the rest of this week we will be doing studio tours here of a few of the artists, all based in Brooklyn, who are creating special pieces to be on exhibition at each of the guests’ tables for the museum’s annual fundraising event.

Walking through Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood you pass food truck restaurants,  junk stores that remind me of my childhood, and unremarkable doors with blacked out windows covered in rusted old bars… but then this unremarkable door opens and you walk into an absolute paradise of creative vision, color, passion, history, friendship and projects that begin here and reach the far corners of the globe: gracing the halls of Lincoln Center,  parks in Mongolia, temples in Portugal, and in art galleries and on sidewalk walls all over the city.

Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, the creative duo behind FAILE Studio, met in high school in Arizona. Their collaborations began with trading sketch books, which eventually led them to creating art on the street and ultimately to New York and this studio, where, on this afternoon, Tuba Skinny plays over the speakers as a handful of assistants help them work on ongoing projects, including their installation for the Brooklyn Artists Ball.

One thing inspires another in this space – an accident or how something is stored will manifest in a new body of work. Their works constantly evolves into itself.

Images are repeated like a universal thread in their work – a ballet dancer appears on large scale murals and smaller objects, like a story retold over time but worded differently.

Their work references sequential art, but panels can be non-linear and a narrative emerges from close inspection. Stories and themes are mashed together in a purposeful jumble.

For the Brooklyn Artists Ball, the duo has constructed a long table of paintings on wood, all collaged together, pieces of their history, reading like modern day Egyptian graphics. On top of this table sits prayer wheels. Your hands reach around them and they spin, throwing words and colors at you, showing you that art can be interactive, a bit high and low, street and couture.

I love this quote on their Wikipedia page: “It gives a person the sense that it is there just for them. That they’ve stumbled across this great little gem amidst the chaos of daily life that can really speak to them. We try to build in a certain ambiguity that leaves the door open for the viewer to find themselves within the story.”

Come see all of us at the Brooklyn Artists After Party! You can purchase tickets here!

PS- You can also keep up with FAILE studio on their Instagram!

See the studios of other Brooklyn-based artists: Emily Noelle Lambert, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, and José Parlá!