for love of: laura letinsky

 recently ive been thinking about the work of laura letinsky. i attended a lecture of hers about a year ago and ive been rolling her images over in my mid alot as of late. 

like modern day vanitas they have a persistent quality of absence. i find myself studying them for clues about who has just left the room and the lives contained just outside the frame. 

beautiful to look at - soft but striking pallets and lots of little details to captivate. 

for love of: icart

as a little girl i was captivated by the dry point etchings of louis icart. its the first piece of art i remember seeing and wanting to poses - it was hanging on the post of an antiques dealer's tent at the brimfield show... i was probably about 8. fascinated, i spent the next bit of time researching and looking at his etchings. i loved the long delicate lines of the women and they were always dressed so beautifully with such a strong but feminine presence. in my 8 yr old mind, they were perfect....the fact that there were often dogs in his images didnt hurt either. my mother bought me a reproduction of one of his prints for my bedroom. some years later and it still hangs in my childhood bedroom. 

my tastes may have changed, and at this moment im not sure exactly where there would be a place for them in my decor...though if i had a very grand bathroom i would like just one there and nothing else at all. as i revisited many of his images for this post i was struck by the same things i was as an 8 yr old - elegance above all, long lean lines, confidence and beauty. but this time i couldnt help notice a slightly provocative darkness in them...  

  

flea market round up.

my first flea market of 2011....smmmmmmmmm !!! i couldnt sleep, got there by 7:30 and came away with just a few choice pieces. As some of you know im in the middle of a little design scheme overhall at my house. 

a pice of pacific pottery in a matte white finish. great art deco lines

a stig lindberg vase from the Karneval collection. its swedish and im in love. 

and last a cool drawing with an architectural bent. im so smitten, but i think ill be changing out the frame on this one. it deserves something a bit more chic. 


these 3 pieces will get incorporated nicely. I cant wait to see how its all going to come together. 

for the love of : irisschwarzart

the new decorating scheme is falling into place nicely. yesterday i sold 2 chairs to make room for the one that is coming from the upholsterer next week. I also sold my living room rug. - may i just sing the praises of craigslist for a moment, without which this would not have been possible.



Im now starting to think about bringing in some new art work - and im in love with the simplicity of her lines and how she is able to create such beautiful and almost haunting figures. I think a lot of the attraction lies in the imperfection of this work.

there is no striving to master the subject only the acceptance of its organic formation. this work is by the artist irischwarz. 

she has also been working on a project called SEVEN. it is a weekly edition with a new addition every Sunday. find it in her etsy shop : paulette edition  

i think three of them together would be divine, or perhaps clustered together with my vintage egg lithographs. now my only problem is which one to choose. 

Valerie Galloway

quite simply, i find myself very drawn to the work of artist Valerie Galloway. im not sure i can put my finger on exactly why. It love its straight forward nature, and the pallet of course. It contains all of the things I love about folk art, and in a way reminds me of the work of Frida Kohal's.

There is a fragility, heightened by that yellowed parchment colored background so indicative of paper ephemera, that makes me look at it again and again. And the scintillating red lips and cheeks on many of her women hint at something beneath it all.

Valerie write that she is "influenced by cinema and old family photos. I love to take a memory or impression and reshape it into a lovely vision" and lovely visions are just what these are. I think they would be just perfect framed in vintage oval portrait frames. find them in her etsy shop here.

not in frame

ive been to enough auctions in my life to know its not always whats in the frame that matters. sometimes its simply the frame itself.

In amsterdam this summer while strolling through the rijksmuseum, i found myself captivated but in some instances it was by the sheer beauty and intricacies of the frames around the old paintings. Delicate, detailed, elegant and telling a story all on their own.

Ive been seeing a few photos around the blog world of just frames - hanging on the wall. no need to fill them just simply allowing them to be seen, to be admired and appreciated - and i think thats simply lovely.

imagine the combinations you could create -

i found these two very old and very beautiful frames and they are in the shop now waiting to grace someone's walls ~

images: greigedesign, anthropologie, unknown, lobster&swan, flickr, cottagefarm

little lovelies : forrest clearing

lovely, arent they?
cast in porcelain from vintage doilies. Not only do i love the aesthetic appeal of these pieces, but thinking about the metaphorical layers behind the work has me captivated.

once handmade, they are like little monuments to the first maker reinvented using clay the second time around and then remade. Given a place of importance through their new material, but in the same breath a greater fragility.

An interesting balance is struck for me between the place of the traditional craft/its maker and its current form. somehow, its new form is both more concrete and speaks to the precarious state of this once widely known skill and its decline into something of obscurity, and all the while these pieces retain the most quite and delicate presence.

Cape Light - Joel Meyerowitz

its finally summer here in San Francisco - most of us were thinking it wouldnt happen, but here it is!


yesterday on sfgirlbybay, victoria took us on a tour of martha's vineyard. it made me long for my childhood summers on the cape and islands. i swear there is something magical that exists only there and no where else.

photographer Joel Meyerowitz captures my feelings for this place so well. his photos from the series Cape Light serve to satiate my longing...at least for now.

hope you enjoy

shead some light on it - interior inspiration

lately there has been a bit of a to-do about the old edison filament lightbulb - its been popping up everywhere in the design world- and i would agree that there is a certain appeal

but instead of finding them overhead ive been intrigued with collections of them, tucked away in bookshelves or out on desk tops and counters. screwed into the very old porcelain style sockets they become more like works of art than an electrical crisis ....

illuminating no?

photos by artist catherine wagner from the series utopia, m.bibelot via flickr, modern50