Standing in Fernando Mastrangelo’s studio in an industrial section of Brooklyn, the last thing you’d expect to see is a man in a business suit from Dallas turning up to buy a bowl. The visitor, for his part, looks a little astonished at the cavernous space and the busy young people wearing pink particle masks who surround him. But his daughter saw the bowl on Instagram and sent him a text with a photo and address, and now here he is, making a pit stop on the way to the airport at the end of a business trip.

“Welcome,” says Mastrangelo, who doesn’t seem surprised at all. An artist who casts tables, lounges, and mirrors from things like coffee, silver BBs, and candy, he has a vibrant presence on social media. After creating the limited-edition chunky blue bowls, called Crush, from sand, salt, coal, and powdered glass left over from other projects, he posted a photo for his followers. Et voilà.

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For several years now, the New Jersey–born Mastrangelo, 40, has been cultivating an enthusiastic and ever-growing fan base. Two years ago he introduced an exhibition called In Good Company to promote innovative young designers and created a nonprofit of the same name to raise funds for the cause. The annual shows, held in this 10,000-square-foot East New York building where merry-go-round parts were reputedly once manufactured, involve a DJ and a pig roast. Last fall’s opening festivities drew more than a thousand attendees.

As for the direction of his own work, it’s moving in ways that even he has a hard time articulating: “I’m focusing less on products and more on conceptual interiors, I guess you can say. I’m not really sure what this category is.”

But he can show you. At the moment, he and his staff of 14 are rushing to complete an elaborate booth for Audemars Piguet, the luxury Swiss watch brand. The installation, which will travel to the Art Basel fairs in Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Miami, is a massive light box evoking the mountainous Vallée de Joux, where the watches are made.

The studio, including an office tower with a kitchen and gathering space at the base and windowed conference and media rooms on the second level, is littered with curved wood forms wrapped in black rubber tree bark. These will be translated into spruce trees for the installation. Giant mirrors that seem to be dipped in loamy earth lean against the walls. Other pieces include a sofa cast from hand-dyed sand and a chandelier made from crushed glass. The mold for a stalagmite-shaped silicone desk, planned as the installation’s centerpiece, is almost ready for pouring.

After the installation ships to Hong Kong in its 25 custom-built crates, Mastrangelo will turn to his next project: a tiny house fully cast from sand, complete with furnishings molded out of silica, salt, coffee, and other greatest hits from his materials palette. He intends to document the construction and promote it on social media before driving the house around town during the NYCxDesign festival in May.

The house is just a taste of what his studio can do, but Mastrangelo promises it will be an eye-catcher, drawing the world virtually, physically, and irresistibly closer to his creative lair.

“If you have a good product,” he says, “you just need people to see it.”

Watch: Inside the Studio of Designer and Materials Master Fernando Mastrangelo