ACME STUDIO

THE PHOTO STUDIO, PROP HOUSE, & SET FABRICATION SHOP in Brooklyn, NY // ACMEBROOKLYN.com

DIRBY CREATES A WATER TOWER SPEAKEASY

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As first reported by our friend Dan Glass in the Atlantic Cities, then profiled by The New Yorker, and today chronicled on page A25 of the New York Times, ACME’s own Dirby was a creator of The Night Heron, a speakeasy housed high above Chelsea in…a derelict building’s rooftop water tower. 

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Guests, who only nabbed an invite if gifted a silver pocket watch from someone who previously visited the tower, were feted with live music, whiskey cocktails, and face-time with a fascinating cross-section of New Yorkers. And if they were brave to climb to the tower’s top, a spectacular view of Manhattan’s nighttime skyline. 

ACME was honored to host a party for our friends and staff in the tower on one of the Night Heron’s last three nights earlier this month before it was sealed forever.

Check out more pictures of the Night Heron from the New York Times. 

And more coverage here, there, there, everywhere. 

BUT WAIT! There’s more! The minds behind The Night Heron will be offering four Tuesday evenings of discussion and illumination at ACME Studio this June in their Wanderlust School of Transgressive Placemaking. Tickets and more information available at Atlas Obscura. 

MISSY ELLIOT AT ACME

Missy Elliot shot her scenes for UK girl group Little Mix’s current top twenty single “How Ya Doin’?” at ACME last month. See the full video here.

The set was created through some ingenious painting directly on our cyc!

ACME TURNS THREE

ACME Studio is three years old! Before we blow out the candles (this Friday at 4/12 7PM, come on by), we thought it’d be fun to find out the story behind how this baby was conceived, from the father and mother himself Shawn Patrick Anderson. 

The year is 2010. Shawn and crew have been building sets and working out of a leaky, rat-filled garage space across the street from the Brooklyn Navy Yard for about four years.

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“My friend Mary Ellen shot the band Chairlift in that space, and then another friend Dennis shot Sonic Youth,” said Shawn. “And I had lunch with my friend Andy, the pornographer, and was telling him about that, how cool it was that people wanted to shoot there. And he said, okay, Shawn, why don’t you get a better space? And I’m defending the shit hole I have, my rat space. I’m going on about how I’ll get a shuttle bus to ferry people from Manhattan all the way over to my rat space.”

“But eventually he convinces me, because Andy is someone who knows me, knows my abilities, and wouldn’t set me up for failure. So I call my friend Mike, who is THE real estate guy in Williamsburg, and say do you have a space? And he said, well, one.”

Mike took Shawn to see only one space, at 63 N. 3rd St., which was little else than an empty room with cinderblock walls and some broken windows. Actually, let’s just show you a picture:

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“And I thought, absolutely! Without a doubt,” Shawn said. “Let’s get it. I knew this would be an amazing thing to do.”

And ACME Studio was born. 

Three years later, ACME has welcomed artists, celebrities, CEOs, lecturers, authors, builders, programmers, dancers, musicians, and strippers. It has hosted three weddings (including the nuptials of Andy, the above mentioned pornographer), art openings, art installations, dance performances, dinner parties, product launches, taxidermy classes, and more than three parties. ACME’s crew has build an indoor heated pool, a faux snow cave, driven a Smart Car through the front doors, had circus performers dangle from the ceiling, and docked an enormous, LED-lit styrofoam spaceship over the cyc. And there was Buddy, the studio bunny. 

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“The motivation of ACME has never been about money, it’s been about offering a space where people can come and do their own projects, bring their own ideas, and take what we have and what we’ve offered and make it their own,” Shawn said. “ACME aims to be a catalyst to help creative people be creative. When you have 4,000 square feet of space to play with and you don’t have to apologize or ask permission, and you run with it, it’s like, yeah. This is what New York City is about. And we’re just getting started.”

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we harlem shake’d. 

Taxidermy Classes this March at ACME

Divya Anantharaman, a Brooklyn artist who VICE recently named “The World’s Hottest Taxidermist”, will be teaching a taxidermy class at ACME on March 9th and 30th. 

Students will learn the art of taxidermy and create their own taxidermic mouse mount while surrounded by all of ACME’s stuffed friends. Seriously.

Watch a video about Divya here. 

Tickets for the 9th (anthropomorphic class) here.

Tickets for the 30th (natural class) here.

Presented by ACME in partnership with Observatory as part of their Morbid Anatomy Art Academy.

TALKING ABOUT OURSELVES

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When I ask Shawn Patrick Anderson what he would take with him from ACME in case of a fire—a question that keeps me personally up late at night—he replies, “My three favorite things to take in a fire? What would I take? I mean, I like a lot of this shit. But, you know, I would let that burn, that would look really cool. [Anderson gestures to an elaborate chandelier hanging in the kitchen] Oh my god, yes. There’s this baby sculpture, these two weirdo babies, that are laughing together in the bathroom. I would take that. You know what? We could let it burn and then start all over. I would grab that baby sculpture and then run. These things are really cool but it’s just stuff. We could start all over.”

Brooklyn Magazine came by ACME to talk to us about our stuff and took lots of pictures. Check it out.