Portrait of a Young Public Artist

We’ve all heard how Williamsburg has changed. How it once was a neighborhood of Hasidic Jewish, Dominican, German, Italian and Puerto Rican families; how over the last thirty years, it’s become a haven for young musicians, artists and hipsters; how it’s now transforming into a cavalcade of enormous, shimmering condos complete with the residents who usually accompany such gaudy buildings. Yet Williamsburg’s role as cultural vanguard remains. Some of this is due to lingering reputation, but a large part of it is due to the continuing influx of exciting, new artists who—through resourcefulness and innovation—still able to find ways of making it happen.
Kinetic sculptor Jason Krugman is one of those artists. Along with his three musician roommates, Krugman, 26, occupies a large, converted warehouse loft on the South Side, along the Williamsburg waterfront. Entering the space is like descending into the basement workshop of an artistically-inclined mad inventor who, in his childhood years played youth league baseball and went to see jambands and trippy shows on the weekends and then somehow channeled all those experiences into something that was productive, as well as captivating, as well as good.
“It’s gritty,” says Krugman, refering to his space, a mangled menagerie of exposed wiring, unfinished wood, salvaged construction material, bikes, electrical gadgetry, and various prototypes and art projects in varying stages of development. “But I generally don’t mind not having a living room or a normal kitchen (we have hot plates). Since I live and work in the same place, there isn’t much separation between living and working, and I pretty much end up working all the time I’m at home.”
It’s a common New York-trend: ambition and work. Currently Krugman is working on several ambitious projects. What the projects have in common are accessibility, playfulness and wonder. One of them, titled “Living Objects” and which will be on display in a public space in the near future, is a series of over-sized human forms embedded with thousands of white LED lights. The sculptures, constructed entirely from plywood, chicken wire and plastic wrap, are simultaneously impressive and scrappy: they’re the kind of pieces you appreciate and engage with almost immediately, due to their human-like form as well as their construction. Another one of his projects, called “Organic Electric,” is series of works that involve soldering together thousands of individual LEDs to make large, flexible nets that glow brilliantly when powered on.

Explains Krugman, “I want kids and old people to enjoy my work, as well as people who do not speak English, people who are disabled and people who are not rich.” The seeking common connection and community is very present in Krugman’s art, and works like “Living Objects” and “Firefly” (a series of wind-responsive LED lights commissioned this summer for the All Points West festival; another version of which is now also on display at the New York Hall of Science in Queens) serve as occasions for curiosity and marvel.
Originally from Newton, MA, a suburb of Boston, Krugman moved to Williamsburg in May, after graduating from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. “I like where I am now,” says Krugman. “Williamsburg is an amazing place to be an artist. Especially one working with different types of materials and using physical space. There are so many people in the neighborhood doing interesting things. On my block alone, there is a metal fabrication shop, a theatre production and rigging shop, a glass blowing studio, a welding shop, and two photo studios…and that’s out of, like, ten buildings.” While towering, shiny condos may be the future of the Williamsburg waterfront, for now, the gutted warehouses on the South Side along Kent Avenue remain home to industry of a different kind: the creative.