Only 11 more days *Update

Only 11 days left until the 2010 Bazaar Bizarre! *I will not be attending

Click here for directions.

MFA Opens New Wing

After 10 years of construction, renovation and anticipation, the Museum of Fine Arts opened its new wing on Friday. The MFA will host a free community day showcasing the new wing on Nov. 20.

The new wing looks amazing, the best part there is a mid-century section! MFA Opens New Wing - Video - WCVB Boston

Level LG
Ancient American, Native American,
17th-Century, and Maritime Art

Level 1
18th-Century Art of the Colonial Americas
and Early 19th-Century Art

Level 2
19th-Century and Early 20th-Century Art

Level 3
20th-Century Art through the mid-1970s

Peter Sandback

Peter Sandback is a modern furniture maker in the woods of Harrisville, NH. He uses local materials and his table tops are made from logs that are cut down on his property. The cylindrical wood bases for the Drum tables are from an actual drum factory in Manchester, New Hampshire


Peters Studio
Originally built as a commercial garage, Sandback converted the building — set on 30 acres of forest — into an organized and efficient workshop where he handcrafts every piece of furniture in his line.

Frank Roop interiors

Loving Frank Roop's interiors! He is based in Boston, but some of his designs look more suited for a warm beachy location.

Frank began his firm in 1998 after a career in fine men’s specialty store retailing. The principles of design he learned in menswear helped give him the basis for formulating and conceptualizing his design schemes.

New Blog: An Hour from Nowhere

I've started a new blog called An Hour From Nowhere. It will feature New Hampshire events, places, people, artists and just about anything hip and fun that is going on in the state. As someone who has only lived here for two years, I've been on the look-out for cool things to do, read, visit, etc. So if you're from NH and want to share something interesting, please e-mail me.

Tomorrow night: BIG PRINT, LIL PRINT

BIG PRINT, LIL PRINT

Please join us for the one-night-only holiday sale and exhibition on Friday, December 11.

The annual Design Nearby show at pinkcomma gallery kickstarts the holiday shopping season with “Big Print, Lil Print,” building on 2007’s successful print-themed show and 2008’s “Cloth Paper Scissors” showcase of local designers. This year’s edition will focus on printed works by Boston-area artists and designers. Whether on paper, canvas, t-shirts, or textiles, the seventeen featured artists display a variety and breadth of design sensibilities. Each designer will present two to six pieces, with editions available for sale. More information on the participating artists is available at designnearby.com.

About Design Nearby
Design Nearby is an exhibition series for people who love design. The events showcase inventive craft and clever aesthetics, from graphics on t-shirts to ornaments made of felt to woodblock wallpaper. Design Nearby highlights works in various disciplines, with a focus on artists and designers from the Boston area.

Exhibit and Holiday Sale
Friday, December 11, 2009, 6 p.m. – 11 p.m.

pinkcomma gallery
81B Wareham Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02118
617.426.4466 www.pinkcomma.com



The pinkcomma gallery was founded in 2007 to showcase Boston’s emerging design culture in architecture and other allied fields. Through exhibitions and events, the gallery provides an independent venue for the exchange and expansion of ideas within the city’s design scene.

It's tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so excited about tomorrow, but I'm not too excited about this snow we're expected to get...Yuck. So normally Bazaar Bizarre gets around 4,000 visitors, wow! I hope to see you there!


Hours
The doors opening at 12pm-7pm

Admission is $1, please try to have exact change ready to make it MUCH quicker to get in.

Bazaar Bizarre will also have new & used music for sale, Wheeler's Black Label Vegan Ice Cream, and some awesome entertainment.

PARKING INFO
GOOGLE MAP: http://tinyurl.com/yk7v4fe

Pilgrim Parking/Atelier 505 Parking Garage:
Located under the Calderwood Pavilion. Enter on Warren Ave, at the rear of the facility.

Garage @ 100 Clarendon Street:
With entrance on Clarendon Street between Stuart Street and Columbus Ave just before Back Bay Station.

CENTRAL PARKING, 10 SAINT JAMES AVE

Corner of Shawmut and East Berkeley Streets

Open Lots on Berkeley:
There are two open parking lots on Berkeley Street at Columbus Avenue. Open until 10pm.

Dartmouth Street Garage
126 Dartmouth St

Wet Paint

Sorry for the lack of posts, I've been swamped with orders and I've been preparing for Bazaar Bizarre, which is next Sunday, ahhh!!.

My hands are smeared with paint from coating my mobiles. I was trying out different color combinations today, and it took so long to get a nice mix of colors. These photo's don't do them justice, I'll take more in the day light.

UPCOMING EVENTS (help support local artists)

Dec. 6th:
Bazaar Bizarre is approaching! Check out the over 80 vendors here. I'll be at table 6, please come down and say hi! Admission is $1, and it's located in the BCA Cyclorama on 539 Tremont St. Also if your interested in a particular print please let me know now, so I can have it for you at the show.



Dec 11th:
If you're not really into the crazy crowds of Bazaar bizarre, I suggest you attend Design Nearby. It's more of a smaller gallery setting where you can view the artists framed work and also purchase it as well. Check out images below from years past. I'm not sure If I will be attending this, it's probably a no, but I'll try.

Design Research is Back in Cambridge, MA … Temporarily

Found via Apartment Therapy

"Fans of modern design who lived in Boston in the 70's will fondly remember the revolutionary Design Research store in Harvard Square. In fact, the floor-to-ceiling glass building that Crate & Barrel just vacated was originally designed and built for "D/R" — the store that introduced modern designs by Marimekko, Hans Wegner, Alvar Aalto, Joe Columbo and more to the US. For the next few months, Design Research is back in its original space … as an installation." Click here for more info from Apartment Therapy

"The iconic five-story glass building at 48 Brattle St. was originally built in 1969 by architect Ben Thompson to house his legendary store Design Research. Over the years, Thompson and D/R had introduced shoppers to bold modernist furnishings and interior designs by Marcel Breuer, Hans Wegner, Alvar Aalto, and Joe Colombo, as well the splashy graphic fabrics of Marimekko. The pioneering retailer would influence American design tastes and sensibilities in ways that are still evident today." Click here to read the original Boston Globe article

OOOoo I hope I catch this before it's gone!

Design Research is located at 48 Brattle Street Cambridge, MA 02138

This Sunday

This Sunday I'll be at the Design Hive indoor market (located in Cambridge, MA) which will be the last market I'll do before Bazaar Bizarre - Boston. Please let me know if you're coming and if so please let me know what items I should bring, I'd hate to not bring your favorite print or decal. Blog readers who attend will get a free holiday penguin card with their purchase! (secret word is Spaghetti)

Nahcotta Gallery: Flora & Fauna

Jennifer Judd-McGee AKA Swallowfield


I took a trip today to the Nahcotta gallery and to do some shop hopping with my friend Sarah in Portsmouth, Nh. I hadn't been there in probably 7 years and was so happy to see so many new shops and more artsy-types walking around sitting in coffee houses or sketching on the streets.


I loved the gallery and all art and home decor. I also saw my first original Matt Stephen's piece!

Julia Rothman

Fall House Tour (Lincoln, MA)

FoMA Fall House Tour Lincoln's Friends of Modern Architecture (FoMA) invites you to tour the updated 1937 Cyrus Murphy House in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Free to FoMA members. Non-members $20 per person. Reservations required as space is limited. Reserve at: fomalincoln@gmail.com and provide your e-mail and phone number. You will be given the address and time for your tour. 10/4: 2pm - 5pm

via Apartment Therapy

Fall & Winter Events

Mark your calenders! I've signed up for some amazing craft shows coming soon.


Concord Arts Market

Downtown Concord, NH (outdoor)

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Saturday, October 24, 2009





Design Hive Market

Maria Baldwin School, Cambridge, MA (indoor)

Sunday, October 4, 2009





Boston Bazaar Bizarre

539 Tremont S, Boston, MA (indoor)

Sunday, December 6, 2009

The Enormous Tiny Art show (NH)

The Enormous Tiny Art show
I haven't been able to see it yet but it's on my list. The enormous tiny art show at the Nahcotta gallery runs until September 28th, located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This show is filled with tons of artists: Amy Ruppel, Leah Giberson, Matte Stephens, Jennifer Judd-McGee, and Lisa Congdon just to name a few. I hope to take a trip over there next weekend and take a peek at all this beautiful tiny art up close and personal. If anyone wants to go with me let me know, I love doing things in groups!

Mid Century Monday: The Gropius house

People I know have been telling me that I need to visit the Walter Gropius house in Lincon, MA. I've never seen photo's of the inside before today but it looks so modern and not dated at all! Your not allowed to take pictures inside but Martha Stewart Living featured the home back in September for all to see.

Info from the article

"One need travel only a mile from where he built his iconic one-room cabin in Massachusetts to encounter another masterpiece of deliberate living, the residence of the great architect of the Modernist period, Walter Gropius.

Born in Berlin in 1883, Gropius was instrumental in defining Modernism not simply as an aesthetic movement but also as a design philosophy capable of uniting the benefits of industrial production and manual craftsmanship. This he achieved largely through his teachings at the Bauhaus, the legendary school he founded in Weimar, Germany, between the two World Wars.

Although judiciousness of means was a central tenet of the Bauhaus philosophy, it was not only for doctrinal reasons that the Gropius House was built with extreme economy. The Gropiuses arrived in the United States with little money, having abandoned Germany to flee the Nazi regime.

Lured to Massachusetts in 1937 by the offer of the chair of architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Gropius relocated with his wife, Ise, and their young daughter, Ati.

He was immediately confronted by the question of where to settle. "We rented a house near one of the lakes," Ise writes in a brief 1977 memoir on the origins of the residence. "But our Bauhaus furniture looked indeed very strange in the small rooms of this prim little house of Colonial style."

Gropius was intent on designing a home for his family according to Bauhaus principles. But in 1938, obtaining a mortgage for a flat-roofed house was an unlikely proposition..

The breakthrough came when he was introduced to Helen Storrow, a wealthy New England patron and landowner who agreed to provide a parcel of land and the funds to construct a home, which Gropius would then rent (and eventually buy) from her.

Marcel Breuer, another Bauhaus luminary, was offered a similar arrangement on an adjacent plot. These were to be their first architectural projects in the United States.

Built with an overall construction budget of $18,000 ($275,000 today), the Gropius House must be one of the least expensive architectural masterpieces of the twentieth century.

Located on a rise overlooking an apple orchard to the front and a copse to the rear, the house reproposes the flat roof, ribbon windows, and overall aesthetic hygiene typical of what became known as the International Style (a label Gropius detested but was unable to shake off entirely). On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that the design celebrates both local craftsmanship and American industrial production.

True to the spirit of the Bauhaus, the Gropius House combines traditional elements of New England architecture, such as clapboard, fieldstone, and brick; new materials, including glass blocks and chrome balusters; and the latest technology in fixtures -- all ordered from stock catalogs. Local techniques are honored but often subverted: The clapboard, for example, runs vertically, not horizontally, as in neighboring Colonial farmhouses.

Completed within the year, the house was a collaborative family effort. In what was to become a defining characteristic of the project, the Gropiuses fashioned the architecture around the furniture, creating a series of intimate, exquisitely functional spaces.

Ati took an active role in the design process, explicitly requesting that she and her friends be able to access her quarters without passing through the main entrance. "Our 12-year-old daughter had some extra wishes," Ise writes. "Her father always paid great attention to the spontaneous ideas of children, because he found them stimulating and less encumbered with the preconceived stylistic notions of their elders." This request became the genesis of the spiral staircase that so gracefully interrupts the house's emphatically horizontal north elevation.

Gropius and his wife inhabited the house until their deaths in 1969 and 1983, respectively. Before she passed away, Ise transferred the ownership of the residence and its contents to the preservation organization Historic New England. The house remains in its hands, immaculately preserved in every detail.

The society's great achievement is to have created a sense of suspended animation, largely thanks to the meticulous preservation not simply of the building itself but also of so many of the Gropiuses' personal effects. The house, in all its modern splendor, looks as if the couple could have just gone out for a walk -- perhaps to Walden Pond, a place of pilgrimage for all those who have lived deliberately." Text by Joseph Grima

View more photos here