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10.26.20

Excerpt: Exhibition

In This Banner Year for Outdoor Art, Anders Ruhwald’s IMA Garden Installation is a Standout Favorite

At Newfields, the gardens that surround the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Detroit-based ceramicist Anders Herwald Ruhwald installed an exhibition of 10 large-scale ceramic works. Titled Century Garden, the sculptures — many of which are meant to hold plants — were tucked into the wilder, more overgrown parts of the garden; though the ceramic surfaces appeared almost tie-dyed, mottled as they were with yellows and blues, tangerine oranges and greens, they were camouflaged amongst the flowers and native plants, creating an uncanny effect.
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DIY papier mache quarantine
10.23.20

Sighted

The Texas Jeweler Plucking Sculptures from the Recycling Bin

Early in quarantine, way back in April, you couldn't open Instagram without running into a designer teaching a papier-mâché tutorial. Down in Austin, Texas, Sarah Murphy of the jewelry brand Hey Murphy caught the bug, like many of us did, and began making pieces from what she calls "quarantine trash" as a creative distraction and release while she watched TV and drank wine (relatable). "The point was to not create any more waste, so they are mostly made from the contents of our recycling bin," Murphy says.
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10.16.20

Excerpt: Book

This Vintage Mid-Century Primer Provides the Blueprint From Which Contemporary Design Emerged

In her encyclopedic 1996 book Fifties Furniture, author Leslie Piña outlines the five styles that influenced the midcentury era: Art Deco, Bauhaus and the International Style, Machine Age Modern, Biomorphism, and Abstract Expressionism. The result, say Jared Blake and Ed Be of Lichen NYC, who chose the book as the last subject of their guest editor week, is something like "basic algebra." Fifties furniture, explains Be, is "a blueprint for a lot of the furniture that we’ve seen in the past twenty or thirty years in America.”
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10.10.20

Saturday Selects

Week of October 5, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Robert McKinley's new Montauk vacation rental — which isn't necessarily "casual" as advertised, but is extremely chic nonetheless — a bevy of IRL exhibitions in London and Milan, and an explosion of florals in Copenhagen.
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09.16.20

Sighted

Three Monumental Works of Public Art You Can Experience Outdoors Right Now

Yesterday we got excited about the possibility of seeing art in person at a gallery or museum sometime soon. But for those who are still wary — or for those who simply can't — there are still plenty of ways to experience art "en plein air," and even moreso this fall: In New York alone, we found three new temporary installations, each centered around a single material.
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09.12.20

Saturday Selects

Week of September 7, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a new destination in Paris with a rooftop sauna, a Faye Toogood sofa that makes cement look downright cozy, and a modern collection of Judaica — i.e. a unicorn.
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09.09.20

Excerpt: Exhibition

With Design Parade Postponed Until 2021, the Cities of Hyères and Toulon Took Their Exhibitions (Mostly) Outside

Like most international art and design festivals this year, the annual Design Parade — which typically takes place across two cities in the south of France and is on record as one of our favorites — was forced to postpone its summer edition until 2021. Somehow, though, these restrictions don't seem to have reduced the activity in Hyères and Toulon by much.
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09.04.20

Excerpt: Magazine

We Want to Live Inside This Editorial On Conscious Consumerism

As our planet hurtles towards climate oblivion, it seems like literally the least we can do is engage in conscious consumerism. And this editorial — published last month in Elle Decoration UK and conceived collaboratively between London-based photographer Kristy Noble and stylist Katie Phillips — makes a pretty excellent case for it.
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09.03.20

Excerpt: Exhibition

Do You Love Your Toilet Paper Holder? Probably Not, But At a New Show, There Are 50+ Reasons to Change Your Mind

Toilet paper holders are, as a general rule, kind of the worst — which is why it's so heartening to see a whole exhibition devoted to them at Marta Los Angeles, on view from September 10 through November 1. Like so many everyday object shows before it, Under/Over — which features contributions from 53 studios — is both a cross-section of contemporary design, and a reflection of each designer's practice.
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09.02.20

Up and Coming

Guess This Is The Point Where We Crown Paper Pulp the “It” Material of 2020

Brazilian designer Humberto da Mata was born and raised in Brasília — which, with its swooping, Oscar Niemeyer–designed reinforced concrete buildings, could be considered the international seat of organic architecture. So perhaps it comes as no surprise that da Mata creates freeform work from easily moldable materials like hand-stitched upholstery, ceramics, and, most recently, papier-mâché (which, in case you missed it, appears to be *the* it material of 2020).
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