Thanks to my friend interior designer Dee Elms of Terrat Elms, who suggested me for the project, Mr. Webster and I have been collaborating on bringing new artwork to his Boston Design Center showroom, Webster & Company.
I pick the artists (most have ties to New England) and present available pieces to Mr. Webster. He and Visual Design Director Jonathan Giacoletto choose which ones to feature and where to hang them. We began in fall 2015 and it’s an ongoing success.
For a full listing of available works (as well as those that have sold), see the Webster Art Project tab here on my blog. If you are interested in pricing, please email me at stylecarrot [at] gmail [dot] com.
I love when I have the opportunity in my work to showcase local Boston artists and makers. For the last couple of months I’ve been working on a interior decor scheme for a model apartment at Troy Boston, a brand new, upscale, “green” rental building in SoWa. It’s a little outside my usual scope of projects and it’s been fun. You may have seen the initial post I did about it, when I was determining the color scheme for the apartment—Impressions: Creating a Color Palette of Charcoal + Dusty Rose. The final palette is indeed based on this post, with plenty of textural elements, including velvet, sheepskin, cork, plywood, and copper.
The best part has been curating the artwork. The art collection is the distinctive feature of the overall design and I hope people will view it as an exhibition rather than mere decoration. The pieces, which include paintings, photographs, sculpture, and mixed media pieces, are all done by New England-based female artists. Some of these Boston artists are talented friends (Lee Essex Doyle, Tess Atkinson, Grace Hopkins), others are young artists whose pieces I’ve purchased over the years at the SMFA Art Sale (Laura Beth Reese, Eugenie Lewalski Berg), others are artists I’ve become familiar with through blogging (Cig Harvey, Alicia Savage, Anastasia Cazabon, Anna Kasabian, Rachel Cossar, Winky Lewis, Jenny Prinn), and others are Boston artists who are new to me (Heather McGrath, Linda Cordner).
I knew from the start that I wanted to include a statement artwork of a partially obscured woman; a moody fashion-y photograph of an elusive woman. I was able to get a few, though no oversize pieces due to the prohibitive cost of printing. Nevertheless I think the collection will hold together well. At the end of this post, you can see my current hanging scheme for the main wall, and for over the bed. I also plan to print a few of my own Instagram photos to pin or (washi) tape up.
Here I present to you the Troy Boston Model Apt #1409 art collection featuring over a dozen Boston area artists. I hope you love it and will learn more about these talented women, all of whom have generously lent me their artwork.
Winky Lewis, Portland, ME Black and white photo of the artist’s daughter
Eugenie Lewalski Berg • Six Couples Cast concrete relief with graphite and oil pastel
Boston, MA
Linda Cordner • Bayside Sky • encaustic
Linda Cordner created this large encaustic for the apartment after seeing my color palette inspiration post.
SoWa, Boston, MA
Tess Atkinson • Vista Series
Color photograph face-mounted on plexiglass
Boston, MA
Heather McGrath • Sunset in Iceland Color photograph printed on sheet metal
SoWa, Boston, MA
Anna Kasabian, North Shore, MA Tide Pool III • stoneware
This many not be the exact piece that will hang. Anna Kasabian is lending me three pieces, which I will see when she drops them off next week.
Jenny Prinn, Maine
Little Footsteps I • Oil on canvas This is not the exact canvas I’ll be hanging. Jenny Prinn has graciously offered to paint an original work for the project.
Our friend, photographer Stephen Sheffield, held an open studio at his loft in Fort Point on Saturday.
We love spending time with Stephen and Alison, whether we’re grabbing a drink at The Hawthorne, which Alison and Stephen designed together, hanging at our house, or, in the old days, at the playground. They’re even a pleasure to follow on Facebook, thanks to plenty of lunches accompanied by oversize glasses of wine, disgruntled kid anecdotes (the boys make appearances around town on Stephen’s Instagram too), and a family trip to Disney in a Winnebago.
We’re longtime fans of Stephen’s work (click back to ARTmonday: Stephen Sheffield), but we’d never been down to his studio. So glad we made the trip. It’s in a Fort Point loft building called Mondo Condo, with a funky old elevator , exposed brick walls, wood beam ceilings, and worn wood floors.
Stephen shoots most of his photographs (he uses actual film) on location, including a fair amount on a lake in northern Maine, where they spend summers. His studio has lots of little work spaces where he makes stuff (he creates mixed media pieces too), and his darkroom is just down the hall.
The studio is filled with his work, plenty of cameras, props like his bowler hats, other interesting odds and ends, a swing he rigged for the kids, and a chandelier he concocted from mannequin limbs.
Stephen grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, attended Cornell University, earned his MFA at California College of the Arts, and teaches at New England School of Photography. Stephen Sheffield is represented in Boston by Panopticon Gallery.
