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April 22, 2013
 Ettore Sottsass is one of my all time favorite designers! He is credited with the style known as memphis, and his designs and jewelry were fantastic!
I hope you enjoy this post! Love, Jamie
Ettore Sottass worked as a design consultant for Olivetti from 1958 to 1980, creating the Elea 9003 calculator and the popular portable red typewriter, released on Valentine’s Day in 1969. Mr. Sottsass referred
to his typewriter as the “anti-machine machine.” Its features included a carriage that dropped to the level of the keyboard and a storage case, though it was the color that made it memorable.
“Every color has a history,” Mr. Sottsass said two years ago. “Red is the color of the Communist flag, the color that makes a surgeon move faster and the color of passion.”
In the 1970s, Alessi hired Mr. Sottsass, who designed various items for the company, like ice condiment sets, soup plates and coasters. He also designed a decanter for Baccarat; a chair for Knoll; and
carpet for Namastre.
 In the 1980s, Mr. Sottsass was one of the founders and the leading figure of Memphis, the Milan design group famous for brightly colored postmodern furniture, lighting and ceramics. Its collection includes
glassworks, and large sculptural cabinets made of acrylic, aluminum and tropical wood.
April 19, 2013
I have always loved photography, landscapes; still life’s and you know it is a recurring theme on my blog. Today I would like to introduce you to one of my favorite German photographers, known for his fantastic approach
 to landscapes.
I hope you enjoy this post and have a fabulous day! Love, Jamie
Axel is involved with ‘landscape’ on many different levels and is constantly shifting his focus, whether it is to do with the city itself, its outskirts and boundaries and also where the ‘natural landscape’ begins.
The untouched or virgin landscape has provided his main motivation in recent years, requiring long distance journeys to many different continents. Increasingly, Hütte has been drawn to more sparsely populated areas in order to concentrate on
 native in its purest form.
 The resulting photographs emphatically reveal strong painterly qualities. The absence of any people in his landscapes stresses the sheer grandiosity of nature, and at the same time transforming the viewer into an absent witness.
April 18, 2013
Whenever I think about Noguci’s work, I think about Nakashimia’s work. This must be for the reason that their work with organic designs in wood are so stunning to me. And the time frame and the history of both their
lives regarding the history of the United States is fascinating.
 Nakashima (1905-1990) was born in Spokane, Washington, and grew up in the forests of the Olympic Peninsula. He attended the University of Washington,
where he initially studied forestry before switching to architecture.
After earning his master’s degree in architecture at MIT in 1930, Nakashima went to work for modern architect Antonin Raymond in Tokyo. Under Raymond,
Nakashima spent three years supervising the construction of the
 first reinforced concrete building in Pondicherry, India. When war broke out, Nakashima returned via Tokyo to the United States. Shortly after his marriage to Marion
and the birth of his daughter, Mira, the family was interned at the camps in
Minidoka, Idaho. It was there that Nakashima met Gentaro Hikogawa, a man trained in traditional Japanese carpentry. Under his tutelage,
Nakashima learned to master traditional Japanese hand tools and joinery techniques.
“Work for him was a spiritual calling, a linking of his strength to a transcendental force, a surrender to the divine, a form of prayer,” says Mira of her father’s approach to woodworking. 
In 1946, Nakashima agreed to have a few of his designs – including the Straight Back Chair – marketed by Knoll, a manufacturer of innovative modern furniture that was founded in New York three years earlier. In order to
accommodate growing demand, Nakashima worked with the Knoll product development team to manufacture his furniture at an off-site Knoll facility.
The relationship between Nakashima and Knoll ended in 1954. Then in 2008, Knoll, in collaboration with Mira Nakashima-Yarnall, reintroduced the Nakashima Straight Back Chair and Splay-Leg Table to its product line.
In order to get the chair and table ready once again for large-scale production, Knoll’s product engineers had the pieces digitally scanned and translated into 3D modeling and architectural programs. Mira worked closely
with the Knoll design team to ensure the integrity and quality of the final product compared to the designer’s original. Today, the Knoll versions of the Straight Back Chair and Splay-Leg Table are manufactured in upstate New York.
The artist’s original version of the Straight Back Chair is still handcrafted at George Nakashima Woodworker’s studio using air-dried walnut, hand-shaved hickory spindles and a hand-rubbed oil finish.
ENJOY!
LOVE,
JAMIE
April 17, 2013
 Tony Rosenthal was among the most amazing public sculptors that ever lived. His work, most of us have seen in person and adore. I hope you enjoy this post! Love,
Jamie
In sheer visibility, Mr. Rosenthal occupied a leading place among contemporary artists. His five works of public sculpture in Manhattan, and dozens of similar works in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and other cities, guaranteed him a vast audience every week, yet he remained, if not obscure, much less than famous.
He was best known for “Alamo,” familiarly called “The Cube” and a neighborhood favorite since it was installed in 1967 as part of the city’s
“Sculpture in Environment” program. All 25 works in the program were intended to be temporary installations, but after residents in the Astor Place area petitioned the city, “Alamo” stayed.
A 15-foot-square cube, made of Cor-Ten steel plates, it stands on one point and revolves on a pedestal, which has endeared it to students at nearbyCooper Union, skateboarders who rally around it and East Village tourists
 Mr. Rosenthal is also represented in Manhattan by “Rondo”
(1969), the gleaming bronze circle in front of the New york Public Library’s branch on East 58th Street; “5 in 1” (1973) at
Police Plaza; “SteelPark” (1980) at 80th Street near First Avenue; and “Hammarskjold,” originally installed at Hammarskjold Plaza in 1977 but acquired the next year by the Fashion Institute of technology on Seventh Avenue at 27th Street.
April 16, 2013
 For me, if there was just one piece of sculpture I could own-ok this is pretend right, because we all know I can never even imagine to have only one of anything I love!-BUT if it was to be taht, it would definitely be a NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE. For so many years I ahve loved and admired her work, and today’s post I hope brings you smiles!
Have a wonderful day!
Love,
Jamie
Niki de Saint Phalle’s decorative style is known for its vivid mosaic surfaces, which bear the influence of Gaudi’s distinctive technique , whilst the architectural scale of the figures blur the boundaries between sculpture and functional objects.
Both fantastical and overwhelming in physical presence, are examples of Niki de Saint Phalle’s personal yet universal iconography. Indeed, the artist concluded: ‘in my work… everything is used great joys, desires, tragedies and pains.
It is all subjective. It is all my life. Nothing is secret. I have nowhere to hide. Luckily people cannot always see what they look at. It is their own past, their unconscious dreams that they see’.
 Playful, bold and baroque, Niki de Saint Phalle’s large-scale multimedia sculptures are among the most idiosyncratic three-dimensional works of the post-war and contemporary era. Their bright, richly textured surfaces,
animated by arabesque patterns and reflective mosaics, imbue each sculpture with a unique sensory immediacy. Niki de Saint Phalle first began to create figural sculpture in 1965 when she conceived of her Nanas an extensive
series of works inspired by the changing position of women in contemporary society. These corpulent figures, typically engaged in a playful dance, convey a spirit of freedom and jubilation, and represent the artist’s provocation
of the male-dominated Parisian art world.
 Without doubt the most distinctive characteristic of these sculptures is their sense of theatricality, which achieved something of an apotheosis in Niki de Saint Phalle’s
Tarot Garden a monumental sculpture park in Garavicchio, Tuscany, on which the artist began working in 1979. It was inspired in large part by the Art Nouveau architecture
of Antoni Gaudí, which she first discovered in 1955 whilst on a trip to Barcelona. Its boundaries contain numerous immense sculptures based on the icons found on tarot cards
and opened to the public in 1998 after almost twenty years of development. This ongoing project inspired the often gargantuan scale of Niki de Saint Phalle’s standalone
sculptures including the present work, Buddha, which was one of the last pieces the artist created before her death in 2002.
April 15, 2013
I love when I can introduce you to designers of my favorite time period who are so current today ! RENE HERBST’S SANDOWS chair is one of the most iconic chairs and
is enjoying a new following of fans! You know the chair! the bungee cord chair!
René Herbst was born in Paris in 1891 in Paris and studied architecture in London and Frankfurt from 1908 before traveling extensively in Russia and Italy. By 1919 René Herbst was back in Paris,
where he worked as a furniture designer and interior decorator. To make the products he designed, Herbst founded Établissements René Herbst. In 1925 René Herbst designed several exhibition stalls for the
“Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes”
in Paris. In 1927 René Herbst came up with a radically functional design for seat furniture: the “Chaise Sandows”. Its frame was made of nickel-plated tubular steel, the seat and back were formed by strips of
 rubber stretched taught and fastened by hooks at the ends to the frame.
René Herbst launched the “Chaise Sandows” at the 1929 Salon d’Automne, where Le Corbusier also presented furniture with tubular steel frames of his own design. In 1930 René Herbst joined Robert Mallet-Stevens-(BLOG TO FOLLOW),
Francis Jourdain, and others in founding the Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM); a large group of artists and designers committed to Modernism soon joined. The UAM started out as a countermovement to Art déco, which its members rejected as
overloaded with decoration and too ornate.
ENJOY!
LOVE,
JAMIE
April 12, 2013
I love the work of Marie Bovo-her work called ‘Cour Interieure gives new meaning to looking up. Have you ever looked at a snap shot out of daily life and thought how much it can be construed as an art form? This series gives meaning to just that.
Originally from Alicante, Spain, photographer Marie Bovo now lives and works in Marseille.
Enjoy!
Love,
Jamie
April 11, 2013
 One of my all time favorite female artists, is the sculptor Ruth Asawa. In San Francisco she is known as the “Fountain Lady”. Her attention to mind blowing detail is outrageous and the sculptures are amazing!
I hope you enjoy this post!
Love, Jamie
Ruth Asawa was born in 1926 in Norwalk, California. In 1942, she and her family were detained through the Japanese American Internment of World War II. Asawa later attended Milwaukee State Teachers  College, but her Japanese
heritage impeded her student teaching training and prevented her from fulfilling   her degree requirements. Instead, she attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina where she studied with Bauhaus Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller.
At Black Mountain, she began her experimentation with looped wire sculpture. Between 1950 and 1960, Asawa started showing work in solo and group shows nationally and internationally, including shows at the SFMOMA, the de Young,
the Oakland Art Museum, Chicago’s Art Institute, the Whitney, MoMA, and the Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil. In the decades that followed, Asawa became increasingly active in the community, on a local and national level.
April 10, 2013
 For years I have often wondered with modern art, why it seems to take such explanations in order to have the audience understand the painter. Robert Combas is an artist just like that. He began in Paris
around the 1980′s and was one of the founders of a movement Figuration Libre-or Free figuration- In essence-it is a movement that draws on pop cultural influences such as graffiti, cartoons and rock  music.
The artists paint in this manner in an attempt to produce a more varied, direct and honest reflection of contemporary society, often satirizing or critiquing its excesses.
 For me, I look at his work, thinks its definitely in a response to something culturally and just enjoy. Sometimes fewer words when trying to describe art the better.
I was standing one day in a museum, listening to a docent describe to the listeners about art,  along the lines of this, and thought, why? art sometimes is better left to the individuals imagination. I find that lately i keep hearing too many
 explanations for every emotion and justifying why that particular emotional Cant we all be quiet for a minute?
Enjoy your day, and try not to put too many words to it!
Love, Jamie
April 9, 2013
 “Searching, I roamed the world—to arrive at the origin—at beauty—at truth—away from the lies of everyday—and my longing was burning hot—then the darkness opened up and I stood at the source
of the Beginning—Paradise.”
For Irma Stern, one of South Africa’s most outstanding artists, Africa was her “Paradise,” the intellectual and emotional mainspring of her artistic creativity. She occupies a unique place in the history of modern
South African art and her works are to be found in many galleries and public collections in South Africa and abroad. She was essentially a product of two worlds. Although born in South Africa, her background,
education and culture were European. However it was Africa that provided the inspiration and canvas for her art.
Irma Stern was the daughter of German-Jewish parents, Samuel and Hennie Stern, who came to South Africa around 1886.
Irma Stern’s first exhibition in South Africa in 1920 was held at Ashbey’s Gallery in Cape Town. In the staid,  colonial art world of Cape Town, the vitality and exuberance of her work shocked and outraged
critics and audiences, eliciting
abusive descriptions such as “Agonies in Oils”, “Lunatic inspirations” and “Insults to human intelligence” and even a police investigation into complaints of public indecency! It took time for her espousal
of modernism and her primary
tools of color and rhythm to find acceptance in the conservative art world of South Africa. Some of her earliest support came from South Africa’s more culturally progressive Jewish community
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