Artful Layers

Grand Hotel Villa Feltrinelli     Lake Garda     Italy

The story of my mirrors is layered and long. I'll try to be brief in describing it which means I'll leave some out so I'll probably end up revisiting the subject. The title of this post is my version of "Artful Lairs", a story written and produced by Zahid Sardar for the San Francisco Examiners' Sunday supplement magazine, Image. I'm talking 1993 but even at this early date you can see, if you look very closely, a tiny mirror cut-out. I used it in a three dimensional collage. I took an exquisite 18th century bull's eye mirror in gilt frame and used it in an irreverent way. The bullseye mirror image forms the "eye" in a surreal face made of flotsam. I made a number of collages of that sort and eventually scaled-up and translated the mirror into paint and graphite and other media.

Scott Waterman    home/studio   Image Magazine 1993

Scott Waterman    home/studio   Image Magazine 1993

Scott Waterman "Bug Box with Photoshop"

Fast forward to the early 2000s by which time I had moved to Oakland and a much larger studio space, a Victorian store front, late 1900s. Since I had the room my work grew in number and size. I explored the mirror image further and showed a portfolio to Bamo. Pamela Babey bought one of my graphite mirrors on the spot and the seed was planted for a future project which turned out to be a boutique hotel in northern Italy. If you, dear reader, ever get the chance to visit the Villa Feltrinelli I wish you'd take a picture of my work installed there and send it to me. I've never been! My mirror painting hangs in a prominent spot and there are a few of works of mine elsewhere in the Villa.

Scott Waterman   Oakland Studio   2001

Scott Waterman   Oakland Studio   2001

Scott Waterman   Oakland Studio   2001

Scott Waterman     acrylic and graphite on canvas

Scott Waterman     acrylic and graphite on canvas  Villa Feltrinelli

Style Saloniste, Diane Saeks wrote a profile on Pamela for City Paper and the mirror drawing Pamela bought from me is there in her chic living room. Actually at home and at work too because one of my largest mirror paintings also hangs in the Bamo lobby.

Scott Waterman  mirror drawing  Pamela Babey collection   San Francisco

Scott Waterman    mirror painting   acrylic and silkscreen on paper   BAMO  S.F. 

Now move with me to Los Angeles because that's where the story continues several years later. My studio has shrunk in size and my mirror work turns intimate again. I take another mirror image portfolio to Jennifer Long at Film Art L.A. She sells my work for use in movies, TV, and more, and that's how my work ended up on the set for "Wright vs. Wrong". It's a TV pilot. I have no idea when and if it will air but Debra Messing and Carrie Fisher are attached. Almost at the same time another agent of mine, Joanna Burke , placed my work in the Pasadena Showcase house. I saw it there. It looked nice. Amy Devault did the interior design.

Scott Waterman   mirror drawing   watercolor and charcoal on paper

Stay tuned for more on this series. There's more to come!

May_studio.07

May_studio.07
Originally uploaded by scott_waterman

Off to Venice to deliver this piece for the Venice art Auction 2010. I always secretly hope the work will come back to me. It hasn't so far.

(untitled 260, 2008)

Man in the Mirror

I have news about my mirror images. I've got links and stories and I've just got enough time right now to type these few words and add these few images. No, these drawings are not what I'm going going to tell about, there's more. These are mine but there are others. Wait.

wither volcanic particulate

wither volcanic particulate
Originally uploaded by scott_waterman

Please Stand By

Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall.

All ya gotta do is call. If you're old enough or broad based enough to know the song I'm referring to then fine but this blog post really is about the seasons. Here in the northern hemisphere we're entering Spring but I can't forget readers in the southern hemisphere because they're starting Fall. So I've selected a project of mine that reflects the season no matter where you are. Impossible? No really, I've done it and you don't even have to get out of bed. Actually I'd prefer you get into bed. But first a word from our sponsor: Jean de Merry.


One winter I painted a flowering plum branch used in a print ad for Jean de Merry. They make furniture with an moderne/deco sort of vibe. Some how a flowering plumb branch seems to go with that. What doesn't it go with? Anyway, it was a fun photo shoot with a French stylist, yummy French catering, and a hunky model. So Christian Maroselli and Jean-Claude de Merry partners in Jean de Merry the company are the sponsors I'm referring to. Although, it's really just tongue in cheek because they had nothing to do with the real reason for this post, the four seasons bed.





One of the last projects I completed before leaving San Francisco was for an Episcopal priest who also happened to be a Chinese scholar. He was specifically interested in Chinese art history and had some beautiful scroll paintings among his treasures. It was kind of wonderful be able to examine his collection which might otherwise be in a museum but at a certain point it became a distraction from the commission he had in mind for me. A small daybed with a canopy had long since lost it's soft decorative feature and it was up to me to come up with a replacement. What I decided upon was a set of four images instead of just one so that the bed could change with the seasons.






The flowering plumb is for Winter, lotus for Spring, bamboo for Summer, and the pine symbolizes Fall. It's funny to think of but I wasn't so excited about the job when I took it. In the end I was rather happy with it. I think it's so pleasant to be able to lie down and gaze up at the paintings. I couldn't tell you the dynasty or school or whatever, they just beautiful images. I had to let all of that art history go because the images and the symbols just work.














The idea of symbolic imagery in painting reminds me of the beautiful chinoiserie in the HBO movie about Grey Gardens. Did you happen to catch it? When the music teacher realizes he must leave Grey Gardens you see a painted bird taking flight right next to him. And then there's a scene where Big Edie has been left all alone and she's on the phone trying to convince Little Edie to come back home. Meanwhile over her shoulder in the chinoiserie is a bird in a cage. Isn't that brilliant? Want some symbolic painting in your life? All ya gotta do is call and I'll be there. Yes I will.
Or just leave a comment, that'd be nice.

Adorned The Wall

Have you ever wondered what they think of you in Italy? No? Me neither, but I got the chance to find out, I guess. I mean, I've been published a couple of times in Italian shelter magazines so I guess they told me what they thought of me. I haven't translated the articles in a while. You're welcome to go for it. Download my .pdf files and give me your best translation. I imagine it will turn out something like: “Me Talk Pretty One Day” or “Adorned The Wall” which is what you get from Il Muro Ornato with a free online translator. Il Muro Ornato is the title of the first article about me in Casa Vogue from October of 1991.







However, I've decided to reproduce here pages from the second article about my place in San Francisco that came out five years later: Casa Vogue, May 1995. What's interesting to me is that my blog is not the random ramblings I sometimes think it to be but instead a coherent message with a common thread. In my last post I showed pictures of the Pontormo figures I painted on a bed and you will note that the panels from that bed are sitting on my mantle, blank, and awaiting my touch. They're there on the page of Casa Vogue. Do you see them?




The other reason I thought to share these pages is because of Hollywood Forever Kevin. Do you know him? Check my comments! He really gets my work and I love his enthusiasm. So much so that I invited him over. Come see for yourself I told him. It's hard to believe that's my first meeting with a fellow L.A. Blogger. There are so many of them you'd think we'd be tripping over one another. Oh, no, that's wrong. I did meet Brooke Giannetti but that's before I was also a blogger myself.






Anyway, back to Kevin. While Kevin was here he reminded me how much people love my giant leaf. “You haven't blogged about it?” he demanded, as if “Why not?!”. So I hereby present my gunera leaf, plucked from my cutting garden in the Sunset District of San Francisco and published in Casa Vogue. My cutting garden, some people call it Golden Gate Park. Golden Gate Park is one of the perks of living in the foggiest part of San Francisco and I really appreciated it! Now I invite you too to appreciate my adorned walls. They're long gone but preserved for history.





Credits:

The marvelous doyenne of design Diane Dorrans Saeks brought the talented photog, Alan Weintraub, out to shoot my place for inclusion in her book San Francisco Interiors. Alan later sold the same images to Casa Vogue through his European agent. They repackaged the images for a magazine and see? That's how it all works.