Zen Moment

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

"In The Afternoon" by Josef Salvat

As evidenced in his song "In The Afternoon," cute Australian singer-songwriter Josef Salvat has a varied dating life. I can respect that.

Et c'est une belle surprise qu'il chante la même chose à Français. Il chante comme un vrai Français!

https://www.josefsalvat.com/

Time For Art

I won't lie, the virus has me worried. Here in Northern California, we are under a stay-at-home order. I have only been out twice for food. Now, my life is normally quite full with my interior design business, and my on-camera and stage acting, as well as my home life and friends. I don't wish to minimize the severity of the current global situation, but experiencing so much downtime has been an interesting experience. It has actually been nice to have a little time to get in touch with some slower creativity (if only it could be under different, less tragic circumstances).

I was cleaning out a corner of my office where I had developed a nice stack of design and shelter magazines, and while leafing through them to see what I wanted to keep, I was struck by individual elements and textures. And I flashed on making some collage art. So I cut out what caught my eye and set to work. I made eight collages over 2 days, and I had a fantastic time doing it. It ended up almost being like meditation...I just did it all by instinct, without much thinking. It was relaxing to lose myself in the process; they sort of assembled themselves. Here are the results.

Top to bottom: The Time Is Now; I No Longer Love Death Valley; The Invention Of The Idea Of Architecture; The Secret Of All Victory; Everything That Rises Just Gets Farther Away; The Lessons Of History Are Ignored Or Forgotten; Bosky Groves Give Way; You Should Have Known

FEATHER Wallcoverings

Regular readers may recall my main profession is interior design and one of my favorite aspects of my career is being exposed to so many new, innovative, and unique products.

And I must profess my love for the Finnish wallcovering company FEATHER, founded by friends Tom, Anne, and Oli. I'm itching to find a client who will love these patterns as much as I do.

Their company creates amazing wallpapers and murals like this gorgeous watercolor series by LA artist Stacy Solodkin.

Artist Magnus Gjoen has created several marvelous wallcoverings for FEATHER that riff on the ideas of Neo-Classical, Georgian, and Victorian wallcoverings but with a wry, modern twist.

His "Flower Bomb" paper looks like a typical design featuring a spray of flowers but when studied closely, that spray is in the shape of a missile.

Gjoen's incredibly realistic trompe-l'œil paper "Victory Over Ignorance" is startling in its depth. The red stripes actually seem to hover over the antique black and white botanical etchings below.

And finally, what self respecting Victorian would not love this florid, Flemish-flowered paper with hidden skulls.

The papers from their regular lines are just as wonderful. I love the Art Deco vibe of this design called "Ember."

The mash up of graffiti and oil paint is exciting in "Glowing Shards Blue."

Take a look at the tranquility of "Ornament," "Oslo," and "Raindrops."

And "Superabstract" is a fun homage to the graphics of the 60s and 70s while "Utopia" is pure 1980s Memphis style!

https://www.feathr.com/

Etnia References Classic Art

I love when photographers recreate famous paintings (I think it started for me with Steve Martin's 1981 film "Pennies From Heaven" which recreated Edward Hopper paintings, and that same year Malcolm McLaren's recreation of Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe for his New Romantic group Bow Wow Wow, previously here in a post about Dame Vivienne Westwood) and Spanish eyewear company Etnia has recreated some marvelous classic art works for their newest collection titled Anartist.

They started with some marvelous copies of works by Klilmt. Here is their image followed by the original The Kiss by Klimt.

Klimt painted Judith and Holofernes, a piece showing Judith from the Biblical story holding the head of Holofernes. Etnia created two image based on this Klimt narrative. Note the amazing chokers, both seemingly made from waste parts of old computers...and that Holofernes' head is here a motorcycle helmet.

Klimt painted an epic wall mural--coming in at 7 feet high and a whopping 112 feet wide, covering several walls--for the 14th Vienna Secessionist exhibition in 1902 which I previously wrote about here. It was part of an assemblage referred to as a "Gesamtkunstwerk" or a "total art work" meant to unite the arts (painting, sculpture, and music). For this exhibition, the artists celebrated the idea of the misunderstood, lone hero of Beethoven. Max Klinger created a massive sculpture of Beethoven while Klimt created his wall mural based on Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Here is a detail from a section of the mural individually titled The Hostiles.

Moving further back in time to 1830, this delightful copy is of Liberty Leading The People by French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix.

The Spanish Baroque artist Diego Velázquez painted The Triumph of Bacchus in 1628-1629...

...while 150 years prior, Sandro Botticelli painted Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder. I love how the modern photograph has the young man holding a sliced eggplant which actually does resemble the surface of the original medal!

A mash-up of two paintings--Raphael's Portrait of Young Woman with Unicorn from 1506 and Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine from 1489--inspired this look-alike.

And speaking of da Vinci, his Salvator Mundi is here portrayed by a woman. But actually there is some controversy about whether this is an actual da Vinci...

https://www.etniabarcelona.com/