i’m swooning over the latest issue of covet garden. go check out the amazing art-filled live-work space of gallerist Olga. The best thing about her beautiful brick loft-style home is that her living quarters are infused with her eclectic personality and passions — from her personal collection of contemporary art to her collections of antique objects. And there’s some great entertaining tips and recipes, too – you can also find them on the covet garden blog.

this friday, if you’re in san francisco, you just gotta go to the curiosity shoppe’s a collection a day book signing! lisa congdon’s new book a collection a day, published by uppercase is launching this week, and we’ll all be celebrating at the curiosity shoppe friday evening, march 18th from 6 to 9pm.

nomi klein.

san francisco open studios continues on this weekend, so if you’ve missed it the past two weekends, you’ve still got time to check out some fantastic work and visit some inspiring studios. here’s a glimpse at a few artists i’d like to visit. and remember, if you’re not in the bay area, a lot of these artists have work available online. for a complete list of open studios this weekend, visit artspan.

jeff bellrose.

lisa neimeth.

rebecca chang.

Weekend 3: October 23 & 24, 11am to 6pm
neighborhoods: Buena Vista, Diamond Heights, Fort Mason, Haight, Hayes Valley, Marina, Mount Davidson, Ocean Beach, Pacific Heights, Richmond, Sunset, Twin Peaks, West Portal

oh yippee! girl hula, aka andrea jenkins of hula seventy is in town (more on this tomorrow!) and she’s got a solo photography show up at arkay workshop this friday night, october 22, from 7 to 9pm. i will definitely see you there!

arkay workshop
2869 24th street
san francisco • 94110

rare device will have a table set up where artists from the book will be participating in a live drawing session, and will also be available to sign books as well. we can watch along as artists draw and then pass the drawing to the next artist, and so on down a long chain. Finished artwork will be hung on rare device’s project wall. libations and snacks will be served!

if you have yet to hear about the Exquisite Book, it’s a collaborative effort between 100 artists, all contained in one beautiful book, with each artist contributing one page. The book is by Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski and Matt Lamothe of also, and published by Chronicle Books in September, with an illustrated foreword by Dave Eggers.

The Exquisite Book from ALSO on Vimeo.

Confirmed artists attending the Exquisite Book event tonight at rare device are: Julia Rothman, Caitlin Keegan, Lisa Congdon, Eunice Moyle of Hello! Lucky, Tom Neely, Kelly Lynn Jones, Susie Ghahremani, Lorena Siminovich.

rare device
october 14, from 7 to 9pm
1845 market street @ guerrero
san francisco • 94103

oh, let’s just all say “yippee!” right now, because photographer sharon montrose has a brand new animal print shop, and it’s awesome.

sharon’s one of my favorite photographers, not only for her elegant, beautiful photos of all sorts of critters, but for her love for them, too. if you’ve never seen her etsy storque video with a behind the scenes look at a baby giraffe shoot, and how she came to work with animals, it’s a must-see, and truly an inspiring piece of footage.

but back to the new animal print shop! i’ve longed for one of sharon’s prints, blown up huge on one wall, and now they’re available in a range of large (and small) format prints, some as large as 30″ x 40′, which would be fantastic! i’m picturing that reindeer on my big black wall, but i find the donkey and that pony pretty endearing, too.

the animal print shop site is streamlined and beautiful, (with a fun new logo designed by artist leigh wells) and showcases sharon’s work beautifully. there’s even some wonderfully styled photographs of rooms with sharon’s prints on the walls so you can get a sense of how great they would look in your place. i’m excited! moo, meow, woof!

first up on my must have list, is this painting (above) by scott parry of mod icon twiggy. i wouldn’t pair her up with anything else – i’d just display her boldly on my black dining room wall! i want this so badly!!

then, on an opposite wall in the dining room, i might perhaps share a wonderful collection of these beholder artists’ work! i like this selection of paintings grouped together.

Don Only Dances In Complete Isolation, by ian dingman.

size 0 is stupid, by martha rich.

birch forest no. 11, by lisa congdon.

untitled, by anna ura.

wolly loco, by lisa solomon.

]]> http://www.sfgirlbybay.com/2010/08/11/wednesdays-wall-2/feed/ 3 http://www.sfgirlbybay.com/2010/07/28/wednesdays-wall/ http://www.sfgirlbybay.com/2010/07/28/wednesdays-wall/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:00:16 +0000 victoria http://www.sfgirlbybay.com/?p=23131 i receive so many submissions from talented artists looking to share their work on sfgirlbybay, that i thought it might be nice to do a gallery round up once a week, featuring a collection of artwork that i think might work well together as a grouping.

it’s always fun to curate a collection of paintings and photography, and just maybe if this is something y’all have trouble with, i might be of some assistance in sharing some new ideas to display your art. each week i’ll group a selection of affordable images and how you might arrange them on your own gallery wall. most of these are under $50.

so, without further ado, here’s wednesday’s wall. i ‘hung’ these images above in a way that seemed pleasing to the eye, and balanced photography with paintings, with complementary colors, and images that made me feel peaceful, in shades of blues, grays and greens — the color of water, which always calms me, too. i think the overall theme is serenity. i hope you feel that too!

relax original painting, from suzanna anna.

she waited for the ice to melt, from this is all i know.

Three Feet Eight Inches polaroid print, from alicia bock.

ebb and flow sewn print, from tastes orangey.

vintage photograph, women at beach, from antique whisperer.

powder blue heels, from janet hill studio.

Icelandic images, from tom edwards.

For this momentous occasion, I’m going to talk about something I’ve never posted on before: my gallery wall. After I expounded so forcefully in my Pin-It-Forward post about having art in the home, I knew that in all fairness I really needed to share more of my own art collection. My little gallery is one of my favorite things about my apartment; each piece tells a story, but even my closest friends haven’t heard them all!

Let me begin by saying that every successful design project has a number of constraints working against it. In may case, the main wall of my apartment is about 20 feet long with no interesting architectural features other than an oddly-placed lighting sconce. Another constraint is that my landlord frowns on creative painting, so I have to leave the walls as-is. While both of these are annoying, after lots of thought, arranging and re-arranging, I came up with a great group of art that stretches across the room.

I don’t want anyone to be intimidated when I used the word “art”. Almost all of these pieces are posters, postcards, art I created myself, or things I purchased really inexpensively. To be honest, I think the framing cost more than all of the artwork combined! Framing can get expensive; I think the best approach is to pick your favorite pieces or those with odd dimensions that won’t fit standard frames, and get those priced first. If you spend your budget on your most important pieces, you can generally do okay with the rest. In my case, I think only one or two pieces needed custom frames, the rest were all ready-made. A cheaper alternative is to get custom mats, which worked really well for me. In the end, I chose gilt frames to warm up the room, but kept them more modern and streamlined. Two of the pieces have teal blue frames bringing a nice counterpoint.

The central piece is a print of Jack Vettriano’s Singing Butler. I love the romance of this piece and it’s the largest work on the wall. As I planned the arrangement, I placed this one in the middle and then arranged everything around it. (Doing this on the floor is a good way to go.) The other piece that defined the wall is a tall, beautiful watercolor of three red poppies. My Mom bought this for me from a street artist in Florence, Italy. Its oblong shape required a custom frame, but it deserved it! It’s height made it double the size of my smaller pieces, so I came up with a tall-short-tall-short pattern across the wall, doubling-up where needed.

The first piece in my group is a black-and-white photo I took for a photography class at UC Davis. I was in the library and photographed the window just as the sun was setting. I caught the trees on the quad, the window, plus the reflection of the people in the library. The next piece after the poppies is a drawing I did of Camille Claudel’s sculpture ‘The Waltz’. This sculpture is in the Musée Rodin in Paris, and I spent a long afternoon devoted to drawing it one day.

Also from my Paris days are a fabulous postcard for Gitanes cigarettes, chosen merely because I love the graphic of the girl with guitar, and the red background brings a lot of color. I also framed the famous “Le Frou-Frou” print that one finds on almost every corner in Paris. I just love this image – it’s so sexy and cute!

From my postcard collection, I framed four hand-tinted postcards. The colors are lush and really vintage-looking, and they just make me happy to look at them. Another piece that’s pure joy is an actual photograph my Grandma Ida took of her two dogs, Rowdy & Juney after she gave them a bath in the backyard. This is a hand-colored photo from the 1930s and always hung in my Grandma’s office. I reframed it, and it looks better than ever.

The Picasso image of a kissing couple is also a postcard, probably purchased in a museum in France, but I can’t remember which one. I do know that I purchased the postcard of Tamara de Lempicka’s Young Lady with Gloves during the Art Deco show at the Legion of Honor museum a few years back. She’s in a gorgeous burlwood frame that is the perfect accompaniment to her art deco attitude.

The fun advertising images of Jacques Leonard fabrics is something I found on eBay. It’s a page from an old magazine, but I love the clever motif of the fabric bolts becoming an evening gown. The last piece on the wall is a small print I purchased in Venice, Italy and carried all over Europe during my student days. It’s small and quiet, and shows a classic Venetian canal. I saw it in a gallery and chose it because I was traveling by myself and feeling really lonely. Somehow the image captured exactly how I felt.

I hope all of this inspires someone to put together a gallery of what they really like. Art doesn’t need to be precious or important, just important to you!

via atlitw.

there is a definite fine art to display. if done properly, it shouldn’t look cluttered or overdone, with tsotchkes strewn about everywhere, or artwork floating mid-air on your walls, without a care in the world. it should look stylishly cohesive, and make people want to look closer. you know, draw them in, not flee your house as if you were on hoarders. here’s some lovely little examples of some wonderful gallery collections and collectibles.

via ATLITW.

via the selby.

via lisa congdon.

via lakbdesign/fergusandme.

via hildagrahnat.

via levintagemaison.

via freshlyfound.

via the selby.

via Adore_Vintage.

via allerleirau.

via wary meyers.

via skona hem.

via hildagrahnat.

via live bohemian.

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