Art

I'm just back from 4 days in San Francisco, working on installing the big project I've been working on for a year and a half.  If you follow me on instagram, you saw some little snippets of what's happening there.

If you have read this blog for a while, you know that I love art.  Yesterday, as I was wrapping up and running to the airport, my client looked around with satisfaction about how things are coming together.  I found myself saying, "it's the art and the window treatments.  That's what really makes a house feel finished."  And I believe it.

It's not only about polish and the "final layer."  Art and window treatments can really be put to work to enhance your home or hide flaws.  In this house we used gorgeous sheer roman shades on the side of the house that sits close to an unattractive building.  We used art to balance the height of the massive front door. (etc.)

We also installed a pair of facing gallery walls in the upstairs hallway that leads to the kids rooms.  It  is one of the most "private" spaces in the house, and it turned out to be the perfect place for personal photos and art.

I think the best testament to the power of art is something I heard the dad say when getting his kids up in the morning.

"I just love this hallway.  Walking through it is like walking through a big hug."

YES!

If you want more on art strategies, check out my "Hanging Art" posts.  For a gallery wall tutorial, go here.  (Come to think of it, I should review and update this as I have created dozens of art walls since then and have learned a thing or two!)  I also hashtag "artmakestheproject on instagram if you want to see other examples in action.

Happy weekend!

Hanging Art: Artist Rugs

Much of my energy over the past, well, almost year has gone to one huge project.  It has been one of the most fun and rewarding opportunities I've had--to imagine a large space nearly from scratch, to work with an architect,  to choose all the lighting and hardware and finishes and faucets--but it also means an immersive, ongoing project without anything to really show for it just yet.

Since we've still got months to go, and I don't want to give too much away, I thought I might share some of the concepts and ideas that are going into it.  And the one I'll tell you about today fits right in to my "hanging art" series.

The house I'm working on was built in the 20s in the Edwardian style, but my clients have modern and eclectic taste, with a special hankering for Italian vintage and the 1970s.  (Hooray, right?)  One of the things I've thought about quite a bit is taking strategies from the 50s-70s and doing a modern take.

We know I'm a textile person, right?  In the middle of the last century, big name artists like Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso were making rugs and tapestries as art.  These days, some of my favorite designers use these pieces in their interiors. (This article is interesting on the resurgence of rug art starting in the 1990s.)

(There was a recent hollywood home by Peter Dunham that used several amazing examples, and it's killing me--KILLING ME--that I can't find it.  Here's a lesson: do not recycle your magazines.  the internet doesn't always offer up what you need.)

Anyway.  When I came across One Love, a series of limited-edition artist rugs from Woven Accents, I knew we needed to go for the rug-on-the-wall thing.  The perfect place?  The dining room.  We aren't doing a rug under the table, and there is a large wall that needs anchoring.  Rug art will help with sound absorption, soften the effect of wood furniture, and bring oh so much color to this space!

Alexandra Grant, Self Portrait

I must say, I am VERY excited to see this go up!

Also, if you wanted to go with the original, there is a selection of Picasso rugs on 1st dibs,  and a whole section devoted to artist rugs in the Nazmyal collection.  Fun to look at, even if they're too spendy to buy.

My art history degrees really come in handy sometimes.

Hanging Art: The "butterfly"

It has been fun looking back through photos to prepare these posts, and to rediscover some spaces I'd forgotten about!

With the "butterfly" (not a real thing: totally coined by me) I feel like I'm sort of jumping right to the advanced level of art hanging, but honestly, it's the easiest post for me to write next in this series, so there you go.  Sometimes the space dictates the art, but other times you start from an existing collection of works.  While I love a salon-style gallery wall, a collection of similar items in similar frames often begs for some order.  The "butterfly" is basically a balanced, even symmetrical arrangement that wings out from a centerline.

My brother collects baseball ephemera and signed vintage photos.  In his old house, they were largely in an office, in smaller groupings split across several walls.  In his new finished basement, there was a large wall where we could display most of them together.

Because we had even numbers of frames of each size, symmetry was called for.  We tested some options, but ultimately this "butterfly" configuration gave the most movement, while remaining orderly.  (I realize as I type this that it's a bit like having a center justification in text.)

In my parents' hallway, we had a collection of black and white drawings in gold frames.  There were some pairs and some that were the same basic size and orientation.  So, same deal.  (You can read an old post on this one, here!)

In a clients house, we wanted to use some of her kids art over the console in the living room.  She also had vintage posters, so we took advantage of the different pairs.  By hanging them the same (button trees in white, ad posters in black), we got cohesion.

All of those examples were a matter of making a collection shine.

These next two examples took a collection and put them to use around an existing element in the room.

In the former office of Public Art St Paul, I had an uneven number of project photos to hang, and some awkward internal windows to work around.  This arrangement reads less like a butterfly but has the same principle of a mirrored layout and is a bit off-grid.

At this bedroom in my parents' house we had a grouping of six framed prints and we wanted to fill the space above the bed.

The idea was the go with the shape of the headboard.  By staggering the placement of the two sets of horizontals, we got a wider overall arrangement AND we were able to hang everything close to the bed.  (If those side pairs were stacked, they would have been hung higher to avoid overlapping the wood headboard.)

I took a similar tack in this bedroom.  Originally we planned on more of a loose gallery wall, but when we decided to repurpose this bed from the attic, the space between the top of the headboard and the picture rail was pretty short!  Stacking pairs over the dressers fills in the negative space created by the height difference in furniture.  The single piece over the headboard is in related subject matter (they are all prints related to swimming), so the 5 pieces feel like one connected arrangement.

(You can read about this project here and here and see the final reveal here).  But if you look at just one side, you get the Stacked Pair!

Is it weird that I think so much/ have so much to say about hanging art?

Hanging Art: The stacked pair

Fun fact:  my design career really started with some art walls.  When I first started this blog, a couple of readers got in touch and asked me to hang artwork for them.  Then we started to work on other projects in their homes.

My background is in the arts--I have a Master's Degree in Modern Art and Curatorial studies from Columbia, I worked at a public art organization in NYC for nearly 6 years, and I am still on the board of Public Art St Paul--so I suppose it's not surprising that the art is one of my favorite parts of any project.

The more I use art to finish spaces, the more I think about the ways we can be strategic not just with the type of art we choose, but the way we hang it to polish a room.

One of my favorite tactics is the stacked pair.  Stacking an actual pair is pretty fool-proof, and it can be a great way to fill all of those narrow spots in a house.

My powder room, above the toilet:

My old guest room:

(a foolproof way to do a mismatched pair: two from the same artist, in the same medium, like these fashion illustration watercolors)

Clio's room:

(these are pieces from 2 different artists, but both are black and white line drawings in gold frames.)

The stacked pair is also a great way to visually balance a tall piece of furniture, like we did in this home:

With the library shelf, the stacked pair helps flank the window--the largest element in the room.  The pieces are from the same artist, in identical frames:

In Eleri's room, there isn't space for nightstands on both sides of the bed, but the bed felt imbalanced without a second lamp.  Enter--you guessed it!--a stacked pair.

In my living room, the window is off center on the couch.  To bring symmetry, I used a pair of side tables topped with a pair of lamps--and filled in the white space next to the window with a pair of 1970s portraits.

Advanced move: on this landing, I needed to balance the height of the gallery wall.  The stacked pair was an orderly way to get the height we needed.

I repeated the same stacked pair facing this one, to "end" the gallery wall:

 

I do love symmetry, balance, and pairs.   Most pairs in a room (chairs, tables, lamps) run on a horizontal plane.  A stacked pair gives the same balance, but since it runs vertical there is a new sense of movement.

Other posts in the works for this series: the row, the column, the flanking pair, and the butterfly.  Stay tuned.