Featured Artist

Rachel Cohen-Lunning and Merrilee Lichtenstein Cohen work together as MERCURA NYC. They initially designed together metal body sculptures and made art at the Hotel Chelsea in the early 1970's. Artwork included unique fantasy jewelry, metal dresses, metal bustiers, gauntlet cuffs, headdresses, crowns, metal hoods, and eyewear, cigarette holders, head ornaments, boxes and paintings and table mounted sculptures. They continue to have their design studio at the Chelsea and at a large work loft in the Flatiron Neighborhood MERCURA NYC is and was worn by artists and intellectuals, from writers as Danielle Steel, Natalie Angier and Jill Neimark to film makers such as Robert Dernhelm and Shirley Clarke to photographers as Greg Kitchen and Catherine Leroy to present painter Susan Olmetti and the New Kids on the Block, and established figures Drew Barrymore, Debbie Gibson, Ivana Trump, Candice Bergen, Barbra Streisand, Tia Carrere, Joan Collins, Maria Snyder, Tisch, Grace Jones, Cher, David Bowie, Iman, Sylvia Miles, Paula Abdul, Kelly Lebrock, Sharon Stone, Elton John, Geena Davis, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Taylor Mead, Mark Sink, Arthur Weinstein, Lebo Newman, Madonna, Gina Davis, Sam Coffie, Derek Warburton, tip, Camilah Brock, Greg Ellis, Madison Mobley, Goldie Hawn, to name a few on the endless list. Some of these wearers are from the Hotel Chelsea, others were magnetized by MERCURA NYC'S work in Shang Hai to Tokyo, Paris, Milan, in boutiques, optical shops and fashion shows around the world.

MERCURA NYC featured in gallery shows at the NOW Gallery NYC, Stuart Gallery NYC, EM Donahue Galleries(presently called Proposition Gallery) NYC, the MICRO Gallery, and museum shops as the Guggenheim Museum Store, the Store Next Door(at the Whitney), the Albright Knox Museum, the New Museum, the Dublin Museum of Optometry. Clearly Recognizable by intense unique visionary qualities in well balanced expressionistic designs Rachel Cohen-Lunning and Merrilee Lichtenstein Cohen are dubbed the "Picassos of NYC Eye and Body Sculptures." MERCURA NYC makes Body Sculptures and Eyewear of sculpted silver, brass or gold painted with jewelers' enamels or molten combinations of metals, or brass veined with silver and/or bent, twisted, scrunched solid brass in signature museum pieces. Sunglasses are designed as armatures by MERCURA NYC who surround them with sculptures which act playfully with the face. Their eye art is made of an endless variety of materials.

Big metal wraps and dresses by MERCURA NYC shown with Giorgio Sant Angelo Couturier American Council of Fashion Design Award winner Collection of 1987 and in a 1999 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art fashion Institute are presently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Fashion Institute Collection.

MERCURA NYC works featured in Giorgio Sant Angelo Collections from 1975 to 1989 on the runway, in magazines such as Interview and the Cover of British Vogue, Elle, Cosmo Cover, were also sketched into Betty and Veronica Comic books by Daryl Edelman.

MERCURA NYC also participated in the Club Art and Fashion Shows, pieces were hung in group shows with John Cage works at the Famous NYC Mudd Club, Richard Hamilton works at Kamikazi, presented at the Limelight with Valentino's Clothes, another show at the Limelight featured MERCURA NYC on models in black tights (show also featured Robert Lee Morris Jewelry). MERCURA NYC was given full solo shows at the Roxy, the World, Club USA, the Limelight, the Underground, MK's, The Palladium, The Mike Todd Room and, of course, shown at the National Arts Club, where big multi media paintings and Body and Eye Sculptures were celebrated and hung on the National Arts Club walls through winter-spring of 2001.

MERCURA NYC went on the runways with many couturier fashion collections including Giorgio Sant Angelo, Oscar de la Renta, David Leigh, Nasty Habits, Mary McFadden, Vera Wang, Vivienne Westwood, Michael Forrest Furs, Grosvenor Furs, Mia Grau Productions, Anna Molinari, Blumarine, Heatherette. MERCURA NYC is also styled into American and International magazines and runways under our own name or clothing designer labels.

MERCURA NYC has been styled and published with famous designers clothing from Gaultier to Yves St Laurent to Calvin Klein to Gucci, to Donna Karan, Celine, Moschino, Victor & Rolf, Prada, Marc Jacobs, Sonia Rykiel, Lanvin, Alberta Ferretti, Giambatista Valli, Valentino, Louis Vuitton, more, more, more, more, more to new young rising designers as Soyoon Elly Park, Tanuka Ghosh and Andy Starkweather. We were most inspired by meetings with Charles James, who never showed on the runway but is known as America's first and most influential couturier designer.

By Madison Mobely