Nicolás Gabot signs slats of wood with the flair of his favorite futból player, Diego Maradona. It’s a tribute to Gabot’s younger self, who followed the sport like a religion in his native Argentina. The backs of his pieces — largely original photos and neighborhood signs inspired by the subway — scream New York.
Gabot, 39, owns this small decoration business. For years, he has run it out of his home studio as well as markets, pop-ups and craft fairs. Despite its name, Brooklyn Art Factory’s pop-ups reach across New York City.
“I wanted to create something that brought a sense of belonging to everyone’s neighbourhood,” Gabot writes on his “About” page on Etsy.
On a Sunday in July, Gabot was showcasing his signature signs — and his city pride — at a Forest Hills street fair. Unsurprisingly, his bestsellers were Queens- and Forest Hills-themed signs.
Pride ran deep beyond the local crowd. Buyers lit up at signs tied to their neighborhoods, like one woman who squealed over a Queens Village sign. Another neighbor, Leechi Lin, held a “Hells Kitchen” sign while reminiscing about her old apartment there, where she lived for four years before moving to Elmhurst. She remembered how the scent of nearby restaurants seeped into her apartment — and sometimes mice.
How he makes it
Initially launched on Facebook in 2011 with street art and bright style, Gabot started his Etsy shop in 2013. The signature Brooklyn Art Factory look didn’t arrive until 2016.
He came up with the idea while missing New York during a brief stint in San Francisco. Gabot wanted to reconnect with what ties people to this city.
He began adapting elements from subway signs to represent neighborhoods. He also brought old neighborhood photos — or more recent ones he digitally distressed — to life on wood. Gabot’s two-day process involves special paper, water, sanding and drying. He learned that rounded corners make visuals easier to absorb, so he sands the edges of pre-cut wood by hand.
Gabot hopes to eventually represent all 350 neighborhoods in the city, “even the ones people think no one is going to know,” according to his website bio. For now, though, he sticks to neighborhoods he’s visited or those often requested.
The post-Bernie burn for more
Before 2017, his New York neighborhood concept art was “ugly,” Gabot said. He wasn’t sanding the pieces, so the signs’ edges weren’t rounded, nor did they look like subway signs.
Gabot blames idealism — and a bit of laziness. “I was hoping that concentrating my energy to … bring social change” would mean rising above the pressures of capitalist achievement, he said.
He had thrown himself into activism to recover from his burnout in the jewelry business after five years. After Bernie’s loss, Gabot realized “I need to help myself by taking things by the horns,” the way many immigrants do, he said. “I’m a migrant, but I lost my way — I need to find it again.”
The “rocks on the road”
Gabot is aware his story as an immigrant and small business owner involves unspoken advantages. He had attended a private high school in Argentina. His parents were entrepreneurial in their own right.
Gabot moved to the U.S. at 16, when his mother decided to leave Argentina during its economic collapse in the early 2000s. Back then, Argentinians didn’t need a visa to migrate. His mom’s job providing food services for airport staff became unsustainable after subsidies ended.
His late father’s motorcycle dealership also went bankrupt around this time, but his father stayed. A former lawyer and history professor, he was into progressive politics and big on everyone, including children, having agency: “He made me believe that I made the decision to come to the U.S.,” he said, laughing. “Liar … it was my mom who told you to send me!”
Gabot first stayed with his mom’s friends in Aventura, Miami, and worked as a paper boy to help with expenses. Later, when they moved to Coral Springs, he took a job as a horse groom — a nod to the polo culture in his native country. Waking at dawn to clean horses’ poop helped him realize what he didn’t want to do — and ultimately the freedom he could later have as a creative entrepreneur.
“A migrant finds rocks on the road … an entrepreneur finds solutions to those problems,” he said.
The Florida hustle
When his stepfather was deported, Gabot got a “real job” washing dishes at a Baja Fresh location. He also got by washing cars, baking and making Italian sandwiches. He then worked at a jewelry business that sold to other businesses. Long term, it was exhausting and difficult to climb the ladder.
Seeing immigrants sometimes exploit newer immigrants, Gabot decided the best path forward was to be his own boss. He carried this conviction as he sought professional development in the jewelry business. Other jewelers mentored him, and he earned certifications in precious stone appraisal and technical watch fixes.
Meanwhile, Gabot worked full time while taking ESOL classes. Still, he says it wasn’t until he moved to New York that he really learned English, not in class but through conversation. Spanish speakers weren’t as common in New York as they were in his Miami circles. It’s one of the things he most loves about the Brooklyn Art Factory: chatting with people across all life experiences.
Despite cycles of anti-immigrant sentiment, “I don’t allow all the negative things to make me feel like I’m not from here,” he said. “This is your place, your home, your whole family’s here.”
One day, Gabot tagged along on a photo shoot with a friend who was documenting the Nike Missile Silo, a relic from the Cuban Missile Crisis. On the drive back, riding in his friend’s open Jeep Wrangler, Gabot gazed out at the ocean and felt a rush of pure adrenaline.
“That was the final click in my life,” Gabot said. “I was like, ‘I want to live a creative life, I don’t want to keep feeling fearful.’”
The New York hustle
Gabot dropped out of college after his freshman year and moved to New York shortly after. Before fully committing to Brooklyn Art Factory, he was part of two artist collectives: The Raw Art in 2010 and The Walking Art in 2012. The Raw Art sold art in the streets, starting in Union Square, before street vending became more regulated. Between those years, he worked on a range of creative projects. One standout project: a book cover for someone writing about a conspiracy theory involving reptilians leading world governments.
At first, Gabot’s basement in Williamsburg served as both home and studio, especially when he couldn’t afford rent. It often flooded, and he lost several pieces of work. Eventually, during the pandemic, Gabot rented the entire building and moved upstairs. The studio, now only downstairs, is available by appointment (“It’s messy,” he admits).
After one of the basement flooding incidents, Gabot took off to sell art in the streets of San Francisco. He wanted a break from the constant hustle and a taste of the hippie activist lifestyle. But he found the city had changed since he’d last been there, to a vibe of “the fake corporate left of saving the world,” he said.
Gabot returned from San Francisco after less than a year. The trip “focused my energy, because I saw how much people were working while working for other people,” he said. “You’ll always be frustrated. The only way is to do your own thing.”
It solidified his path. He says his renewed energy drew in big-name collaborators. During one winter market season at Union Square and Bryant Park, a Google manager earning six figures helped him sell signs — for just over $15 an hour.
“You know what I love about NYC? You can be selling wood in the street — and the next day, you can be having dinner with the CFO of Amazon,” Gabot said.
Reading future signs
Gabot wants to keep expanding so he can travel more. He does aerial photography across the country and in Spain, Mexico and Argentina. He hopes to build out the photography arm of his business while keeping Brooklyn Art Factory as his anchor. Traveling is also his form of self-care, he said.
Another big motivator: taking care of his mom financially so she can stay in the U.S. That might mean creating more products, like T-shirts, that would make the business more scalable.
Throughout his string of jobs and business ventures, Gabot’s biggest challenge has been an internal one: “defeating yourself all the time,” he said. “To do it anyway, even if you don’t feel like it, even if you’re sick.”
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