NU PERSPECTIVES
A hotel room with a view of the Manhattan Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Williamsburg Savings Bank? That’s geographically impossible! Not at NU Hotel Brooklyn, where guests can immerse themselves in the borough when staying in select guestrooms painted with Brooklyn-themed floor to ceiling murals.
As part of the NU Perspectives project, the 93-room boutique hotel has given creative license to five local artists to liven up the largest guestrooms. The hotel’s white walls and loft-like design serve as a blank canvas on which artists can put their signature creations. The murals give the rooms color and an edge, while maintaining a comfortable feel and a uniquely Brooklyn look.
Select guestrooms are works of art in their own right, as they have been hand-painted by local artists with Brooklyn-themed murals from floor to ceiling. Meet the artists behind the NU Perspectives project:
CAM, Room 301
Brooklyn native, Craig Anthony Miller aka “CAM”, creates art through an exploratory process. He maps shapes into images that repetitively convey messages of strength triumphing over despair. His early influences are stained glass and the graffiti and street art that once dominated New York’s boroughs. CAM’s style employs his graphic arts training to create works that explore far, distant lands and tribal warriors stealthily transplanted into layered urban landscapes. www.craiganthonymiller.com/
Adam Suerte, Room 302
Born and bred in South Brooklyn, the streets served as Adam’s canvas long before he was putting the streets on canvas. Drawing inspiration from his own graffiti career and his deep Brooklyn roots, his paintings often depict the area he grew up in as the wave of gentrification covers the finer details of the neighborhood he remembers and loves. Suerte is the founder of Urban Folk Art© Studios (an artist collective and gallery) and co-founder and co-owner of Brooklyn Tattoo®. He continues to make art on many levels in many mediums, from painting, to illustrating, to making comics, to print making. http://www.adamsuerte.com/about/
Steven Weinberg, Room 303
Steven Weinberg is an artist in Brooklyn, NY. He illustrated To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One True Story with his girlfriend/writer/regular collaborator Casey Scieszka about the two years they lived around the world from Beijing to Timbuktu. He also does a variety of freelance illustration, cartoons, and paintings for individuals, bars, restaurants, ad agencies, and more.
Magdalena Marcenaro, Room 201
Argentine photographer and mixed media artist Magdalena Marcenaro has been living and creating in the United States for nearly twelve years. Her work, often deeply textured, exposes vulnerability joined with sudden ferocity, and nostalgia linked to sudden joy. She has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows from Buenos Aires to New York, including group shows for the Scope Foundation, The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition , The Urban Folk Art, and Gowanus Print Lab in Brooklyn.
ICY and SOT, Room 202
Hailing from the city of Tabriz in North West Iran, brothers ICY AND SOT continue on their creative crusade to traverse pre-conceived perceptions of traditional Iranian art’s brevity through their highly intricate yet striking stencil artworks. Despite Iran’s cultural flourishing since the 2009 uprisings in Tehran, the challenges faced by creative free expression in the country are a constant struggle for its artists and society today. It is an oppressive force that provokes the Iranian art scene to fluctuate between an inhibited elegance and raw underground energy. This ambiguity is reflected in the vulnerable yet hopeful deep-set imagery of ICY AND SOT’s street art.