PROJECT REVEAL
Art and How It
Makes You Feel
A walk through the pieces we have chosen across some of our favorite projects,
and why each one earned its place.
People ask me how I choose art for a project, like there is a formula. There really is not. For me it always comes back to one thing: how does it make you feel. It does not matter if a piece costs fifty dollars or fifty thousand. If you love it, that is the criteria. Everything else, the scale, the framing, where it lands on the wall, follows from that.
Here is a look at some of the pieces we have lived with lately, across a few different homes, and the thinking behind each one.
The Cambridge Project
This home is a 1920s colonial, so it is very traditional, with traditional shapes in the furnishings. I wanted to push against that a little with art that was more textural, that would pop off the blue green color washing we did in the rooms.
Charles Dwyer, a figure that greets you
I absolutely love Charles Dwyer's work. He does figure collages and figure paintings, and this one is a limited edition print. When you come into the home you turn left, and this is the first room you see, so you experience her from the foyer and again from the dining room across the hall. I love how she is looking at you, kind of staring you down.
The scale of her in this large room works so well. It is basically a living room with three living rooms within it, and she holds all of that space. She brings so much mood. Her dress is white, and there is this color around her, so she picks up the patches of white in the LaFontsee piece and in the upholstery. This one came during the design process, after we had set the colors. We shopped for art together, brought pieces into the home to test them, and the moment we put her up, she just felt right.
James Karsina, a Lake Michigan pier
I absolutely love James Karsina's work. He has passed away now, but the way he color blocks really speaks to me. He takes something familiar, a pier on Lake Michigan, which for us Michiganders feels so comforting, and breaks it into these distinct shapes.
There are a lot of paintings of the lake and the piers, but I had never seen anything quite like this, the way he uses form and the light and the dark together. It is such a bold piece that you can enjoy it from clear across the room, and in a space this large, that means you get to experience it from everywhere.
The Vibrant Retreat
A home where I got to be bolder, and where the art ranges from something a hundred and fifty years old to a piece made just for the house.
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Antique French Fabric Pages
My dad was in the textile business for over thirty years, and my mom was a seamstress and very creative, so I grew up with fabrics and fabrics and fabrics. It has always been a big part of me. When I was shopping in France I found several books of antique fabric swatches. Merchants used them in the 1800s to sell fabric, carrying these books of small samples so shop owners could order from the pages. Each piece is numbered and identified. I found them through one vendor and just fell in love. I have three, and they are all a little different.
What I love is that each individual sample has its own story, its own color and texture and pattern. But stand back and the whole page turns into a graphic composition that almost feels modern, all these squares and blocks on cream. That is exactly my aesthetic. Something can be a hundred and fifty years old and feel modern at the same time. For the primary suite we framed four pages in a rich red velvet mat and red frame. There is red running through the swatches, so it becomes the anchoring color and pulls your eye right in.
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Kelly Allen, a commissioned
piece for the stairs
This round, bio form piece sits on the Schumacher wallpaper along the staircase, and it is by Kelly Allen. She came to mind early, because this client is willing to do things that are really out of the box. She loves color and fun, and they have kids, so I wanted something playful. As you walk up and down the stairs you get right up close to it, and there is glitter in it, all kinds of materials she used. It is an experience. It is a very used, public part of the home, so it is something the whole family enjoys every day. I love the scale, how it fills the room, and the irregular shape against a traditional home.
Commissioning a piece can feel intimidating, but it should not. First and foremost, I have to love the artist's body of work, because whatever they make will live inside that world. Then it is about their process, and how much say you get. With Kelly, I showed the client her work, we talked about the colors, and then I let her go. It is art, not engineering. There has to be room for the artist's own expression. I am not going to dictate every stroke.
Michael Schaeffer, a portrait in the powder room
This funky abstract portrait in the powder room is by Michael Schaeffer. I have one of his in my own dining room. He is a little gritty, a little dark, and then he throws in this bright red or yellow that says, wait, I am also a little happy. I love how he plays with negative space. He is a Michigan artist, and I discovered him through LaFontsee Gallery.
That gallery has introduced me to so many artists, but I try not to lean too heavily on any one source. Having a stable of art resources you trust is what lets you really pull a project together. And my advice to anyone: get out and discover. Go to more shows and exhibits. Do not be intimidated. Just go and look.
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The Most Personal Art of All
The pieces I love most are in my own home, and not one of them came from a gallery. This is where the whole idea really lives, that art is about meaning and memory, not price.
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A family cottage, on the dining room wall
In my dining room I collected plaster ceiling tiles from an antique shop here in Grand Rapids, and I mixed them with negatives of photos from our family cottage in the 1950s and 60s. The cottage has been in our family for almost eighty years, and we still go every summer. There is a photo of my dad, one of my grandpa, and my favorite, the nuns holding a ski and a life preserver. My dad said it was unusual to see nuns doing water sports, so it is funny and cute and completely ours. Those negatives were sitting in a box. Now they are a wall.
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A boy's room, handmade
My youngest loves Legos and loves Batman, so I found an illustrator and bought a print of the Lego Batman, this great oversized Lego face. Next to it hangs a little painting of our dog Lizzie that my aunt made. A child's room does not need mass produced decor. Art that is hand drawn by an aunt is still art.
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A boy's room, handmade
A boy's room, handmade
The most personal piece in the house is in my son Marek's room. It is a black and white photo of his dad flying through the air on a skateboard in the 1980s, a sport they both share. We only had the image, no negative, so as we blew it up it went grainy and granular. I was okay with that. It added to the artistic effect. Do not let a little imperfection stop you from framing the photo you love.
When I work with a client, I am always asking about past trips, family experiences, the places that mean something, anything we can pull, photographs or memorabilia, that they would love to have in their home. Because in the end, art makes a house a home. If you do not have art, the house is never complete.
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FURTHER READING
