building shift

I have not left blog world-I am trying to shift to a new and improved Chairs and Buildings identity.............bear with me.

ghost building

I got down to Moss in Soho yesterday and saw the "Butch-Craft" show. The work is interesting because to me its a kind of "Brooklyn" look but as you get closer you see that the craft is super polished and fits nicely in the oh so zipped up tight Moss shop. Peter Marigold's work stands out because of his interest in molding the opposite to form the mirror of the work-the result is a "Rachel Whitheadesque' cabinet

building pictures

A pop in from the a senior field trip to New York. I got to see last night at a favorite tradition of Friday Metropolitan visit aka" Drinks on the Roof". I visited an old friend the beautiful wood inlaid room from the 15th century from the Ducal Palace of Gubbio designed by Franceso di Giorgio Martini.

cloud building

I think this is the manufactured version of the chair/cloud that I spied in the photographers portfolio months ago. This is a Poliform product by the ultra chic french designer Jean Marie Massaud. I like how its a homage to the Eames Le Chaise and its works with the current trend toward quilted,knitted upholstery...

building resources

The last month has been a whirl wind of exhibitions, lectures and field trips...which makes life quite fun but for me unfocused. Thinking back on last week-a highlight was visiting local furniture manufacturer
Tupolo Manufacturing. Specializing in commercial custom work,with there minimum order being #1-this company is a great resource for designers as well as inspiring.......

Monster building.............

While checking out a new favorite blog(thanks erin!) The Jealous Curator, I came upon this chair done by student Anni Arnefjord, a student at a new favorite school-Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm. I am loving these monster chairs......

"designer meets artisan"

Spotted on Style-Files, Claire Anne O'Brien knitted stools are all the rage. I love the scale difference from the bulky knitted seat to the delicate legs. Now for us middle aged types do stools really work in interiors? They are great vehicles for ideas but are they used?

Story building

This little lady has her dress on to go to Oxford in the morning for a
"One Night Stand at the Ole Miss Motel"-don't judge. I wanted to make a piece to talk about Sargent's Madame X. and Amelie Gaureau's life. The map on the seat shows her ancestral home of False River, Louisiana, the map then moves to her birth place of Toulouse Street in New Orleans and then the walk from John Singer Sargent's studio to The Academie De
Beaux Arts to hang the famous Madame X portrait and then a map showing the route from Amelie's home to Sargent's studio where she begged him to take down the infamous painting.

blank building..........

C&B will be a bit dormant for this week as we get ready for One Night Stand in Oxford....follow the buzz on Erin Abbott Kirkpatrick's blog Afterschool Oxford.

exhibition building

here is a tour of the Julia and Varina show if you did not get to Starkville..........

Building for big

Just back from a morning at Kentuck in Northport Alabama. The bravest stuff is from the seasoned artists like Butch Anthony; one seeing his work was the first time I have uttered" I wish I had a space large enough" to acquire one of these giant entities and I really want to check out his annual Doo-Nanny next March.

Building Pink

These takes on the Hans Wegner Wishbone Chair range from using lots of imagination to using almost none the most successful is this Sara Rotman creation. The Sea anemone is always an appropriate muse......The project is in an effort to raise money for breast cancer-the wishbone chair is a beautiful starting point.

Building Infinity

The Ai Weiwei project at the Tate looks breathtaking. One Million porcelain sunflower seeds covering the great hall floor. The material has multiple meanings in the cultural narrative of Weiwei's work. I find myself alittle disappointed that they are not real sunflower seeds-I can work through the functional concern, three months of stepped on sunflower seeds-yuck. I can also follow the porcelain industry as key to China's economy and the gesture toward 100 million as a potent number in China. I can even work through the real/fake thing. But wouldn't have smelled great in there????

Public building

We are in the "could the week have more stuff going on???season". On Thursday at 2:00pm artist Erin Hayne and Nuno Goncalves Ferreira are coming to Mississippi State to lecture! Studio NunoErin is breaking new ground in Jackson, producing haptic furniture and installing this large scale public art work at the Jackson Convention Center. The lecture is at Fowlkes Hall in the Student Union-open to all. Please come.

Value building

Get to a copy of Fast Company this month some very good insights into the design world. In particular the cover story article on Patricia Urguilo with ideas like sustainability is about longevity and that water taps should be designed to evoke the preciousness of the water available not the excess.......

furniture ideas

So I look at art because I do generally feel that art is at times doing a better job of interior design. The art world, whether its money or chutzpah, just seem to get at ideas in furniture rather than just fill in the space. I have yet to work out the work of Tom Sachs.....his subject manner is too judgemental for me but his struggles regarding craft in the New York art world are struggles to learn from. I found images of his studio on the Selby and the most interesting things were the ad hoc/remade chairs about the studio. There is another discussion on Design verses Craft verses DIY?????

Life building

A couple of more weeks of high production mode but frankly I need alittle C&B inspiration too! So I wandered around and came upon the work of Tanya Aguiniga. I posted about her breakout felt folding chairs at the advent of C&B but had not looked at her work since. A couple of things stuck me-a bold move to "Felt" a Eames DCM chair is true to message a found chair......right on. And reading her "about" statement; her work is more activist than design diva-very nice. This inspired me to keep on the path of the inverse career...........

I heart my graphic designer......

I am in big change mode as well as generating alot of work.........I have decided to make Chairs and Buildings" more of a "thing". So I asked the very talented Jamie Runnells to think through what Chairs and Buildings might need if it were at "thing". First of all, she dealt with my ambitious vagueness with great elan and then proceeded to knock me out with some of the clearest, sweetest ideas around. See the best business card ever. Thanks Jamie-and stay tuned for more identity.

Its time

Erin Abbott has sent out the beautiful poster for the One Night Stand Show and I am excited about my comrades in the show! If your in Oxford on the 23rd-come on by!

Thought building

There is a heated debate in design schools as to whether the academia is following industry and whether it could be reversed. What I have found is the general curriculum of design schools is behind the times but if you look deeper into the colleges you see this trend toward small centers that are leading the way in design thinking. See the Aridlands Institute at Woodbury College in LA for an prime example. This fall's lecture series will lead the way in understanding water scarcity as a catalyst in the climate change discussion.

seeing some good work-

Its a couple of weeks away but this year I get to go to Kentuck Arts Festival in Northport, Alabama. Evidently, the folk art heroes of the south, Amos Kennedy, Butch Antony and Charlie Lucas converge on this festival site and make it a must see event.

Clean-work

Okay, the first show is almost up and now to clean the studio. I am using this image of Betty Goodwin's studio as clean studio inspiration and I hope to learn more about this upcoming show-entitled At Work: Hesse, Goodwin, Martin promises some valuable insights into the process of these three great artists.

Working more

If your in Starkville the opening for this is October 14th, 5:30pm.

Working..........

For the next few days I am going to take a break and get this show up. Stay tuned for exhibition photos-maybe a slide show...wish me luck. Annie



Image by Jennifer Hudson

roommaking-

So I am working away on this installation and when I get discouraged I have found myself saying..."what would Studio Toogood do?" Master of the temporary, the work of Faye Toogood has captivated the London Design Week again and raised the bar for those of us who make rooms.....

Learning about building

I have spent the morning-learning about, researching the work of dutch artist Mark Manders. Things to consider; the wonderful use of language in his titles , ie. "silent factory" and "writing room fiction machine", the difference in scale in the objects that are assembled for the idea, the difference in materials (something I am not good at) in the assemblege, the razor shape way the installantion is photographed.......

Building Innovation

C&B's comrade Ghislaine Vinas has hit a home run with the apartment that is the cover girl for
Interior Design Magazine this month- Vinas has an uncanny ability to mess the "store bought" with artisan craft and custom work-providing clients with a sense of place and livability.
Bravo Miss G! And I will be stealing the dipped upholstery idea.......

Image by Eric Laignel

Building a garden

Its still in the 90's here everyday in Mississippi so fall has not shown up-but the light is changing in the back and if doing else the leaves are changing because they are just worn out....I took some images around the garden this morning-I must have entered my horticultural phase between the Sissinghurst book and planting fall cauliflower.....

Interior Building

Last year at this time I was asked by A Public Space editor Brigid Hughes to make a project that started with a Found Object-at the time I had come upon the work at the Ulysses S. Grant Association and was captivated by Mrs. Grants Opera Shawl...That began a series of drawings that essentially re-decorated the Grants New York brownstone-in a fictional way. Look for the the drawings published in this issue of A Public Space.

Building a look

You can not really think about Porter chairs now without conjuring up the image of Kelly Wearsler's Bergdorf Goodman's tea room. These chairs now frame the most beautiful of the beautiful in New York City.

chair building

Recent research done on the "porter chair" as a terrific example of form and function. Popular in medieval Europe and up until 18th century England-note this one survives from in the Bank of England Museum. The egg shape was needed to protect the porter from drafts that occurred in the entry way of an estate or castle, one needed a porter to answer the knocker since the estate was so large...

Building rural

I am really enjoying Adam Nicholson's Sissinghurst An Unfinished History. Well written with a bit about Vita, a bit about garden history, alot about environmentalism in the realm of historic preservation and alot about the reality of our world agriculturally and how drastic we have let it change in the last two centuries.

Building arabesque

Spotted this "Bloomsburyesque" chair in the home of embroidery designer Erica Wilson and modernist furniture designer Vladimir Kagan on The Selby. My stitching skills are not even close but I will keep this image to aspire to.

Building structural logic

A Thonet chair is made out of six components and then about eight to ten screws depending on the model number. The curves are an illustration of using the the circle shape structurally(the circle holds the legs and the arch shape maintains the back)-because its the strongest shape.

Room building

Getting ready for a show at the Mississippi State Visual Arts Center 1, 808 University Drive., Starkville. The show opens October 4th, opening reception October 14th. Come see some new work!

new technique

I have just stumbled upon the Japanese embroidery technique of Sashiko in my new best book Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Fabric Crafts. This simple running stitch really appeals to my modernist outlook.

building legacy

The history of the Gebruber Thonet company is a very common industrial revolution story. The Thonet family hit upon a material condition that lent itself to a faster and more efficient manufacturing process. The look of the chairs embraced the fin de seicle and art nouveau sensibility of the 1850's. But what was unexpected was the enduring/timeless quality of the chair. Everyone knows the story of modernist master Corbusier using these chairs in all his projects more than 100 years after the birth of the no. 14-but who knew that we would using them into the 21st century without a hint of nostalgia.

Ode to Thonet

As part of "Ode to Thonet" week I get to show this Tim Hawkinson piece. Entitled "Shrink", I love the reproduction of the reproduction idea...being that Thonet chairs can be considered one of the first mass produced furniture or furniture of the industrial revolution in decorative arts history.

twisting thonet

I was included in a"twist on Thonet" round up on a Spanish blog earlier this summer and I thought I would share with you my folder of Thonets with a twist and share some history as well this week. This work was included and its some of my favorite thoughts about Thonet-Keisuke Fujiwara delicately wrapped the chair in gradated threads...........beautiful.

building day dreams

One of my finest character flaws is that when I am under tremendous pressure, I daydream. The daydream usually involves travel and then a "pilgrimage to" an obscure building/interior that I have deemed necessary to view for my well being..... Currently under scrutiny for obsessive daydreaming is Paris and the Musee Gustave Moreau is the destination. Moreau in an early 19th century symbolist painter who made "literary" work. Not my taste in painting but maybe my taste in living......

Working

Alot going on around here-October 14th a show opens here at the Visual Arts Center on campus. And on October 22nd I will be showing at the world famous Motel Art Show in Oxford...busy month. Here is a sneak peek prototype of some of the work I am into right now..Hope you can come by!

building forever

I would like this in my garden. This poured in-place concrete Chesterfield sofa by British company Grey Concrete has got me thinking about permanence verses impermanence..........They says its comfortable.

building light

Good night sweet New York. Hope you had a good day, see you soon.......................

Building a body of work

My work has entered a very funny phase in the last year but I am getting what I have been interested in for along time; telling a story. These two pieces are finally installed in the Grant Association reading room at Mississippi State. The loveseat is an embroidered map of General Grants movements around the state of Mississippi during the war and the arm chair is the final formation at the battle of Vicksburg.




P.S. A bit of a repeat post but such great images by Caleb...