#playlab

NYC’s premier dream factory, our indefinable friends at PlayLab define themselves simply: “creative studio, no focus, lots of ideas.” This week, they unveiled their latest mercurial art campaign in Midtown — Grown Up Flowers. We sat down with the ‘Lab’s lead alchemist Archie Lee Coates IV to get the details.

When exactly did this Grown Up Flowers project start, and what was the initial impetus for it?

As a studio, PlayLab wants to constantly move into new territory; we don't necessarily know how to do projects at a certain scale, but always want to try. We had started a conversation with Sarah Berman of the Berman Group, who we met through Plus Pool —we told her that we really wanted to get into large-scale public work.

She represents a lot of developers, property owners, things like that. She was saying that quite often they have an interest in art, and hosting art to some degree, to help draw people to their buildings. She mentioned that there this association called Avenue of the Americas — a coalition of property owners on the Avenue of the Americas in Midtown — and that they were interested in bringing more people there for the purpose of art. It just sounded like a dream. We were like, "Okay, cool. Well, let's start that conversation, see where it goes."

We presented maybe a dozen ideas to the board, and they liked pretty much all of them, but it was really just for one or two specific properties at the time. 

This was the Flowers project?

They hadn't even seen the flowers yet. There was this project that we wanted to do called Say What You Want to Say, which was gonna be a massive billboard in the center of Midtown, staffed full-time by an attendant with a phone. The idea was, you could text his phone and say whatever you wanted to say, and he would change it physically on a giant billboard marquee. They were like, "This is awesome! Let's do it!" But, we spec'd it out and it was pretty expensive, and they only had the budget to do one. Eventually, there were five other property owners that want to get involved, so they asked if we could do something for the budget that hits all five properties at a giant scale. The only thing we knew that could do that was either projections or inflatables. So we started going down this path of inflatables, and flowers just kind of came to mind.

Flowers have been painted and sculpted since the beginning of time, and Jeff [Franklin, co-founder of PlayLab] said this really amazing thing to me early on with the project: “You don't really have to ask permission to paint a flower.” Everybody's gonna have a different perception of what that is, but it's such a naturally beautiful object.. so, yeah, we were like: "Let's just make big, giant flowers."

Did you have previous experience working with inflatables, or was this a first time venture?

Yeah, it was a first time venture. I think we always had an ambition to do inflatables. We always referenced them for projects, and we didn't know what the cost would be — it turns out the cost was exactly perfect for a five site budget.

We had a lot of ideas. One of them was making smaller-scale, inflatable replicas of the buildings — or maybe inflatable nesting dolls, with, like, five different scales of the building in front of the actual building. With a little shop in front that sold tiny tourist trinkets of the building. 

One day, we were walking through Midtown — this giant jungle of concrete and glass —and occasionally there are these small little flower beds. We were like, “wouldn’t it be amazing if there were just just giant flowers everywhere? 

There’s something interesting about how the flowers look like original design objects, but also as if there’s some kind of generic template —they're not so dissimilar to what you’d expect to see a vendor at a street parade handing out to kids.

Right.

So, who originally designed them? Are they based off templates?

I'm so glad you are observing that and asked that question, because a large part of the project was sculpting these flowers and figuring out our approach to them. Because it was a blank template, we could make anything we wanted to make. But we don't know... like, we don't have 3D software. We just don't have that skill set or experience. So we literally started by drawing with pencil, shading to show three dimensions, with Jeff and Anya [Shcherbakova] — who led that charge in the studio — doing hundreds and hundreds of options. It got really difficult once we got to forms, so we started modeling them out of clay — then made new drawings from that. We would sculpt and then do still lives of those. it was really a blank template.

There are stock flowers, but there's not a crazy variation of them, and they all look like what you’d see at like a car dealership... these kind of like wavy things. So we made our own, but tried to make them to feel a little like they might be stock ones. The limitations turned out to be super fun. We really like the artist Paul McCarthy, so we found out the place where he makes his inflatables, and they ended up making them for us.

Your sculptures are a little more G-rated than his.

They are 100% more G-rated, with the best family-friendly intentions. But the New York Post definitely had their mind in the gutter when they said they looked like giant penises.

Really? The Post said that?

Yeah, it was just funny. The were like “We reached out to PlayLab, but they declined to comment.” But they didn't. We didn't hear from them at all.

Whenever I think about inflatables, like at the Macy's Day parade or wherever, I think about how easy it seems to be for these objects to be ruined or penetrated or disrupted in some way. What measures are taken to preserve their structural integrity?

We were super nervous about that, obviously, but these people at Inflatable Images in Ohio have done this so many times, and they were like, "Look, based on probability, nobody's going to screw with these." Plus, each of these buildings has security like 24 hours a day — not like guarding the flowers, but they're around, you know?

Mm-hmm.

For the majority of them, there's so much air going through the blowers, a pinprick isn’t really gonna do anything. If you look closely at the flowers that have the blowers there are little tiny holes where the seams are at every little joint. So I think they're relatively safe.

There's like a constant stream of air coming into them?

Yeah, constant.

How long does the exhibition run?

Three months. Through July. 

And what happens to the flowers after that?

The Avenue of the Americas Association owns them now, which is awesome, but we already have interest in showing them in other places. We're talking to them about the idea, because they're just too big and beautiful to just keep in storage. 

Do you have any dream locations?

Man, I don't know... like, right in front of the U.N. building? I don't know.

That makes me wonder — are the flowers geographically specific? Are they like, native New York flowers?

No, they're more like caricatures of a bunch of flowers, combined. Like, if you took every archetypical flower in your mind and joined them together.

You’ve said that New York was once an island of flowers, and now it's an island of buildings. When I think about the average viewer — like, a tourist or something — that comes across them out of context, that narrative might not immediately translate.

Totally.

So what are you hoping their immediate takeaway is? Is it just sort of, you know, “art! Its big, it's beautiful, it's great?”

Yeah, definitely — just a feeling of positivity and fun. You know, we don't usually make hashtags for any of our projects, but we did for this one, because it was so public that we wanted to see what people were posting. As soon as the flowers went up, it became an immediate selfie zone. There's tons of people posting photos that are like, "Spring is here, life is great, thanks for the flowers!,” you know? No political statement, no negative conversation around it. It's just supposed to be a delightful break from the ordinary visual, or whatever thing you're doing at that moment. They're not so big that they're overpowering, and they're not small that they can be forgotten. When I see photos of them they still look like renderings to me, you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's kind of hard to think, "why they would be there?” because they're just so obviously out of place.

They're all in publicly accessible places, right? Even in the buildings?

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