For a new installation at the Mondrian South Beach, artists Jen Stark and Misaki Kawai painted large, canvas teepees surrounding the hotel's pool. The installation is part of "Pool Party," a series of artist-designed sculptures curated by the art collective FriendsWithYou and the gallery Grey Area. Last year, FriendsWithYou filled the Mondrian's pool with large iridescent blow-up shapes for a project called Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
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For 2014, Kawai and Stark's teepees make the pool feel like a Burning Man oasis. At night, illuminated by light from within, the glowing tents reflect on the surface of the water, making the trippy sculptures actually feel like a psychedelic dream. Kawai, who is a Japanese artist, painted her tent with black figures that almost look like primitive hieroglyphs done my comedian cavemen. Her Saturn shape is emblazoned with the word "HOME."
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Stark, who is from Miami, often works in colored paper to create geometric, rainbow shapes. Her teepee pulls from this vibrant color palette; it's covered in squiggly lines that remind you of the florescent coal populating the waters of Miami.
Stark was hanging out in her teepee when we got a chance to ask her about the project. "A lot of my work is based of organic and psychedelic shapes, based of shapes in nature and a little bit of math involved too. For this, I wanted to do all of my crazy, psychedelic mish-mash, which kind of ties into the whole peyote ceremony," she said. Stark also explained her process: "I pretty much just took a pencil and started sketching. I had an idea in my head. Then I marked the colors and had some assistants help with painting in the lines."
She then obliged us by posing for a photo on the rugs in her tent:
