On April 26th and 27th, from 1 to 6 pm, artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as part of DUMBO Open Studios, offering a rare look inside the art studios along the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the 1970s, DUMBO has been shaped by its vibrant art community. This interview series highlights a handful of participating artists in 2025. Each response offers a glimpse of what’s waiting behind the studio door. Jenny Polak has been based in DUMBO since February 2025, previously participated in the BRIC residency in 2022, and returned this year to 20 Jay Street—now working from Studio #310B—through the Cultural Space Subsidy Program.
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What will we see in your studio?
There will be sculptural objects in progress: some protective wearables made of recycled materials, some stuffed textiles, and a selection of ink drawings – my Sanity/Insanity drawings, which I make mostly with Japanese brushes and black or sepia ink, to try to get a grip in terrible times. My very recent Mattress 1 and 2 (We Who Believe In Freedom Cannot Rest) 2024 will be there as I am processing what they have taught me, which is a lot.
The two mattresses mimic those produced in a Corcraft prison mattress workshop, and were made in collaboration with poet Daniel Kelly and community members. Daniel told me how the mattresses must be made, and how he used to have to make them. I painstakingly transcribed his words onto the mattress ticking, like someone learning to write. The words describe his experience of forced labor in the Corcraft mattress factory while incarcerated, noting how the workers were paid pennies and joked about being slaves to the Corcraft masters. I worked with other Fortune Society members to highlight some words with embroidery, contrasting the pleasure of shared domestic labor with the un-refusable labor in the multi-million dollar prison factory.
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About the artist: Jenny Polak uses ink and paper, building materials, quilted textiles, and slipcast ceramics to make protective garments, kitchen adaptations, escape signs, and other strategies for surviving hostile authorities. Drawing on her studies in architecture, she often creates work through collaborations with communities directly impacted by incarceration or anti-immigrant laws, celebrating their resilience and inspiring resistance to injustices. Scales range from large interventions in public space – like “Offshore” on the waterfront at Socrates Sculpture Park – to intimate subversions of domestic design like her prototype built-in hiding places, seen recently at BRIC. Since 2020 Polak has worked with members of The Fortune Society – people rebuilding lives after the trauma of incarceration – on collaborative textile-and-text artworks connecting their experiences through her material language. Their latest project, for MoMA PS1, includes joyful sculptural outfits stuffed with shredded documents – transforming layers of bureaucracy that hold participants back – and replica prison mattresses reimagined as embroidery samplers. @jennypolakstudio