A Peek Inside Herringbone Home

Fort Worth blogger Traci Richards snapped some photos yesterday of the new Herringbone Home, which opened this weekend. Read her post, and while you're there, check out her blog.

Artist Pam Nelson's New Home Collection

Well-known Dallas artist Pamela Nelson spent the last three years collaborating with various artisans to translate her paintings onto fabrics, tiles, rugs, and into other objects for the home. 

Some of the talented people she worked with were Philip Einsohn at Accents Con Aqua in Dallas; Peter Fasano Fabrics and Wallpapers in Massachusetts; Janan Ott, master rug hooker, Dallas; and Foster Stained Glass in Bryan, Texas. She has also designed embroideries sewn by Honduran women in co-ops.

Homecoming, a show at Nelson's studio which will debut the collection, opens this Saturday April 4. View the collection every Saturday in April, then in May at Robert Bellamy's studio (Read the press release at the bottom of this post for all the details you need).

Nelson's downtown loft studio.

14" x 14" tiles made from travertine, glass, slate, and inlaid marble.

Chopstick Table, 42 " round pedestal table. 

Gilt sofa with fabric designed by Nelson and printed by Peter Fasano.

16" x 16" inlaid porcelain tiles.

Wave folding screen, steel, glass, rice paper. 5' x 5'.6"

Throw, acrylic on linen.

Textile, acrylic on linen.

Textile, acrylic on linen.

Pam in front of a wall of Texas Medallions, inspired by stained glass rose windows she created for a local church. They're made from wood with beads and jewels. 

See more of her collection on the website, or better yet, go to the show and see them for real. 

PRESS RELEASE

HOMECOMING
An Installation
Paintings, Prototypes, Projects



Dallas Multi-Media Artist Pamela Nelson Debuts HOMECOMING
with Four Saturday Exhibitions in April





Multi-media artist Pamela Nelson presents Homecoming, an exhibition of her recent work and collaborations for the home. Porcelain tiles, wall medallions, wallpapers, rugs, carpet tiles, fabrics and multi-paneled steel, glass and tile screens comprise this vibrant new collection translated from her hybrid painting, sculpture, furniture and assemblages.



“A good word to describe the projects is ‘translations’ because each piece is a translation of my paintings,” Ms. Nelson says. “They are based on pattern, rhythm and repetition, much like daily life, with nuances, surprises and stumbles. I am intrigued by imperfection in natural forms, in the urban grid, in work made by hand. Repetitive work is often women’s work. Parallel lines that never meet. Work that is never finished.”



The name Homecoming has special significance in these times. “We were supposed to have this show at Gerald Peters Gallery but then the gallery closed. So I’m bringing it home to my own studio.” Nelson’s light filled studio is in downtown Dallas, two blocks north of the Farmers’ Market, where she’s worked without ceasing for 15 years.



Nelson has worked on this collaborative effort for nearly three years with four other artists and specialists, mostly in Texas, and with the Honduran Threads co-op which she supports as a board member.



She collaborated with Philip Einsohn at Accents Con Aqua in Dallas to incorporate her organic geometry, as she calls it, into a steel folding screen; inlaid tiles of natural stones, porcelain and glass; and composite rugs.



Peter Fasano of Peter Fasano Fabrics and Wallpapers in Great Barrington, Massachusetts (he is represented by George Cameron Nash in Dallas) produced Nelson’s fabric for her gilt sofas, and her custom wallpaper.



Janan Ott, a master rug hooker in Dallas, translates Nelson’s paintings into a lush hand-hooked rug from American wool. Ms. Ott worked on this five by six foot rug for a year.



Quint Foster of Foster Stained Glass in Bryan, Texas, makes the stained glass fireplace screen and the four-sided mosaic lamps.



Nelson makes the extraordinary Texas Wall Medallions, assemblages on round wood in various sizes representing the 29 cities most important to the artist. Some of these relief sculptures began as paintings, the larger ones named for Dallas and Houston; smaller works for cities such as Lubbock and Bryan. The Bay City medallion includes Nelson’s grandmother’s buttons.



Also among these colorful expressions are the hand-embroidered pillows from the Honduras Threads Co-ops. In this case, Nelson created the designs; the artisans picked the colors, creating spectacular pillow talk for bed, sofa, chairs and floor. “These pillows are amazing,” Nelson says. “One pattern can look a million different ways. I’ve been knocked out! I give them fifteen different designs and they produce endless variations.” The board sends French embroidery thread and cotton fabrics to the co-ops. Fabrics donated by a dozen Dallas designers are also used.



The Homecoming exhibition also includes Nelson’s paintings and works on paper. Also on view are altered and beaded furniture, functional and non functional.



The exhibition Homecoming can be seen by appointment in April and at the Open Studio Salons every Saturday in April (April 4, 11, 18, 25) from 12 Noon to 5 p.m. The exhibition is also online at www.Pamelahnelson.com.



For appointments and information, please contact Judith Segura at Segura Studios,

972 385 4779 or email at judithsegura@sbcglobal.net, or Philip Einsohn at

800 905 6060, email philip@accentsconagua.com.



Pamela Nelson’s studio is located at 312 S. Harwood, Dallas, Texas 75201.



The next venue for Homecoming will be Robert Bellamy’s east Dallas studio, Prairie Dog Imports, in May.

Harringbone Home Opens in Fort Worth

This past weekend, Fort Worth designer Lisa Richards opened her first home design store, Harringbone Home. According to Richards, it sells antique furniture, lighting, and miscellaneous accessories, as well as offering design service. I'm going to make a trip to Fort Worth soon to check it out, and will post the photos here for you.

Genius Among Us

Dallas-born artist and documentary film maker James Dowell (left) and New York-based film maker John Kolomvakis have a screening of their feature documentary, Ned Rorem: Word & Music at 8pm on Monday March 30 at the Lyric Theater, Murchison Performing Arts Center on the UNT campus.

Not familiar with Ned Rorem? Neither was I, sad to say. But we need to be, just as we need to know the work of these two extraordinary film makers. Dowell's core audience is in New York and San Francisco, he admits, where Rorem is a cult hero of sorts. While Dowell's work hasn't gotten much attention in his hometown, the film debuted to critical acclaim at Lincoln Center in New York last year.

Read this excerpt from the press release about the new film:

Ned Rorem is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and a diarist who has been described by Time magazine as "the leading American composer of Art Songs". His numerous diaries constitute one of the most intimate records of the interconnection of gay culture with the larger musical and art worlds. Tim Page, the noted critic for the Washington Post and NPR, has described Rorem’s Nantucket Diaries as, “the earliest and most evocative (account) of the early years of the AIDS epidemic.” We are also given a picture in the diaries of the haute music and art worlds of Paris and New York from the late 1940's to the present. As the subject of Ned Rorem: Word & Music he brings a compelling body of music and also a wide range of cultural experience to this endeavor, which has been filmed from 1994 to 2004.

Rorem, photographed in Nantuckett by Dowell. 

Rorem, as painted during the filming of the documentary, by Dowell. The film took 10 years to make.

"In the context of the film, you see people changing. You see us changing," Dowell told me by phone from the house on Desco where he grew up, and which he recently inherited after his father passed away. "Rorem was in his early 70s when we started filming, and by the time we finished he was 81. He's 86 now.

"....one of the things we had no idea would happen with Ned during the filming, his longtime companion contracted AIDS, and died. It was devastating for Ned, and for us. We had no idea how to deal with it in the movie, as it  fell toward the end of the chronology. We didn't want to end on such a sad note. The film needed something to recover. Then we had our solution. The Van Cliburn Foundation did a tribute to Ned in Dallas, and performed one of his song cycles. Ned came for that, and they had an 81st birthday party for him. So, the film begins in Nantuckett, but then ends in Dallas for the party. We finished the film with this scene. You see him presented with a birthday cake. It was upbeat, sort of life goes on."

One of the things I find so fascinating about Dowell and Kolomvakis' work is how interwoven and serendipitous it is. They met Rorem through the brilliant Pop Art poet Charles Henri Ford, whom they were also making a documentary about, called Sleep in a Nest of Flames. (That one also took about 10 years). 

Charles Henri Ford, as photographed by Cecil Beaton. 

You've got to read how they stumbled on Ford, and by doing so, were able to document an astonishing world inhabited by Ford and his equally astonishing friends. This excerpt is from their website:

In 1992, on a trip to Crete, we found a group of books by the side of a deserted road; abandoned now, they had belonged to an American writer who lived in Greece. Among the many literary volumes in these stacks, was a book of Pop Art poems by Charles Henri Ford, a friend of the writer. This book led us to a meeting with Charles in New York and he, in turn, told us a story that would give us a view onto a special part of the century that has just passed.

... Ford, co- author of The Young and Evil and the subject of Sleep in a Nest of Flames has been a poet and gadfly of the world of art and letters over the last 70 years. He has inhabited those worlds with the great and grand, but has kept the sharp needle of his wit polished and close at hand. The Young and Evil, which he co-authored with Parker Tyler in 1931, depicts their life in Greenwich Village. It was one of the first novels that dealt with gay characters in a nonjudgmental way and was a cause célèbre for a whole circle of bohemian modernists. Published in Paris, it was banned in both the United States and Great Britain. Our film dramatizes one chapter of this controversial novel, in which the characters represent Charles and Parker as they tweak the nose of conventional morality and explore with quicksilver prose the line between poetry and high camp. Its publication was an event in the underground, but only a prelude to a life lived in the avant-garde.

Ford spent the 1930's in the Paris of Gertrude Stein. The glittering circle into which he was introduced included the modernist writer Djuna Barnes with whom he had an affair..." and on and on -- go here to read the rest.

During the making of Sleep in a Nest of Flames, Dowell decided to paint Charles Henri Ford and film it. The idea started a trend, and he decided to paint Ned Rorem too.

Charles Henri Ford, as painted by Dowell.

Check out Dowell's website.  It's a little confusing to navigate, but well worth the effort once you figure out how he's got it organized. Click on everything. 

Dowell and Kolomvaski are currently working on a documentary about the playwright Edward Albee which he thinks will be finished in another six months or so. The idea to do a documentary came about, naturally, because Rorem is a good friend of Albee's. They've definitely got a Six Degrees of Separation thing going on, don't they?

If you can't make it out to UNT on Monday to watch the film, you can buy a copy from Dowell, who says to email him at symbiosisfilms@msn.com, or call him at 214-368-4420 and he'll arrange it.

Something We Haven't Seen In A While

.... a new retail store opening in Dallas

Who: IO Metro

What: 9,000 square feet of retail home design. This is their first in Texas, but they have 12 others throughout the south. 

When: Opens April 3

Where: 5301 Alpha Road, Village on the Green

Why: "Globally Inspired Furnishings and Great Prices"

I'll keep you posted when I know more......

30 Tiny Chairs

[Click on invitation to read it]

Designers and showrooms in Dallas are making more than 30 tiny chairs for sale at a luncheon next week, benefiting Dallas Casa. The chairs will be on display at the Cherish the Children luncheon hosted by Casa on Thursday, April 2 at 11 am. at the Old Red Courthouse downtown. Jocelyn Dabeau is the PR for the event, so email her for tickets at dabeauj@hotmail.com.

Want to see a darling little chair being made? Come on.

I visited William & Wesley Furniture on Wednesday, where a craftsman was busy making the patterns for a tiny chair designed by William Lawrence and Urban Interiors designers Vicki Crew and Susan Smith

Using this child's chair for scale

And this full-size chair for inspiration

Tiny patterns were made for the legs, arms, seat, and back. These patterns hanging on the wall are used when producing any of the bench-made chairs that William & Wesley creates. They look like sculpture on the wall, don't they?

Patterns for the small legs

...a pattern for the seat. Once the patterns are all cut, craftsmen carve and finish the pieces. For this chair, solid walnut was used. 

Then, the company's in-house upholstery shop covers them. For this tiny chair, 

they chose Christopher Hyland's flirty eyelash fabric in tangerine.

The finished product! I bet you know a child who'd love this little chair in her room.

Here's William looking pretty happy about how cute it turned out. 

Publisher of Luxe Magazine Buys Western Interiors

Architect Lionel Morrison just sent me this breaking news release (click on it and you'll be able to read it better)

The Grass is Greener

Dallas landscape architect Dave Rolston and daughter Mila atop their grass roof, as shown in the April issue of Metropolitan Home. Read the story about their remodeled, green house here. To read more about the house and its owners, go here and here.  

Why Architects Are Cooler Than The Rest Of Us

.... because they office in hip buildings such as The Meadows, a 1955 masterpiece by architect J.N. MacCammon, that's now home to dozens of creative types, mostly architects who love the design.

I couldn't find much information online about the history of the building or the architect. If you find some, send it my way, I'll post it. Cosmic Cool has some great images, however.

Most of the original details of the building were preserved, such as the green striated marble.

What a great design using plain ol' pipes....

and streamline-era reception desk....

Old black and white images of the building back in the day....

Amazing flying saucer light fixtures.....

Retro vinyl furniture in the lobby.....

Bear with me as we head into the Annex, so I can show you one of the architect's offices inside.....

The lobby of the Annex has original striped green and white marble walls. I think it looks like a hat box from the 60s.

Okay, now we're inside the reception area of Buchanan Architecture. It might as well be the MOMA. Here's a table Russ Buchanan designed, on casters, as well as a bench and coffee table of his own design below.

The lighting is even moody.

This is architect Russell Buchanan's office. Check out the minimalist art on the walls, and the lean, tidy table.

Does your office look like an art installation? I didn't think so.

Here's Russ Buchanan.

View inside. How do architects do it? Keep everything looking so neat and white, I mean?

The Buchanan's dog is probably even cooler than yours. 

In fact, I'm sure of it. Unless yours, like Mamie, was featured in a story about dogs who go to work in architect's offices in Interior Design magazine recently. Here's the story.

 

Then there's Jason Franzen, who's working on all kinds of amazing things in his spare time, including several stylish game applications for Apple's iPhone. He's probably cooler than any of us.

Karen Buchanan and Mamie out for a walk and a smoke at the end of the day.