AphroChic Magazine: Issue No. 4

Interior Design
marked “no deposit, no return.” Or that the
beautiful painting of yellow flowers hanging
over the loveseat is actually three-dimensional
and thickly ribboned with texture. Or that
in place of wood, the fireplace has only a small
electric light with a neon filament spelling out,
“lamp.” There’s no end to the details, and no
standard on how long it takes to notice them.
But once noticed they become irresistible,
enticing you to stare and daring you to look for
more.
Past the living room, the dining room is
Paul’s image of a dinner under the sea. One of
the first contrasts to be bridged here is the one
between form and function, as the lighting
over the dining table is a work of art in itself,
and the centerpiece of the concept. “I always
had this vision of people kind of living in art —
that art is around you — and so I wanted to have
this fantasy dinner where art is everywhere.”
Beginning with the idea of eating underwater
with jellyfish all around, the light, which was
originally a single jellyfish, became several.
The form and function motif continues around
the table as, capped by mid-century bentwood
chairs at the head and foot, the seating along
the sides is equipped with back rollers to
keep guests comfortable as they sit and chat.
Because dinner beneath the sea is pointless
without any interesting creatures in attendance,
another of the artist’s unique creations
stands sentinel at the far end of the room. With
only one of its two legs attached to the pedestal,
the piece was originally intended as a commentary
on balance. But when inspiration hit to
use rolled foam to add a larger head, something
new was born. It was the kind of spur-of-themoment
creativity that Paul relies on to keep
things interesting.
“You have to take risks to make art,
because sometimes it’s the accident that makes
it great,” he says. “The first thing is to be open
as an artist, open your mind to everything and
look at everything, and be curious. Examine everything
and pay attention to everything.” It’s
this openness that allows space for all of the
contrasts Paul builds into the decor of each
room on a small level, and between rooms and
floors on a larger scale. “I have a certain feel on
one floor and a different feel on another. Every
room is special to me in different ways.”
Upstairs the decor takes a step away from
the sublime and into the realm of memory.
The library, one of Paul’s favorite spaces in the
entire home, speaks specifically to the memory
of his godparents. “The library came from my
godparents, who I lived with when I first came
to New York,” he remembers. “They were very
kind of radical, political, very Black Panther
kind of people. So when they passed away a
couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted
to remember them very, very much. So we
literally took the library out of their house, bitby-bit,
and we gently brought it all here and
put it all together and recreated that room and
the memory of them. That was really very, very
important to me.”
Memory plays a role in the bedroom as
well. Amid the tropical colors and modern
lines that define one of the home’s most resolutely
contemporary spaces, one playfully
designed art piece disguises a dresser as a stack
of “Pablo” (Paul’s nickname) brand bananas.
The piece is a call-back to both the bodegas he
frequented after late nights of bartending in
his early days in New York and to his childhood
home in Kingston, Jamaica. This blending of
memories is another feature common to both
his art and his design.
“I question my existence a lot,” he begins.
“And so, I look back at my past to get some of
why I do this, why am I attracted to texture,
why am I attracted to the earth. I grew up in this
area of Jamaica that had a lot of mango trees and
cherry trees and plum trees, and that’s one of
the things I miss most about the Caribbean …
it’s like you literally can wallow in the nature,
like it’s all over you. That’s more my aesthetic.
It’s a mix of the nature of the Caribbean and the
man-made of New York. And I kind of mix that
together in a way, like blend it in a blender and
just kind of spit it out.”
The outdoor spaces behind the house are
as much a fantasy as the rooms within it. The
first is an enclosed dining area that combines
modern seating with a table lined with an assortment
of Paul’s sculpted characters. The
enclosure is perfect for those days when the
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