Get Plastered

No, this isn't a post about what I did on election night (though I am not denying anything) -- this is about ANOTHER kind of plaster, one that I may even prefer over the alcoholic variety....may.

Over the last year or so I have had the great pleasure of getting to know a wonderfully talented local artist/designer/generally fabulous person named Tamara Codor, who with partner Sterling Voss is the brains/beauty/brawn behind Codor Design. You may have read about her from one or more of my pals here in Seattle, so it almost seems fruitless for me to try and describe or depict her work better than they already have. But when did that stop me?

I was lucky enough to get a private tour of her Seattle showroom a few weeks ago, and now I am (more) obsessed with owning one of her plaster-covered mirrors. To the best of my recollection (correct me if I'm wrong, Tamara), she culls found objects like plastic frogs, toy boats, rope, dolls and other miscellaneous oddities that make my heart sing, applies them to wonderfully shaped mirrors, and coats the entire piece in plaster to an austere, haunting effect.

Here are some favorites:

That bird!

Can you spot the toy violin (or "fiddle," as we call it in the South)?

The frog kills me. 

This one is smaller scale, and I think my very favorite. It would look smashing against one of my client's Albert Hadley black-and-white "Fireworks"-papered bathroom walls. (My English teacher would cringe at that sentence.) 

The devil is in the details.

Here's a peek at her back room:

Ironically, my favorite thing in her entire showroom is a piece that was left behind by a previous tenant. Add a coat of white paint and VOILA! A white monkey holding up some stuff.

Speaking of her showroom...

A sampling of her custom furnishings:

 

A cast-glass Louis coffee table (!)

This chandelier is HUGE and amazing, with rotating arms.

And as if all this weren't enough reason to envy Tamara's talent, she's also a talented artist... I happened to spy this pile in a corner, only to find out she had created the whole lot.

Get thee to Codor Design. Buy a plaster mirror and tell her Leah sent you.

Go to Elles

I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at an amazing new exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum a few days ago, Elles: Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Because I couldn't phrase it any better, here's a description from SAM's site about the exhibition:

Elles: Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Paris is a landmark exhibition of more than 130 works of art made by 75 women artists from 1907 to 2007. Organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris, home to the Musée National d'Art Moderne—the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe—this exhibition is an unforgettable visual experience that will challenge visitors' assumptions about art of the past century. This survey of daring painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, video and installation by pioneering women artists offers a fresh perspective on a history of modern and contemporary art. With humor, disdain, sensuality and ambiguity, these women represent the major movements in modern art—from abstraction to contemporary concerns.

Artists include Sonia Delaunay, Frida Kahlo, Dora Maar, Diane Arbus, Marina Abramovic, Louise Bourgeois, Atsuko Tanaka, Cindy Sherman, Sophie Calle, Hannah Wilke, Nan Goldin and Tania Bruguera, among others.

An exhilarating exhibition that has already become a milestone in the history of exhibitions, Elles: Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Paris will excite the casual viewer as much as the hardboiled expert.

– Marisa C. Sánchez, Associate Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art

Here are some of my favorite pieces from the show...

Helen Frankenthaler, one of my favorite artists--male or female--of all time:

Jenny Holzer:

I love these. Not part of the show but one of my favorite of her pieces from this series is this guy:

Ummm...yes.

A huge installation covering multiple walls, with multiple copies of the following texts:

Sonia Delauney, who I recently raved about:

Artist unknown -- but it was one of my favorites:

"Hilton Head Island, S.C., USA" by Rineke Dijekstra. Her work is amazing:

Cindy Sherman, who I think is pure genius:

Guerrilla Girls:

I love "Not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius."

 I was unfamiliar with Guerrilla Girls prior to this exhibit, but they are spectacular. In their own words:

"We're a bunch of anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks. We have produced posters, stickers, books, printed projects, and actions that expose sexism and racism in politics, the art world, film and the culture at large. We use humor to convey information, provoke discussion, and show that feminists can be funny. We wear gorilla masks to focus on the issues rather than our personalities."

I can't say enough good things about the show, not to mention the opportunity it has given me to begin a dialogue with my two daughters, ages 6 and 4, about why women have their own exhibition -- why women are underrepresented in museum collections, in art history, and in all sorts of other places. You simply must go to Elles!

Adult Education

I have long considered myself an art lover, beginning in college with coursework in art history and time volunteering in my university's wonderful on-campus museum, the Georgia Museum of Art. Despite majoring in journalism, I briefly toyed with the idea of attending the Sotheby's Institute of Art after graduation to build upon my developing passion. (Sometimes I still fantasize about enrolling!)

And of course now, as an interior designer, I am fortunate to work with art in varying capacities -- selecting for clients and building on and around existing pieces in their collections -- so I like to think I am fairly knowledgeable about "mainstream" artwork.

Imagine my surprise and delight when volunteering last week in my daughter's first-grade art class to discover an artist who, by all accounts, I should have been familiar with: Sonia Delaunay. The teacher posted images of her work as part of the class's ongoing study of jazz and art's relation to it (!), and many of the pieces felt as if they could have been pulled directly from a contemporary gallery. The colors and shapes are bold and energetic, yet there is also a wonderful sense of whimsy about them that I find so compelling.

Much of her work focuses on the exploration of pattern and color and clearly predicts her later foray into textile design:

A contemporary of Picasso and Braque, Delaunay was married to the better-known painter Robert Delaunay (though I prefer Mme. Delaunay's work, myself). I find the story of her life to be fascinating and would encourage you to read more about it; her husband and collaborator, by all accounts her great love, died more than 38 years before Sonia, and she went on to reinvent herself many times over -- as a textile and costume designer, car decorator (!), and clothing-design collaborator with the likes of Coco Chanel and Lanvin.

An example of her fabric design...don't you love it?

Delaunay designed for the wives of celebrated architects and designers Gropius, Breuer and Mendelsohn.

Delaunay with the Citroen she decorated. I want one!

Of her life Delaunay said the following: "I have led three lives: one for Robert [her husband], one for my son and grandsons, a shorter one for myself. I don't regret not having given myself more attention. I really did not have the time."

I love that my first-grade daughter's art teacher inspired this art-history lesson for me. A great reminder of how much there will always be to learn, no matter how old we get.