THE NEXT BIG THING?

In New York, art is always within reach. Now, it's at the tip of your fingers.

"A nail is really just a tiny, tiny canvas," says Los Angeles-based nail artist Natalie Minerva, whose fans know her as Nail Swag, "It's such a concentrated form of art." (click below to read more)

Since January, MoMA PS1 in New York has been hosting a weekly pop-up nail salon called "Vanity Projects" (the Saturday series wraps up this weekend). The salon, which shares gallery space with an exhibition of the art-design firm Confettisystem, features a rotating cast of well-known nail artists from across the nation, including Regina Rodriguez, Jessica Washick and Fleury Rose Waldau (her nom de nail is Fleury Rose). Ms. Minerva has 20,000 followers on Instagram; Ms. Rodriguez has 144,000.

"They're building these massive followings," says Rita de Alencar Pinto, an independent curator who founded "Vanity Projects." She says that she plans to open a full-fledged nail- salon that doubles as a video-art gallery on Manhattan's Lower East Side this summer. "People don't watch enough video art," Ms. Pinto says. At a nail salon, "it's a captive audience."

Thanks in part to celebrities like Zooey Deschanel and Katy Perry, who post images of their miniature masterpieces on Twitter or Instagram, nail art has shed its fringe-craft status and is now considered a mainstream art form. At PS1, manicures start at $50 and can take up to an hour, depending on the complexity of the pattern.

Ms. Washick has a signature design of a painted fingernail that sits on top of the client's actual nail. She has painted nails inspired by monarch butterflies, licorice allsorts and the work of artist Olimpia Zagnoli. Ms. Minerva incorporates metals, crystals and abalone shells into her designs; Ms. Waldau uses real acrylic paint for detail work. Many of the artists' designs require the use of a needle-thin brush.

"I'm a nail nerd," says Jodi Love, 28, who follows several nail artists on Instagram and visited the pop-up last weekend to have her nails decorated by Ms. Waldau. Her requested design? "Just an acid trip on my nails," she says. "Neon tribal barf—that's what I'm going for."

"It's like miniature painting," Ms. Waldau says of her craft. Asked to describe her nail style, the artist says, "It has a sense of humor and an edge."

Ms. Washick, who was seated at her station with sample acrylic nails spread out before her, says she began painting her nails after a breakup. "I said to myself, you don't need a man, you need a manicure." She used the phrase as the title of her nail-art blog.