Paper Plastico

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Today I often skip the watercolor sketch and do the preliminary design in Photoshop. It's faster and more flexible. Still, I love to work with good quality heavy weight watercolor paper and will even use it to create a maquette. This is especially helpful if the architecture is a bit complicated which was certainly the case with my painted room in Hong Kong. It really helps the client get an idea of how the completed room will look.

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Actually, I did begin the project with a nice watercolor, rather tight and in scale. Wisely the client rejected this first idea and it was my own fault for not doing some quick messy sketches just to get some basic concepts down. The room, a dining room in the client's home on Victoria Peak is eight sided. The number eight in Chinese is similar in sound to the word for prosper or wealth so the Chinese like that number but the client didn't necessarily want a design that was especially Chinese.

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I worked with the designers at BAMO to come up with something but they had their hands full with so many other other aspects of the project. In a way I wanted the challenge of trying to design in what to me was a foreign culture and for it to look authentic. What I came up with is a western traditional motif that is skewed in an Eastern fashion. I knew the key to the design issue was to start with the hexagonal panel in the middle of the ceiling. Eventually I realized this shaped replicated the bagwa which often has a yin yan symbol in its center. Instead of a yin yan symbol I gently distorted a tradition palmette design found on ancient Greek pottery. After completing the design of the center ceiling panel the rest of the room sort of fell into place.

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I painted the whole project in my studio in California. I typically use heavy weight muslin for this type of work. It's lighter than canvas but strong enough to hold up to the kind of abuse that seems necessary for applying it to wall surfaces. I went to Hong Kong to supervise the installation despite the fact that that hanging wall paper (or fabric) is not my area of expertise nor do I speak Cantonese. I actually was able to help since I knew readily which pieces went where and I came up with a simple technical suggestion that made it possible to get the central ceiling panel up. I'll post pictures from Hong Kong in my next post.

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Click on Tumblr for more pictures of this and other projects. Thanks!

Into the Woods

Looking down from any high rise structure in Atlanta clearly shows a city built in a forest. Atlanta loves its trees and gardens. It definitely took edge off city living and attracted me as a student in the late 70s. I later found out Frederick Law Olmsted of Central Park fame had big influence on the city's tree culture (starting in 1890). In fact his namesake landscape architectural design firm lasted for nearly 100 years in Atlanta.



In the early 70s I remember obsessing over the super graphics (painted walls and furniture) and giant photo murals I saw in shelter magazines. By 1976 I was in London and I had the chance to see two of my obsessions together in one place: Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth. It's amazing to see such contrasts together in one place: a forest in a room with an extraterrestrial (David Bowie).



By the early 80s I had finished art school in Atlanta and was starting a career there as a decorative painter. An early assignment was to propose a mural for a new restaurant. Actually it was the newest restaurant for the local (highly successful) Pleasant Peasant chain. They had acquired a beautiful beaux arts building which I realized would make a great frame for whatever I could come up with. I designed two landscape inspired works: one representational, the other abstract. One is based on a 19th c British watercolor and the other a painting by Arthur Dove.



I was new at the game and let the designer John Oetgen present my work to the client. It may not have made much difference had I presented it myself but it left me feeling that much more bereft when I learned I didn't get the job. John assured me they liked the work -the abstract one even better. Steve Nygren, the owner, was undoubtedly very thrifty and as is often the case money was an issue. Still, Steve did drive the fanciest Mercedes and he may have even at that time been saving up to buy his own town (Serenbe) which he subsequently did. And John Oetgen might have liked to design and paint the work himself which he has subsequently done for more that one of his interior design clients.

In the end I'm left with my sketches which I still like quite a lot. I'd totally forgotten about them and the whole incident until recently sorting through my flat files. I think I'd propose the very same thing to day and feel either one would make a very handsome mural.