Hollywood Regency and Banana Fantasy

My friend Hannah is one of the most glamorous people I know, we met in French class our senior year of college when she showed up in a sexy pencil skirt and a sweater that spelled out 'j'daore' across her chest. She is living in LA now, working for William Morris Endeavor (ooh la la) and then planning to go on to run Hollywood and win Oscars. So she needs an apartment that lives up to these great expectations.

When I picture it in my mind, her apartment is a glamorous throwback to Hollywood Regency style. There are lots of mirrors, and black lacquered furniture, and a reigned in color palette so that the moments of bold color (she has a growing art collection) can really get the attention they deserve. She has such an "Old Hollywood" glamour to her, that instead of seeming anachronistic it will feel utterly appropriate.

Hollywood Regency by way of Jonathan Adler:

Kelly Wearstler's style would be perfect for Hannah:

More Brown Paper

As I hinted in my previous post on brown paper, I've decided to cover all of my books so that my bookcase looks less schizophrenic and more coordinated:

I guess the jig is up on my dorky taste in books....

Philip Larkin

Some of my absolute favorite contemporary art came from a series that Damien Hirst did a few years ago called 'Superstition'. It was a series of enormous collages, which from a distance look like stained glass windows, but as you approach you are struck by the realization that they are in fact not composed of slivers of glass, but rather of thousands upon thousands of butterfly wings. Someday I hope to own a piece, but until then Ill make due with this book:

In it, the images of Hirst's collages are interspersed with poems by Philip Larkin which play brilliantly off the two themes in 'Superstition': death and religion. Now on this blog I've posted "this be the verse" which is far and away one of the most amazing poems ever, but I just read another poem of his and it brought me to tears, so I thought I'd share:

High Windows

When I see a couple of kids

And guess he's fucking her and she's

Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,

I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives-

Bonds and gestures pushed to one side

Like an outdated combine harvester,

And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if

Anyone looked at me, forty years back,

And thought, That'll be the life;

No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide

What you think of the priest. He

And his lot will all go down the long slide

Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:

The sun-comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

-Philip Larkin

My House is Me and I am It

Today I was reminiscing about one of my favorite books from childhood, "The Big Orange Splot", its tale is a story about individuality but also about design, so it seems that my interests were sealed early.

In the tale, Mr. Plumbean lives on a "neat street" where all of the houses look proper, appropriate, and entirely the same:

'and they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same'

One night, a seagull flies over Mr. Plumbean's home and drops a can of orange paint on his roof, all of his neighbors are horrified by this breach in their monotony, and demand that he paint his house. He acquiesces, but when they wake up the next morning they see that he didn't paint in quite the way they had intended:

Instead of covering up the orange splot he had added others, and lions, and elephants, rainbows and a turquoise roof! In response to their angry questions he simply said:

“My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all of my dreams.”

Mr. Plumbean kept dreaming, and to his neighbor's amazement and horror he installed palm trees which he swung between in a hammock:

And slowly but surely his neighbors came around, inspired by how Mr. Plumbean had a house which truly reflected his dreams. They changed their own homes, making them as unique as each of their dreams:

And in the end they said:

"Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all of our dreams."

I'm not sure I necessarily think we should all be installing palm trees and leashing alligators in our front yards, but on the other hand I think that design has lost the "anything the mind can dream" mentality. The arts are dominated by a kind of condescending academicism that seems to frown on these surreal, romantic impulses. In a world where we can create virtually anything, why have we been forced to worship boring, simple, easy to produce lines. I advocate whimsy and fantasy, a departure from mundane reality...a home that looks like our dreams.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String

Every year at the beginning of the summer I take all of my photos from the preceding year and put them into an album. I think that there is something really special about having the tactile sensation of photos in your hands, flipping through the pages and the years. But the albums themselves weren't looking too special- so I came up with a solution. When I picked up a new album at The Container Store, I also grabbed a roll of kraft paper and a roll of white grosgrain ribbon (and altogether it was less

than $20!!).

Once I was home, covering the albums was a cinch- remember in grade school when you had to make book covers? I essentially did the same thing: folding a big envelope pocket and sliding the album into it.

Then I affixed the grosgrain ribbon with a dot of hot glue, and added the dates along the spine with a Sharpie:

I think they still look clean and neat and uniform, but they now have a warmer, softer, home-made quality:

I'm thinking about covering my books this same way...thoughts?

Season Finale

I officially finished my semester on Friday night (I submitted my last assignment at 11 pm) so this weekend has been dedicated to some serious spring cleaning. As I am deciding what to throw away and what to keep, I took a moment to photograph the model from my final studio project, the Vitra Design Museum. Models take up so much space and don't weather very well, so I think this will end up down the garbage shoot in the next few days and with that in mind I wanted to document it thoroughly:

The view from the sidewalk into the museum.

View of first floor and mezzanine from outside.

Another peek from outside featuring more of the staircase.

A bird's eye view into the Sheila Hicks Exhibit.

Bird's Eye View of the entire model.

View of someone exiting the museum.