Commune Shows: Marina Contro & Noah Cohen

October 24, 2026 – January 2, 2027

Blunk Space is pleased to announce its third installment of Commune Shows, featuring hand carved wood furniture by LA-based furniture maker Noah Cohen and woven blankets and textile paintings by San Francisco-based weaver Marina Contro. A collaboration between Commune Design and Blunk Space, the exhibition honors the domestic scale and interdisciplinary nature of JB Blunk's work and life. Visits to the Blunk House in Inverness deepened the artists' connection to Blunk’s work, culminating with a meditation on the dressing room ritual, reimagined for today. Cohen’s tables, blanket chest, vanity, mirrors, and racks provide exquisite spaces for Contro’s series of blankets and textile wall works. 

Both Cohen and Contro are masters of subtle detail: tiny gestures that belie deeply technical precision, yet register only as comfort, simplicity, and subtle beauty. The effect is like enjoying an Agnes Martin painting, an invitation to appreciate each handmade mark. Deeply domestic in scale, use, form, and concept, the work takes its cues from the gesamtkunstwerk of the Blunk House itself rather than from Blunk's approach to materials. “Despite working in completely different mediums, they share an unwavering commitment to quality and refinement,” says Roman Alonso, principal of Commune Design. “While there may not be an obvious visual connection between their work and JB Blunk's, they are all deeply intuitive makers whose work questions the boundaries between art, craft, and design.”

Trained at the Krenov School in Mendocino, Cohen learned to carve wood with extreme precision, entirely by hand. His stay at the Blunk House brought that reverence for materials to the surface, pushing him toward whimsy and narrative. Though his education would seem distant from Blunk's sculptural hand, like Blunk, Cohen is in tune with his materials, sourcing salvaged wood and letting grain and natural form guide shape and function. The Blunk House echoes through the natural ombré of Paradox Walnut mimicking the coastal horizon, or a compact wardrobe dressed in flamboyant Eucalyptus veneer.

A hand weaver and artist based in San Francisco, Contro received her MFA in fiber from Cranbrook University, grounding her in a similarly classical, materials-based training. Whether she’s making a wall-based artwork or a blanket that will live in constant physical contact with the world, she works on an antique 19th-century loom and another from the 1970s, her hands leading each step in the process. Her lifelong interest in religious studies translates into a sense of ceremony for both art and functional objects; for Contro, any moment can feel precious, even using a dish towel. The Blunk House is a manifestation of this way of living without distinctions between artwork and design. Inspired by her visit, she made six blankets, each taking one to two weeks and woven and felted entirely by hand, alongside nine textile paintings, each a subtle gesture of minimalism, warmed by hand that shaped it.

Together, these two bodies of work navigate the moment where precision meets intuition, a place of surprising ease where the rhythms of daily life—preparing for rest, throwing on a layer—are worthy of devotion. Rooted in the spirit of the Blunk House, where art and life were never separate, Cohen and Contro offer objects of rare beauty: elegant, exacting, and made to be lived with.