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That experience would go on to influence his renovation.
Most of the initial work on the house was on the parlor
floor, where the most damage existed. “I try not to think
of problems as problems. I think problems create creativity,”
Sue-Pat says. He had been collecting both furniture
and design objects for years, often picking them up for
cheap at flea markets and estate sales, and also random
items he sometimes incorporated into his sculptures.
So when considering pocket doors at the entrance of
the parlor during the initial renovation, for instance,
Sue-Pat decided to put two giant columns painted light
sky blue that were stored in his studio in the open space
instead. His interest in texture, a major component of his
paintings and sculptures, led him to leave much of the
original banister in the house intact, even the parts that
had sustained fire damage. “We thought it would be nice
to remember part of what was here before,” he says.
One of his favorite parts of the house is the outdoor area
that sparked his imagination during his first visit. He was
interested in the ways he could make it feel like the Blue
Mountains, a cooler, lush part of Jamaica and a place from
his childhood he remembers fondly. “I knew it had to be
something I could escape into,” he says. So, in addition to
filling the yard with opulent plants and a variety of sculptures,
he turned the windows in the back of the house into
doors and created an enclosed deck off the parlor floor.
“I’ve always been in love with having a British solarium,”
he says. “This was a cheaper version of that.”
“I wanted it to look effortless,” he adds. “I didn’t want
things to look forced. People come and think I’ve lived
here for many, many years.”
There is a certain lived-in quality to the work Sue-Pat
makes in the studio as well. When he has an idea, he
says, he is “open to the idea changing.” Sculptures that
look one way will change form once they have been
placed in a certain context. Nothing is static. Sometimes
an idea for a sculpture will become a painting or vice
versa. Many of his recent pieces, which were exhibited
in his studio-gallery space last year, also find Sue-Pat
reinvestigating memories from his childhood. There are
sculptures, he says, modeled after his grandmother. A
giant shoe filled with insects came from his boyhood
fear of ants in Jamaica. “I’ve never done this kind of
work, that presents nature and where I grew up,” he says.
“I’ve always run away from that. I think of it as a rebirth,
going back to my roots.”
To go back home, he needed to discover what that meant
to him in Bed Stuy. “I was always trying to find home, my
space, my people,” Sue-Pat says. “In New York, you can
come from anywhere, find your own space, and reinvent
yourself. I wanted t Left, artwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Manuel Mendive hangs o become what I wanted to be.”
above the mantel in an upstairs den. Top, a powder room with
bright green walls is tucked behind the stairs. Bottom, the powder
room contains paintings and objects by Manuel Mendive, Joseph
Brown, and Ras Dizzy, among others.