8.3.09

A Little Shop in the Village

















Occasionally, on days that I'm not in school I work at Elizabeth Charles, a sweet little multi-line boutique in the Village. It's named after the lovely Australian woman who owns it.

I like to think of it as part of my ongoing design education. Its filled with beautiful pieces; mostly Australian designers that are known for their unique details and high quality craftsmanship.

Good design is good design is good design. Right?

3.3.09

Cassoulet

My friend Nancy got me started on Cassoulet a few years ago. She made the more traditional version; using duck meat and making her own pork sausages. It was a memorable meal.

The Cassoulet I make is much more simple and pared down, but still a pretty satisfying winter meal. It's even better a couple days later, which is why I make it the day before and insist my friends take some home as well.







Chopping fresh rosemary in our tiny New York kitchen.


2 tablespoons plus 1/4 cup olive oil
3 pounds assorted fully cooked smoked sausages (such as kielbasa and andouille)
4 large leeks (white and pale green parts only), thinly sliced
6 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 medium apple, peeled, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 1/2 teaspoons dried rubbed sage
1/2 cup brandy
2 14 1/2-ounce cans diced tomatoes with roasted garlic in juice
3 15-ounce cans Great Northern beans, drained, liquid reserved
1 10-ounce package frozen baby lima beans, thawed
1 cup (or more) canned chicken broth
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
4 cups diced country-style bread
1 pound tomatoes, seeded, diced
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley


Preheat oven to 350°F. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy large ovenproof pot over medium heat. Add sausages; sauté until brown, about 25 minutes. Transfer to plate and cut into 1/2-inch rounds.


Add leeks and garlic to same pot. Sauté until beginning to soften, about 8 minutes. Mix in apple, rosemary and sage. Add brandy and simmer until almost evaporated, about 5 minutes. Mix in canned tomatoes with juices, canned beans with 1/2 cup reserved liquid, lima beans, 1 cup broth, tomato paste and cloves. Add sausages. Season with pepper.


Bring cassoulet to boil. Cover pot and transfer to preheated oven; bake 30 minutes. (Can be made up to 2 days ahead. Uncover; cool 1 hour. Refrigerate until cold; cover and keep refrigerated. Before continuing, rewarm in covered pot in 350°F. oven 40 minutes, adding more broth if dry.)


Heat remaining 1/4 cup oil in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add bread and sauté until golden brown, stirring often, about 25 minutes. Combine fresh tomatoes and parsley in large bowl; mix in bread. Season topping with salt and pepper. Spoon onto warm cassoulet. Bake uncovered 15 minutes longer.

14.2.09

Paper

Jennifer Krauss
Untitled, 2000, 2000
abaca paper, Slinkys, rust
20 x 16 inches
collaborator: Paul Wong

I recently went to the Dieu Donné paper mill and artist workspace with my Christie's class. We viewed several works by artists that create works made both with and on handmade paper produced in the studio.

Paper is such a wonderfully tactile medium. I wanted to touch and nuzzle the sometimes gloriously thick and meaty and sometimes veil-like and gracefully thin sheets of handmade paper.

After the tour, we had a chance to create our own paper to take home. Dipping screens into soupy troughs of snowy cotton pulp, we pulled thick paper sheets out of the water. I could totally get into this.




Keeping with the paper-theme of the day, I arrived home to a package of custom letterpress stationary that I had ordered a few weeks back from Lunalux in Minneapolis. They do such a lovely job. Nice thick paper. So simple and such high quality.

Just in time for Valentines day.

10.2.09

Brassy.

I really love this pair of 1950's brass steamer trunks. I found them on the antique website, 1stdibs. I would use them as lovely little bedside tables. They have a nice "Out of Africa" feel to them.
I would put them on either side of the Ghost slipcovered bed by Paola Navone, available at The Conran Shop.
Nice.

9.2.09

Agnes Gund is too cool for school.


























This fall, I moved to New York to study with Christie's. Their certificate program, Modern Art, Connoisseurship and the History of the Art Market, has taken me all over the city. We tour museums, galleries, artist's studios and my favorite; Agnes Gund's home on Park Avenue.

Agnes Gund is president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art and chairman of its International Council.

This notable philanthropist and collector of post-war art an impressive home and an even more impressive art collection: Mark Rothko in her living room, Jasper Johns above her Sofa and countless others tucked away in hallways and as quiet little shrines in offices and guest bedrooms. These are pieces that draw immense crowds at historically important museum shows. These very artworks are loaned out for exhibition all over the world.

This woman literally lives with some of the most important post-war contemporary works of art. She eats her cereal by a Lichtenstein, brushes her teeth near a Rauschenberg and shoos her pups away from the Wolfgang Laib work consisting of slabbed marble and graceful white rice piles in the front hallway.

This was one of those experiences that changes you. This woman has some serious art all wrapped up in a seriously spectacular apartment.

It felt spiritual.

Silly as it may be, with all that amazing art and exceptional design I felt really proud of humans. Even in the unnatural world, the man-made world, we are participating in the creation of beauty.

Mother Nature does not have a monopoly on beautiful design.

I realize this isn't news to most people, especially artists and designers, but it was a "moment" for me. A happy epiphany. Art is not just stuff. It's really, really beautiful stuff.



Read more about Gund's home here.



1.2.09

For the End of the Bed

Throw by Susan Shalom for Holly Hunt

I'm not one for a million boudoir pillows on a bed, but I do adore something at the foot.



It's been done a million times before, but for very good reason. An Hermes blanket at the foot of a bed looks so attractive.






There is also more affordable, but no less desirable, Hudson Bay Blanket. So cozy.

Small Packages

I have fallen in love with the MINOX DCC Leica M3 5MP Digital Camera.

It is tiny and beautiful. It is like a high quality European toy.

Just the thing for taking pictures in an inconspicuous manner. But on the other hand, I wouldn't mind getting caught with it. It's just so very handsome.

30.1.09

The Life of a Chair

"The wonderful distress on the thick saddle leather seat and armrests suggest an active life during the great age of exploration."

Chair from Modest Designs in Brooklyn

A sweet quality of light.

Campari Pendant Light by Ingo Maurer

So very nice.

www.ingo-maurer.com

18.11.08

Joan Mitchell


Joan Mitchell, They Never Appeared in the White, 1973



"What makes me want to squeeze the paint in the first place, so that the brush is out, is a memory of a feeling. It might be of a dead dog, it might be of a lake, but once I start painting, I'm painting a picture" (J. Mitchell, quoted in J. E. Bernstock, Joan Mitchell, exh. cat., New York, 1988, p. 33).


After her move to the countryside of rural Vétheuil, which is north of Paris, on an expansive property Mitchell seemed to inspire a more lyrical approach to abstraction. Many of her paintings embody her felt responses to nature and landscapes. Emotional and expressive strokes of colors personify her style of painting. The later pictures are open and airy, often exploding in colorful calligraphic gestures. Mitchell was known to talk about how her paintings are conceived from her memories from nature or in her words ‘what it leaves me with’. Her work oftentimes emulates the movement, gravity, and structure of landscapes in nature.

The Joan Mitchell painting, titled ’They Never Appeared with the White”, a diptych oil on canvas painted in 1973 is one of her larger scaled works painted when she was living in France. The piece consists of two canvases each 94 ½ x70 1/2 in. which when placed together dominates 141 ½ inches of wall space. Like many other post-War American painters, Mitchell was utilizing sheer physical size to vocalize her visual statement. On the grounds of the two large canvases that are butted together is a treatment of layered patches of white that seems to have been each dirtied by blue, grey and taupe pigments. The whites present the canvases as large rectangular blocks that may be read as the ground or as part of the paintings landscape. In bottom right hand corner of each layered and seemingly dingy white panel lays a light lavender blue “nest” form. Beside each of these circular nest figures is a deep indigo patch that drips paint to the bottom edge of the canvas. On the right canvas another small emerald patch has been wedged in between the indigo blue patch and the lavender blue nest, which has tufted a slight tangle of flame colored brush strokes. It seems to be crowding the blue patch, which elongates it slightly. Most dramatically in the right hand panel Mitchell applies three massive vertical strokes of color, salmon pink, more lavender blue and the largest a deep emerald green. The dominating three swaths of color in the right hand panel might read as a surprise or conclusion in relation to the left hand panel. When reading the diptych from left to right, which comes so naturally to the viewer, there is an emotional build up, a crescendo of the right hand panel. This effect makes this particular painting stand out from Joan Mitchell’s larger body of work with its open spaces and visual imbalance.