An Auspicious Day

Here we all are, sharing a day that comes once in a century!

Completely irrational, it never ends and never repeats itself.

Math is usually all Greek to me; much as I love geometry and use it endlessly in my interiors. 

In case you forgot, Pi is the circumference of any circle, divided by its diameter.

 I do believe that everything and everyone is connected, and there is no beginning or end.

What I love about interior design are the special relationships that evolve in the process. Just consider the many people and resources that get involved in the production of putting an interior together! It is a richly layered tapestry that is completely unique.

Sometimes, in the creative process, I do feel that I am going in circles with no end in sight. There seems no end of irrationality!

I like that I have the area code 314 for telephonic communications; isn't it time that you got around to calling me?

Enough with the math,let's all enjoy some other kind of pie!

Rescue Me!

If you are down in the doldrums and want to be rescued, my suggestion is to medicate yourself with a good dose of art and music.  I recently had the perfect sort of day...a morning visit to see an art exhibit of Federico Barocci bookended with an evening musical tribute to Fontella Bass...who could want for anything more?

Entombment of Christ, 1579-82

Federico Barocci

Oil on canvas 116 1/8" x 78 5/8"

Chiesa della Croce, Senigallia

And who is Federico Barocci and Fontella Bass, you may ask? Federico was a Renaissance artist famous in his own time, but rather forgotten otherwise. Fontella was a soul and gospel singer who had one big hit with the song "Rescue Me",  in 1965.  

Fontella Bass

July 3, 1940 -  December 26, 2012

R.I.P., Divine Diva

The St. Louis Art Museum is essentially in my own back yard and less than 5 minutes away.  But to get to the church where Fontella's memorial was to take place required Mapquest.  And interestingly enough, Mapquest chose a 30 minute route through the most gangster-ridden, dangerous neighborhoods you can imagine. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea", I thought, as I barreled past boarded up buildings in the bleak, battle-zone blocks of North St. Louis.  Funny how Mapquest doesn't take the particular property of personal peril into account. Well, perhaps the route was all part of a pilgrimage experience, so as to get a deeper understanding of the roots of black music.  You gotta show some respect to the dearly departed, so I took my chances. 

Amazing grace! The adventurous ramble ended up at a large Christian church in an outlying suburban locale.  I quickly observed that I was definitely one of a minority complexion, but was received with sincere warmth and welcome by the assembled family and friends. What then commenced were prayers, poems and musical selections of gospel, blues, and soul that righteously rocked the roof off. An after-set followed in The Duck Room at Blueberry Hill, which is practically in my own front yard. It was indeed a fitting send-off to Fontella.

Studies for the Virgin's hands

Federico Barocci

Charcoal with red and pink pastel heightened with white on blue paper

10 13/16" x 15 1/2"

Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

My message today is to get off the couch and go see some good art and listen to some good music - it is out there and likely in your own front or back yard! And if you haven't yet seen the current exhibit of Barocci at the St. Louis Art Museum, you'd better run, because it runs only through January 20th. You will be awed by the intimacy of sketches and drawings that build up to the finished paintings.  You will be able to observe the creative process of a great artist. The show is composed of 134 pieces, assembled from all corners of the world, so this will save you a lot of money and time in travel expenses. Better get going and you'll feel like you're in heaven!

If you still need rescuing, listen to Fontella:

1. Fontella Bass - Rescue Me (1965) - YouTube

   ► 1:52► 1:52

   www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndO80eh9YwIShare

   Mar 6, 2009 - Uploaded by John1948Five

   The 1965 classic "Rescue Me" is widely regarded as the greatest record Aretha Franklin never made. The song ...

2. 
   

Imagine a Mirror!

"No, but I used to like walking backwards", Rosemary said in response to my question if she used to walk around with mirrors held horizontal as a child, so as to imagine walking on the ceiling.  Ah yes, another way to experience sensory perceptions from a time long ago. Both required curiosity and courage. It does allow you to see things differently and gain a better perspective. Nice to see  the artist Anish Kapoor using the medium of mirrors in the lofty realm of fine art.

Sky Mirror

Rockefeller Center NYC 2006 

Anish Kapoor

photo by Brad Patrick at en.Wikipedia

To think that we started with gazing into a bowl of water in prehistoric times, we've come a long way baby.  But can you believe that it has been only 177 years that we've had mirrors as we are used to today? Prior to this, mirrors were enormously rare and expensive, so the populous had to make do with the puddle.  It was the old 1% deal.

Mirrors

 Obsidian 

6000 BC from Anatolia, Turkey

These polished and burnished slabs of rock may have been wetted to help with the reflection. Copper mirrors were found in 4000 BC Mesopotamia.  

Early Chinese octagon mirror, front and back

Bronze

Bronze followed suit in China and India c. 2000 BC, which required periodic polishing by the 99%.  

Egyptian,  New Kingdom (1550-1070 BC)

This one could use a little elbow grease, too!

Milo

43 x 81 cm

Homage to Carlo Mollino (1937)

www.Zanotta.it

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? Have an instant great figure, courtesy of Venus de Milo!  Art and architecture made huge strides in ancient Greece, but a bronze hand-held mirror was likely all that Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty ever owned.

Mirror, Roman

Metal-coated glass was invented in modern-day Lebanon around 100 AD. Later, the Romans made the leap to using molten lead on blown glass. Cleopatra (69-30 BC) likely enjoyed reflecting her renowned beauty with this new technology via Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. 

Mirror, Middle Ages

People muddled with their murky mirrors in the middle ages until the big breakthrough of glass-blowing in the 14th century. Little pieces of broken blown glass were used as convex mirrors, which seemed an improvement over the unevenness of lumpy metal.  They didn't mind, probably because they had to worry about plague rather than obesity as we do nowadays! 

I like the connection those early mirrors have with modern day security mirrors, which I enjoy using in residential interiors. 

Girandole mirror

England/America 1800's

giltwood, mercury, gesso

4'11"h  x  11"d  x  45"w

David Skinner Antiques

Really, wasn't this just a fore-runner of the security mirrors commonplace at convenience markets today? Likely the homeowner was ensuring that the silver wasn't pocketed!

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) 

Vitruvian Man, 1487

shown with mirror writing

Leonardo was fascinated with mirrors.  He suggested that artists use mirrors to compare their work with the reflection of what they were painting from.  This was a technique that I was taught in art school, and I use it to look at my art or interiors with more objectivity.  It's like flipping your right brain with your left brain.  Leonardo frequently wrote backwards, in what is called 'mirror writing'.  It's easy to read if you hold it up to a mirror, as all schoolchildren know.

Venetian Giltwood Mirror c. 1685

112"h  x 48"h

Richard Shapiro Antiques and Works of Art

In the 16th century, the Italian island of Murano, near Venice, became the most important center of mirror production.  Methods were perfected using an amalgam of tin and mercury over ever larger sheets of glass. It was not until 1835, when Justus von Leibig discovered how to thinly layer silver onto glass, that we came to have the mirrors that we take for granted today! Nowadays less expensive processes and materials allow the mass-production of mirrors to the minions. 

The imperfect reflections of ancient mirrors are amusement for us today - we don't know how hard things were in the old days! These purposely warped mirrors are good to have around to keep your sense of humor intact -  doctors agree that a  good laugh is important to your physical and mental health!

vacuum deposited silver metal surface on polyester sheet

84" x 56"

Here's a cool, inexpensive product (about $170)  just ripe for imaginative minds.

hiroshi 

design Marta Laudani - Marco Romanelli

100 x 8 x 100 cm

Hanging mirror in 6mm - thick curved silver-backed glass 

Fiam Italia

This mirror would nicely accommodate someone with multiple personalities.  Or, the planes of glass could suggest a past, present, and a future. The largest central area could be the present, right now on April 16th, 2012. Indeed, walking backwards in time, we can see that we've come a long way since peering into a pool!

Through the Looking Glass

One of my favorite past times as a child was walking around with a mirror, held horizontally, and imagining that I was walking on the ceiling.  This gave me an entirely new perspective on the space in which I lived, and guaranteed endless entertainment. Grasping everything from a hand mirror to a picture size mirror so as to increase the effect, I would carefully step over door headers and ceiling beams, skirt around light fixtures and plunge into the abyss above a staircase. The magic of the mirror has never ceased to fascinate me.

Photograph by Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The New Museum in New York recently hosted "Carsten Holler: Experience",  where you could don a pair of "upside-down-goggles" so that your eyes would do a back flip. The show was hailed as an art world amusement park and included corkscrew slides, a sensory deprivation tank, and light shows that would leave you hallucinating. Just my kind of show!  For those of you who missed it, I recommend the my old-fashioned method of walking around your home with as big a mirror as you can manage, an epsom salt bath, and some psychedelic drugs (Steve Jobs would approve). 

I was amazed to find this unique clothing boutique image in my files. I believe it may be in Paris, showing a room completely upside down. Just imagine how discombobulating but fun it must be! Just imagine the designer selling the concept to the client: "Let's make the showroom upside down"! The herringbone parquet installers might not have been so enthralled, but obviously the client took the bait.

Christie's auction of The Collection of Will Fisher, founder of Jamb

Otherwise, a safe, tamer and more affordable way of delving into the "other-world" of the mirror is simply to see what your wall mirrors are reflecting.  We can get "turned on" by how artfully the reflection is arranged.  It's a simple way for you to "make art".

Vicente Wolf

Vicente Wolf has been using large mirrors for years to tell a different story of what is typically reflected.  In this case, he calls attention to the interesting table legs and echoes the beckoning hand sculpture. The mirror is actually a three-dimensional piece of stainless steel, polished and framed with a satin finish bevel. He likes that there is a bit of distortion; that is when the fun begins!

IKEA

New mirrors are like children and teenagers. They are lucky to survive a generation, given the throw-away society that we now live in. Funny that Ikea included dinosaurs as props. These mirrors will be extinct, too, in no time flat.  But instead of being frozen, they'll be melted!

Caadre

design by Philippe Starck

Fiam Italia

Until that day of extinction comes, the more expensive and better quality new mirrors, as this one, will surely endure and be handed down by the generations, the equivalent of the computer age external hard drive, storing 21st century memories.

17th c. Italian giltwood mirror

Interior Design by Michael S. Smith

I am captivated by the souls and the history that antique mirrors contain.  What stories could they tell of the countless scenes that have unfolded in their presence?  How have they witnessed the aging of persons gazing into their never-ending depths?  I view mirrors with the greatest respect for the history that they hold within.  These old mirrors, with beautiful frames, silvered backing on thick glass, are a treasure, and perhaps someday their code of silence will be cracked and their secrets will spill forth. Perhaps someday the technology will allow them to be as a television History Channel. Just touch the mirror and be transported to another world!  

Oh, Bee Hive!

Spring is a-busting out all over with blossoms and blooms! The birds are belting out ballads building to a crescendo, and speaking of birds, I think of the bees.  I do hope that the bees are a-buzzing, what with the strange depletion lately of their pollinating population.

How did bees get the pre-programmed idea that the hexagon would be the perfect solution for their hives? Ah, that we could come up with such an elegant solution for our homes! These exceedingly strong structures are masterpieces in engineering that make the most efficient use of space and labor expended. How amazing, that the mathematically optimal solutions are always found in nature, yet we humans continue to struggle to come up with just the right equation.

As always, we return to geometry in our understanding and discipline in art and design.

wild bee hives 

 Austin Powers had it right when he exclaimed, "Oh behave!"

"BEEHIVE" ceiling lamp A331

Alvar Aalto

1953

The natural beehive form inspired Aalto to create this modernist ceiling lamp from back in the day of "Mad Men" design. 

In relation to this subject, though a human invention, I was inspired to fashion a lamp finial from a honey dipper.  I've seen this form used on cabinet pulls, vases, etc.

www.crossville.com

Everywhere we look, we can find honeycomb/hexagon inspiration.

We see it in numerous shelf designs to stash and store your stuff.

The honeycomb rug pattern adds design interest in its small repetitions of the hexagon shape, providing structure in an open and amorphous interior design.

"Hive"

Janet Lofquist

corten steel

Dedicated September 11, 2009

This sculpture was erected at a Metrolink station nearby my house. Inspired by the idea of community spirit in rebuilding the neighborhood, the artist thought of honeycombs and the bee colony's cooperative efforts in building and maintaining their hives. It is an appropriate symbol for the regeneration of the neighborhood and is very pedestrian friendly.  Frequently children run around it, peer at one another through the cells, and even crawl through the cells.  

Every time I walk or drive by, I think to myself, "Oh, honey!"  I like that the bees have had such a visual impact on our community.  Let us hope that many more hives will prosper in their own livelihood as well!  Buzz on!

Star Struck

Oh, if only my math teacher could have been Donald Duck! Unfortunately, back in the day, I was put in the corner with a dunce hat for all the teaching that didn't crack open my cranium. Nowadays, in schools you'll have courses that blend and overlap as recent teaching strategies have recognized that not everyone learns in exactly the same way. In my previous blog, I wrote about how integral math is to art and design.  How would music be as we know it without mathematics?  Oh, to have had art and music in my math class; that would have been heaven! Don't be square and check out this link and see what Donald Duck has to say about the great adventures that can be had in Math Magic Land.  You won't regret it! Around about the 7 minute mark you will find a nice explanation of the Golden Rectangle, but I recommend that when you have the time to view it in its entirety. 

 http://www.schooltube.com/video/4330a09d98c125dcaa00/Donald%20Duck%20in%20MathMagicLand

Geodesic Terrarium

Glass with bronze finish aluminum

Restoration Hardware

www.restorationhardware.com

As a former art teacher, I was always dismayed by students who claimed that "they couldn't draw a straight line."  What is a geodesic dome but a network of straight lines?  These were generally left brain individuals who at an impressionable age were told they were "no good at art". I always tried to dispel that destructive belief and sow seeds of inspiration that we are all capable of artistic creations on many levels and in many ways.  

Polyhedron

polished stainless steel

Restoration Hardware

www.restorationhardware.com

The polyhedron is a geometric solid in three dimensions with flat faces and straight edges.  This shape has fascinated mankind since antiquity, though it fell out of favor in the middle ages. Revived once more in the Renaissance, interest since then has not flagged.  I like throwing these up on a bookcase or tucked in a corner for a little intellectual stimulation and titillation.

Raimond Lamp by Raimond Puts

stainless 'spring steel"

distributed by B & B Italia/Moooi

www.moooi.com

Oh those Dutch!  Always ahead of the design game, definitely in outer space while the rest of us mortals muddle around on the ground. This chandelier is a perfect recipe composed of mathematical ingredients and lit by tiny LED lights.  Puts lives on a houseboat with his painter wife in Amsterdam.  He is a self-taught designer, and at the ripe age of 70 (yes!) presented this light at the 2009 Milan furniture fair.  It was the star of the show.  He says, "My thoughts are in measurements.  Before I start anything I need to produce precise drawings."  That's always been my inclination when starting an interior design project. I like to measure everything and then start adding, multiplying, dividing and subtracting. I no longer believe that I'm "no good at math" - I just didn't have the right teacher!