Friday, October 4, 2024

Design Chicago 2024

 


I went to Design Chicago last week and had a great time checking out new products in the showrooms.  What really stood out to me this year were these incredibly plush upholstery fabrics. They feel amazing! They would make wonderful throw pillows.


Kravet


S. Harris




Here are the rest of my favorite things I saw this year.


Fabricut


Stroheim


Stroheim


Fabricut


*everything I like gets discontinued


Carlucci Fabrics

S. Harris

S. Harris



Osborne & Little

Osborne & Little


Designers Guild

Designers Guild


C.A.I. Designs


A. Rudin


A. Rudin


A. Rudin



C.A.I. Designs


C.A.I. Designs


Century


Stark


The Romo Group


The Romo Group


The Romo Group


The Romo Group


Baker Furniture


Baker Furniture


Baker Furniture


Baker Furniture


Baker Furniture


Baker Furniture



Interior Crafts


Atelier Agahzadeh



Holland & Sherry



Assembled Works



The showrooms also had beautiful art. Holly Hunt has a stunning collection.


Jean Alexander Frater





Though it's hard to tell in the first photo, this Eberhard Ross painting looks like its sides are glowing. There are no electric lights involved. The edges of the canvas are beveled and painted a really bright shade of orange! It's reflected on the wall.






I enjoyed having the opportunity to see so much beautiful art and design in person and look forward to next year's show.






Thursday, August 15, 2024

Beautiful experiments

Working on these experimental mini paintings has been a lot of fun. These pieces all have one material in common: paper towels. Defective paper towels, to be specific. Something must have gone wrong in the Viva factory the day mine were manufactured because the ones I picked up shed lint everywhere. My refund from Target paid for a replacement, but I decided to keep the linty paper towels so I could make art with them. I was initially considering running them through a blender with some water to make pulp and my own handmade paper, or even papier mâché. But then I decided to try something else. 


I used them to create textured surfaces and painted them with my inks and watercolors. I was impressed with how thirstily they absorb water-based media.






After I finished painting them, I sealed them with acrylic varnish. 






I have really enjoyed the process and am pleased to have some new work to sell at my in-person events. Now that I see what I can do with this material at a smaller scale, I look forward to incorporating it into larger works. That's the beauty of experimenting with miniature artwork.