Art Apéritifs with Zesty Meyers of R & Company
An interview with the co-Founder and Principal of the ever dynamic design gallery
21st & 18th is a weekly Newsletter written by Lauren Lynch Wemple (@lolynchwemple). We discuss art, history and fashion as well as feature interviews with curators, art dealers, experts and voices in fashion. Subscribe to 21st & 18th for free at the button below.
LLW will often produce visual time travel content to accompany our articles, if you are into that sort of thing follow 21st & 18th (@21stand18th) on Instagram.
San Diego, California
You know those movies you see in theaters that inspire you to change your life and go after those dreams or call that person? The films you can’t help but smile when the credits roll despite the fact that you’re sad it’s all over? This is how I felt after wrapping my interview with Zesty Meyers, of R & Company, in their 64 White Street Tribeca location.
I waltzed out of R & Company feeling like I had it all figured out. I instinctively knew which block was mine to turn down and my smile was out in full force for any passerby to hopefully spread the joy I was feeling. Truly, that day I met Zesty and learned about his story and how and why he built R & Company with his business partner, Evan Snyderman, my soul was connected to my brain in a way that rarely happens.
Funnily enough I had visited R & Company prior to interviewing Zesty. I was in their gloriously lofted space for a NYFW event hosted by luxury vintage shop and marketplace, Dora Maar1. On my way out of the event, and keen to learn more about this incredible space and their art, I looked around for a member of the R & Company team, eventually I triangulated my way to Zesty.
Welcome back to Art Apéritifs, one of our interview segments here on 21st & 18th where we welcome leading voices in the art world, usually from museums, but today, today I have a treat for you.
In March, I sat down with Zesty Meyers of R & Company, a long standing design gallery in New York City, to learn about his journey in the arts, where he goes to escape the frenetic energy of downtown NYC and, of course, what he’s currently obsessed with. I hope you’ll carve out time to enjoy this interview and allow yourself to feel inspired by another’s journey. Cheers!
New York, New York, 11 March 2024
LLW: It's myself and Zesty Meyers. It's March 11th, 2024. We're in New York City.
ZM: …Okay, so one of the great things [about all of this] is that I have a real passion I can't run away from, no matter how hard I try. <laugh>
LLW: Have you really tried?
ZM: No, I've never tried. I can't. It doesn't work that way. I need to find a way to give back, for my own happiness. I need to work on projects that excite, advance, help, and give culture to people. <Zesty pauses>
In that sense, I have to help find a way to ensure the artists [we’re working with] are making work they're passionate about and are able to create what they want to create. Then the team and I have to find a clientele somewhere in the world. We have to find somewhere to place [the art] either with a person individually, collectors, through the architectural design community, or an institution.
LLW: It sounds like you’re finding homes for each of these works of art.
ZM: Yeah. A lot of homes.
LLW: Let’s chat about that for a moment, when you're looking for a home for art. How does that work, exactly? Do people come to you?
ZM: Sometimes, yes, or people get recommended to us. We also go to fairs and meet new people. The hardest thing to do [in the art world] is help set the marker of what becomes attractive to a broad public and not just a few people…What is not the song of summer, what’s going to be bigger than the song of the summer?
LLW: How do you approach that? How do you look at a piece and understand, after all these years in the business, if it is truly interesting?
ZM: So what's the magic?
LLW: Yeah. What is the magic?
ZM: <laugh> You know, normally, it starts with a feeling. With the person who made the piece, with the human. What were they trying to do? Where are they trying to go? What did they tell me? Did this piece inspire me? It's not so much about work that I like.
I am attracted to people who want to prove that their design or art is fascinating. So I get turned onto something, and it's not that I want to live with [all the art] that I sell, but I can tell that somebody would. It's like constant graduate school to me, having to learn more and having no choice but to become an expert in someone we represent because I have to figure out what that artist is all about so I can convey it to somebody else.
LLW: Being a student in a lot of ways…
ZM: Yeah. I have to do my research, put in the time, and study.
LLW: To conceptualize how the art world works, as someone who is not a part of it, I liken it to the music world or how producers and directors work with talent in entertainment. Would you agree with that metaphor?
ZM: Yes, it's similar to music or fashion. I mean, consider how many bands are trying to get a label.
LLW: Exactly.
ZM: Or, how many people can become movie or TV stars? The odds are against them because there are only so many slots. It's the same thing [with art]; you're working with creative people to do creative things. My problem is time. It's not want or desire to have more. It's time running out.
LLW: Would you explain that?
ZM: There are only so many hours in a day, and there are more projects than we can take on in any given day.
LLW: For artists and people, creating time is the most intense factor or feeling. I imagine that puts pressure on creation because time reminds you this is all finite.
ZM: We don't want them to get burnt out; you have to find the balance. There are some people who only make ten pieces in a year, while there are others who need to make 300 pieces in a year. That is how they are chemically made; there is no choice. [By that] I mean that they work differently; it's their constitution–those artists’ makeups are completely different.
LLW: Fascinating.
ZM: The person who only makes ten pieces in a year has to think through a process that takes time. We can assume, naturally, that there are either high intellectual, conceptual formulas or sophisticated technical ideas being brought to life.
LLW: Something like this <Lauren picks up a Richard Marquis2 glass work>.
ZM: Yeah. That takes many years to figure out, and this would be technical.
LLW: Let’s talk about R & Company. How would you describe R & Company to someone who has no idea what it is?
ZM: We define ourselves as a design gallery and are recognized as one. When we take artists on, we don't just offer them a place to sell. Of course, being a gallery, first and foremost, we have to sell art because that’s what enables us to run the rest of the program.
LLW: Which is?
ZM: It starts with the people that work with the artist, who are the Artist Liaisons, and they work directly with the artists to understand what they want to achieve and how to get them places, residencies, etc., or if they would like to speak to the press, those types of things.
Then we have a Director of Museum Relations, who aids artists in getting into institutions in perpetuity. Some artists we can [do that for], and some we can't. Most museums have mandates that they can only buy X kind of things, while other museums can buy anything they like.
Then, we have shipping managers and registrars, which is no different from how a museum operates. We have technicians, especially for electrified works. Artists may know how to make the parts but maybe not how to put them all together, and if we're going to hang something above someone's head, it better not fall.
LLW: <laugh>
ZM: We also have a full-time photographer because, in the end, if the work sells, the only thing the artist will ever live with is the picture. The picture should be as good as the piece, and the picture then gets us press-ready, which also gets us book-ready. We create books to give back to the community, because we know not everyone can afford the art, but maybe they can afford the book.
This brings us to our Publications Department, which is run by our Archivist, who also looks after a collection of exceptionally rare, beautiful books. We have an archive that has thousands of objects. We started the archive as an internal learning tool before the internet in the ‘90s. When we began to consume these books, we would ask questions like, “ If Alvar Aalto3 was the best-known designer in Finland, who was number two? And why don’t we know the answer to this?” Then we'd get on a plane and go to Finland… We do it all.
LLW: For our Readers who are keen, can people make appointments to visit and use R & Company’s Archive?
ZM: Absolutely4.
LLW: Let’s travel back in time to your beginnings in art. When did you fall in love with art? Did you go to art school?
ZM: I did, yes. College wasn't really my thing. <laugh> Actually, in high school, I started a jewelry company.
LLW: Really? What was it called?
ZM: This was in the mid-1980s. It was called Meyers Creations. I simply started to make fishing leader5 bracelets.
LLW: Where in the world are you at this point? You're from Rhode Island, correct?
ZM: Yeah, I’m from Providence. So I'm 15 years old and I start making fishing leader bracelets. They're just fishing leaders with maybe a bead or two on them. [I was making these bracelets] and took them to some stores and learned that Providence used to be the costume jewelry capital of the world, which is something I never knew. I continued to buy beads and sell to stores, and it turned into a very big company, [which eventually] my mom ended up taking over.
LLW: Wow. And this was all in high school?
ZM: This is all in high school. When I was 16, we got into our first showroom in Dallas.
LLW: Wow!
ZM: I was showing with Norma Kamali6, José Cotel7, and WilliWear8—I always wondered what happened to WilliWear until he recently had a show at the Cooper Hewitt9.
LLW: My mom and I are big WilliWear fans.
ZM: I loved Willi, though I never got to meet him. I sent a picture of me wearing his blazer to Cooper Hewitt for their show at the Smithsonian, which was wild. And then it turns out a friend of mine, who was Willi’s next-door neighbor, made his original catalog.
LLW: Truly epic. What a small world.
ZM: I guess I was deeply immersed in the arts from a young age…At the time [I founded my jewelry business], I had to go to a specialized high school for dyslexia, and my sister had to as well, but our parents did not have enough money to send both of us.
But by the end of the company's first year, we had made enough money to send my sister and me to school, plus a profit.
LLW: That's quite the accomplishment.
ZM: My Mom quit her corporate job, my grandparents were helping, and the business blew up to sell to 200 stores across America.
LLW: How incredible. Again, this is all while you’re in high school, right?
ZM: Yeah.
LLW: Obviously, this is impressive for anyone but a teenager! Did you ever consider yourself a jewelry designer, and think, “This is what I'm going to do”?
ZM: I just did it. It was a little bit punk rock. [After] my mom took over [the jewelry business], I went to art school and didn't know what I wanted to be. After school, I had an adversity to money because the jewelry company made a lot of money, and it wasn't mine; it paid for my family. That’s when I started my not-for-profit arts organization to give back.
LLW: We’ve entered the next chapter.
ZM: When I went to that special high school in the 11th grade, it was a boarding school. There, I was told I could learn anything I wanted, and [those teachers] were the ones that proved that to me. From that moment on, I knew I could learn.
LLW: That's an empowering feeling. Everybody has different moments like that in life. Moments when you realize that you can do something with your own method in the way that works for you. All of a sudden, it clicks. Maybe that was your moment?
ZM: Yep, and because someone had shown me that I could learn, I knew I wanted to give back. How could I help the world and show other people that they could grow as well?
LLW: What was the non-profit organization called?
ZM: The B Team. We were professional glass blowers at this point. I found glass in college and fell in love with it.
We would work as teams to make glass because glass is always blown by more than one person; you can’t blow glass by yourself. It's a ballet. When you blow a glass, you're doing a dance, and the dance has to be correct, but you're doing a dance with something that can be as hot as 2000 degrees.
LLW: <laugh>
ZM: Everyone else around you has to be in sync with you. Which is why it was always a performance to make a glass vessel. [As we continued], we started to do performance art with glass. Glass was limitless, and [I kept thinking], “Why aren't more people experimenting with it?”
LLW: Right.
ZM: Glass is in fiber optic cables, it's the glass that’s covering your iPhone, it’s in the scientific beaker that doesn't explode when you heat it up, it’s even in CorningWare. So why weren’t people experimenting with it? Why were people stuck?
LLW: From that perspective, what was the artistic goal of The B Team?
ZM: We wanted to carry things past craft; we didn't understand why craft was so different from fine art. If you want to be a good painter, you have to have a craft.
If you want to be a good fashion designer, you have to have craft. To show someone why they should fall in love with a [piece] or be interested in it, you need to know about materials and how they work. All of these people use craft in their work. We set out to bridge the gaps between craft and fine art and craft and performance because we didn't see any difference. We set out to bridge those gaps completely and started to do molten glass performances.
LLW: How do you even do that?
ZM: We would make it rain molten glass. We would dance on molten glass. We created a slingshot that would fire molten glass onto a black-and-white glass target.
LLW: How cool.
ZM: We would do other such things. We tried to make glass conduct electricity. What would happen if we poured molten glass on a TV? Which probably wasn't so smart. <laugh> Then we would do tricks, jump rope with glass, which also wasn't smart.
LLW: That's crazy.
ZM: We would juggle glass which, again, probably wasn't so smart, as eventually your hands would burn. We would do all sorts of things like this, and why not?
LLW: Fascinating.
ZM: Why shouldn't we take the time to experiment with material? [Especially] when we had the choice of being at a university before we had to go do other, real jobs. By the time I got my undergraduate degree, I'd already given lectures at over 30 different universities across the country.
LLW: And started a national business!
ZM: <laugh> Yeah, and we were raising serious money to be able to do performances. Glass has to be 2000 degrees [to work with], so it costs real money to do a performance. As it became more serious, we became our own not-for-profit, and in the mid-1990s we went on tour through the Midwest or down the West Coast.
LLW: When did you move to New York and start selling art?
ZM: I moved in ‘95. After I got out of college, I traveled for a little bit, and I had this awesome loft in Boston.
LLW: I love a loft. Very ‘90s artsy of you.
ZM: It was big, it was beautiful. After traveling, I sat on the floor of my loft and looked at my life in Boston, and I said, “I can make a nice living here, but am I going to be as happy or challenged as I want to be?” The answer was no. I gave myself a year to move to New York, and within three months, I was here, which was fantastic.
LLW: You knew it was the right place for you?
ZM: Yeah, because I knew I needed more of a challenge to rise to something more than just being in Boston. I wouldn't have been pushed as hard. No matter how long you've been here, either you fight the city to win, or it's going to fight you.
LLW: What challenges you? Is it other people? Is it learning? How do you get your energy to thrive in this city?
ZM: All of it. It's the whole thing, the culture. You're surrounded by a fast pace and all these different people. I couldn't be in the city if there weren't new restaurants opening or new artists, new fashion or new whatever. Again, it’s not about me liking all of this; it's about needing to be around that energy.
I need to be inspired by that kind of thing to grow as a human. When I go out in the street, I see it, even if I don't know what it is. It could be as simple as what someone's wearing or what's painted on some wall, as much as it may be going to a museum or gallery or going out to some new food experience.
LLW: All the different characters at the watering hole are what make it the place where you go to be nourished.
ZM: Oh, completely.
LLW: What was your experience like getting started selling art in NYC?
ZM: We opened our first gallery on the south side of Williamsburg back in the day when there was nothing there. Williamsburg was a completely different place.
LLW: That’s not even that long ago.
ZM: Our corner was covered with crack vials, rainbow ones every day that friends of mine would make jewelry out of. <laugh> The prostitutes knew us by name.
LLW: <laugh> You were part of the community.
ZM: We started at the Chelsea Flea Market and, before that, a flea market on 11th Street. My business partner, Evan Snyderman, lived in an old firehouse in Philly at that time and collected amazing things. He couldn't move to NYC with all these things, so he started bringing them to the flea market, and we would sell them. In 1996, we went out and spent a hundred bucks each - I went to Providence, and he went back to Philly - [We came back to the city], put the things we had bought on the table at the 11th Street flea market that spring, and it just took off.
One dollar became three, and so on and so forth - the same story as the jewelry business. I started with nothing and started to build it up. Other people helped us along the way, gave us stuff to sell, and shared knowledge. We didn't follow anyone else's rules, though. We did it the way we thought was correct, and we knew it was going to piss people off or people weren't going to like us, but it was our world. Why should we conform to the supposed way it had to be done?
At the flea market, since we were both visual artists, we would set up a booth like it was a home or a gallery because we knew presentation was everything, and either we presented it right or we presented it wrong.
By presenting it right, it begged people to come to Williamsburg [and visit our space]. Eventually, we rented this place on South 1st and White, and initially, the plan was to open it to the public one day a week. But by the time we were moving the first piece of furniture through the front door, we sold it to someone walking by, and we ended up being open seven days a week. The business grew and grew and grew until we got to this space. This is the masterwork. I don't want anything else. I don't need anything else.
LLW: The space is incredible.
ZM: We've elevated design to the highest level. That was the goal, and goals are hard. Being in business for over 25 years is hard work because how do you stay current with the times? Or move from an aging clientele to include a younger demographic in your list, too?
LLW: Do you ever feel the need to escape NYC? If yes, where do you go to retreat? Or are you a person who gets energy from being out in the world?
ZM: Both, but I do need to get out. My constitution is highly attracted to salt water. I couldn't live in a desert or the middle of the country. I'm really an east coaster.
LLW: There are some people who just have the sea in their bones.
ZM: I really need to be by saltwater, to be a part of it, to be in it, touching it. As much as I can do other things and go elsewhere, to the mountains or into the forest, I need to be at a beach-type place. That’s just me. The beach is my number one, but I do get to get out a lot and experience other things. I love seeing places and absorbing culture.
LLW: I meant to ask this earlier. Who was your first proper artist partner at R & Company?
ZM: Jeff Zimmerman10.
LLW: Jeff Zimmerman!
ZM: He is a really good friend of ours and was on the B Team as well. He moved to New York, and, one day, he said, “I'm starting to make my own artwork again. Can I give you a couple of pieces to try to sell?” We put his art in the window, and overnight we had voicemails of people trying to buy his work.
LLW: Wow.
ZM: Since that day, his career has been unbelievably amazing. We're working on his second major monograph11 now.
LLW: Very cool.
ZM: We've represented Jeff for 20 years now, and that's a really amazing thing. He's done hundreds of installations for people. Almost none of his work has ever come back out on the secondary market.
LLW: Which makes that even more special.
ZM: He made the piece above your head.
LLW: Oh?
ZM: Right above your head. I mean, take a picture. This is more of a pendant, and was done with a man named James Mongrain12, who was also part of the B Team for a little bit—he is an amazing glass blower. Jeff is looking at science and nature and the cosmos and how nature never makes anything perfect.
LLW: That's beautiful.
ZM: That's his inspiration. He is looking at reflective surfaces, trying to push the material to its limit, to make it feel alive and like it's moving; glass technically is still moving even though we have it as a solid. He’s experimenting with all of those things.
LLW: Nuts. I love that nature never makes anything perfect, but somehow it works the way it should work.
ZM: I think that's why people end up loving his work. A lot of craftspeople try to make the most perfect thing, and he's there trying to push the material to its limits in the other direction, something most people don't do.
LLW: Which is more aligned with, I guess, the natural way of things. Right?
ZM: Yeah, or more in line with the concept of fine art.
LLW: Sounds like a fascinating guy.
ZM: And his book13 is going to be amazing, plus we’re going to show a bunch of the interiors.
Explore R & Company’s Exhibition schedule here
LLW: Speaking of inspiring artists and their work. I wanted to mention the exhibition with MoMA14. Congratulations to you and your team. Everyone reading should go see it.
[For our Readers, MoMA currently has an exhibition on view through September 2024: Crafting Modernity: Design in Latin America, which features art from R & Company’s collection. Learn more and plan your visit to this show here.]
ZM: I mean, it's pretty incredible.
LLW: It's insane!
ZM: It's sort of the dream coming true. We went down there and rediscovered Brazilian design, and wrote an overview history book, and here it is: one of the seven countries represented in this Latin America-focused show at MoMA. I never imagined being able to loan so many works to the MoMA for an exhibition and then having one or two other works in the show that they had bought over time from us.
LLW: It's an incredible achievement. MoMA, it’s a masterful museum.
ZM: It’s excellent. Maybe I don't slow down enough to realize some of the things I've done because I don't think I've done enough.
LLW: Oh, of course you don't. If you think you've done enough, you might stop. <laugh>
ZM: I did take a moment to stand in the exhibition gallery space the other night and think, “Wow, a lot of people are going to see this.” I guess I've done something bigger than what we are, which is really cool. I love that we're going to expose someone to something that might influence their life to some degree.
LLW: This is a great segue into the two questions I ask everyone we interview on 21st & 18th. First, what's your favorite museum?
ZM: Hmm. God. That's a good one.
LLW: <laugh> People always love/hate this one.
ZM: I love it. Ooh. I'm trying to think of a museum that just blew me away. I don't know if I have a favorite museum. Normally, it would come to me right away. My favorite thing about museums is when they present art that shows me things in ways that I've never seen, exhibitions that suck me in.
LLW: Any exhibitions that come to mind?
ZM: One of the most influential pieces I ever saw was by a man named Gary Hill15; I saw it in Toronto but I can't remember where. It's a piece called Tall Ships, and it was an interactive video in a very dark room where you walked in and saw all sorts of regular, more blue-collar type workers walking towards you to the point where you thought they were interacting with you.
LLW: Fascinating.
ZM: Lucas Samaras’s16 Hall of Mirrors would be another piece that was really inspirational. Beautiful installations from Ann Hamilton17 would also do it. How she put all these things together and the volume she took up. I could go on.
LLW: Wonderful. Next, what are you currently obsessed with?
ZM: Obsessed with? What am I obsessed with?
LLW: Anything that's keeping you up at night.
ZM: Well, I think about fishing quite a lot.
LLW: I didn't expect that <laugh>
ZM: That’s my solitude because my job is talking all day, and I like the idea of having to think and do the opposite. I also like going on a chase and being totally unsuccessful, then every once in a blue moon catching more fish than I've ever seen. Knowing that the odds are stacked against you in the same way as how I do business; there's more technique and subtlety involved. Fishing also makes me slow down.
LLW: Where do you fish?
ZM: I fish in Brooklyn, Amagansett, Alaska, Seattle…Those are the places I fish the most, but locally, Brooklyn. There are all sorts of things right here [in New York City], even dolphins and whales have been popping up in the East River to 42nd Street or up to Williamsburg over the past several years because the water's getting much cleaner.
LLW: That's great.
ZM: I’m also an oyster farmer. I have a small gentleman's oyster patch that's part of a state-run program in Amagansett where I can't sell them legally, but I eat them and give them to my friends. It's no different than being in a community garden and getting a square plot. I have a cage with 25 other people, a part of the Billion Oyster Project18. Using simplicity to help give back to the earth is a wonderful thing.
LLW: Do you have a favorite lure in your tackle box?
ZM: No.
LLW: That's surprising.
ZM: Given what?
LLW: That you’re a collector.
ZM: We use bait sometimes. It depends on what time of day we're fishing and what the conditions are. Some are prettier, of course, but I try not to get turned on. I don't collect that. You know, could I buy more fishing rods? Of course I could. I collect them. I could collect a hundred of them and not have enough, but I don't need to. Maybe that's the point. It's a great hobby, traveling is another hobby, but fishing and oystering are the ways I escape from the pressures of doing this.
LLW: And it reconnects you with what you love, which is saltwater. It makes you feel at home.
ZM: Yes. Alive and happy.
LLW: That is beautiful.
Thank you, Zesty, and to his team at R & Company, for their time and partnership on this interview. It is always a treat to meet people, in the flesh, who inspire you, and even better such an experience happens when you need that positive energy most.
Here’s to Zesty, his team and all of their artist partners. We appreciate you.
(b. 1945) Richard Marquis is an American glass artist. He was the first American allowed to blow glass in a Venetian glass factory and has mastered the techniques of cane and murrine. Learn more about him and his work here, or visit the R & Company Archives.
(b. 1898 - d. 1976) Alvar Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer who worked with glassware, furniture, textiles, painting and sculpture. Learn more about his body of work and contribution to art here.
A fish leader is the fishing line between your lure, hook and rod (I think I’m right but I’m not a fishing enthusiast like Zesty).
(b. 1945) Norma Kamali is an American fashion designer who operates an eponymous apparel line originally founded in 1969. She is known for her ‘Sleeping bag coat’ among other avant garde creations.
French fashion designer who had a very popular line of accessories in the 1970s and ‘80s.
WilliWear was the label of American fashion designer Willi Smith (b. 1948 - d. 1987) who became one of the most successful African-American designers in the USA after launching his label in 1976. Learn more about Smith and review his design archives here.
The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, NY, turns out incredible exhibitions that are thought provoking and enjoyable. Highly recommend the next time you are in NYC - learn more here.
Jeff Zimmerman is an American glass artist who has been working with the medium since the late 1980s. Learn more about Jeff’s art here.
A monograph is a specialist written work or exhibition on one subject.
(b. 1968) James Mongrain is an American glass artist who works in the Venetian style of glass crafting. Learn more about the works of art he has created in collaboration with Jeff Zimmerman here.
(b. 1951) Gary Hill is an American artist who is known for pioneering video art. Learn more about Hill and his work here.
(b. 1936 - d. 2024) Lucas Samaras was an American photographer, artist and sculptor originally from Greece who emigrated to the United States in 1948. Learn more about his work and the exhibition Zesty is referencing here.