Calder Kusmierski Singer is a visual artist, electronic musician, poet & perfumer. Calder was born and raised in TriBeCa, Manhattan by his artist parents. His immediate family members are all painters: father, mother, & sister. Art was everywhere: in his parents’ home-studios, in his father’s career as a film projectionist at MoMA, and in the vast network of friends and peers in their collective creative communities. Knowing art would always be part of his life & practice, he pushed into other mediums driven by a desire to expand beyond the world he knew. At 13 he began to write poetry, by 14 he learned piano, and by 16 he began recording and producing original music, with a focus on ambient electronica & song writing. At 17 he began to earn his Bachelor’s of Music at Oberlin Conservatory in electronic music composition. At 18 his practice expanded into performance, choreographing dance to accompany his compositions. His performance incorporated set, lighting, video & costume design, working with varying casts of dancers / movers.

Upon graduating from Oberlin Conservatory, Calder expanded his visual art practice to include digital intervention, whether altering scans of physical works, creating purely digital work, or some combination of the two. Additionally, Calder’s keen interest in scent eventually grew into a sophisticate perfume practice. Initially drawn to botanical extractions (essential oils, absolutes, CO2s), he began to purchase samples and experimented with blending them. As a working art museum professional (MoMA, The Met, The Whitney, Guggenheim, The Jewish Museum, The Morgan) and peer to many creative colleagues & artists, his olfactive practice matured as he began to incorporate it into other contexts: scent design for public areas, events, exhibitions, performances, and bespoke perfumes for individual clients.

He has worked alongside & in conjunction with a wide array of artists: musical scores for John Jahnke’s Men Go Down at BAM Fisher & Jack Ferver’s Rumble Ghost at PS 122 (now Performance Space); scent design for Westfield’s Topanga Mall & the Smithsonian National Museum of Mathematics; a 2012 solo performance & program curation at Rare Gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan. He had an artist feature in i-D magazine & was featured in Brooklyn Magazine, listed in their 2015 30 under 30. He has collaborated and shown alongside artists including Ultraviolet, Azikiwe Mohammed, Z Behl, Isaac Pool, Material Girls, Claire Lachow, Lea Cetera, Adam Schecter, Linda Lauro Lazin, Avena Gallagher, Peter Stanglmayr, Daniel Jackson & Darren Katz. He has had work presented at BAM Fisher, LMCC, Microscope Gallery, Eleven Rivington, Wave Hill, Cleveland Public Theatre, Schema Projects, Trestle Projects, Cinema COBRA, Plum Benefits, 9/11 Memorial Art Exhibition Loft In The Red Zone, Adult Contemporary, and various pop up exhibitions in NYC. Calder is a lover of nature and of the cosmos.