I just saw Ironman 2 (Don’t judge) and started to think about the significance and sometimes ill placement of art and furniture in movies. In Ironman 2 and in the first Ironman, Tony Stark is portrayed as an eccentric billionaire inventor with an acute eye for design. Stark lives in a mid-century marvel-of-a-house on the coast of Malibu, California. The inside of the house seems to be designed well by the set crew with what appears to be a mix the original mid-century design and some more modern improvement that have occurred over the years through renovations.
Google corporate has its own unique environment complete with Foosball, pool tables, volleyball courts, assorted video games, pianos, ping pong tables, and gyms that offer yoga and dance classes. Googlers share cubicles, yurts and huddle rooms and there are very few solo offices. Zappatos uses whiskey shots during its employee interviews to offer a more relaxed environment and to provide the potential employee with the necessary "fuel" to be completely open during the interview.
I say "Barcelona Chair" and you regurgitate "Mies Van Der Rohe" or "German Bauhaus". At the 1929 Barcelona Expo the Germans definitely stole the show with their sleek new modern look from the Bauhaus school. But lets walk over to the Scandinavian tent and see what they are showing. Indeed a more traditional styling and academic approach to furniture making, the Danes should not be overlooked at the Barcelona Expo.
There are two generally agreed upon generations of Amerian studio furniture makers: the first and the second generation. The first generation of furniture makers were dedicated to the preservation of the natural beauty of the wood they worked with and in bringing out the qualities of the wood that are essential to its character.
The work of Jonas Criscoe explores the relationship of abstracted city landscape with everyday objects and signage. Each Collage is piecemealed together with found objects and signage creating an intriguing and complex composition. At first encounter, a Criscoe Collage may seem very foreign, but as one studies a Criscoe piece and lets the image speak, the work becomes intoxicating and even addicting.
I am obsessed with the juxtapostition of unusual and odd materials with common and everyday objects and textures. Which is why I love the book ‘Modern Eclectic” by Orianna Fielding Banks. The book covers ten different homes and lofts and focuses on five themes: Color, texture, pattern, surface, shape and form.
he cubist like yet playful studio art furniture by John Cederquist is sure to entertain your curiosity. Cederquist is able to put his own twist on the cubistic style first begun by Picasso and Braque in 1909 and move forward in a new direction offering three-dimensional furniture that has one ideal viewing point where the full illusion of the cubistic tromp l’oiel piece is visible.
Obsessed with textures. Obsessed with materials. Sometimes to the point of driving myself mad. I am willing to search though 100,000 square feet of wood to find the 1,000 square feet that meets my specific criteria. I may stumble across a texture I fall in love with or may find a particular material that I just can't live without. I only design objects and only use materials that I would consider suitable to put in my own house. Although I have a specific taste for materials, I also am very open and very eclectic in my choosing.
This past week while in NY for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) I had the great pleasure of visiting Todd Merrill Antiques on Bleacker street in New York. Todd Merrill is one of the foremost experts on studio made furniture in the United States between the 1950s to the 1980s. He is also the author of andldquo;Modern Americanaandrdquo; which gives biographies and descriptions of many of the great studio furniture makers including J. B. Blunk, Wharten Escerick, Paul Evans, Philip Lloyd Powell, and Tommi Parzinger.
In fact, from high school to college, I painted portraits. At first, I developed my style quickly and could whip out a portrait in one to two days. My senior year of college, however, my perfectionist tendencies caught up with me and I began to experiment with different materials. Thus, one portrait now took one to two weeks to complete.
