Archive for the ‘Aspirational’ Category

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Valentine Affairs + Art Writing Alliance

Hot fuss, it’s been a big week!  In part to a forbidden affair carried on with chocolate and crab cakes, though thankfully not at the same time.  In truth, it’s one of those high-quality liaisons, so I’ll just keep it up.

Other affairs of note, unfortunately none of the  kinky quality ~

Brigitte of Covet, Design, etc., in Chicago + Beyond and I are having a blog affair.  She high-fived The Clueless Crafter.  I’m high-tening her.  Thanks for keeping Clueless off your crap list, especially before Valentine’s Day when my heart is like a fragile (insert your desired visual here).

Julieann, Deisgnstress of CreateGirl posted a fantabualistic round-up of her favorite blogpreneuses current must-haves.  I paid her in Dove Chocolates (though, she didn’t know they were last year’s batch) to put me in her list.  The French mid-century lacquer and birch desk sadly did not make it into our collection.  The Christie’s auctioneer really knew how to amp the audience up, driving the hammer price into a no-own zone.  Jerk!

By the end of the week, affairs gave way to a promising professional alliance.  I am thrilled to announce that I’ve been appointed LVCmag.com’s at-large Arts contributor!

LVCmag.com (En francais, La Vie Cherie)  is the vision that women can achieve a meaningful balance between the Darling life – the exterior, the surface – and the Cherished life – the interior, the substance.

Mary Georgiana Caroline, Lady Filmer (English, 1838–1903) Untitled loose page from the Filmer Album, mid-1860s

I hope you stop by to see what the women behind this enterprise are about. At the least, cruise past my first article “Playing with Pictures,” a look into the inner lives of Victorian women, their obsessions with photography, and how they “cut and pasted” their likenesses into alternate realities.

Tell me what you want to read more of and I’ll whip it up into something funky, full of feeling, and future forward for next week’s Arts Column.

xoxo

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Posted in Aspirational | 38 Comments »

Auction Connection

A stunning pair of mercury glass obelisks that caught my fancy.

‘A symphony of plates, and vases, and silverware and candlesticks,’ he inevitably shouts my way, but I cannot focus. My peripheral vision has caught sight of a cobalt and salmon lustreware pitcher on the bottom shelf of a glass display case.  I fumble inside to inspect the piece firsthand, an activity that involves drawing it to the eye or under my handy magnifying loop, all while twirling and turning it around and upside down for signs of irreparable damage. ‘dances in your head!‘ he continues, ‘Is this (pointing at the lustreware in my death grip with a knowing smirk) going to be part of our symphony?’

‘Mayybe?‘ I  husband-probe, ‘How do you feel about it?’

And so goes the way of conversation after conversation hinged on our collecting dreams. Saturday afternoon’s grand tour of  Doyle At Home ~ Fine Furniture, Decorations, and Paintings unfolded in much the same way as previous auction previews. Whether collecting for pleasure or the pragmatic, the discussion invariably leads to chat of aesthetics and economics.  Do we both love it?  Can we afford it?

As young collectors, it is prudent to peruse the wares at as many fleas, estate sales, galleries, art and craft fairs, antique shows, and auction previews long before purchasing.

Below is a short, yet suitable list to familiarize you with the larger auction houses as well as smaller regional auctions. Wherever you are, there is an auction for you.

Interior Designers snap up settees like this for a bargain, refurbishing and reupholstering for a spectacular return.

Dizzy from the symphony of china and crystal dancing through my head, this velvet jewel-toned chaise lounge had just the right Hollywood vibe for a good faint.

Camel back sofa with great bones. The Euro-oriental kitsch and the pearlescent sheen of the fabric was a tad over the top.

Antiques and the Arts Online, offers a comprehensive overview of  auctions taking place across the United States

Bonhams and Butterfields

Christie’s

Doyle New York

Freeman’s, American Furniture, Decorative & Folk Art, English & Continental Furniture & Decorative Arts, Asian Arts, Fine American & European Paintings, Modern and Contemporary Art, Rare Books, Fine Prints, Oriental Rugs, Fine Jewelry & Silver, and 20th /21st Century Design

iGavel online auctions,  fine arts, antiques, and collectibles

Phillips De Pury & Company, specializing in contemporary art

Sotheby’s

Swann Galleries Auctioneers, specializing in rare books and works on paper

Tepper Galleries

Waddington’s

Wes Cowan’s Historic Americana Auctions, specializing in Native American art and antiques

Do you know of any well-regarded large or regional auction houses near you? What treasures can be found there?

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Posted in Ambivalent, Aspirational, Creative | 22 Comments »

Auctions and My Art Story ~ An Approach to Collecting

By this juncture, I just may have established that I’m clueless when it comes to crafting.  What I have not said is that in other areas, well, I’m just not that clueless.

There, I’ve come clean.

While I don’t intend to debunk the validity of my clueless crafting – afterall, I relish in the freedom it has given me to fail with a smile – I don’t want to withhold what by nature captures my fancy.

Back Art Story

I’m trained academically in art history and professionally in the inside world of the art market at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York (Click here for more on this amazing program).

I’ve plodded along in the fascinating fields of art appraisal and the recovery of stolen and looted art & objects.  Before this,  in a large bank organizing an art lecture series for prominent collectors.  And, delightfully true, when one lives in a center for art trade, how could she not have spent countless hours in galleries, museums and auction houses?

Future Art Story

Now I’m slowly transitioning to the other side:  the would-be collector.  If even I have auction apprehension, I can only presume that others do as well. But what makes me hopelessly attached to the auction format is the adrenaline rush of competition.  In my world, that plastic paddle is a menacing weapon, asserting autonomy and art audacity.  I’m declaring the right to make life beautiful and meaningful.  This right, however, only comes with work – your work.

Your Art Story

* Get acquainted with art and antiques that will financially never be within reach.  In the museum, works have been vetted by specialists.  They know (most of the time) what is authentic.  Put yourself in their eyes.  You may have seen a similar painting or sideboard in your grandmother’s attic, but how does the one in the museum differ?

* Go to auction previews.  They are free, open to the public, and welcome questions.  Specialists will be milling about, at the ready to answer your thoughtful questions.  So you want to look at the back of the painting for signs of restoration or damage?  Perfect! Ask to have them take it down so you can have a good look.  You can’t do this in a museum, so get in there and go for it.

* Go to galleries whose works most represent your taste. If you don’t know your taste, all the better.  Explore!  Begin to forge a relationship with the dealer, which will in turn allow you to profit from her expertise. Consider her a teacher willing to impart knowledge to a future client.  Afterall, if you do purchase, her commission is the result of your education.

* Do your own research.  Google. Read books.  Check online art databases for recent auction results for your artist, genre, Regency chair. Visit other galleries, museums, auction houses, non-vetted group shows, artists’ studios, non-profits, corporate art collections, the hospital waiting room.  Be autonomous. Be audacious.

I’ve been tromping around New York for years and I’m still not comfortable with the art and antiques world scene.  It’s a growing process.  Whether you live here or in a small town seemingly off the map, people are and have been creating exquisite works of expression.  The above tips are not relegated to my geographic location.  As art is everywhere, in subsequent installments I will share with you resources such as websites; books; online auctions; art & antique sale indexes; building relationships within the art world; and steps to ensure your purchase is indeed authentic.

Now, I’m curious.  Share a story or anything you know or want to know about acquiring art, antiques, collectibles, and furniture at auction.

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Posted in Aspirational | 24 Comments »

A Studio, the Aperture of Aspiration

Desk left, a tapestried wall reminiscent of art mounted in the salon style (I should note that this was sewed together all by my lonesome!). One day, a carefully curated collection will hang in its place. Desk front, a salvaged punched tin magnetic board. Desk right, the early stages of fabric bombing.

Had I known that carving out a creative nook in my New York apartment would be a feat of physical and emotional proportions, I may have outsourced the event.

I waffled. I pouted. I wailed.  I hit my head and teared to my husband.

I endured design distress.

What was this Blank Canvas?  It was doubt. For days I sat in paralysis, angered and frustrated by its sterile presence.  How would I summon the self understanding to make a space that reflected me – not only in this moment but through time?

The beauty and the beast of design is that it forces one to make decisions that most likely will not represent the future self.  It’s an exercise in value.  What object is worthy of wall space now?  How does one know?

You see, in the magazines the process and the product of designing a space happen at once.  At the end of the spread, there’s always a tidy, soul-fulfilling environment that speaks volumes about the person inside.  Within a single afternoon, meaning is ascribed to material.

But I can’t take the pressure, which is why I call my humble zone an “aperture of aspiration,” a place that I cannot yet attribute meaning (though, I’m sensing an inkling) but has all aspiration of evolving into one – over time.

The Materials~

* A punched tin tile salvaged from a demo in the Lower East Side.  Perfectly so, these tiles are a fun magnetic surface for savory images, this or even that.

* Ghost Salon Tapestry, a nod to our collecting dreams. Comprised of black swatches that hang in lieu of the artworks that will one day hang, salon style, in our home.  I picked the succulent oriental motif fabrics, traced shapes using our favorite gratin dishes and bread plates, and finally sewed them onto the backdrop.

Tapestry detail

* Fabric bombing has begun.  Discarded seam binding, gift ribbons, scraps and swatches that I have used will be the only materials to wrap the unsightly poles.

* A miscellany of my own darkroom exposures, brads, pushpins, cards, ephemera, inspirations are welcome on all walls, tapestry and magnetic surfaces –  through time.

How have you shaped your studio?  How has your studio shaped you?

Oh, and a strapping hug goes out to each of you for helping me through this.  I brought all of you with me into the streets of New York and this inward journey!

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Posted in Aspirational, Creative, Puzzled | 23 Comments »

De Sign

I have often worried that design, a word I use as casually as the requisite articles a/an/the, had to be greater than the thoughtless contexts I accord with its name.  It is true, I have been guilty of emptying meaning in service of a simple way to express what I really see when I look about. So, I resort to exclamation points and ohh ahhhs.

A recent, soul-warming coffee clutch with a special blogpreneuse* at Wall Street’s Le Financier put words to my intellectual and, so it feels, spiritual conundrum.  Design talk is my cursory attempt to confer and convey significance without working on the substance beneath. In my world, you can believe I am always wearing a designer dress.

My way threatens to de sign design, to eradicate the historical, political, and social roots by looking into its shiny surface for the perfect reflection of myself.

From 2010 forward, I challenge myself to look beyond the surface, to research the antecedents of my visual desire and to know the history and emotions that thrust the object into my orbit.

I leave to you an excerpt on the etymology of design~

from its Greek definition, design is about incompleteness, indefiniteness, or imperfection, yet it also is about likelihood, expectation, or anticipation.  In its largest sense, design signifies not only the vague, intangible, or ambiguous, but also the strive to capture the elusive./Translating the etymological context into English, it can be said that design is about something we once had, but have no longer.

Dear Designers, Artists and Crafters,

How do you lend meaning to the objects before you?

*The special someone I speak of is @abcddesigns.  Find her.

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Posted in Aspirational, Intellectual | 14 Comments »

Blank Canvas

The year has begun, but not for all it seems.  Unfortunately for me, a crafter who needs expert supervision and a pat on the back for a job well – okay, partially well – done, the closure of Etsy Labs for the holidays has thrown me into a funktastic internal drama sesh. I need help and a whole lot of community to get back to pre-holiday craftercising.  My hands are getting flabby already!

Harumphhhh. Yet, thankfully. . .

Holiday Hubby bestowed in my tiny hands a huge gift-burden:  the first sewing machine.  Wow does it look menacing with its coterie of presser feet and tiny parts that go here or there.  Change is underfoot chez nous, though, as we work to divide our office space into a zone for our computers and for a new sewing-craft area.  Must say it feels transcendent to work amicably beside the one you love.

Here’s my new duppy

I’ve got a blank canvas and need your help, dear readers.  Behind my desk is a white wall craving craftervention.  I need ideas stat before I hop online and use my credit card to fill the void.  Any suggestions, especially one that involves sewing, will be taken with glee. I will not, however, make anything that involves gummy drops and toothpicks.  That was so last year.

To stir your thoughts (or make you cringe), here are photos of architectural elements in our apartment that may inform your suggestions.

Pink glass sconces original to this brownstone frame the studio space

Across from my desk, these paned glass windows filter light from the living room

A small portion of the art history and criticism texts we keep above our desks

The sad sewer hangs its head at the sight of the blank canvas

I’ve considered knit bombing the pipes like Lion Brand Yarn has done to the bike racks outside their West 15th Street storefront in NYC, but figure that since I can’t knit all meaning just may be lost in the art act.

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Posted in Aspirational, Flustered | 33 Comments »

Who Your Duppy?

Millie making her fabled curried mutton while Oswald models the proverb plate.

Millie making her fabled curried mutton while Oswald models the proverb plate.

Fresh from a Jamaican holiday where I spent an entire week doing nothing myself – Yah mon, meals, beds, and laundry were all done by dear Millie, Oswald and Angela, the villa’s staff – I had all opportunity in the world to become an arrogant, mindless, tourist-jerk.  And, quite frankly, I came close.  Fortuitously, I was saved by a decorative plate and its intriguing description, “Ebery cave-hole hab him own duppy.”

Now, I have been confused by Jamaican patois many a time.  This dialect comes straight from the slaves who cleverly devised a method of  communication to befuddle their masters.

But, as we bridge the New Year, I want to talk about our duppies.  A duppy in Caribbean folklore is a malevolent spirit.  In the inscription “Ebery cave-hole hab him own duppy,” the duppy stands for “troubles.”  As we walk, crawl reluctantly or sprint toward a new year, we must acknowledge what troubles us.

In 2010, what will will your duppy look like? Will it create or destroy?

Who your duppy?

*For more on the etymology of duppy, amuse here.

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Posted in Analytical, Aspirational, Reflective | 21 Comments »

Don’t Be Tardy for the Party

Alrighty, are we officially tired of all this Basel ballyhoo? Good.

Moving on from that yawner, I’d like to share some fantastic news with you! It has come to my attention that I have created a new profession for myself, perhaps even a new profession for personkind.  It wouldn’t be a stretch, self promotion or propaganda of any sort to posit that this new field could cure joblessness – forever.

I am a watcher of famous people (see, I'm just like that camera!). All. Eyes. On. Them.

I am a watcher of famous people (see, I'm just like that camera!). All. Eyes. On. Them.

I’m adding the soon-to-be-respected title Professional Audience Member to my resume.  At 8 am tomorrow, I will plop my toosh in Wendy Williams’ pink candy fluff TV studio, at the ready to holler for my honey.  As she personally requested in the official mass email correspondence, I am not planning on being tardy for this party.  This is probably one of the best professional assignments I’ve gotten to date.  I can say that with confidence on the eve of my sixth TV appearance,  some of those ranked America’s finest daytime TV sets.

To all of you who have considered this your career, I’d like to share a few caveats.  This  is not for the weak.

1.  Consider your physical fitness before diving in.  Standing is required.  There are long lines to get in, longer lines for the restroom and an even longer line to get out.  Security is no joke; if you plan on stealing a memento of your visit, say a chair or an autographed photo be prepared to visit the slammer.

2.   Secondly, they don’t heat the studio, so layer up.  It has something to do with the lights generating a lot of heat, but I don’t buy it.  Anyways, it is what it is so bring a snowsuit if that will keep you warm.

3.  Finally, hunger can set in unexpectedly.  A perk of the profession is that they often provide free coffee and packaged double chocolate Sara Lee muffins before, but once the show starts be prepared to starve.  I suggest keeping a flask of water at the ready and/or an energy bar velcroed around your waist, under your shirt of course.  Sometimes I wear an adult diaper in case of an emergency bathroom need.  We all know what coffee and a cold room will do for the bladder.

I would love to illuminate the finer points further, but being a Professional Audience Member requires a well-hydrated, super rested body.  I will not be the Clueless Clapper, the last one to clap when queued by the audience warm up guy!  That’s room for automatic dismissal and totally embarrassing.

Here’s the list of all my famous debuts.  Hope you’re not jealous, but you probably are.

* The Wendy Williams Show

* Good Morning America

* The Maury Povich Show (I came home with a bad case of carpel tunnel attributed to overclapping.  Just another day on the job)

* The Rachael Ray Show

* Bravo’s Top Artist (yet to air)

* The Martha Stewart Show

Adieu, my fans!

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Posted in Absurd, Aspirational, Confident, Creative, Witty | 29 Comments »

When the Art Market Is a Big Bully, You Got to Get Arthletic

A stroll through a high caliber, “blue chip” art fair as seen from this clueless collector.  I know my art, but sure can’t play the collector part.

The Basel Bully - the collectors, the blue chip galleries, the aspirational affluent - take on the art uninitiated.

The Basel Bully - the collectors, the blue chip galleries, the aspirational-affluent - takes on the art market uninitiated.

Art Basel Miami was a bully to my senses. The fair, the 15 satellite exhibitions, the whole production from pre- to after-party was a twitching muscle demanding the submission of all assets  - spiritual to financial – to its needy desire.  It wanted to perform for me; I to perform for it.

You wouldn't happen to be VIP? Oh, you're notttt?! As I've been hearing, John, (taking a quarter turn to his left) the blogs have been saying that you have had the most active backroom of all at the fair. What's the champagne for? Everything is sold. (cork pops, both smile).

Overheard: "You wouldn't happen to be VIP? OH, you're not?! As I've been hearing, John, (taking a quarter turn to his left away from Non-VIP Person) the blogs have been saying that you have had the most active backroom at the fair. . . What's the champagne for?" "Everything sold, of course." (cork pops, both smile).

From my 5′4″ shortstuff standpoint, the fair’s muscularity was palpable. For the moneyed and the art afficonado who frequent this premier event, politesse was remarkably passee.  A push here a body check there?  Yeah rah!  A  point on the score board. . . .

The Basel Labrynth where clans of collectors lurk, waiting to strike a move.

The Basel Labyrinth where clans of collectors lurk, waiting to strike a move. (photo credit Artnet.com)

I’m a feisty woman who works assiduously to achieve the utopia of perfected self esteem (HEY, we all got dreams), yet the labyrinthine passageways that cut in and out of the exhibition booths threw me right off that path.  I could not contend with the pulsing, ornery crowds.   At every corner, I was knocked into, clearly  sized up by teems of fellow fair goers, gallerinas, collectors, and would-be elite.  It’s all so performative, theatrical, which seemed unusual until I realized I had gone from the sidelines (art historian) to a main participant in the art market game.

The Basel Blood Clot at fair's entrance. In just moments, toes will be stepped on, glares will be shared, and an aggressive nudge will strike the unsuspecting

The Basel Blood Clot at fair's entrance. In just moments, toes will be stepped on, glares will be shared, and an aggressive nudge will strike the unsuspecting

In one weekend, I leapt from art appreciator to art speculator.  And so I became arthletic.  I confronted the Basel Bully head on.  I pushed back, got sassy with the gallery assistant who wouldn’t share a work’s price with me, and best of all, I remained positive, knowing that the market can only destroy the artist’s intention, the aura of the work, if I let it.

How would you carry yourself in the art market environment I described?  Would you be disenchanted by the money, the affluence, the art-as-object for purchase mentality?

**As a side note – and I’m ashamed to admit this, though not really –  I dropkicked some art.  That’s right, there was a work installed on the floor and when I walked across the exhibition space, I heard the sickening crunch of art under foot.  Crunchy, cracky, shattery, art explosion!  My quick reply to the jaws on the floor, “Sorrrry.  But it’s probably not safe for the art to be there.”  Classy, uber classee.

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Posted in Analytical, Aspirational, Candid, Disillusioned, Judgmental, Snarky | 13 Comments »

Basel Miami 2: Critique My Art Aesthetic

Within the week, I will pen my thoughts on what it was like to go to Art Basel, to be at the most exclusive happening of the contemporary art world.

Until then, peek at the last few works I captured from Pulse Miami, one of Basel’s 15 satellite fairs.  Imagine what it would be like to own an original, a piece of art that made you think or feel something you had never experienced before.  What would that work look like?

If you’re not into the art, then check out a blog I frequent to keep up with my dose of art market news and gossip.  I know this journalist-blogger and respect her insight.

Click here for Basel and Scope artworks part 1.

Pulse Miami

Not afraid of the Kindle, this work captures the essence of book as art as decor. They speak volumes.

Not afraid of the Kindle, this work captures the essence of book as art as decor. They speak volumes.

Baroque beauty. Jewelry as art. Again, a bit more of my design side.

Baroque beauty. Jewelry as art. Again, a bit more of my design side.

Sun, water, zizzle zazzle. Miami. Looks like by the end of Basel, I became a design hound.

Sun, water, zizzle zazzle. Miami. Looks like by the end of Basel, I became a design hound.

Bureaucratic beauty. This will be placed next to the Baroque beauty. Good bye Miami, back to the office.

Bureaucratic beauty. This will be placed next to the Baroque beauty. Good bye Miami, back to the office.

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Posted in Analytical, Aspirational, Creative | 16 Comments »

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