The Craziest Thing I Have Ever Bought Has Arrived

Ok dudes, I have maybe four minutes to write this post before Luke demands to be fed and then proceeds to vomit forth said feeding all over my briefly clean clothes, so buckle your seat belts because this is going to be a lightning fast haunted ass trip.

Remember how I said I can't stop shopping at 4 am? Yeah, I wasn't kidding. And at 4 am your brain isn't wired quite properly... it might gravitate towards the quirky end of the spectrum. So when I saw this, my semi wired synapses sputtered and sparked up the old paypal account pretty much immediately. Love at first bleary sight.

Yes, that is a mega giant hand painted Victorian backdrop used for photographs. Like this.

These painted backdrops were used as early as the daguerreotype era, but more commonly for tintypes or carte de visites. Oh, and did I mention that I used to make daguerreotypes and albumen prints and all sorts of other toxic and delightful antique processes? I had to have this thing. Had. To.

Then it arrived in all its crumbling, eight-foot-square glory. Holy shit -- BIG. Oh, and look at my new leprechaun green velvet chairs... they are GREEN.

Anyway, lucky for me Ben and my sweet father in law are handy men, capable of nothing less than magic. In other words, they built stretcher bars for this bad boy and then framed him up with cheapo molding from Home Depot that I spray painted gold (duh).

All along I had plans to transform the back wall of our living room from this drab, flat blahdom:

To this splendifirous rendering:

Ok, sure that may be Albert Hadley's house, but you get the idea. I bought the backdrop to be a backdrop.

But, huh. Hmmmm. Yeah, I don't know about that. PS, this is about how dark and flat that wall really is for most of the day. I photoshopped the bejeezus out of the other picture I posted previously... before I had a baby. When I had time to photoshop things and use a tripod and SHOWER.

Where was I?

I think I need to rethink my Albert Hadley plan. I don't like how much of the backdrop is being backdropified by all the stuff piled in front of it. Should I ditch the mirror? The lamps? The credenza?

All of it?

I haven't had the time or pumped up the muscles to move that credenza out of the way, but I have had time to make some mockups. Of course. Behold:

Option 1 recycles the rug I already have, tosses the credenza and adds a smaller antique oval library table. I saw one similar to this a few days ago... totally doable. I did black library sconces and muted pillows to tone down the rug.

Option 2 is a little more glamooooor. Brass and glass console (this is an actual table I could buy, thus the wonky angle), brass double sconces, same rug and pillows.

Option 3 is muted maximus. The sconces are similar to a pair I'm eyeing... new rug in this mockup.

I guess what I'm thinking is that the credenza has to go. It might fit somewhere else in this room...

Like where it used to be or behind the couch? But I use that white console as my desk, so then I would lose my desk space.

Also, thank gawd my house doesn't look like that anymore.

Phew, that's better.

Also also, whatever I do on the back wall needs to flow with the front part of the room. So I probably shouldn't go too Tudor Regency all up on it. Whatever that means.

Ok, kids. There you have it.

What should I do?

Here are jpegs of the chairs and backdrop... make your own mockups if you want to.

I'm sure you have nothing better to do -- like grocery shop and wash the sheets and sweep dust bunnies under the rug before your Thanksgiving guests arrive.

Speaking of, I need to do those things STAT.

Check y'all later.

Feelin' Fussy

I'm on pins and needles, people. Have bitten my nails into the quick. Stomach in knots big enough to anchor a billionaire's yacht. Election Day is almost here, but instead of pumping up the volume on CNN and turning my living room into campaign headquarters, I think it may be best for me to focus on something else right now, to go to my happy place. Yes, it's I Spy Art Day here at Design Crisis, where I bring you a roundup of interior design's latest muse. Today's special is the always interesting photographer, Adam Fuss.

Adam Fuss is one of those old school dudes that I can identify with. Instead of embracing the novelty of digital wizardry, Fuss goes back to basics by frequently ditching the camera altogether and dealing with the light sensitive properties of photographic paper itself. In the home of Pieter Estersohn, seen in New York Social Diary, this photogram of Estersohn's son Elio hangs as a super realistic, one of a kind baby portrait. Instead of capturing a representation of the baby, Adam Fuss captures the shadow of the baby crawling over the paper, and in a sense, he captures the baby itself (but not literally, because that would be illegal).

While Estersohn was lucky enough to have a portrait made for him, most of the pictures floating around the designosphere are of Fuss' black and white photograms of smoke.

Donald and Phillip's amazing art filled home in San Francisco features this small Fuss photogram (courtesy of More Ways to Waste Time).

Generally, Fuss' pieces tend to be large in scale, so that they become a viewing experience where one is enveloped in the image, as seen in this gorgeous Paris apartment.

To stand in front of one of Fuss' photograms of smoke is to stand in a whirling maelstrom of eddies and currents. Sounds like my stomach. So much for happy distractions!

All of Fuss' work is intensely aesthetic, seductive in both its delicacy and first generation sharpness. The print over the fireplace makes a lovely addition to this Smoke and Mirrors themed room designed by Steven Volpe featured in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Earlier works involved hanging bare bulbs on a string and allowing them to move, exposing the paper in a pattern of spirals, as seen in this home of Charles Allen, featured in Architectural Digest.

Fuss' black and white works may be particularly popular in the design world because they behave so minimally on the wall, as seen in this apartment featured on Habitually Chic.

It's like very elegant (and expensive) white noise. But I have followed Fuss' work for years, and he certainly didn't start out as a decorator's favorite. Many of his earlier works recalled death and decay, and a very studied interest in photography's unique ability to capture the "what has been," as philosopher Roland Barthes said.

These beautiful plants were pressed onto paper, exposed with light, and captured with a permanence that a real pressed flower can never emulate. It's the intersection of mortality and immortality, and it gets back to the basics of what photography initially set out to do: to preserve a slice of time.

This exact configuration of smoke only existed for the split second that it was illuminated by light. And then it was gone.

The images in his My Ghost series reference the impermanence of time and, consequentially, of life. A child could fit into this christening dress for a matter of weeks, perhaps, before she/he outgrew it. As the Greek philiosopher Heraclitus said, "Panta Rhei." Everything changes. You cannot step into the same river twice.

And raindrops will never fall in this same pattern again.

Recently, Fuss has begun experimenting with other forms of image making, taking up the Daguerreotype (at which time he became my hero, since I used to make them, too) as another way to create one of a kind images. The Daguerreotype was the Victorian's medium of choice, and its clarity was shocking to them (and still is - the sharpness of digital isn't even close).

The Victorians famously used Daguerreotypes to record (in addition to more conventional portraits) images of their deceased children, posed as if sleeping. Perhaps they were creating an alternate universe where the child might have lived. Or perhaps the images acted as reminders that nothing lasts forever. Fuss has a similar predilection for Memento Mori and its imperative to seize the day.

Once again changing his method of production, Fuss photographed butterfly chrysalis and enlarged them to six feet tall for his latest series.

As iconic symbols of transformation and metamorphosis, they are compelling both in their stasis and potential energy.

Fuss' photographs act as talismans, reminders of the past and its contrast to the present. And so they are also avatars of change. Nothing can stay the same.

Nor should it.

(Art images courtesy of the artist and Fraenkel Gallery, Art Lies, Artnet, and Photography Now.)