J McDonald is an artist and designer based in Brooklyn, NY. He creates otherworldly furniture and sculpture that illuminate the tensions and dialogues between humans and our environment. Imagining a collision of future and past, society and nature, his work brings a refined minimalism together with an organic and sculptural animism. Working in the space between art and architecture, between sculpture and furniture, his work incorporates ideas around nature, space, tactility, intuition, and the human condition.

J is fascinated by the myriad ways that we live with (or apart from) our natural world. The focus of his work is the exploration not only of the interactions between these worlds, but also how those relationships impact our psyche and our behavior. He believes that an object, a home, a chair, has the power to impact and shape our daily existence, challenge our habitualized normalities, and cultivate our mental, physical and spiritual selves towards a more harmonious world.

Launched in 2019, his eponymous furniture design practice brings together backgrounds in sculpture, architecture, and fabrication. His interests in art and architecture first began to merge during a year spent in West Africa, with a house project in Abetenim, Ghana and a human scale inhabitable termite mound in Bamako, Mali. Living in and working on earth buildings sparked the realization that there is an essential human nostalgia for these organic, seductive forms containing the essence of the earth and the hand of the maker.

Working across a wide range of mediums but specializing in metal, plaster and paper, his unique and small edition pieces are handmade to examine and redefine our perception and experience of the world, ourselves, and the relationship between the two.