We love Nina Saltman‘s and her husband James Bullock‘s pun of a paint job at their house in San Francisco: faux brick painted on a concrete and block wall!
Related post: We’re Back! (Let’s Paint a Wall)
walls + windows
we’re back! (let’s paint a wall…)
We’ve spent the past ten days or so on the other side of the country, looking at everything but our laptops, and being nothing but lazy. Somehow doing NOTHING filled us up, gave us lots to think about and share…
Like this sign we saw (when Nina said LOOK UP!) in Balmy Alley in San Francisco, known for its wonderful murals, from one end to another…
(and which happens to be right around the corner from Humphry Slocum, our favorite ice cream place – more on that later)… read more…
MOMA’s photo wallpaper (a piece of ass)
Pamela Hovland‘s Comment in response to our recent wallpaper post is an amazing report from MOMA of a wallpaper installation that is so wonderfully described, hilarious and thoughtful, that we had to publish it here. And just as we were despairing of not being able to find any image like it on MOMA’s website, Pamela sent us one by email: blurry but completely expressive…
“I stopped by MoMA today, for a quick dose of inspiration. The Matisse show is on view so it is quite crowded — it takes all one’s attention just to negotiate the hallways. As a result, I don’t think many people stopped to look closely at a wallpaper “installation” between two galleries. The wallpaper is a temporary construction made simply by repeating a photograph numerous times in a grid. The image is a tightly cropped view of a man’s bare bottom (I’m trying to be polite) with his crack (I can’t think of another word here) in the center of the composition. It’s not a particularly photogenic specimen; upon closer analysis you see the dimples and blemishes of some anonymous middle aged guy’s rear end. In this presentation, however, the image takes on a kind of architectural quality – a kind of industrial building block, I guess. The imperfections are lost as the sum of the parts takes precedence.
Makes me want to create wallpaper at home out of some crazy image fragment I have lying around. Not a body part though… it’s been done!
Now that I think about it, this installation is a bit like your Lego post AND the wallpaper post — conflated!” read more…
tacked-up wallpaper (un-permanent + d-i-y)
While surfing around this morning, we stumbled on an interior by photographer Ditte Isager and was struck by the wallpaper, loosely tacked rather than glued, for a whole other, delightfully un-done look. For us, it’s a swell alternative to the often-fussy permanence of wallpaper (and the difficulty of taking it off the wall when we change our minds). We went to Isager’s website to check out her work and found more lovely examples of paper wall coverings… read more…
our lesson in pink (paint)
We never would imagined how beautiful and NON-kids room pink walls could be until we saw pictures of a house designed by the great Mexican architet Luis Barrigan in 1947. Pink upon pink balanced by yellow, wood, dark floors….
read more…
visionary blue tape art work
While visiting Pam Hunter who was in New York starting her sabbatical a few weeks ago, I was spellbound by the blue tape art works on several of the windows of the apartment she was staying in. They were nothing more than rough-torn, inch-or-so pieces of blue painter’s tape
japanese masking tape in cool colors +patterns
We were just dreaming of making a sign on the office wall the said YES! when we stumbled on a webstore call Happy Tape. It sells nothing but Japanese masking tape: slightly translucent tape made of washi paper that comes in beautiful colors and patterns. It made us wonder “Why didn’t anybody think of this before?!!!” read more…
pascal anson’s surprising d-i-y paint project
Pascal Anson is the ultimate ALT-Martha Stewart, a true challenge to keeping everything within-the-lines and predictable. He’s made some videos which we plan to run periodically to remind ourselves that a guy on tv (well almost; we wish he were on tv) can inspire EXPLOSIVE!, original thinking about d-i-y and home improvement. Pascal’s view of things is a joy and a relief: charming, thoughtful, playful and inspiring…
…the bomb!
alt (wall) Christmas trees
At the farmer’s market this weekend, Keith Stewart was selling beautiful Christmas trees from his farm, as well as “wall trees” which are tall sculptural branches cut from huge trees. Keith recommended leaning them against or affixing them to a wall and decorating them like a regular Christmas tree (at much less cost).
There are lots of possible plays on the idea of “wall Christmas trees” that would make for fun-to-improvise (if last-minute) trees. The elaborate one above appeared on in The Style Files last year, the brilliant inspiration of Jane of All the Luck in the World; she used her collection read more…
learning about color (a daily practice)
Do you ever feel like you just can’t figure out what colors go with what? Being great at color is clearly a special gift, but we mortals can learn to find our way with a little help. Consciously looking at wonderful combinations of color is a way of training the eye: a practice. And an easy way to start practicing is to visit Studio Horn, color master Eve Ashcraft’s quirky personal blog about “Design, Art, Absurdity, Obscurity, Good Shopping, Farming, Wild Life, Urban Life, Domesticated Animals, Humans, Color, Architecture, Photography, Ideas and Happiness”.
Ashcraft, who has consulted about color for Martha Stewart, Architectural Digest and Benjamin Moore Paints, to name a few, has a regular post theme called “Today’s Color Palette“. read more…
grown-up chalkboard “art”
Sometimes when I need a diversion from writing, I poke around location scout Andrea Raisfeld’s website of interesting spaces for rent for photography locations. You can browse by type (apartment, barn, log cabin…), or description (contemporary, Modernist, Swedish…), or even by a feature (bunk bed, river, treehouse), and so on. I always find unexpected ideas there, like the rectangle of unframed chalkboard on a wall at designer Pamela Hovland’s house in Connecticut.
Pamela made a pattern of chalk squiggles that is striking. She says some people have it mistaken for a Cy Twombly (an artist famous for chalkboard-like paintings and magnificent squiggles), although Pamela wasn’t thinking of his work when she made it. This is a grown-up chalkboard, made to define the space in an un-kid-like way. read more…
repurpose: japanese screen as window “shade”
Suzanne Shaker, whose spare modernist house was posted here a while back, wanted a window shade for her bathroom that afforded some privacy, let light in and didn’t block the view completely. She found an old japanese screen with paper on the back that was ripped. She removed the paper and her husband Pete added hooks and simple chain. It’s a beautiful bit of repurposing. Here’s another picture. read more…
grouped “rounds” as modern wall art
Stephen Falcke via The Style Files
Over the past few months, I’ve found myself clipping pictures of walls decorated with groupings of simple, often primitive round or oval objects that make for a clean, unexpectedly modern design. Repetitions of baskets, plates, wooden bowls become a great deal more than the sum of their parts: abstract patterns made of “storied” elements. read more…
blue tape painting
In the wonderful daddy blog Stork Bites Man, Andy (who also writes Reference Library) wrote a brief post about making this blue tape painting in the hallway outside his daughter Elsa’s room. The two had been working on it for a few months,”a few minutes at a time. She requests a ‘little one, great big one, skinny one, or triangle one’ and I cut each shape to order.”
It’s a perfect, simple, visually charming project to do with a kid (or another adult), and is another example of the brilliant versatility of blue painter’s tape
Here are more things to do with painter’s tape.
And don’t forget how great it is for making signs on walls.
