White Lightning

September 21, 2010UncategorizedDesignersMrs. Blandings

Geez, Louise, but it is hot and sticky here in Kansas City. I’m a warm weather fan, but this Indian Summer is wearing out its welcome.

I aimed to beat the heat inside but my quest for white wall inspiration led to Melissa Rufty and I ended up hot under the collar.

I think I’ve shied away from white walls in the past because I have such an itch to color outside the lines, but Rufty’s rooms show that white can be just right. These spaces are anything but vanilla.

It helps, of course, that her furniture choices are so distinct; mine are not nearly so fine though what they lack in pedigree they do make up for in chutzpah.

Everything looks so crisp. Everything looks so clean.

Even when the upholstery is not as exuberant the look still goes, “pow!” Who needs colored walls? White is the answer!

Or turquoise. Oh, my.

I had a vision of Rufty’s work that I spied on Style Court, here. All images courtesy of Melissa Rufty at MMR Interiors. She does tons more than white walls, in fact, she’s in House Beautiful this month – check it out.

Local Landscape

September 16, 2010UncategorizedArt Galleries, ArtistsMrs. Blandings

If you are intrigued by ceramics, you don’t have to wait until Forever for an engaging exhibit.

Cary Esser’s Lay of the Land at the Sherry Leedy Gallery (here in town) is another exploration of permanence and change.

In this exhibit Esser, Ceramics Chair at the Kansas City Art Institute, explores the relationship of clay to human history and shelter.

She has created these tiles by pushing clay into molds; the glazes are beautiful, though I haven’t really captured them here. The groupings suggest topography and landscape (and cityscape, too, I think.) While numbered to ease recreation of the installation, I am intrigued by the thought that they could be manipulated by the viewer. It seems an interesting manifestation of the artist’s intent and the viewer’s perception. Also, it’s always fun to build with blocks.

You can see Cary Esser’s Lay of the Land at the Sherry Leedy Gallery of Contemporary Art through October 30th.

Forever

September 15, 2010UncategorizedArtists, Nelson-Atkins Museum of ArtMrs. Blandings

As I savor Freedom, I am also anticipating Forever. Forever is Clare Twomey’s first solo exhibit in the United States, opening at the Nelson-Atkins Museum October 9th.

Twomey had been in Kansas City visiting the ceramics department at the Kansas City Art Institute when she had the opportunity to view the Burnap Collection of English ceramics. The collection, 1345 pieces, is the largest outside of England.

One of the things that intrigued Twomey was the permanence of the Burnaps’ gift, “in trust forever.” Which brings to the forefront of our minds the significance of the intent of the gift coupled with the fragility of the pieces themselves.

If you are familiar with Twomey’s work (I was not), you know that several of her exhibits have been interactive. Consciousness/Conscience, above, was an installation involving 7000 hollow cast bone china tiles created to be destroyed.

Trophy included 4000 Wedgwood Jasper Blue clay birds scattered about Clay Courts that were taken by the audience.

And, Blossom was comprised of thousands of fragile ceramic flowers left to decompose out of doors.

Forever, too, allows the audience to interject itself into the exhibit. Twomey will install 1345 scaled-down replicas of an 18th century caudle cup from the Burnap collection at the Nelson. Visitors will have the opportunity to apply for ownership of one of the pieces. Each cup will be unique and numbered and the applicants must choose a specific cup in their requests. It’s interesting to consider the responsibility the owners will have to their cups as the Nelson has had to the Collection. The cups will go home with their new caretakers when the exhibit closes January 2nd.

Top three images courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; remaining images courtesy of claretwomey.com.

Simply Divine

September 14, 2010Uncategorizeddesign books, Designers, Vintage DesignMrs. Blandings

It’s been bookshelf bounty around here the last couple of days. I have neglected everything else and have been reading Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom when not toting or driving or fixing something for someone else.

Today’s post was supposed to be about finding cool stuff for yourself instead of letting catalogue companies reproduce it and deliver it to your mailbox, but I took a turn at Spivey’s Books and never made it to the River Market Antique Mall.

There I found this tiny little pamphlet-like thing, Interiors, Character and Color edited and written by Van Day Truex. For $3. Wonderful. Being so close to Half-Priced Books I stopped in to see if Vreeland’s Allure was still there. Was. Truly, I don’t need to be spending $50 on a book, but it seemed some kind of divine intervention so I lugged it around while making a quick dash through the design section. There, completely unaware that it is fashion week, was The Fashion House with no price tag. “How about $2 since the jacket is torn?” said the nice woman behind the counter. Um. Great. Thereby justifying the alluring Allure.

So while the youngest did his math homework and spelling, I was tutored by Vreeland and Truex. After all her musings on style and photography and attitude she declares, “…really, we should forget all this nonsense and just stay home and read Proust.”

Then, with iCarly in the background, I noticed Yves Saint Laurent’s note in the Fashion House that his entire home was conceived around Rememberance of Things Past. But I can’t possibly return to Proust right now as Franzen has my fancy and in the meantime I must ponder the allure of Bill Blass’s white walls.

All images Bill Blass’s home in The Fashion House by Lisa Lovatt-Smith. Photography by Fritz von der Schulenburg.

Jonathan Franzen will be at Unity Temple on the Plaza, thanks to the wonderful Rainy Day Books, September 22nd. Information here.

Spin the Wheel

September 10, 2010UncategorizedMusings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

This week has been a bit of a meander with no discussion of interior design, so let’s finish it up that way and perhaps I’ll reboot for next week. Not to go too long without pulling something from a magazine, I bring you Belief-O-Matic via O, the Oprah Magazine. A quick-ish (though be prepared for a million pop-ups) quiz to help you figure out where you fall in the spiritual spectrum. Before you click off in a huff, I am not making fun. Mary Karr’s latest book, Lit, landed in my lap at a time when putting some framework around my belief system has seemed significant. Hitherto, I’ve cobbled together what I believe like I gather book advice, sort of scribbled notes that I find months later at the bottom of a bag. Something that I thought about that I meant to get back to.

In Lit, Karr describes her journey through alcoholic recover to Catholicism without making me blanch. Me, who flips closed the lifestyle section of the Saturday paper a page early to avoid the Beliefs section. After twenty questions, here are the Belief-O-Matic’s picks for me:

This is interesting and amusing only because my friend, the chicken sex expert, has been trying to set me up with the Unitarian church for a couple of years.

The bottom five contained no surprises, though I did say, “I told you so,” to my deceased mother at the last place finish of the religion of my youth. Still, I bear the Church no grudge; She provided a framework I value still.

Click over and see what comes up. I keep telling Mr. Blandings that I think we should both set up profiles on Match.com to see if a computer would set us up. So far, he’s declined. (Speaking of chickens.) This could be a little bit like that. In any event, your boss could hardly get mad at your taking an online survey about religion.

Also, the biggest ads? CB2 and One King’s Lane. Maybe there is some correlation between spiritual discovery and a quest for great glasses.