If it seems like I blog about art a lot, it's because I have a gaping hole in the middle of the biggest wall in my living room, the living room that I am redecorating again after only one year of home ownership. Hunny Bunny is very unhappy about this development. I seriously need some art because the hole is making the process slower than Christmas shopping with grandma. I mean, until I'm holding the room's centerpiece in my hot little hands, how will I know how to finish the rest of it??? As evidenced by the superfluous question marks, I'm feeling a trifle impatient about the whole situation. Of course I already have a googleplex photos and paintings hanging out at home, but I'm sick of them all. Probably because I made most of them. But also because some of them suck. So when I saw this on My Love For You is a Stampede of Horses, I felt like a sweet ray of light had shone down upon me from the heavens above.
Or perhaps it was a moonbeam from an apocalyptic wasteland. Either way, Hilary Pecis' work currently on exhibit at the Receiver Gallery in San Francisco makes me want to find a black market for that pesky extra kidney I've been lugging around for years. There are diamonds in her paintings!
Ok, maybe just magazine pictures of diamonds, but still! When I first looked at her work, it reminded me of Leslie Shows' giant paintings, which I encountered on a studio tour of CCA years ago. I LOVE her titles; this one is called Brine Pipes:
Pecis and Shows both make large scale works that are painstakingly collaged from tiny scraps of magazines and then over painted in certain areas. Both of them deal with industrial/apocalyptic wastelands, and Surprise! Pecis is a CCA alum, too, so there must be something in the water over there. Perhaps it's nasty Dredge:
I saw these works in person, and they're so much more impressive when you can stand in front of them and count the hours that inevitably went into the making of such a piece. I want to stab myself in the eye with a fork every time I think about the fact that I probably could have bought a piece off her when I was standing in her tiny, dirty, mangy grad student cubicle. It's way too late now.
One more just because I love them so much. This one is called The Arrangement of Salts and Metals By Properties. Pretty and smart. Le sigh.
It's a good thing I encountered Pecis' work when I did, because I was on the verge of attempting to copy this:
God, I know that Andy Warhol's Rorschach paintings would look good on my wall, and I'm embarrassed to admit I got as far as pricing out canvases. It makes me feel dirty to even think about it, not because I feel guilty about ripping off Warhol's work (he's the original ripper, after all), but because IT IS MORALLY WRONG TO BUY OR MAKE ART BECAUSE IT MATCHES YOUR COUCH, or whatever. That is just F'art (faux art, as named by The Nerdy Fashionista).
But the gold Warhol painting at The Gramercy Hotel that I blogged about eons ago would be so, so perfect:
And talk about easy! Even I can pour some paint on a canvas and fold it in half. Sometimes when people snarkily suggest that a child could have done it, it's true. Like this painting in a Miles Redd designed room:
Ok, this one might be a bit more difficult for photographernotpainter Erin to get right, but it's so simple, and it looks so good with that color palette. New York School Abstract Expressionism has been struggling to fill my hole (ew!) even though I kind of hated that macho crap when I was but a skinny starving filthy grad student myself. Why, you may ask? Because I think those paintings are decorative. And that's a dirty word to an artist. But not to a decorator. Oh, the irony.
Camilla at Designalogue also helped to set me straight.
She did this fantastic post about art in interiors, and I thought this was far and away the sharpest set up. Oh, it just turned out to be her OWN HOME. Sheesh, that girl is good!
Alas, I am still on the lookout for the perfect, yet affordable, something to fill The Hole. Meanwhile, in search of art (and other things) Karly and I drove WAY out to the country this morning after we stayed up late and drank too much. We drove out past trailers overloaded with pink flamingos, like so far out we could practically hear the banjos in the distance, way, way far out to this crazy lady's house to look at some "awesome mid century retro furnishings and decor." Hm. After we waded through piles of rusty junk, herds of chicken, geese and guineas, past the eight dogs plus 10 puppies, I did find a weird old painting for $35. It's not THE piece, but it's A piece... of something.
Why oh why is demon baby's face blue, you are probably asking yourself. It may have something to do with this:
What the bleep is going on down there???
Nevermind, I don't need to know.