West Elm or Bust

Last Tuesday I woke up with a wild hair to drive to San Antonio and pick up two of these Step Side Tables from West Elm (brown ones):



I called my friend Lynn, who's from San Antonio. She was fully on board with the idea of a spontaneous road trip, so I headed over to her house to pick her up.

When I arrived at Lynn's at 10 am, I went ahead and gave the store a call so they could set aside the two tables for me. Wouldn't you know, they did have the two tables...but someone else had already paid for them.

Shoot.

Well, we were all buffed and puffed and in the mood for a field trip, so we decided to just go anyway for fun. And boy, was it fun. That was one of the nicest shopping experiences I've had in a long, long time.

I've always been a fan of their merchandise (although I did discover their seating isn't comfortable to me) but the store itself is just a pleasure to be in. It was very spacious and well-designed, very light and airy. Very California. I could've stayed in there for hours.

I highly recommend the excursion...and if you go, be sure to save some time to hit the McNay art museum, as we did. They have such an incredible collection, it made me feel closer to my old haunts in NYC.

Cheap Art

I bought this $35 reproduction tablecloth several years ago and converted it into an art piece by stretching it on a canvas frame. You can turn fabric and other vintage finds into art the same way, for very little money. Ikea sells 19 3/4" square stretchers or you can pick up blank art canvases at any craft store and cover them with the fabric of your choice. For a custom size or oversized piece, head to Miller Blueprint. They sell parts to make your own stretcher and they're easy to put together.

Marfa Redux

A day after returning to Austin, I'm feeling a little guilty about the harsh words I used to describe my first impression of Marfa, TX. When I began writing about the experience, I was...well, mad. I rolled into this ghost town and felt like I'd been duped by a great PR campaign. I wanted others to learn from my mistake.

It should be noted that my mind had changed about the town after less than 24 hours.

What I couldn't appreciate at first sight was how this town has adopted Donald Judd's minimal style and philosophy and embraced it as a way of life. You will not be overfed or overstimulated in Marfa (aside from the art displayed in the many galleries). You are forced to exist simply...without a lot of hoo-hah.

Pardon me if I kind of did a freakdance at first. I tend to like a decent amount of hoo-hah if I've driven 6.5 hours for the experience. All I could think at first was, oh gawd...I drove all this way and paid $4.29 a gallon (in some parts of TX) for this? I suppose I needed to chillax a bit...and I did.

So here's the thing.

Feast your eyes on the ghost town:



...and just know that you're gonna have to do without your Venti-Nonfat-No-Water-Chai for a few days. You're here for the art anyway.

What changed it for me? Look around:

You'd swear you were in South Austin, wouldn't you?

Great way to start our day.

Best art books.

The Austin Street Cafe's only open on weekends until 3. Normally a big fan of color, I warmed to their crisp white-black-latte palette and loved the mix of antiques and modern touches. The food was amazing too!

And then there's Cochineal, the perfect way to celebrate my birthday.

Locally known as "Tom and Toshi's," book a reservation and by all means try Toshi's Date Bread Pudding with Rum Caramel Sauce. Good grief, that was good.

I'm in love with the walls and the ceiling in the tiny dining room. Colorful and simple, the accordion-fold screens along the perimeter are literally highlighted through the use of uplights. The wool felt strung in wavy strips near the ceiling creates texture and adds a bit of softness to balance all the hard edges.

This doesn't even begin to cover it, but you get the idea. Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that hoo-hah is in the eye of the beholder.

Marfa Madness

I've read so many articles about how hip Marfa is and how great the art is, so when I requested a little getaway for my birthday, my husband surprised me with an excursion here.

Bitter disappointment occurred when we rolled into town last night.

The articles you read about this town don't really tell it like it is, so I'm going to attempt to do just that and let you make your own decisions as to whether or not this is worth the 6+ hour drive from Austin or not.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Imagine a dust bowl. Imagine a depressed and dilapidated ghost town. Now add 5 hip-looking establishments to the mix, and roll up the sidewalks at 9pm. That is Marfa.

Shell-shocked after arriving, we climbed back into the car we'd just spent the better part of a day in and decided to drive into the surrounding mountains. This turned out to be a supreme idea. Along the way we drove through Fort Davis, which is an incredibly picturesque (although tiny) town that called to mind Park City, UT in some ways. The restaurants and hotels along the Texas Mountain Trail looked very inviting and unpretentious, and the up-close-and-personal nature of the mountains surrounding the town made us wonder...

Why don't travel writers overwhelmingly recommend that you stay in Ft. Davis and drive into Marfa instead of the other way around?

We continued to drive up farther along the Trail and ended up at McDonald Observatory just in time for one of their Star Parties, where they give you a "constellation tour" and allow you to look into three domed and several large telescopes at various stars and planets. Maybe we're a couple of nerds, but Jeb and I got a real thrill out of this and we're looking forward to going back tomorrow for a look at the sun through a specially-filtered telescope.



DAY 2

Started the day at The Brown Recluse, which was comfy-cozy but the ultra-slow service and fly overpopulation left a lot to be desired.


Hit a dozen or so galleries conveniently located nearly door-to-door along an L-shaped path connecting Highland and San Antonio. One standouts was The Ballroom, where we encountered an installation titled "Hello Meth Lab in the Sun," an incredible, interactive piece illustrating some of the ways people try and fail to achieve happiness (drugs, mysticism, cultish religion, etc.). Can't wait to upload the pictures I took of Jeb amidst the charred remains of the meth kitchen and the lab...you'll have to wait for that because I forgot to pack the USB cord, unfortunately. Also thoroughly enjoyed Galleri Urbane, where I unknowingly admired the work of one of my favorite Etsy artists, Andrea Zuill (I'd never identified her Etsy prints by her name, only by her storefront). I'm not much of a fan of Donald Judd (cue the artworld ridicule) so we skipped the Chinati Foundation (which my brain reads as the Chianti Foundation)...which is ironic, considering that Donald Judd is the sole reason Marfa's on the art world map in the first place. But hey, diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, right? Steel cubes just aren't my thang.

We were fortunate to get the local hookup thanks to Anna at Galleri Urbane, who is on her seventh week of Marfa residency, having moved here from Sante Fe. She filled us in on Cochineal, a new restaurant in town locally known as "Tom & Toshi's" (because in a town with one blinking red light, everyone knows everyone, right?) and recommended we make reservations for dinner. Superglad to have gotten that tip...it was such a great experience, but I'll also have to fill you in on that later, as part of what I loved about it was the interior design and I'm heading back this afternoon to take a few pics so I can show as well as tell...

Between the amazing art that we saw today and the decadent meal at Cochineal, Marfa is truly growing on us. It's been incredibly creatively inspiring...

DAY 3
Today's my birthday (42, wow) and we are enjoying our vacation, so I may skip the Design Star dish tonight. I've DVR'd it back home, so if it's a particularly good episode, I may post about it at a later date. Truthfully though, I've got a lot of work to tackle when I get home so I may just skip it and pick up on it again next week!

Girls Gone Wild

A client-turned-friend and I decided to grab some girl time this week. If you, too, are moms with small children, you understand what a cause for celebration this is. Gallery-hopping is the activity we settled on, hoping for a bit more intellectual stimulation than the average Barbie Mariposa-Diego/Dora-Scooby Doo onslaught we might otherwise contend with during the day.

But Kathryn's sitter was coming at 10 am (my own kiddo goes to daycare MWF) and most galleries open at 11...except for Russell Collection, on W. 6th Street, which I'd never been to. "Never been to" was part of my own personal criteria for this outing...we were looking for a bit of adventure. And according to the Interwebs, they were featuring works by Dali and Kandinsky.

Salvador Dali and Kandinsky Kandinsky? At an art gallery in Austin? We were intrigued.

When we arrived at the gallery, we had the place to ourselves. Evidently, Austinites are not clamoring for fine art at 10:30 on a Friday morning. This turned out to be very fortuitous, because not only did we get the grand tour from Jacqueline Martinez, the art consultant on deck, but it also allowed us to bombard her with all sorts of questions about the art we might have been too self-conscious to ask, had there been other patrons in the place.

It was so thrilling, this experience. It seemed so indulgent to see these prints and tapestries to begin with. (Dali did Aubusson tapestries? Who knew?) Then to get all the inside scoop from Jacqueline about the inspiration for each of the series featured, plus a lot of anecdotal information about Dali himself that I never learned in all the semesters of art history I took in college...it really helped us connect with the art on a more personal level.

After spending quite a bit of time with Jacqueline and Salvador (I felt we were on a first-name-basis after talking with Jacqueline), I noticed a small sign informing me that the gallery offered twelve-months-no-interest-financing. My eyes went from the small sign to my favorite of the Dali prints on display just a few steps away. Small sign, $7205 Dali print. Small sign, $7205 Dali print. I kept looking back and forth, the gears switching to overdrive in my mind. Impulsively, I whipped out my BlackBerry and started crunching the numbers. Could I really afford to possess my very own Dali? Could my new Dali print peacefully coexist with the cartoon-y etchings I did in printmaking in college? Was it right to put Dali in a duplex?

I know I will someday kick myself over it, but Salvador and I parted at the door. Jeb and I are trying to save for a house right now and I couldn't come up with a rationalization that would allow me to divert funds toward an impulse buy on that level.

Still, it was fun to feel like a superrich art collector for half a second.

Russell Collection is located at 1137 West 6th Street. If you are normally intimidated by art galleries, find out when Jacqueline is working. She was awesome and immediately put us at ease.

More from Photography Class

Tonight's photography class reminded me that sometimes you can make big improvements through small changes (which, ironically, is what I tell my clients all the time). Just by understanding a few settings on my camera a little better, I was pretty psyched about the results. I'll share a couple of shots I am particularly proud of:

In case you've never been to the Laguna Gloria, I took some shots of the grounds as well:

The little shack where my class was held:

If you are interested in taking classes at the AMOA: Laguna Gloria, you can find more information here.

Art Classes at AMOA - Laguna Gloria

I'm taking a 2-night photography class ("Using Available Light") at the Laguna Gloria and highly recommend taking their art classes if you have a creative bent. If you haven't been out there, it's really amazing. You have the Italian villa-style former home of Clara Driskoll on the one hand, which is beautiful for weddings and parties and whatnot...then there's this cute little cluster of small buildings where they hold the art school classes. The first night I attended there was a slight chill in the air, the light was beautiful, and when the cafe lights came on, it reminded me of that part in Roman Holiday when Audrey Hepburn meets her hairstylist for a night on the town--very charming and festive. What I really wished for was to be part of the lucky group enjoying their class in the open-air pavilion (my class was in a boring white box of a room, comparatively). Before the mosquitos descend upon us, that is one prime spot for an art class.

The class I'm taking is a bit of a disaster, actually. Not that it hasn't been useful--I've picked up one particular tidbit for color correcting photos that is totally worth the price of admission in terms of time savings for future online portfolio photos--but it's impossible to learn such a complex skill in two nights. Especially when you're not even altogether completely familiar with your own dang camera and have to spend much of the class time pressing button after button in frustration. *Update 5/2/08: The 2nd night of this class made a believer out of me. It all clicked into place...I learned several amazing new camera tricks and I can't wait to use them on the next room(s) I shoot.*

If you're interested in other classes being taught here, I'd wholeheartedly encourage you to sign up.

Ode to the Robot

We three Callans have a fascination with all things Robot...

I couldn't resist getting these John Golden prints for Jeb last Christmas (framed and addressed from both Phoebe and I) because he does this cute robot attack with Phoebe that really cracks me up.

Also inspired by Jeb's nightly robot attacks, a friend gave Phoebe these adorable PJs:

This isn't really robot-themed, but I tend to do this Jetsons mind-meld of robots and spacemen. I give you...my trash can:

Believe it or not, Jeb gave me this for Christmas the first year we met. And I was THRILLED. I'd been lusting after Spaceboy forever (dubbed so by Westco, the manufacturer) but would never have splurged on a mui expensive trash can. I adore it. It makes me smile every time I throw something away.

To continue going off on a tangent, we saw the trailer for the new Speed Racer movie coming out May 9th and I was blown away by the color effects!

Even if I didn't grow up addicted to the Mach 5 and all that, I would still be chomping at the bit to see this movie--it looks amazing.