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Artist Raises Money to Make Rainbow Snowflakes for Chelsea Market

By Mathew Katz | September 16, 2013 8:37am
  Chelsea Hrynick Browne wants to raise $2,000 to make an installation with Queens teens.
Snowflakes at Chelsea Market
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CHELSEA — A local artist is hoping Christmas will come early for her Chelsea Market art project.

Artist Chelsea Hrynick Browne hopes to work with 20 Queens high school students on a massive holiday art project that will hang in the market — but she needs some cash to do it.

Browne has set up a Kickstarter crowd-funding site to raise cash for the 12-foot-by-12-foot installation of rainbow-colored "snowflakes" made from origami paper pasted on 1,296 wooden tiles.

Once the work is displayed at the market's Artists & Fleas flea market, Browne plans to turn each 4-inch-by-4-inch tile into a holiday ornament, half of which will be donated to the city's annual holiday toy drive. The other half of the ornaments will be rewards for people who donated to the Kickstarter.

"I've been wanting to use Chelsea Market as the site of an art installation for months now," the East Village-based artist said. "It's a big community space, but it also has a lot of traffic."

She hopes to raise $2,000 for the project, which will pay for materials, snacks for the students, transportation and her time.

Browne plans to work on the project with students from the Queens High School for Language Studies.

"I want to work collaboratively — it's a way to interact as a community and use the students' energy to bring out other peoples' energy," she said.

Browne's been working with origami patterns for years, and has had similar work displayed at the NYU Langone Children’s Center for Cancer & Blood Disorders and the New York Public Library.

If she raises the funds, Browne hopes the exhibit will be up in time for the holiday season. The plan is for the art to go up on Nov. 1 and be taken down on Dec. 15 — enough time for the ornaments to be sent out to Kickstarter supporters and needy kids.