PATRICIA AYRES

I am a Brooklyn based artist working in the mediums of Fashion Design and Sculpture. Living in such a densely populated city, I find myself drawn to the more isolated areas of New York City. My studio is located in an 100 year old factory in a gritty, raw section of Brooklyn. In the area’s heyday, there were trolley cars and a bustling waterfront dock. One can still see traces of the old rail lines and the cobblestone streets. Today there is a major expressway, built by Robert Moses, that severs through the neighborhood cutting off the industrial from the residential. This lends itself to a lot of character on the industrial side… sweet-shops, sweatshops, chop-shops, porn-shops. 24/7. I find the most intriguing juxtapositions here, such as an orthodox religious person passing by a sex shop. Or an auto tire shop with sewers set up inside. I enjoy the cultural diversity; I can frequent any number of authentic spots from a Yemeni owned bodega to an Israeli falafal place with the most delicious hummus to a tiny Mexican resturant with some very spicy tacos to some ”real” Chinese soup, as the waiter likes to call it, in between our conversations of Mao and China today. Mostly it’s the stimulating visual vocabulary I derive while going to and from my studio on a daily basis that I find so inspiring. This continually feeds into my work as an artist.