Talking with Natalie Shook, you get the feeling that she’s actually many people trying to be one person. Born and bred in the midwest, the Cuban-American artist moved to New York to study painting at the famed Cooper Union but quickly discovered an affinity for carpentry and fabrication. A taste of the polymathic led her to launch Piscina, a design studio and collective in Red Hook, Brooklyn showcasing the talents of woodworkers, ceramicists, and metalsmiths.
All, appropriately, feature in her debut collection. Headlined by a showstopping oak shelving unit and rounded out by ceramic and cast-iron pieces, it launched to considerable acclaim at 2022’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair. She won Best New Designer and, for good measure, Best in Show.
“Moving from painting into the applied arts was a big shift,” Shook says. “I needed to build a space where I could…
