A reader asked if I could provide a closer look at the gallery wall of paintings, photos, and drawings in the main room. Anything for my fans! I'm happy with the way this assemblage turned out. I did a similar one in my old apartment, this is basically the same configuration, just slightly altered to fit this new space...plus I've added a few more finds. That's the great thing about this kind of arrangement, it grows organically. You just keep adding to it once you've got a basic layout, you can't screw it up. The other great thing is that, as in my case, none of the art is of any great value (other than sentimental), and any one piece by itself is not so special, but massed together it all makes a cohesive decorating statement.
Here's the overall layout:
This is a painting I dashed off quickly one night while I was watching John Edwards give a speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Funny how something like that sticks in your head. I was inspired by the drawings Ethan Hawke did in a remake of "Great Expectations" a few years earlier (good art, bad movie). Here's mine plus a still from the movie where Ethan is showing Gwyneth Paltrow a drawing he's done of her, you can see how I ripped off the style:
A small figural drawing I bought upstate at an antique store, I liked the frame because I think it's homemade, it's very 'off plumb':
A snapshot of me in the backyard of my house from a few years back. I love this time of the afternoon in that famous Hamptons Light, after the beach and just before cocktails!:
This art piece was 30 years in the making! It's a collage of fortune cookie fortunes that I had saved for years and years. I always knew I was going to do
something with all those slips of paper, and then ultimately, I did. They represent a LOT of beef with snow peas and General Tso's chicken. I got the frame from IKEA, I like the beveled edge. A few straggler fortunes have been taped on after the fact, good ones I couldn't part with:
I've had this architectural rendering for a good twenty-five years. I got it at the old 26th Street flea market for a song. It looks to me like a design for a 1930s California bungalow. I like the design of the house and the architectural firm's name is at at the bottom, "Berlinger & Kaufman." It's done in watercolor and ink. I like the figure of the woman on the porch with a bun in her hair and a serape:
This is an ink drawing I did way back in 1980. My mom framed it and had it in her house for years, then she gave it to me. It's based on a famous old photograph of Jane Fonda from the 1960's I saw in Life magazine once. I liked her pose and interpolated it into this work:
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| The inspiration photograph by Jean-Pierre Lagarde from 1966 |
When the construction on the apartment was in full swing after the demolition, I stopped by one weekend to see how things were progressing. The workmen had created a pile of rubble and sitting on top was this little piece of cardboard, a die-cut figure of a cloaked nurse. It was a calendar you could stand up on your desk, most of the pages on the little pad of months were still there as "February" was the first one showing...and it was from 1948! Maybe it was a giveaway from a hospital? Who knows? The only writing on it said "The Visiting Nurse", and the oddest thing was that her head was missing, torn off sometime over the years. No telling where they found this in the apartment, maybe in a high cupboard or the back of a closet. The lady who lived here before me had been here over 50 years. I did know one thing though, I didn't want to throw it out, that would have been bad luck somehow, "Bad Joo-Joo" as my friend Carmine calls it. So I framed The Visiting Nurse and she looks over the apartment and brings it protection :)
I wanted a punch of color and found this little red frame somewhere. I did up this graphic for modernity, a quote from an old T.S.Eliot poem I've always liked...
"Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
My friend Jan gave me this painting about 15 years ago, if memory serves she got it at the flea market. We think it's a study, probably oil or acrylic, the artist did for a more detailed painting. It's Modigliani-esque but instead of a long faced girl, this is a young boy with his kooky little dog peeping out from behind him (my favorite part!):
This is a photo I took after a day of shopping in Stockholm, Sweden. I had purchased a passel of mid-century Scandinavian pottery and set up this little still life in my hotel room:
An old photo of my very young parents, my baby sister, and me on the front lawn of my grandmother's house...i'm guessing this is 1963 or '64:
An ink on paper abstract by me. Over the years, the more I stare at it, the more it looks like a dog's face with his ears perked up, LOL:
A photo of little me, probably one year old, all duded up in my cowboy outfit, a little Texan!:
Years ago I took a figural drawing class down in Soho, this is one of the sketches from that session with a live nude model. I should do more of that, art classes keep your drawing 'chops' active, those models keep moving and you've got to be quick on the draw:
Another pencil drawing I did back in college (when dinosaurs roamed the earth). I must've been 17 or 18 when I did this. I look at it and think, "Boy, you had talent once":
