Who Was David Hicks?

I fell in love with this late British designer in the early 90's by reading all his old books from the 60's and 70's which I found at the public library. What was it that attracted me so? It was the clean, the graphic, the eclectic, and the glamorous. It's what is happening in design right now. David Hicks has been hugely influential lately.

His later designs from the 80's don't look quite as interesting right now, but they still show the strong sense of symmetry, repetition, and eclectisism that made his earlier more glamorous work look so good.

Here are some David Hicks trademarks which you will see all over fashionable rooms right now:

• Geometric Patterns: He designed textiles, wallpapers, and carpets. His geometric designs are being reproduced in a big way. Pattern on the wall is a growing trend and especially patern underfoot.
  
• Mixing Traditional and Modern: For example his rooms often juxtaposed boxy modern upholstered pieces with 18th century french chair shapes painted white with solid upholstery. Or a collection of antique decorative pieces featured on a simple parsons table.
  
• Lucite: coffee tables, end tables, and always putting antique artifacts or sculptures under a lucite box, museum style.
  
• Strong Colors: supported by a lot of white, and sometimes black accents (we could learn a lot about odd, bracing color combinations from the British designers. Why do we always want things to harmonize in such a "nice" way?)
  
• Borders: plain borders framing pillows, sofas, beds, walls, rugs or roman shades.
  

Check out: http://www.dh1970.com/ for an archive of his designs.

How to be Trendy...or Not

(photo: NYTimes)


Here's a link to a year-end round up of decorating trends that are "over"!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/garden/20over.html

If you're like me you may have been wondering:"what's up with all the antlers, faux deer heads, and woodland creatures popping up everywhere in the past few years?" (have you seen Smith, on 15th in Seattle?, they really went for it with the antlers)

The linked article has the answer.

As for the "Hollywood Regency" look being over, when a term becomes a keyword on Craigslist and Ebay descriptions to be lumped together with a bunch of other vague labels like "Eames", and when the pieces featured only vaguely have anything to do with the look. You know the trend is becoming threadbare.

The sad thing is how fast this is happening.

Neoclassical, yes, Empire, yes, but this chair would have to be more exaggerated to be "Hollywood Regency", maybe if it was laquered green with black and white zebra upholstery!


Also "Hollywood Regency" according to the lister on Craigslist. To me it's just a nice little mahogany dining chair with a neoclassical influence, probably from the 40's when this sort of thing was very common.

It could be pushed into "Hollywood Regency" territory if it were re-done, let's say white laquer with a bold, large scale black and white geometric seat fabric, that would do it!


Here is a room by Johnathan Adler which shows the exaggerated, almost cartoonish quality of the "Hollywood Regency" look. (and there's that zebra rug!)

A New Painting

A small 8"x8" painting on board from Sunday. A little different direction. I'm so pleased that I would like to make a series of these.

I was obviously influenced by the monochrome and the use of graphite in Juan Alonso's paintings described below.

New Show by Juan Alonso

"The Big Bang"Juan Alonso, 2007ink, graphite / Claybord, unframed: 30 x 30"

I went to see Juan Alonso's new show at Francine Seders Gallery yesterday. The paintings are beautiful. All monochrome graphite and ink with subtly worked backgrounds and tone on tone black. In person you can see the sheen of the solid graphite shapes next to the dullness of the ink-washed shapes. There are lovely calligraphic markings in the background too, which repeat as if they are trying to find the final shapes.

I met Juan when I was in the Washington Artist Trust EDGE professional development program. He was a teacher for part of the program and was particularly inspiring because he has made a successful career as an artist without the benefit of art school.

The show will be up through Nov. 25th.

Lois Graham Tribute

What I didn't know when I wrote my last post is that Lois was in the hospital. She passed away Tuesday morning, the 9th.

To what I wrote about her, and her artwork, and how she inspired me, I will add that she battled severe health problems for many years. She had debilitating rheumatoid arthritis that was disintegrtating every joint in her body. She had operation after operation, and it was a miracle that she could stand, let alone walk, let alone work so hard at making paintings.

Her immune system was so delicate that it was an infection, minor to most of us, that began the cascade of her organs being finally overwhelmed.

She painted in a large studio two floors above me. Knowing that she was up there every day, and possibly late at night, obsessively making her marks on a canvas, and knowing that she had been doing this for thirty years seemed to me to give a soul and moral direction to this building where several other artists live and/or work.

Several summers ago when I was on the roof garden learning to paint, she stopped to demonstrate a brushstroke. I had been used to making strokes on whole walls and rooms. She showed me how to slow down, and scale down, very small. How to make minute, very soft brustrokes in the oil paint that created a shimmering blended surface. It was a Zen like focus, paying incredible attention to small, small things, that startled me and showed me an intensity that I will always remember and try to emulate.

Thank you to Lois for being passionate and serious about making art.

See http://www.fosterwhite.com for more information.

Shimmering Dazzling Paintings by Lois Graham

Flux 2007 oil on canvas 32 x 72 in.

Recess 2007 oil on canvas 24 x 24 in.

Twist Stitch 2007 oil on canvas 24 x 48 in.

My neighbor, painter Lois Graham is showing at Foster White Gallery in Seattle. The opening was this past thursday night. These paintings are a concentrated distillation of what she has been doing for many years.

The show is beautiful. The surfaces of the paintings seem to shimmer and dance with points of contrasting colors. I couldn't focus my eyes on the center of "Recess". It's as if they have a sound: a low intense humming vibration.

She is truly an inspiration, at work constantly. Her way of life is painting in her studio. http://www.fosterwhite.com/

What a Difference a Frame Makes

Before: a favorite lithograph of a client.

After: Wow. Repeating the dark color inside the print puts weight out onto the frame thus increasing the depth and illusion of the image.
(Thank you to New Dimensions for the mocked-up images)

Mad Over the Top Damask Wallpaper

I'm thinking of hanging this wallpaper in my apartment on one wall. It's from Printer's Guild Productions, gorgeously screen printed. I love how it's an 18th century damask, only blown up very large with that off-set shadow and the distressed finish. Kind of wild and messed up, awesome.

Here is What this Blog is About

I'd like this blog to be all about my passion for design. More than just interior design and decoration, but about how the design of everything enhances or detracts from life. It's about how the color and texture of our surroundings and the everyday things that we live with effect each moment of our lives, which eventually adds up to our whole life.

A lot of the design business is about aspiration, about selling dreams of a certain lifestyle. Ralph Lauren captured America's fantasies about living in the upper class in pre-World War II America. A nostalgia for what we wish we had, or where we wish we had come from. The craze, which thank god is passing, for anything "Tuscan" styled reflects an aspiration or nostalgia for a simpler time in a simpler place where people lived more slowly and more closely to the earth. Calvin Klein's sleek minimalism is about an edited version of reality, maybe a future where only a Zen-like calm is permitted to enter.

This escapism can be comforting, especially given the world around us right now (that world which I can write about on a different blog...), but to me design also needs to be about the present, and the real.

What does the chair you are sitting in feel like? Is the lighting where you are sitting comfortable? How does the color on the walls make you feel? Is there something close by which brings back a good memory, or which reminds you of someone you love, or that is comforting for you to pick up and hold? Do you have a place to set your drink? Can you reach that book you were looking for?

Your life is mostly made up of the small repetitive tasks that we do every day. For example a large part of our lives are spent in bed sleeping, so what is the bedding like? Do you have a truly comfortable mattress? Do you have good pillows? What is the surface of the sheets like? It's touching your skin for 8 hours. Does it feel good? Does it absorb moisture and keep you comfortable? Where do your feet touch down when you get out of bed? Is it cold and slick, or soft? When you dry off after bathing, does your towel really absorb, or does it have so much synthetic fiber content that it just pushes the water around your skin? Think of the doorknobs and handles in your life. Do they feel comfortable, solid and trustworthy or are they sharp edged, or flimsy?

What about sound? Can you hear yourself think, or are there so many hard surfaces and open spaces that your home is like an echo chamber where everyone hears everything all at once? Is the noise of the street invading? In my case the answer is yes, and I'm working on heavy fabric window treatments that will screen out the noise and give me more visual privacy, but also more of a feeling of remove from the outside which I need in the middle of the city.

Your body meets the material world through designed objects and spaces, the things that you touch and use every day, as well as the things you see and hear around you. Design is about the senses, your senses, not other people's senses, unless you are hosting them in your world.

Color, light, texture, sound, temperature, and smell are the ways your environment interacts with you. Design is about making all those things intentional in a way that will enhance all the moments that add up to the greater whole of your days and your life.

This is why design is really about reality more than fantasy. When reality is taken care of and things are really working, then fantasy and romance thrown in adds life and emotion.

This is why your home should not be like a hotel, or a magazine page. A hotel does not have your books and pictures, or your memories. A hotel does not have your personal and family history. A picture from a magazine or a set in a furniture showroom doesn't have those things either. (Your friend's house does not have those things either.)

Design is personal, it's real, it's about the here and now, and it's also about what moves you and what you dream of, less about what other people see or what they think of you. If we're only out to impress, which I will admit we all are to some extent, then design is cold and impersonal. The space which is based on impressing others reflects that we don't know who we are, or that we are trying to convince the world that we are someone else. From that impulse stems a lot of not-so-good design.

So for me the design process is a process of honesty, practicality and self discovery with some fantasy and romance thrown in to keep things fun. A designer's or decorator's job is to look and listen very carefully, then bring his or her skills and resources to bear in creating something personal to the client, but which also embodies the high aesthetic values that only come from having a trained and experienced eye.

Ready for New Colors?

This is where color is going. Cool blues, greys, violets, accented with acidic greens. Cool neutrals infused with color. Refreshing huh? After years of warm earth colors. You knew it would happen. (Painting from a favorite painter: Richard Diebenkorn)

Mad Fabulous Wallpaper from Timourous Beasties

This would work equally well in a tradtional room, or a very contemporary room. I've fantasized about hanging this (in the blue) in my apartment. Timourous Beasties is from Scotland, available in the US through Holland & Sherry.

C/2, The Best Collection of Paint Colors

Paint chips from C/2. The best collection of colors. Yes, better than Divine. And the paint is great to work with. The painters love it once they get past the sticker shock.

Beautiful Chair

"Klismos Chair" by T.H. Robsjohn Gibbings, probably from the 50's

A Small Painting to Start Things Out

From my "View From the Roof" series painted last summer.

E-Mail me for more info.