{book bargain: 30,000 years of art}

I just ordered this book on amazon , received it yesterday, and felt compelled to share. I'm constantly updating my collection of books and have boxes at my door everyday.

Now, I'm no book snob, and am just always feeding my voracious appetite for words and pictures due to my constant need of stimulation. I find that stimulation in books.

This book, with 1072 pages and 1000 high-quality color illustrations is an absolute bargain, on sale for $32.97. If you love art, history, or just need a big important looking book for your coffee table... you will love this book!

{artist: Dale Fairbanks}

Another beautiful piece by one of my favorite artists, Dale Fairbanks. I not only love her work, but the stories she tells about each piece. Wonderful!

Flight of the Ridleys
Price: $12,000.00
Size: 96″ × 60″
Date: 2009
Medium: Oil on Canvas

The Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle is one of the smallest of the sea turtles and the most endangered. Under strict protection, the Kemp’s Ridley turtle is struggling back to recovery battling its primary enemy: the human and his activities.

Kemp’s Ridleys nest off of the coasts of Mexico, but one of the major habitats for this species is in the waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico, especially the Louisiana salt marshes.

The Kemp’s Ridley, the Loggerhead, and the Green Sea Turtle are all found in this area I call home. The Gulf Islands National Seashore fills our back-porch view across Santa Rosa Sound, and we join many in the grand effort to protect and safeguard these sea turtles who come to our seashore to nest in early May.

This painting has been brewing for several years…I am pleased the scrambling hatchlings brought it home.

http://www.dalefairbanks.com/

Click Here to see an older post about Dale's works

New Work: See Dale's online portfolio for details.

{artist: Liza Lou}

Homeostatis, 2005-2006

Artist Liza Lou beaded her way onto the New York art scene in 1996 by creating a real size kitchen in nothing but beads. We can't decide if she is crazy, or a genius- and with her MacArthur Genius Grant we'll go for the latter. With grant in hand, she moved to South Africa and didn't show in New York for six years.

In October of 2008, she showed her most critiqued installation to a less than thrilled art crowd, Maximum Security Fence. Her work began as painstakingly rebuilt bits of Americana (see the kitchen and trailer below) out of nothing but brightly colored beads. Her departure from where she began, to Maximum Security fence has been described as, "derivitive, soul-less" and a "politically correct commodity". Ouch.

Kitchen, 1991-1994

Kitchen, 1991-1994

Kitchen, 1991-1994

Trailer, 1999-2000

Backyard, 1994-1999

Backyard, 1994-1999

Maximum Security Fence, 2008

Personally, I enjoy it all and think that each artist should create work representing what they are feeling at that time, and maybe she wasn't feeling to colorful and cheerful during that time. With that type of critique, I wonder what would have made the critics happy... a ferris wheel or carousel covered in beads (not a bad idea... I'd like to see that one)? While I understand the anticlimactic nature of walking into the gallery to see a beaded fence and barbed wire, I'm still okay with it.

Security Fence, 2005

{artist: Ed Burtynsky}

I first saw Ed Burtynsky's art while visiting the Hamptons Designer Showhouse this summer. There were several pieces hanging in the living room (seen in the back left). Unfortunately, I did not make a note of his name, and it quickly left my mind. Fortunately, as I was scouring the latest House Beautiful magazine, there he was again, in a picture of the living room of the same showhouse. I featured this a while back, and you can see my pics here.

Nickel Tailings No. 34,Sudbury, Ontario 1996

Carrara Marble Quarries # 11,Carrara, Italy, 1993

Did you ever wonder where your table top, or marble floors came from? It's a miracle in itself how they can do this.

Iberia Quarries # 8,Cochicho Co., Pardais, Portugal, 2006

Oxford Tire Pile No. 8,Westley, California 1999

Shipyard #15,Qili Port, Zhejiang Province, 2005

I'm trying desperately to buy this one, but waiting for the gallery to call me back. Isn't it incredible? His work is so relevant today, and is beautiful and eye-opening at the same time.

Click Here for information on the artist

{artist: patricia van essche}

I recently commissioned some pieces of art for my store Sur La Mer , and I just got them back. Artist Patricia van Essche of PVE Design did a beautiful job and I am excited to use them in my new ad campaign. Thanks Patricia!

Click Here for more information about the artist

{artist: Dale Fairbanks: The Berry Pickers}

I've shown artist Dale Fairbanks work on my blog before, and wanted to share her latest piece. Her art speaks to me, and the added story makes it more vibrant than it already is. I see different things now, and feel different feelings after reading the accompanying story. She is amazing and I'm so happy to have her words and works in my mind and heart.

The Berry Pickers

Price: $9,500 ♦ Size: 60" x 60" ♦ Date: 2008 ♦ Medium: Oil on Canvas

Our son returned to Alaska and the river Tanana in May, 2008, his truck primed and loaded, hauling behind an eighteen foot Jon boat packed with cold winter gear and provisions. The man, my boy, is twenty-one years old fierce on the trail of a dream and old roots he calls home.
I was slashing paint across a white fresh canvas before he crossed out of Florida...crying like a fool for what I am confused. He'd made sure in two months of packing that we would be glad to see him go.
The Berry Pickers appeared unsummoned to remind me that this boy is formed and done with growing. They taunted me, called me his yoke, a reminder of his vulnerability, his fear. The Berry Pickers will see to him now, and not in my fashion. They will leave him be, watch him out of the corners of their eyes, monitor his mistakes with no word, no opinion, no judgment. He will follow the trapping trail and disappear, and I trust with faltering faith he will return. The Berry Pickers understand he may not and go about their business of gathering: blueberries, salmonberries, lowbush cranberries, gathering for the long impatient white of winter.


New Work: See Dale's online portfolio for details.
www.dalefairbanks.com

{art: now this is real.}

LOVE, DAD

Exhibition designer Robert Guest has been getting up at dawn every school day for the past 15 years to write a note to each of his two children, Joanna and Theo. Here are some of the thousands of letters he wrote.

This inspirational blog is one of those simple ideas that is so touching to me. The fact that it comes from a dad, rather than the expected mom, is that much more special. It touched me and made me think of my wonderful dad.

{artist: Willard Wigan}

Known as the creator of the world's smallest and most wondrous works of art, I couldn't agree more. Willard Wigan may also be the world's first "micro-sculptor".

I'm obviously in a very artsy and inspired place these days, but how can I be anything else when there are so many fascinating people out there doing the impossible for the sake of art. I use the words obsessed and love too much, but I am completely obsessed and in love with Willard's art.

Apparently, I'm not the only one... former England Davis Cup captain turned entrepreneur, David Lloyd purchased the remaining Willard Wigan collection of micro sculptured art in February 2007. The collection was subsequently insured by Lloyd’s of London for £11.2 million. A long time anonymous collector of art, David Lloyd’s purchase has been viewed by many as a significant coup in the art world.

Statue of Liberty in the head of a pin

Willard was commisioned by Lloyds of London to replicate the iconic Lloyd’s of London Building as designed by the award winning architect, Lord Richard Rogers. The difference however being that Willard's masterpiece was on a pinhead, which was then sold by Eric Knowles (Bonham’s Fine Art) for £94,000.

Six Wives of Henry VIII
A Green Clown

You can see Willard's art here

{artist: Spencer Tunick}

Mexico City

Dusseldorf
Dusseldorf
Grand Central Station, NY

Dusseldorf

The artist, born, lives and works in NY. He uses the human body as the subject matter for all his photography to dramatic effect. When I lived in NY, I heard about a few of his shoots (and even considered being in one, but chickened out). I'm still enraptured when I see his work. Go to his website to see them larger and more dramatic.

{artist: Devorah Sperber}

I'm purely amazed at her creativity and vision. Read below what you are looking at!

Description:

A life sized rendering of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper constructed from 20,736 spools of thread strung onto aluminum ball chain. When seen with the aid of optical devices, the spools of thread coalesce into realistic images of Christ and his disciples.. When seen with the naked eye, the spools of thread appear as an abstract arrangement of multi-colored blocks/3D pixels, further abstracted by the fact that The Last Supper imagery is upside down and backwards. The clear acrylic viewing spheres rotate the imagery 180 degrees back to the correct orientation and condense the individual pixels/spools of thread into recognizable images. In addition, the spheres offer monocular views of the work, accentuating the illusion of 3 dimension as it exists in flat paintings. Leonardo da Vinci understood that the illusion of 3D in paintings was derived from monocular, not binocular, vision.

The original mural is highly symmetrical, with the right eye of the Christ figure as the single, centered vanishing point, from which all compositional elements project. In my rendering, the vanishing point, also Christ's right eye is slightly lower than eye level. Because the spheres rotate the imagery 180 degrees, viewers have the illusion of looking up at the image, replicating the orientation of viewers to the original mural. The two 45 degree angles of the trapezoid replicate the illusion of 3D space in the painting, referencing the site-specific nature of the original mural.

All photos and copy from the artists website

{artist: Dale Fairbanks}

Last year, I ripped out an article from In Style Home Fall/Winter, that featured Campbell Brown's NYC apartment. While I thought her apartment was great, it was the artwork that really captivated me. It just so happens that all the art displayed in her apartment was painted by her artist mother, Dale Fairbanks.

Moonlight Sonata

Life Goes On

This Way Up

I'm in love with the scale and vibrancy of the pieces. It's been over a year since I had seen that article, and it kept popping into my mind. I searched through hundreds of cutouts to find it. I'm such a huge fan of color, movement, and energy, and this art has that and more. You just may see a piece appear in one of my clients homes, or mine, for that matter.

Visit her website to see more pieces for sale Click Here

{design: interiors, designed}

It seems that everywhere I look lately, there are pictures of beautifully detailed watercolors of interiors. These are courtesy of the New York Times. I've been so inspired by them that I purchased a sketch pad and colored pencils to try to teach myself how to develop a complete and detailed room on paper. I'm hoping it will help with my architect and the cabin renovation project...

An 1846 watercolor of the Schloss Fischbach’s Red Room by Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Klose.
An1848 watercolor of the Queen's sitting room at Buckingham Palace.
The museum has supplemented the Thaw works with related watercolors, furniture, decorative objects and books. Thus Matthaus Kern’s 1837 depiction of a wonderfully austere Biedermeier study with a pinch-waisted side chair in one corner hangs near a similar real chair.

All Photos: Matt Flynn/Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/08/15/arts/20080815-HOUS_index.html