Public Commissions
Fabulous Phil
Scrollathon: City Point, Brooklyn, New York
2016
Commissioned by: Washington Square Partners, Acadia Realty Trust, and The Brodsky Organization for City Point, Brooklyn, New York
Medium: Papier-mâché, paint, varnish, hand-blown glass, brass grommets, screws, plywood, skim coat
Dimensions: Each of 576 plates approximately 18 ¼ × 18 ¼ × 3 ¾ inches; full artwork 40 × 40 ft × 4 in.
Photograph: Primary image: Todd Eberle; additional images courtesy of the artists
Created in: Brooklyn and New York City, New York
Artists’ Registration Numbers: 2016.001.001–2016.001.577
Exhibition History: Permanent installation, City Point, Brooklyn, New York, 2016–present
The result was Fabulous Phil, the largest Collaborative Masterwork of our careers. Conceived through the City Point Scrollathon, the project unfolded over eight months—from May 2015 through January 2016—and engaged more than 1,100 community participants in the creation of thousands of sculptural elements that together form a permanent, community-built landmark in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn.
Commission Overview
In 2014, amid Brooklyn’s rapid redevelopment, we were approached by Paul Travis of Washington Square Partners. Together with Acadia Realty Trust and The Brodsky Organization, he envisioned a permanent, monumental artwork that would both represent and actively involve the surrounding community. As part of the City Point development, a massive climate-controlled vitrine was being constructed in the public concourse, and we were invited to imagine what could inhabit this highly visible civic space.
Artistic Approach
Measuring forty by forty feet, Fabulous Phil is composed of 576 modular plates, each densely layered with hand-sculpted and hand-painted elements. The surface is built from tens of thousands of individually crafted components, including handmade papier-mâché beads and hand-blown glass elements. Every component was formed by hand, embracing labor, repetition, and touch as foundational values.
Once completed, the plates were permanently installed within City Point’s public concourse vitrine, transforming a commercial environment into a site of shared authorship, reflection, and civic pride.
While the scale was daunting—Paul Travis famously joked that a project of this magnitude could only be accomplished by machines—we intentionally chose the opposite path. Community members participated directly in painting and assembling sculptural elements during Scrollathon workshops, while our studio team refined, sealed, and structurally integrated each plate. The work balances architectural rigor with an accumulated intimacy, holding thousands of gestures within a single monumental field.
Engagement and Impact
The City Point Scrollathon brought together more than 1,100 participants from 16 Brooklyn-based community organizations. People of all ages and backgrounds contributed to the making of the work—painting beads, assembling components, and seeing their labor translated into a permanent public artwork during a period of intense neighborhood change.
Context and Legacy
Fabulous Phil stands as our largest community-built artwork and one of our most ambitious public commissions. It crystallizes the core of our practice: monumental scale rooted in handcraft, storytelling, and collective making. Installed permanently within a major urban development, the work demonstrates how community participation can be embedded into the physical and cultural fabric of a city.
For us, Fabulous Phil is a portrait of Brooklyn itself—layered, resilient, exuberant, and built by many hands.
One participant reflected that it was the first time they had seen their community’s creativity represented in such a visible and lasting way within Brooklyn’s public realm. In parallel with the masterwork, we created a Portrait Mural and a Signature Plate to honor every contributor, permanently recording their presence and participation as part of the project’s legacy.
