I stopped in to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to see the new installment of the dramatic video art exhibit, The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image. Although I have yet to visit a home in this area that has integrated video art into the décor, it’s clear we’re becoming more “at home” with the notion of art that doesn’t sit still. It’s likely just a matter of time before projected, changing images on walls become as mainstream as framed art.

The exhibit has several works composed of multiple screens that combine for a complex narrative – for example, in Candice Breitz’s Mother + Father, the artist presents 12 characters from popular films, each on its own screen, that run simultaneously to form a kind of melodramatic cacophony. By turns laughable and endearing, it shows us (in stereo) some Hollywood-fueled stereotypes of how we view the roles and struggles of parents.

Pierre Huyghe’s The Third Memory explores the power film has to alter perceptions and plant memories. In one of the most mesmerizing pieces, Isaac Julien fills four screens with juxtaposed hot and cold landscapes (Scandinavia, Burkina Faso) while a graceful, contemplative African-American woman walks through and observes them.

And I am seriously oversimplifying. The exhibit’s content is rich with ideas – from the way innocuous news footage can be consequentially biased to the way cinema can confuse our sense of place (we’re certain it’s Brooklyn when really, it’s Hollywood). If you’re craving art that moves you, stop by the Hirshhorn (the exhibit runs through Sept. 7) and check out art that moves, period. Plan to spend a couple hours.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Avenue & 7th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20013
hirshhorn.si.edu

Noyes’ father, Eliot Noyes, was an architect who became the first director of the Museum of Modern Art’s (then) new industrial design department in the 1940s. One of his first acts was to hold a competition for furniture design. Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen won that competition with the innovative molded plywood chair, which has since come to be known as the potato-chip chair. You can see them featured in a modern Old Town Alexandria space in our current issue, along with the Eames Lounge Chair.

After that MoMA competition, Eliot Noyes would call on Eames many more times to be a consultant for design and film projects when Noyes moved on to be an industrial designer for IBM.

“They became lifelong friends,” Derry recalls. Where Charles had the architectural background and Ray Eames was an artist, “my parents were very similar,” she says, in that her father was an architect and her mother, Molly Noyes, was an interior designer. “It went much further than a business relationship. Design was a way of life. It wasn’t compartmentalized. It was a point of view.”

One of Derry’s first Eames memories is when she was 4 in 1956, and her parents had four of the original Lounge Chairs in their home. “I would put my cats in there and swivel them around to make them dizzy,” she says, laughing. Two of those chairs remain in her Cleveland Park home.

Derry’s childhood bedroom had the Eames wire chair in it (which is also depicted in the stamps). It had a thin blue pad on it, and it also remains in her home today. An original Hang-it-All, the rack with colorful round balls on it, graces her home on Martha’s Vineyard.

Just as she retains several original Eames pieces, she also retains the aesthetic that they and her parents instilled.

“Design was a way of thinking. You surround yourself with things that give you joy – not that the pattern on your curtain will match the pattern you upholster your sofa in. [Design] happens over time. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

Stamp collectors can live that life vicariously through Derry’s designs. In addition to the Eames stamps, she’s also designed stamps for her parents’ other friends:

Alexander Calder (Yes, she has an original Calder mobile at her home.)

And Isamu Noguchi (His works can be found in her childhood home in New Canaan, CT, which her father designed and where her mother still lives.)

Other products in the hopper:

Matchstick window valances and custom-sized sisal rug from Cindy Sayers of Creative Design Solutions. (Original retail for rug: $1,765. Tent sale price: $700. Original price of valances: $1,718. Tent sale price: $650)

A pair of burled wood wine tasting tables from Karen Mitrano Snyder of Interiors of Washington Ltd. Retail: $1,900 each. Tent Sale: $933 each.

An original oil painting, also from Snyder. Retail: $850. Tent Sale: $350.

As of Friday, the list of designers participating in the sale is impressive, and still growing, event organizer Cris Tallent says.

Anne Dutcher
Annette Hannon
Ashton Design Group
Camille Saum
Chad Alan
Cindy Sayers
Cole Prévost
Darryl Carter
Dolly Howarth
Diana Garner
Edna Gross, DeFord Sharp
Gloria Capron,
Julia Mitchell /Marchten Interiors
Justine Sancho
Lavinia Lemon
Lisa Bartolomei
Karen Luria
Karen Mitrano Snyder Interiors of Washington, Ltd.
Kelley Proxmire
Michael Roberson
Page Palmer
Pamela Gaylin Ryder
Pat Leibowitz
Ricardo Ramos Studio Nuovo
Rosalia Kallivokas
Sally Steponkus
Sandra Myers
Skip Sroka
Tina Doyle Interiors
Victoria Neale
Victoria Sanchez
Weiss Design
Whitney Stewart


Designer’s Tent Sale
June 20-21
8 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Center for Family Development
7007 Bradley Blvd.
Bethesda, MD 20817

WORLD MARKET

This Raj Panel would look great on its own on the wall, or put several of them together to make an unusual headboard:

The Akio Coffee Table and the Soho Bookcase have a slight Asian flair, but mostly they just give a strong profile to a room:

And wow – there’s wall art from Kim Parker, the famous textile designer.

PIER 1

I love garden stools, and was so pleased to find them here, where they don’t cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, as many do:

This floral dinnerware is so pretty to look at, and it’s something no one would ever know came from Pier 1:

Same thing with these enamel boxes:

And I was so taken with these sweet ceramic box and lotus flowers – they would be perfect for the top of a dresser or vanity:

And speaking of vanities, this Hayworth vanity and bench swept me away. Pier 1? Who knew?

Until he can make furniture full time, Couch’s day job is spent teaching woodworking to young people in a job-training program affiliated with the Covenant House charity. But his furniture design has already gotten him great press this year with his District Table, a cocktail table cleverly carved into DC’s iconic shape. But his less-talked about works are just as exciting, always visually eloquent and sharply executed.

Couch is attracted to the “human scale of furniture—it’s very immediate, very utilitarian.” His roots in architecture instilled in him a love of spaces and of “dealing with pure objects,” and using those objects to make a home.

Here, these chairs represent the “negative” of the classic shield-back and Chippendale designs:

This cool cocktail table not only has great storage nooks, but the indentation on the right can serve as an extra seat:

To see how he executes his designs, here are excerpts from his own blog, de(sein).

Here, Couch talks about how all the pieces of his tables come together – the clamping alone is a work of art.

Justin says "The clamping of the big table. I had to do this one all at once. Talk about a nightmare! I was sure that it would come out terrible."

Suzanne Kasler
Kasler, who is just as fashionable as her new furniture, has filled her own home with antiques from her many travels, particularly the Paris flea markets. She’s been collecting for more than a decade, and her clients tend to ask for what she’s got.

“People would ask for that piece and that’s when I started thinking, this could be great to translate it,” she says. But unlike some antiques that are meant to be looked at rather than used, she adds, “I like things that are really comfortable.”

Here are some of her new – comfortable – chairs for Hickory Chair, for which you can find local dealers right here:

The Chastain Chair, which comes slipcovered or with bare legs, was inspired by a wicker chair Kasler slipcovered for her office.

The Alexandra Chair invokes the quatrefoil, one of the most renowned architectural motifs, according to Hickory Chair.

And the Anastasia Bench was inspired by Russian antiques that Kasler found in Paris.

Bradley Hughes
Michelle Bradley started as a commercial designer five years ago, and then got into high-end residential design, where she custom-designed lots of furniture and other home accessories for her clients. And now she has her own showroom and makes her designs available to the trade. “We make everything by hand here in the United States, within 300 miles of our showroom,” she says.

Her new Mick Chair, inspired by Rolling Stones’ frontman Mick Jagger, shows off the edgy graphics of artist Philip Barlow. “I like that movement in fashion that’s more rock than hip-hop,” she says.

Washington Designer Darryl Carter has purchased her Heidi Pierce wall coverings for his clients. The wall coverings are made from Venetian plaster laid over 100 percent imported cotton paper, and they are embossed with a damask pattern and wax-coated on top. “You know if Darryl Carter is calling about it, it’s awesome,” Bradley says.

My personal favorite is her Lucille chandelier:

Go see Bradley Hughes furniture at And Beige at 1781 Florida Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20009
Designers can go through Katharine Lambeth. 804.358.5858 or Info@KCLambeth.com.

Craig Alan
Consultant Mike Weber has dozens of Alan works on his Web site. As Alan says in his bio, he’s “constantly craving new ways to link contemporary expressions to traditional art.”

I was most taken by Folly Cove’s humorous storytelling through its designs, such as the amusing “gossip” and “reducing” designs:

For a modern take on such humorous patterns, check out designer Sheila Bridges’ Harlem Toile de Jouy and Dirty Linens’ Suburban Toile: Both are available at groovyQ, and as wallpaper, the Harlem Toile de Jouy is at Studio Printworks.

Folly Cove also produced lovely nature-inspired patterns, such as Little Daisy and Peony:

In that light, Galbraith & Paul, a husband-and-wife team in Philadelphia, use a similar block-printing process to make these beautiful designs.

Photo credit: Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

 

• The early years: “The first piece of furniture I bought was a really dumb purchase. It was a Spanish trunk. The minute you bought it, it wasn’t worth anything.”
• Favorite book: “The New Fine Points of Furniture: Early American: The Good, Better, Best, Superior, Masterpiece,” by Albert Sack. “It’s time to educate more than ever about the fine points of furniture.”
• Antiquing: “A week can’t go by without antiquing,” she says. When her company once questioned her about expensing a driver for those trips, she said it was worth it for the business: “I go antique, I look for inspiration, I look for ideas!”
• Artistic leanings: “I’m always sketching knot designs for knot gardens.”
• The mission: “We try to look for purity of design, clarity of vision, sense of proportion – usable, practical, and most of all, beautiful.”
• Her own home: “I don’t have any rugs – I have too many animals.”
• When asked if there was anyone else she would want to be: “I always wanted to be Sophia Loren, but I met Sophia Loren, and now I only want to be Martha. No insult – but she wears glasses!”
• Now you can live in her homes, in nine communities built by KB Homes: “We decorate the houses with all our things – you’ll want to just move in.”