Posted: February 11th, 2013 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: design | Tags: architecture, design, home
BEFORE
I am constantly compensating for my various dissatisfactions with our house by investing myself in home improvement projects. And admittedly, that is the beauty of a small home — that home improvement projects are all the more viable and easier to confront. Our home may be smaller than I would like, but I am committed to making each part of it exactly as I want it. Throughout our house we have blond wood floors which I hate. Admittedly, that seems like an extreme response, but it’s a pet peeve of mine. They’re just so darn yellow looking. In addition, of the limited square footage we have, a fair amount is dedicated to the stairway and landing — wasted space in a small home — so I am determined to milk that staircase and landing for all of the aesthetic potential they are worth. Hence the beloved dear. And now the Christmas vase. The last step, easily accomplished with a quart of paint or two, is the stairs themselves, and that cursed blond wood. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 7th, 2013 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: design, fashion, stuff to buy | Tags: jewelry, Spring 2013
Tatty Devine Large Parakeet Necklace (available at asos.com $189.43) – fyi, this necklace is a lot bigger than you’re thinking, but it’s elegant and awesome, check it out on asos
THE ARTISTRY OF TATTY DEVINE: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 6th, 2013 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: design, fashion, stuff to buy | Tags: artists, designers, jewelry
Delfina Delettrez necklace ($465) and bracelet ($558) – available on yoox.com
We all need something completely unattainable to lust after, don’t we? That is generally my specialty … I lust after it long enough to convince myself that whatever it is I’m pursuing is, in fact, attainable. An incredibly destructive habit. But all the more seductive for it. My newest bad habit is Delfina Delettrez jewelry. For now it is only a would be bad habit because I have acknowledged that the prices are firmly outside of my budget. But the jewelry is just bizarre and playful enough to be intensely lust-worthy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 24th, 2012 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: art, design | Tags: art, graffiti, politics, popular culture, public art, public spaces, street art
Faces of Dudley, Mike Womble and the MMC, Roxbury, MA, 1995, Acrylic paint
I received my daily update from the Boston Magazine blog with tremendous excitement today, because there were a few posts which touched directly on issues I have been thinking about a lot lately. The first was entitled “How Boston Shapes City Resident: A new study proves that we’re still bound by our Puritanical history”. The post directs the reader toward Emily Badger’s piece for The Atlantic Cities in which she discusses a study entitled “The Cultural Construction of Self and Well-Being: A Tale of Two Cities“. Those two cities are Boston and San Francisco. The idea behind the study is that these cities have a tremendous amount in common, offering a perfect opportunity to examine what factors, then, might be responsible for the cities’ profound cultural differences.
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Posted: May 22nd, 2012 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: design | Tags: decorating, design, home
I now officially have the home renovation bug – bad. I know I promised the other day that I would share images of the built-ins we just installed in my sons’ room and didn’t deliver. I will, eventually, I swear. But I am in love with my built-ins. In fact, I am in love with built-ins in general. As a kid there were a built-in closet and dresser in my bedroom and we cursed them nearly every day. The placed serious constraints on how I could arrange my room, and seemed a highly inefficient and unattractive use of space. And as an adult homeowner I have noticed that built-ins seem to have generally fallen out of favor for some time now. But I think that’s a big mistake. When done well, the storage — and therefore space, organization and dimension – and character that they can add to a room is truly phenomenal.
I received perhaps my favorite complement of all time the other day when my son and his friends did some baking for a school fundraiser in my renovated kitchen and one of the boys commented that it was the best kitchen he had ever seen (or something to that effect, but we’ll just assume that was the gist). I loved not only the complement itself certainly, but the fact that it was made after and in response to spending the day working in my kitchen. Because certainly whether it is the nicest looking kitchen around is highly debatable. The really beauty of the kitchen is in how efficiently and effectively the space is used, so that it honestly makes me happy every single time I cook or bake in it. All of which feels fairly arrogant to say, since I designed the kitchen, but I think the actual point is that built-ins work best when they are designed by (or in conjunction with) the owner and take into account the user’s specific needs. While pruning the photographs in the iPhoto library which threatens to take over — and then take down — my computer I came across pictures of the kitchen pre-renovation. Organizing the room around efficient storage was nothing short of transformative. Read the rest of this entry »
