Art and my design job

I couldn't be happier with my job at Marco French Studio.  We are gearing up to design a house in lovely Palm Springs.  Marco, my boss and design master of 20 plus years, is headed out on their private jet to assess the situation while we get to drool over the pictures back at the studio.

In preparation for the new project, I forwarded Coco+kelley's timely blog to Marco.  It features artist James Nares's creative work. I thought one of his painting could be an option for the condo. 

He creates his pieces by suspending himself over a canvas in a selfmade harness.  Amazing.
  
Searching for artwork has become a favorite part of the job for me.  Marco often finds great pieces or artist and then forwards them on to his assistants to gather the details on.   I get the joy of visiting several art studios in search of the perfect piece.  I return with photographs, dimensions, pricing and then work on contacting our professional to schedule it being professional hung.


Where have I been headed to find these amazing pieces? Well, the design district of course.  Here is a quick sampling.


Holly Johnson has a great gallery and often contain very large pieces.  We have considered some of David Aylsworth pieces for a recent project.

David Aylsworth piece "I'm 41"

Another place I frequent is Conduit Gallery.  About a month ago, we had a small area needing some artwork.  As took some pictures in and two of the wonderful women there pulled out pieces they thought would work.  We had a great time holding them up while I photographed the ones that might work.  We eventually found a great piece.

Susan Barnett is one of their featured artist.  Here is a picture of Permeable and Impermeable Boundarids II and III, 2010.  Gouache on paper and is 30.5 x 44".


Craighead-Green Gallery is also another stomping grounds.  I love their space because you can really take in some of their painting.  

Their museum quality gallery.  

I love this sculture piece from J P Long, made of steel and glass.

Thie amazing work of Miami Artist Ramond Saa captured my attention too.  What detail. Created with acrylic, sumi ink and charcoal on wood.  He writes, "Being from Miami originally, I am most interested in the agressive and lush plants of the tropics and these are the plants that invade the canvas.  Their relationship to man as food or shelter or as a hindrance to him is also fascinating to me.  I reduce the 'foliage' to a monochromatic language to dramatize the drawing (or painting) with 'light' and its negative, creating a flat image; a pattern that is very separate from its original three dimensional complexity.

Restoration Hardware previously carried this "dress" by Murphy.

As for me, I'm still in love with artist Todd Murphy who creates those amazing dress paintings.   I wrote about him in a previous blog and he recently sent me a nice email stating how he enjoying reading it and that he soon would have an new website up, so stay tuned.  As some of you know, I finally ordered my treasure print from Restoration Hardware.  Several days later, I received a call from them that the shipment didn't meet the quality expectations.  And, I was out of luck.  They HAD NO MORE PAINTINGS!  I was devestated...and my huge niche remains without a pieces.  Perhaps I shall save up for an original.

I did recently discover another piece from my home by John Richard, called Golden Sky Giclee. It's fairly large (65 1/2" H x 49"w) and will take some time to install so I don't have any pictures of it quite yet.   I found it on sale, of course, at Horchow Finale.  Not only was it on sale, but I had my 40% coupon off one item, so I got it for a steal.  


As you can see, art is a huge part of the design world and I can't get enough of it.  I've been waiting patiently for my upcoming Art History Classes, but I 'm still treading through those entry-level drawing classes.  Which explains why this blog is pretty choppy.  Last night I was up past 1 AM drawing floor plans for my Space Planning final....


Until the next piece,


C