Commune Shows: Marina Contro & Noah Cohen @ Blunk Space

Blunk Space is pleased to announce the 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 deepened the artists’ connection to Blunk’s work, culminating in a meditation on the dressing room ritual, reimagined for today.

Both Cohen and Contro are masters of subtle detail: tiny gestures that belie deeply technical precision, yet register as comfort, simplicity, and subtle beauty. 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 Commune Design principal Roman Alonso.

Trained at the Krenov School in Mendocino, Cohen learned to carve wood with extreme precision, sourcing salvaged material and allowing grain and natural form to guide shape and function. With an MFA in fiber from Cranbrook University, Contro comes from a similarly classical, materials-based training. Working on antique looms, she brings a sense of ceremony to both art and functional objects.

Together, these bodies of work navigate the moment where precision meets intuition, where the rhythms of daily life 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.