“Process, process, process,” repeats artist-designer Joseph Algieri during a visit to his Brooklyn studio—a Technicolor space of just 120 square feet, where wild material experiments unfold. Mirrors are doodled with resin, tiles frosted with grout and stacked into chunky tables, and bulbous lamps coated in goopy foam. Each piece offers a study in trial and error. “I make several iterations of everything,” he explains. “I might map out my tooling at the dollar store or Home Depot, but if they don’t have what I need, I’ll make it.” He’s not kidding. That thrift-store milkshake mixer on his shelf? Algieri uses it to whip resin and a binding agent into thick paste that he can squeeze out of a pastry bag, squiggling it onto reclaimed mirrors. That lamp on his desk? He created it (his first piece of lighting) by pouring soft Smooth-On foam over a papier-mâché mold of a traffic cone he purchased on Craigslist. Since then, his work has found many admirers in the design community, including Voutsa’s George Venson, for whom Algieri made a cactus-shaped fixture, and Fernando Mastrangelo, who included two towering versions of that lamp in a group show at his East New York studio last September. His latest experiment? Fruity Pebbles–like foam forms assembled into a chair. Says Algieri: “I start with a really simple shape and build upon it—until it loses that simplicity.” josephalgieri.com
