May 15, 2012

is interior design really a creative art?

This is a guest post from Mike Gracia.

What do artistic graffiti, photography, and interior design have in common? They are all divisive when referred to as art forms; while some consider them creative, others do not.

Those against graffiti have the fact that it is a criminal act on their side; photographs are already an essential part of life for many for documenting their children’s development, recording special occasions, and more.

But what about interior design?

Can a well planned and stylishly decorated living area ever be as evocative as a painting or sculpture?

Can your kitchen ever inspire strong feelings like a piece of graffiti on a public wall or a perfectly timed and exposed photo can?

Do you see clutter or cosiness? Minimalism or emptiness? Just as there is no clear interpretation of a painting or piece of modern art, there is no right answer when it comes to the way we decorate and furnish our homes. Personal preference reigns supreme.

This piece looks at whether a few creative flourishes and the right choice of furniture and colours can turn a living space from a purely functional area into a feast for the eyes and soul that is inviting, reflects tastes and personality, but is also warm and comforting.

Since forever, the home has been the ultimate showcase of its inhabitants’ personal tastes and preferences; furniture and decoration can powerfully showcase a person’s way of thinking and even the kind of life they lead, and that is a very powerful effect for an inanimate object to have. The home can be an accurate representation of the self, and in very much the same way as you may hang a classy painting on your wall, furnishing your home can represent your artistic outlook and tell your guests a lot about you.



Take these designs, for example.

photo via Fashion For Home

A number of aspects shown here in this bedroom layout can definitely be considered artistic, the most obvious being the colour scheme; the basic cream contrasts with the black to create a sophisticated feel, and the brown sets a tone of warmth and friendliness, crucial in the bedroom. This ability to use colours to create a mood is an art in itself. Minimalism is created with straight edges and symmetry in this layout, influenced by the artistic movement because of its suggestion of modernity in simplicity.

photo via Fashion For Home

This living room feels very modern, with contemporary furniture design that is classy but almost post-modern as it has taken traditional ideas such as sofas, coffee tables, and bookcases and put a futuristic spin on them.

photo via Fashion For Home

This stylish living room continues the theme of minimalism, with its use of plain white – a colour that generally suggests neutrality but may project hospitality to some guests, proposing that a living room can be as subjective as any painting.

It is products like these designer beds that reinforce interior design’s demand to be considered true art. The common artistic aspects shown here, such as colour schemes and usage of space, value interior design as a valid art form.



The actress Hedy Lamarr once said,

A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires.

She highlights the charm art can radiate, and where else would such emotional reaction be better suited than your own home?

- – -
Mike Gracia currently writes for Fashion For Home, a home fashion retailer, who are members of the Sustainable Furnishings Council.

Filed Under: The Setting Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
March 16, 2011

Thrifted Thoughts: Petite End Table

Wooden end tables are a dime a dozen at thrift stores. The trick is finding one that has a little something special.

I found this end table at a reuse centre in a neighboring city. It’s special because the feet are set on the diagonal and the hardware is not only shapely, but also has a lovely patina.

Let’s talk scale.

It’s pretty tiny for a bedside table, unless your bed is low and your space is small. So, where else could you use it? It would be a great option for a child’s bedroom. But, I envision it cozied up to an upholstered lounge chair in a quiet reading nook.

It’s the perfect height for setting down a cup of tea (or glass of wine) and getting comfy with a good book or, if you’re like me, a stack of design magazines.

Maybe I’ve got a little case of Spring fever, but to me, it screams “GREEN”! A few coats of fresh, green paint would look so regal against the time worn handles and provide a little pop of colour to a forgotten corner. ICI’s Market Green 30GY 21/429 would fit the bill perfectly.

If you prefer the look of wood, you can up the sophistication factor by finishing it in a rich, dark stain. Applying a thin layer of beeswax furniture polish over top would provide protection, but also offer a subtle sheen.

Either way, I’d include a little treat inside the door and drawer. Line the bottoms with a bold, graphic paper to freshen up the inside. I’m feeling this hydrangea gift wrap from Snow & Graham.

Gift wrap is a budget-friendly drawer lining solution, but does come with some challenges. It’s usually quite thin, making it a bit of a nightmare to decoupage into the drawers. I’d suggest using double sided tape instead. This way, you’re free to change it up if you tire of the pattern.

So, let’s tally the cost.

One thrifted find, $19.99
+ One quart of paint, $20.00
+ One small container of beeswax furniture polish, $7.95
+ Two sheets of gift wrap, $6.50
= One refreshed end table with loads of personality for a grand total of $54.44

That’s a steal!

Like my ideas? Why not check out my ever-changing Furniture Orphanage to see if there’s a piece in my current stock that you’d like made over to perfectly suit you?

Filed Under: Thrifted Thoughts Tagged With: , , 4 Comments
October 7, 2010

Don’t be afraid of a Table

wake.create.repeat_Header

i’m supposed to be a creative person. i routinely slap together loud and colorful outfits. i have a whole drawer full of clothes dedicated to painting, ones that welcome new paint splotches like badges of honor. i seek out the work of other artists to decorate my home, and i encourage my son to scribble outside the lines.

But this past weekend, after many hours of unwarranted stressing out and a furrowed brow, i gave myself a good swift “i shoulda had a V-8!” smack in the forehead. i realized i was wigging out over the fear of a dining room table. It was ridiculous.

The back-story here is not terribly interesting, but maybe a little bit necessary. Suffice it to say that i’ve had a dining room without surface for dining for about 4 months now. It’s been eating away at me slowly. The beginning of a lovely table sits in my garage. It’s a sad, lonely temporarily abandoned project started by my sweet husband. And i can’t really blame him. He works a lot. He’s been picking up my slack and caring for our son while i slowly escape the trappings of all-day morning sickness. And he’s been preoccupied with plans to add a new bedroom to our house to make way for our pending arrival.

“Ok”, i said. “Come the end of September, if we still lack the ability the dine in the dining room, i’m a-gonna buy us a darned table!”

Our plan was to find a cheap placeholder….IKEA? Target? We settled on The Dump as a starting place. And i bet you can just guess what happened next. We passed over all the inexpensive and reasonable choices and fell in love with a completely inappropriate table instead. 10 feet long (our dining room is only 12′) and made of salvage wood with an amazing criss-cross metal trestle base so beautiful, it made me think i might start eating UNDER the table.

BUT!

Our original plan was to have a big square table to suit the room. Our original plan was to be able to seat 10-12 adults so i could host a holiday meal for once. Our original plan was to have something practical.

After many hours that night of “should we/shouldn’t we”, i realized i was being close-minded. i was not being my creative self.

Dang it! i was afraid of a table! Metal and wood. It was scaring me off.

So i snapped out of it, we stopped talking and we bought it. I LOVE IT!

the UN-scary table

Sure we have to put it right up against one wall to make it fit. i’m planning to prop a chalkboard at the end near the wall and draw pretty doodles and write menus for dinner parties on it!

Sure it only really seats 6-7 people. But let’s face it, i don’t really want to host a throng for a sit-down dinner anyway. i’m a buffet, or coffee-and-dessert kinda girl.

Sure it’s a little odd and industrial for a dining room table. But nobody said i had to have a shiny lacquered table in my dining room, did they?

Letting go and embracing something outside the plan, a little outside the box and a little unconventional felt great. i felt like myself. i don’t want to go through life being afraid of tables…or any of the “small stuff.” i want to connect to beautiful things and bring them into my life, whether or not they are on my to-do-list.

And i just bet i will have more fun in our slightly quirky dining room than i would in a more traditional one, because i’ll feel at-home.

Filed Under: creativity, wake. create. repeat. Tagged With: , , 16 Comments
August 19, 2010

Reduce / Reuse / Reimagine: Frank Criscione

Tupp A Lamps, by Frank Criscione

Tupp A Lamps, by Frank Criscione

The Kernel: Counter-intuitive as it may seem, real creative possibility often lives within constraints.  From Mondrian to Picasso, from Hemingway to Kundera, creatives have often used carefully chosen, often self-imposed, limitations to take their work from pedestrian to game-changing.  The box, so to speak, is as important to the creativity as is the thinking your way outside it.

The Column: Reduce/Reuse/Reimagine, my brand new weekly column here on Scoutie Girl, takes that kernel as a lens for thinking about eco-friendly art and design. This is a column that will explore the art and design successes that come about when makers purposefully limit their materials and resources, opting to make eco-friendly choices an integral rather than merely incidental component in the creative process.

The Promise: The focus won’t necessarily be on earth-shattering creative breakthroughs but rather on products that are so much the cooler simply for having been created under these specific constraints.

The Guinea Pig: Frank Criscione

I’d originally planned to whip up a quick feature of the Tupp A Lamps created by Frank Criscione, a designer educated at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. But as happens, one link led to the next led to the next and suddenly I was basking in the glow of Criscione’s product portfolio.

Feast your eyes:

Poof, by Frank Criscione

Poof, by Frank Criscione

Fz Side Table, by Frank Criscione

Fz Side Table, by Frank Criscione

Shagaloo Chairs, by Frank Criscione

Shagaloo Chairs, by Frank Criscione

Shagaloo Chairs, by Frank Criscione

Shagaloo Chairs, by Frank Criscione

Whether you can picture his work in your own home or not (his Tupp A Lamps generated quite a vehement response on Apartment Therapy), there’s something about its very existence that proves to me that design can be a revolutionary thing. It can challenge the status quo.

As fashion trends tell us, our sense of beauty is ever evolving. With each new change to the height of a hemline or the width of a pant leg, we retrain ourselves to understand and appreciate proportion, alignment, shape… What Frank Criscione’s work does, just by its very existence, is help retrain our eyes to see repurposed items in new ways, perhaps even to redefine what we think is beautiful.

{all images via Criscione’s portfolio on Coroflot}

Filed Under: eco-friendly, home decor, reduce reuse reimagine Tagged With: , , 10 Comments
April 12, 2010

wicker furniture makeover :: before & after

wicker furniture makeover - before

we live on a very friendly block. sometimes, a bit too friendly for my husband & my wallflower ways.

last summer, the neighbors across the street donated their wicker patio furniture to us. i could tell at one point it had been a very nice set of white wicker pieces but time had not been kind… the paint was all chipped & cracked and lots of pieces were broken and jutting out.

it was ripe for a crazy makeover

.

wicker furniture makeover - during

for whatever reason (insert any number of stupid excuses here), i never got to it and it sat outside all. winter. long. oops! needless to say, it got worse. so, i hauled by butt to home depot this weekend and purchased 4 cans of bright aqua spray paint.

and then i sprayed my little heart out.

i love them.

now i know this is no great revelation of home decor but it was pretty exciting for me who is generally cooped up behind a glowing laptop screen. i love how bright & unexpected they are on my porch and, at about $15 worth of paint, i won’t be sad when i have to throw them out in another year or so.

wicker furniture makeover - after

one final thought: i’m addicted. and not in a government psa on sniffing fumes kind of way, i think spray paint might be my new best friend. antique dealers in the southeastern pennsylvania area should be warned, i will be coming by soon and i will be purchasing anything that will look awesome with a crazy coat of paint on them. of course, when this all goes down, you – dear readers – will be the first to know!

Filed Under: home decor Tagged With: , , , , , 11 Comments