Get Your Art On: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

I got a long weekend in Fort Worth this past weekend due to my husband speaking at an  Android conference. I got to meet with a client, eat great food and visit my favorite museum. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth was designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The building gives me goose bumps, it feels alive. I love the art of course, but the building. The. Building. The building is a modern piece of art itself. The concrete walls. The amazing windows and the shadows the mullions create is beyond. Goose bumps. I always get emotional in this space. I didn't get a shot of the famous windows, I was running out of time and my phone died midway through the museum. Sidenote, all of these shots are from my phone, I apologize for the quality.

This is the one shot I didn't take. Isn't it a stunner?

Check out my last couple Get Your Art on posts here and here.

 

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love contact me to learn more about Jamie House Design interior design services.

Get Your Art On: Holly Farrell

In my quest to find great art I happened upon Holly Farrell and her fabulous book paintings. Modern still lifes. I adore those book paintings and turns out I really love her other pieces as well. I am imagining these with a really modern frame OR a gilt antique frame to really punch the old fashioned feel of her paintings.  

Typically I'm not into theming artwork to your room, you know say images of forks in the kitchen or a picture of a baby in a basket of laundry in the utility room. Although....I just had the thought that a grouping of antique silver forks or spoons framed together could be really great.  But wouldn't a grouping of recipe books paintings look fab in a kitchen? Frame them modern and they work even in a modern industrial kitchen space, framed in an antique gilt frame and they're fab in a traditional kitchen. I would also love to see a giant version of the sofa painting hanging over a completely opposite style sofa. 

Holly is a fine art painter from Toronto. She does the amazing work I've highlighted here and sells her originals in galleries. Interested in pricing & sizes click here.  I've yet to find where she sells any prints so you're going to have to pony up the cash to buy an original, in my opinion it's completely worth it. Plus supporting artists while getting amazing art to enjoy is a great investment. Check Holly's Facebook page out here. And of course her website here. She also does commissioned portraits! Now here are those book paintings I fell so hard for.

I love these still lifes too. I want to show you all of her work! Go to her site, she's just uber talented. Seeing mundane items painted in her crisp style with the amazing floral backgrounds speaks to me. What do you think?

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love contact me to learn more about Jamie House Design interior design services.

Wallflowers and Mums

​A few weeks ago I happened upon The Perks of Being a Wallflower on Amazon & thought I'd give it a try. I fell in LOVE. It's so exciting to find a movie that touches your soul. It's rare and it's beautiful. I'd heard about the book for a long time and specifically the famous quote...

The Perks of Being a Wallflower has been floating around in the background of my life since I saw the movie (twice now). High school was an incredibly hard and awkward time for me. Not necessarily as tragic as the movie, certainly not, but tragic in my own sense. I'm not really going to go into it, I mean, you're not my therapist. The movie brought it all out, those emotions. I had so much anxiety watching it. Wanting to protect Charlie, keep him from being hurt. It's also so uplifting. To find friends like that, to find your people at such a young age is an incredible gift. I didn't find my people in high school and it makes me sad. I did meet some really great people and some not so great people and learned a lot about people and how it's rare for them to say what they mean. Lot's of hard lessons there. I remained a wallflower and probably would still be described that way. And that's OK.  

I'm reading the book now. I'm savoring it and swimming in it. I'd love to hear if you've read it or the movie. I'd love to chat about it with someone. ​

But really the movie brings me to some artwork that a friend sent me a few months ago. We laughed and laughed and recalled memories while looking at them together. ​MUMS. OMG mums. Did you have mums in high school? I moved to Katy TX in 9th grade. I had not heard of these ridiculous mums till seeing them in school, on people. That was maybe one of the best moments of my life. It'd been a long time since I'd laughed that hard. {I mean seriously no offense to those of you that grew up with the tradition.}

​Artist Nancy Newberry took inspiration from her own memories to create this brilliant photographic journey called Mum. In her words, "Artificial, shiny and virtually unknown outside of Texas, the Homecoming Mum is an elaborate corsage, exchanged between friends and lovers. They are ritually worn and subsequently immortalized, tacked to bedroom walls as trophies. At a time when many American high schoolers seem purposefully disengaged from the world around them, the Mum constitutes both a unique act of cultural immersion and a specific brand of folk art."

“Shot slowly and inspired by an interpretation of my memories, I have limited the settings of the photographs to in and around the subject’s homes. In this very personal space, I pair spontaneous and carefully arranged moments to construct chaos; my interest is in the struggle between self and culture, the real and the perceived. With the extravagance of adornment and insignia the work continues to explore ceremony and commonplace.”
— Nancy Newberry

The settings in each photograph are perfect. Showing the homes of Texas suburbia as the backdrop to the teenagers and their mums brilliantly shows the contrast of teenage rebellion and the desire to fit in. I mean these mums are heavy! & boys wear mums too! I had to buy a mum for my homecoming date senior year and was so clueless about it my dates mother had to add things to it to make it presentable. I was clearly not cut out for Texas suburbia. I believe these prints are available for purchase in limited editions. You can click any image to be take to Nancy Newberry's site. She has other great photographic series on her site as well. I can't wait to see her next vision! ​

​Don't you love it? This is art that makes me feel and reminisce. Did you wear a mum for homecoming? If this is your first time seeing mums? I'd love to hear your gut reaction.

​​If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love contact me about Jamie House Design services!