After the color makeover

When I first posted some of the MLS photos of my place near Aspen, one of my designer friends asked, “Were the people who owned it colorblind?”

That made me chuckle. I don’t think that there was anything wrong with their eyes; I could see what they were trying to do with the colors in the house. They were trying to make it lively, but I don’t think that they quite understood how to pull a unified palette together. They didn’t understand that certain colors had cultural roots, or that particular materials evoked places and styles that were also associated with color palettes.

Nor did they know much about light.

Color reflects light of course, and it also changes light. One can learn this via observation, by studying design, and through experimentation.

The room before the color makeover

Before: the chocolate brown half-wall. It's also visible (barely in the dark) in the "before" photo above.

The brown wall repainted with five colors in a dry-brush technique.

Of course, judgement plays a role. As the witty Michael Adams, president of BJ Adams and Company real estate in Aspen asked me a couple months ago, “Do you know where good judgement comes from?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll bite. Where does good judgement come from?”

“From experience,” he answered. “And do you know where experience comes from?”

“I bet you’re going to tell me.”

“Yes! It comes from bad judgement.”

Oh yeah, that rings true. We all learn by making mistakes. Some years ago, I painted a rather gloomy dining room a coral pink, hoping to warm it up. The color didn’t work as I had hoped. The room did look warmer, but still a bit gloomy. There simply wasn’t enough light in the room, and the place still looked dark.

The room has a lovely, rustic Mexican tile floor. It is a saltillo tile inset with blue Talavera diamonds. I think that those blue tiles were probably what inspired the home’s owners to paint the dining room wall a dark blue — a color that positively sucks the light out of the room.

In the case of this current dining room – which was also somewhat dark as the “before” photos show – the home’s owners hoped to pick up on a color that is prominent in one of the room’s nicer features and play it up.

Vibrant blue can be stunning on walls in the right situation. The Hotel Casa Azul in Antigua, Guatalemala, where I stayed during the wedding of my friends Diana Reid and Terry  Hanold, comes to mind. Amid bougainvillea, palms and tropical light, the hotel’s grotto-like reception area and deep blue walls are soothing.

Detail of the Talavera tile floor with the cobalt blue inset

But in Colorado, where the light may be reflecting off snow on the porch, that blue is chilling. Worse, when the natural light comes from a single source, it’s important to bounce the light as far into the interior as possible.

A mirror or a white wall will do the trick, but that deep blue wall shown in the “before” picture simply sucks the light out of the room. (Interestingly, the reflectance of a white wall is as good as a mirror, both of them having an albedo rating of one.)

In the case of this dining room, the gloom cast by the blue wall was further deepened by painting the half-wall between the dining room and living room a dark, chocolate brown. The interior doors were painted black.

To repair these design mistakes, the room was painted a warm white (the color is Sherwin Williams’ “downey”). New paneled doors replaced the ugly slab doors, which were also painted white. This made quite a difference, as the before and after photos below will show.

The brown half wall, which has a rough, uneven texture was art-painted in five earthtone colors – terracotta, amber, poppy gold, butter gold and ivory – in a dry brush stroke. The colors were chosen to pick up and extend the natural colors of the floor tile.

To pick up on that deep, cobalt blue, I went back to the cultural source of the tile: Mexico. Talavera tile comes in beautiful hues, typically a wine red, poppy yellow and cobalt blue, mixed with other coordinated shades.

Detail of Talavera tile on the mirror showing the typical Talavera palette - Tuscan pottery uses a similar color palette and is used to great effect in kitchens

Talavera is a type of majolica earthenware that dates back to the 16th century. It has a white base glaze, over which patterns are hand painted.  

Authentic Talavera pottery comes from the city of Puebla and the nearby communities of Atlixco, Cholula and Tecali.

A Talavera palette is brought into the room with a large, beaten tin mirror that is ornamented with tile. (The mirror is 33″ in diameter, and was purchased from La Fuente imports in San Diego.)

The Latin theme is further elaborated with Guatemalan textiles; that’s one draped over the golden-hued half wall in the “after” photo above.  Somehow,  the light is now soft and the colors are glowing. When it’s right, you feel it as much as you see it — and I feel very, very good in this room.

Before: Black doors

After: white doors

>>>><<<<

DE COLORES

De colores,
De colores se visten los campos en la primavera.
De colores,
De colores son los pajaritos que vienen de afuera.
De colores,
De colores es el arco iris que vemos lucir.
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores
Me gustan a mí. 

The dining room I just redesigned in my Carbondale home near Aspen provides a cautionary tale. This room suffered from many problems, as the “before” photos below will show: dark colors, gloss paint, blocked sight lines and a mish-mash of disconnected styles and motifs. But for this post, I will concentrate on the towering table. Here’s how the room looks now.

Compare the visual effect of this table with the one below.

It’s had a makeover that has included paint, lighting, color scheme and a change of furniture that included the purchase of a round, traditional height table that expands from 42 inches in diameter to a large oval that easily seats six people, and eight if they are friendly. (This is the Ronan table from Pier 1 Imports.)

Here's how the dining room looked before. This was a sales photo from the MLS listings!

As you can see from the “before” photo below, placing a counter-height table in this rather diminutive dining space was a double-dip doozy of a design mistake. First, the dimensions of the table were all wrong for this room — or any small area — because they take up too much visual space.

When you’re short on room, whether it’s floor space or cramped vertical space resulting from a low ceiling, the best approach is choose smaller-scale furniture.

In a small bedroom, for example, a low, modern bed with clean, un-fussy lines will make the room feel more open and accessible. It’s best to leave the raised-platform beds with steps to the mansions up the hill. (However, I am sorry to report that I have seen enormous, ornate beds dominating not-big-enough bedrooms in the grand homes up in Aspen, near where I live. Some of those four-poster beds can make even a generously-sized room feel cramped.)

But back to my place downvalley from Aspen.

The faux pas committed by the too-tall table that formerly occupied my dining room was compounded by the fact that the dining room is raised. To reach it, one climbs two steps up from the adjacent living room. Given this split-level arrangement, the table top, as seen from the living room, was well above the eye-level of most visitors. Coming up to it felt oppressive, like running into a wall.

The shorter table and the removal of a dangling pot rack opens up the sight lines from the kitchen into the dining room.

What’s more, the hulking bulk of the too-tall table and chairs blocked the light coming into the living room and the sight lines from both the kitchen and living room. This made all three areas seem darker than they needed to be.

Finally, I wondered how well that tall table and chairs worked in a family with a young child. Since he was in grade school, I supposed he had learned to clamber up on the high chairs, but the family also had an infant on the way. I can’t imagine those chairs being particularly easy for toddlers or elders to use.

Tall tables work well in rooms that are airy, bright, spacious and have high-ceilings. Unfortunately, those adjectives don’t describe dining rooms in most of our houses.

In this "before" picture, a dangling pot rack, a bar-height table and a too-tall sideboard all conspire to block sightlines and cramp the room.

Despite all that, tall tables seem to be the order of the day in small apartments and in houses with children who will without a doubt tip over those towering chairs. I really don’t understand the allure. Who’s buying them? Are these the same people who went for platform shoes?

If you’re not living in a coffee house, a bar or a mansion, my advice – which you didn’t ask for and is worth more than you’re paying for it – is to just say no. Don’t be a fashion victim.

>>>>>>>>>

I wanna jump but I’m afraid I’ll fall
I wanna holler but the joint’s too small
Young man rhythm’s got a hold of me too
I got the rockin’ pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu

Call some other’s baby that ain’t all
I wanna kiss her but she’s way too tall
Young man rhythm’s got a hold of me too
I got the rockin’ pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu…

- Johnny Rivers

My husband and I just bought a house in Carbondale, near Aspen, Colorado. Although the photos posted on the MLS didn’t look all that great, I could see that the place has wonderful possibilities.I’m eager to start a design makeover on my Rock Court house, and I will be sharing my progress here in this blog.

Right after the previous owners moved out, I walked around the naked house and took lots of photos. The house has lots of potential, and it was easier to see it with the house stripped of its furnishings.

Talavera tile with cobalt blue insets - one of the handsome features of this house

It has good bones.

I have been looking for clues that would tell me what the house wanted to be.  As I walked through it, multiple details have caught my eye. It is as if the house has been whispering, “I feel a bit Latin.”

It wasn’t about to break into a Tango, but the clues were there: a handsome Talavera tile floor. A round arch in the entryway. Rooms clustered around a central social space.

It’s not built around a courtyard, as would be traditional in a Spanish house. (Those courtyards serve a cooling function in warm, Mediterranean climates. Here, we’re in ski country.) But all of the rooms do radiate off of a central, open-plan living room which serves a social function similar to the courtyard.

Granite inset in the living room - another nice detail.

This light fixture would look good in a New York studio or a very modern interior. But it's all out of whack with the Mexican tile --looks like the Jetsons landed at the wrong airport.

The house also has exposed beams and a nice inset of granite in the living room.

Best yet, the place is oriented perfectly on its lot; the long axis lies east/west, and the kitchen window and dining room, with its sliding glass doors, face south. This means that the house is appropriately oriented for solar heating and cooling, and I mean to take advantage of that.

Even though the interior is a bit dark, the orientation of the house should make it reasonably easy to improve amount of natural light available inside the house.

Dark interior colors have made the low level of lighting even worse than it might be. There’s a lime green entry hall, a cobalt blue accent wall in the dining room, and a half wall that is painted a dark brown. (When I posted photos on Facebook, a friend asked, “Did the owners have something wrong with their eyes? They seem a bit color-challenged.”

This interior is going to have plenty of color, but I’m starting by painting it all a warm, creamy white.

That’s the contractor’s second job. His first is to install insulation under the floors and to order energy-efficient windows. Replacing the windows is going to be a bit of a juggling act, with winter coming on, but we’re just down the valley from Aspen here and that’s a priority.

Although it’s not a priority, I couldn’t close this post without a nod to the infamous “Bronco’s Room” — aka “the man cave.” What can I say about this eye-popping spot? Maybe the realtor who wrote the copy for the MLS listing handled it with just the right note of understatement: “Wait until you see the Broncos room.”

The wait here will be very short. Just look below.

OMG! LMAO!

Because the table moves, you would think a video would best convey what it’s like. But a YouTube video that shows the table’s spinning glass plates in action doesn’t fully convey the way that the colors change and that the patterns interact. (You can see the video at the bottom of this post.)

The one-of-a-kind kaleiscope table is a collaborative work of art that took eight artists, engineers and fabricators more than seven years to produce. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find something like this at a gallery in downtown San Francisco. But Carbondale, Colorado?

Detail of jeweled glass

When I moved back to Colorado in the spring of 2011, and new friends suggested that Carbondale was the place for me, I worried about whether they had both oars in the water. I also suspected that they were seeing me in way quite at odds with the way I see myself.

When I knew Carbondale back in the 1970′s, it was a wide place in the road where there was a bait and tackle shop and a potato farmer’s co-op. It was a place you could roll out your sleeping bag for a couple bucks a night during a ski trip to Aspen. But that was about it.

Why would an urbane, artsy sort like me want to go there?

Since then, Carbondale has grown into a wonderful artists’ community. It’s a town of about 6,000 that features not only gorgeous scenery, but also great restaurants, frequent cultural festivals, and delightful art galleries. The Ravenheart Gallery on Weant Boulevard is one of them. Ravenheart has a bit of specialty in glass and when one walks in the front door, the kaleidoscope table takes center stage.

The half-ton table is made of four stacked orbs of glass, each more than six feet in diameter. All four balance on a steel stem, and only the lowest orb, which is made of clear and crackled glass underlit by LEDs, is fixed in place.

Above the lighted plate, everything rotates.  The second-to-the-bottom orb spins around to reveal rainbow-hued peacocks, ravens, rivers, fish, mountains, orchids and symbols. The third-level orb, which is divided into sections by three jeweled scepters; a detail of one of them is shown at the top of this post. This orb rotates across the two below, changing colors and flashing as its facets cross the lights.

The fourth orb, perched at the top of the stack, is composed of clear tempered glass. Although it protects the artwork below it and provides a dining surface, it also has a decorative job: it frames a large lighted dome of crystal that perches at the table’s center.

The table’s three decorated layers contain at least 16 kinds of glass: fused, dichroic, jeweled, stained, rippled, textured, seeded, mirrored, molded, crackled, watered, etched and beveled glass, to name a few.

The idiosyncratic table was the brainchild of Willa Doolin, who opened the Ravenheart Gallery in the spring of 2011. “I thought of this about 20 years ago,” said Doolin, “but it took 14 years to find the right people to make it, and for technology to catch up to my vision.”

Because of the table’s weight, and because three of the four orbs are supported only by the tensile strength of the glass plates themselves, the table required custom-made ball bearings. Two engineers and four different metal shops were involved in making the petal-shaped base to which the orbs are attached.

A sun and a peacock in the table. Doolin's family raised peacocks in Texas. Most of the symbols in the table have autobiographical significance.

Glass artist Mary Matchael, who drew the table’s designs for Doolin and fabricated the glass plates, said, “If anything was so much as 1/16 of an inch out of true, it wouldn’t work. The glass is essentially balanced on a pipe that is nine inches in diameter, and the plates extend out more than six feet. If a 200-pound man were to lean on the edge – and someone will because it’s a dining table – the table can’t tip. The base had to sit on the floor and be very stable. It took a lot of trial and error to get it all to work, to get it to rotate smoothly and quietly.”

Matchael is the owner of the Crystal Glass Studio, located behind the Ravenheart Gallery. Matchael cuts, cooks, and carves glass to create sophisticated architectural lighting, doors, windows and giftware. She has received commissions from all across the US. Despite nearly 40 years of glass-making experience, Matchael had to develop new techniques for adhering and attaching the glass plates in the kaleidoscope.

A school of jeweled fish swimming in the Crystal River; it's the river that flows through Carbondale on its way to the Colorado River.

If you’re looking for a distinctive dining room table, this one is for sale. The asking price: $200,000.

Doolin admits that she’s “rather conflicted” about selling the table. The art in it commemorates her sons, her birth constellation, the peacocks that her family raised in Dallas, and orchids that her scientist brother named after discovering them in the Amazon.

But no matter; now that all the kinks have been worked out, other kaleidoscope tables can be made.

“If a person wanted to commission a table like this, we would know how to do it now,” said Doolin. “We wouldn’t have to have seven or eight people work on it. It wouldn’t have to be as heavy; this one could bow a floor. It would have the buyer’s own symbols in it, rather than mine. Or it could be geometrical, more like a traditional kaleidoscope.”

This handsome arts and crafts pattern of barred vertical lines creates a theme that is taken up with many variations throughout the house. BELOW: Here's another variation of the pattern, this time formed by the patio doors as they are opened.

Because I work for a fine Aspen, Colorado real estate firm, BJ Adams and Company, I get to see lots of multi-million dollar homes.

Of course, every last one is designed to impress.

But not all of these houses leave a lasting impression on me. In fact, relatively few do. I like them when I’m there: I admire the handsome granite kitchens, the decks, the views, the beautiful hardwood. But when I think back on them a couple weeks later, one or two out a couple dozen homes will stand out.

Why is that? What it is that separates the splashy from the sublime?

You Say Potato,
I Say Pototo

I suspect that the answer to that question is quite individual. Some people feel right at home with the sculpted angles of mid-century modern home while others feel over-exposed by all that open space. Some people are charmed by Victoriana, others can’t stomach dart and egg in quantity.

Different strokes for different folks.

My own tastes are electic. In the last couple months, I have found myself enchanted by a Victorian in Aspen’s West End, excited by a modern townhome, captivated by a schoolhouse built from straw bales, and delighted by an Arts-and-Crafts style home nestled in the forest near Snowmass Village.

Stylistically, these dwellings have little in common. But in terms of visual composition, each one is a masterpiece. Architect Mies van der Rohe famously said that “god is in the details,” and each of these memorable dwellings shows a Zen-like attention to detail, fine craftsmanship, and a splendid unity of style. I think that virtuosity and that sense of composition contribute strongly to making these dwellings stand out.

Visual Chamber Music

Paired verticals barred with a horizontal line show up not only in the windows, but also in the fireplace's copper cladding. Detail below shows the fine hand of a craftsman in nearby Paonia.

Every one of these  buildings has been composed like a piece of classical music in which one can find theme and development, rhythm and repetition, contrast and unity. For that reason, walking through each of them is as delightful as listening to a theme and variations.

Over time, I will likely write about all of the buildings  that I mentioned above. But this post will be devoted to the Arts-and-Crafts style house on the Ridge of Wildcat in Snowmass.

The house is beautifully sited, nestling amid spruce and aspens in a most discrete way. This home is too cultured to shout about its presence. It is placed below the crest of the ridge on what Frank Lloyd Wright called the “taliesin”  of the hill. That word is Welsh, and means “shining brow.” The fact that it’s situated there means that it has a fine view, but is protected from the winds that blow over the ridge. It’s a thoughtful choice.

Fully at Home in its Surroundings

What I wanted,” [says] the homeowner, “was a house that fits into its surroundings, what Frank Lloyd Wright described as “of the mountain” rather than “on the mountain.” This house, with its rusty corrugated roof, broad overhangs, and aubergine-clad windows is colored and positioned so in keeping with its setting that someone glancing up the valley would barely notice it.

The house has been sited so that its long axis runs east and west, which causes the southern exposure to catch the winter sun. In summer, when the sun is higher overhead, the house avoids overheating. And year-round, the interior is filled with sunlight. Look up into the exposed rafters, and you’ll see that clerestory windows light to dance across the ceilings.

The arts and crafts pattern of crossed vertical lines is repeated in these two paired windows. The windows light a landing and provide wonderful views into the aspens.

The windows have been artfully placed. Clerestory windows situated at the ceiling’s crest in the great room draw the eye subconsciously upward. As one descends the stairs, two tall windows meet in a corner offering a 180-degree view of aspens and wildflowers. Every room has windows on at least two sides, filling the interiors with clear, mountain light.

Glass sliding doors in the bedroom open to a patio on the southern exposure. As they do so, the framing of their panes cross and repeat – almost as if by accident – the parallel lines motif established by the balusters on the central stairs.

I’m sure that this was not accidental. The architect, Bill Lipsey, obviously lavished great attention on this home, as did the interior designer and the owners. On the eave of the house that greets you as you drive up, there’s a clock-like decoration. This clock, which is made of tree branches, does not run; it always says eleven-ten.  An odd detail until you realize that the time happens to be a homonym for the owners surname.

Open divider shelves that frame the entrance to the great room.

Everywhere, one finds variations on the theme of parallel barred lines: In the kitchen, handsome glass insets adorn the cabinets and the softly fluted columns in the glass repeat the motif. In the dining room, the theme repeats in the backs of the chairs and in the chandelier. At the entry, open shelves echo these lines while creating a proscenium that opens to the great room beyond.

Throughout the house, rich woodwork, elegant, simple lines, walls of windows, stone window sills, cherry wood floors, integral plaster walls with metal-beaded corners, and a monochromatic palette with rich oriental rug accents create warm, understated elegance. The use of materials – wood, flagstone, glass, copper – is at once understated and sensual. The play of textures awakens one to the color and peacefulness of this place.

Hats off to Aspen architect Bill Lipsey and interior designer Brett Robin. In this house, they have paired up to make architectural music.

More of the theme and variations in the dining room.

Exterior of the house takes its theme from the colors of the mountain and the forest.

Passiflora photo by Warren Krupsaw

My email has been abuzz recently with notes between me and accomplished nature photographer Warren Krupsaw. I’m pleased to share some of Warren’s photos here. They speak for themselves far more eloquently than any praise I can heap on them. I encourage you to check out both the photos here and the links below. Warren’s nature photos are simply stunning.

Warren, who was a student – and also a houseguest – of Ansel Adams, suddenly appeared in my life via the magic of the internet. (Yes, it’s absolutely amazing who I have met through my website, blog and other online presences.)

Warren and I share an interest in passion vines. I have planted and painted them, and he has photographed them extensively.

Bumblebee drinking. Photo by Warren Krupsaw.

Warren’s first note to me arrived out of the blue. He complimented me on one of my paintings and let me know that he too is interested in bees:

“I’m not much on honeybees (much more a bumblebee kind of guy), but after seeing your Passion of the Honeybee, along with your rendering of a passion flower, it occurred to me that you might be interested in checking out my passion flower gallery (as well as my ‘pet’ bumblebee in ‘Selected Animals’).”

My comment to Warren after seeing this photo of a bee perched upon his thumb: “Hats off to you for getting this photo – not to mention the one with the hornet! If a bee was perched on my thumb, I would be trembling so hard I would be wholly unable to hold a camera, much less snap a photo.”

Horny the Hornet, another of Warren's "friends"

Turns out that Warren has a secret trick when it comes to dealing with stinging insects.

The story is fascinating, so I am going to reproduce “Buzzy #423 or The Plight of the Bumblebee” here exactly as he wrote it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

The Plight of the Bumblebee

“It may not have actually been 423, but certainly after almost a half century, there have been a lot of bumblebees I’ve operated on. Naming each and every one of them “Buzzy” seemed the simplest way to go (only confusing when you kept more than one at a time).

Passion flower photo by Warren Krupsaw. Formally called “passiflora,” these flowers are idiosyncratically unique in the world of flora. The complexity of their structure led to them being named “passion flowers” in honor of the passion of Christ. The ten petals of the flower are supposed to represent the ten apostles in Christianity (excluding St. Peter and Judas).

“As the inventor (originator) of the ‘Stingerectomy’ (or more precisely ‘Stingerotomy’), here’s how it began:  When I was a junior in high school biology class (1960), one of our assignments was to make an insect collection:  capturing, mounting, and identifying butterflies, and other insects on stick pins. I noticed that the gas caused all kinds of muscle contractions in the insects upon being placed in the killing jar.

“In the case of wasps, bees and hornets this included their stingers which would stay out longer and longer as they approached unconsciousness (and death).  In those days one of the commonly available gassing solvents was something used in the dry cleaning business, carbon tetrachloride (‘carbon tet’), no longer used. 

“Now I use diethyl ether (only available by prescription). At some point, the light dawned and it occurred to me: Why not clip off the sharp end? Maybe, given enough fresh air, they’d revive. After some experimentation on how long to leave them in the jar, low and behold, I discovered that they did survive!  And if the gas exposure was just right, there was also enough time to tie a thread around their ‘waist’ (pedicel).

Warren's photo of Passiflora Silvie - or what I call an "Ugga-Bugga blossom." I think that both passiflora and protea look like they must be the descendants of dinosaur salad. The name Ugga-Bugga Blossoms, by the way, was coined by my friend and former colleague, graphic designer Paul Curtin, one of the founders of Eleven Design in San Francisco.

“Now I had a bumblebee on a ‘leash’ and by attaching a small safety pin to the loose end, I could wear it on my shirt. As you might expect, these became a big hit with my fellow male students (great for scaring girls). I did a brisk business selling them for 25 cents each — a fair sum in those days.

“Most of the bees learned to drink a sugar-water solution through an eye-dropper and a few survived as long as three weeks. It was fascinating to be able to handle them safely without fear of being stung and to study them up  close: they cleaned themselves practically like cats, their buzzing became slower as ‘bedtime’ approached, you could fly them like a kite, etc.

“Some of the larger ones became especially tame after a while and didn’t seem to mind being handled. A few of the more enterprising ones chewed through their tethers and freed themselves. Each one was different.

“Along the way, I learned which flowers attracted them, and by holding a jar in one hand and the lid in my other, I became proficient in catching them.  Sometimes, the occasional bee would find its way into my house on its own — down the chimney I presume.

“Of course, as the objective science kid, I also operated on wasps and hornets. (Honeybees were just too small and delicate). But their ‘personalities’ were quite different. They were much more flighty and aggressive, besides being more ‘intelligent’ as evidenced by their freeing themselves with more regularity.

Passiflora incense, photo by Warren Krupsaw.

“So recently, when I heard that characteristic buzzing sound (another chimney visitor) I looked around and sure enough, there was a good-sized bumblebee knocking against our sliding glass door.

“Having a jar at the ready, I quickly captured my next pet-to-’bee’ and prepared for surgery. Buzzy #423 seemed OK, but the first night was off his feed.

“By the next day however, Buzzy’s appetite was back and he consumed one whole drop! Normally, when not ‘wearing’ a bee, I keep them pinned to a curtain.

“The day after that, Buzzy was up to two drops. Things were looking good and I had big plans for showing Buzzy off and then letting him go (cutting the leash next to his body). But on Day Three, when I went to check, Buzzy #423 was gone! Apparently, with not much else to do, he had wised-up and freed himself. I looked all around, but couldn’t find him.

“I came to the unhappy conclusion that he could have flown virtually anywhere in the house.

Blue Bouquet passiflora, photo by Warren Krupsaw

“In an attempt to distract myself from this sad state of affairs, I settled into the couch for a good read. A couple hours later,there was that sound again. Buzzy!  There he was, amidst our house plants.

“Without too much of a struggle, I captured him by hand. Sure enough, he was still wearing his ‘belt.’  Normally, I would have used a jar, but I was pretty sure it was Buzzy.  (Actually there is one type of bumblebee that can be caught by hand; the yellow-spot-on-its face drone has no stinger.)

“Not wanting to knock him out again to re-attach a leash, I decided he had ‘served his time.’ I told him what a good and clever bee he was, opened the door (and my hand), and off he flew with an amazing tale to tell. 

Tree frog, photo by Warren Krupsaw

“Good bye and fly high!”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A Bit More About Warren Krupsaw

Nature photographer Warren Krupsaw was a one-time student (and house guest) of Ansel Adams. He earned his M.F.A. in photography under Harry Callahan at the Rhode Island school of Design and was  also one of the first students in the graduate photography program at MIT with Minor White.

Warren has exhibited his work at numerous venues including the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Academy of Sciences, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and New York City’s Underground Gallery.

This is the painting that prompted Warren to contact me. It's called "Passion of the Honeybee." I painted this after filling my garden with plants that honeybees enjoy - passiflora among them - to help provide diversity for the bees' diet. I had been reading about colony collapse, and I'm still worried. (I'm now reading that cellphone signals are damaging our winged friends - and that's scary. We depend our bees to pollenate our food crops.)

His photographs have been published in several books including On the Ice, Investigating the Earth and the Polaroid Book. His work has appeared in  Smithsonian, Popular Photography, Modern Photography, Camera, Mineral Digest and Garden Design.

Living in Comfort and Joy is honored to be able to reprise some of Warren’s photos here.

Topical Links

• A Home for the Bees, an earlier post about my Passion of the Honeybee painting and colony collapse
• CNN: Study links cellphones to bee deaths
• Inhabitat: Cellphones killing bees

Warren’s Links

• An online gallery of Warren’s photos
• More Flowers by Warren
• Ice is Nice, a photo essay in the Photo Argus
• Rocks Rock: An Amazing Collection of Rock and Mineral Photography
• Memories of Ansel Adams, by Warren Krupsaw
• Portraits of Passion and Other Dalliances, book by Warren Krupsaw

This fine Queen Anne style house, built in 1888, now houses the Wheeler / Stallard Museum and the Aspen Historical Society. Photo by Samantha Toberman.

I have moved from San Francisco to Carbondale, Colorado. As I have explained to my California friends, it’s not in a howling wilderness. It’s just down the road from Aspen, home of the famed Aspen Institute, Aspen Music Festival, Aspen’s International Design Conference and the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Once a silver mining town, Aspen was reborn after WWII as a retreat that sought to nurture mind, body and spirit. That’s the “Aspen idea,” and it made the little mountain town an international crossroads for ideas, arts and architecture. I have long felt called to come back here.

And so I returned to my home state just in time for Colorado Architecture Month.

Aspen Interfaith Chapel, designed by architects George Edward Heneghan and Daniel Gale, pays homage to Frank Lloyd Wright in its use of natural materials.

I can almost hear my West Coast friends chuckling. Colorado architecture? What the heck is that?

I recently listened to some bright folks wrestling with that very question. The occasion was an American Institute of Architects (AIA) event called “Aspen’s Significant Architecture, Past, Present and Future.”

During the evening, Aspen architects Willis Pember, Suzannah Reid and Harry Teague gamely picked out a number of Aspen area buildings that could warrant that “significant” moniker. While applauding their choices, I also found myself fretting over a major omission. Since I couldn’t very well climb onto the stage and add my two cents, I will use this post to nominate a few buildings of my own – and to point out why Aspen and its little Colorado valley have a golden opportunity to play a significant, and even crucial role, in contemporary architecture.

But bit of background is in order first.

A Climate for Change

Christ Episcopal Church, designed by Francis Stanton. The church's renovation, by Studio B, received three regional awards and will receive a fourth national award in May, 2011. Photo by Raul Garcia.

As Harry Teague told the AIA’s audience, a distinctive regional architectural style usually arises out a combination of cultural influences and climate. Traditional, pre-architectural buildings around the world provide plenty of examples.

For example, Islamic culture – specifically the Muslim prohibition against depicting the human form – influenced the handsome, geometric (and cooling!) tile that adorns homes in Morocco. A Zen aesthetic influences Japanese homes and temples.

Climate gave rise to New England’s salt box houses with their long, asymmetrical, wind-breaking roofs. It was also the impetus behind India’s bungalows. There, people do most of their living on deeply shaded porches that surround a central courtyard. The roofless courtyard creates a “stack effect” that allows sweltering heat to exhale upward and ventilate the home’s living quarters.

Back to the Future

Now, as human activities threaten to undermine the ecosystems that support us, architects who are interested in sustainable building have begun to plumb traditional, pre-architectural dwellings for inspiration. Before modern engineering harnessed fossil fuels and nuclear reactors, no one imagined creating buildings that would have to be scaled by elevators or lit by electric lights. Our ancestors couldn’t import exotic materials from afar, or fill their homes with electronic devices, or create landscapes that were alien to the local climate. With no option but to use local materials and to adapt to the weather, they built green and came up with some impressive passive heating and cooling strategies.

Amory Lovins's energy-efficiency demonstration home at Snowmass. Photo courtesy of Judy Hill Lovins.

At the turn of the 20th century, cheap fuel transformed building technology and gave rise to modern architecture.

Today, residential and commercial buildings, taken together, use 76 percent of all electricity produced in the US. The architectural sector consumes “a whopping 48 percent of total US energy consumption,” according to architect Edward Mazria, author of a ground-breaking 2003 article called “It’s the Architecture, Stupid.” In that article, which was published in Solar Today, Mazria argued convincingly that it is architects who hold “the key to the lock on the global thermostat.”

Although still too few of them know this, one thing is certain: our use (and abuse) of energy will transform architecture all over again in the 21st century.

Considering the stakes involved in climate change, I was surprised that the Aspen architects neglected to include Amory Lovins’ green home at Snowmass in their survey of significant local buildings.

I was doubly surprised when the whole issue of sustainability – not just energy, but water, climate and air quality – rated scarcely a mention.

Aspen Influences: Buckminster, Barns and Bauhaus

As Willis Pember noted during the AIA event, Colorado’s vernacular buildings include mining structures, ranches and barns, log cabins, and the Victorians that were in vogue when the 1879 silver rush peopled the place with white folks. (Truth be told, Ute Indians settled the region eight centuries before all this happened. But the Utes lived a nomadic lifestyle and their wikiups weren’t meant to last.)

Given Institute. Photo: City of Aspen files.

Silver mining faded and Aspen, which was first called “Ute City”, struggled through the Great Depression. At the end of WWII, the town was a bit dilapidated, but it still had a newspaper, an opera house, a post office and the iconic Hotel Jerome. The west side was filled with Queen Anne and Victorian homes, and in 1941, a downhill and slalom championship breathed new life into the town. The east side and modern architecture got a big boost when architects Fritz Benedict and Bauhaus-trained Herbert Bayer arrived in the mid 1940s.

During the 1950s as the Aspen ski resort began to grow, a few Bauhaus-style modern residences were built. Among these avant garde structures were Frederick “Fritz” Benedict’s Hallam Lake residence, built for novelist John Marquand, and the “Waterfall” house he built for D. V. Edmundson. Both houses have been demolished.

Victor Lundy modern house. Photo by VRBO rentals.

A similar fate may soon befall another mid-century modern Aspen landmark, the Given Institute for Pathobiology, which was designed by distinguished Chicago modernist Harry Weese. (It’s owned by my alma mater, the University of Colorado, which wants to sell it – or more precisely, the land on which it stands – because CU is strapped for money.)

Aspen also felt the west wind blowing in from California, picking up influences that ranged from Yosemite’s famed 1927 Ahwahnee Lodge to Buckminster Fullerton’s geodesic domes, plus a dose of Haight-Ashbury-type weirdness in the form of buildings erected by Chip Lord’s Ant Farm avant-garde architectural and media group. They were the folks who planted all those Cadillacs in the ground. (Oh yeah, I’m right at home here!)

Aspen Music Festival tent designed by architect Harry Teague. Photo: Harry Teague Architects.

Among the modern buildings the panel named as being significant were architect Victor Lundy’s house (still standing and used as a vacation rental), the Aspen Interfaith Chapel, the Aspen Bank, the Institute for Physics and the Aspen Institute. The three tents used by the Aspen Music Festival, designed by Eero Saarinen, Herbert Bayer and Harry Teague, also merited nomination.

Among the as-yet-to-be-built modern buildings that promise to be significant is the new Aspen Art Museum. Plans for the 30,000 square foot building have been drawn up by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. (I’m happy to note that the new AAM will be built green, and it will exceed LEED standards.)

Nicolette’s Picks for Significant Architecture

No one asked me, but I’m going to nominate a few more buildings as being significant.

Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork, designed by architect Jeff Dickinson.

The first, already mentioned, is the Amory Lovins home. Located in Snowmass, about nine miles from Aspen, the Lovins’ residence was built in 1983 to be an energy-saving showplace. Judy Hill Lovins, who I met at the AIA event, told me that the house recently received an award recognizing it as the spark that lit the international Passivhaus movement. (Lovins’ house is now being remodeled with the goal of burning no fossil fuels.)

Another of my favorite local buildings is the Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork, located about 25 miles from Aspen. As regular readers know, I’m a fan of straw bale building. The insulating quality of the walls creates a deep, contemplative hush inside the house while also providing thermal insulation. The walls can be shaped into curves or angles that hold deep-set windows, and they can be used to create stunningly handsome buildings. I love the Waldorf School’s roof line and the way its angles echo the mountains that surround it.

Rammed Earth house features zinc roofing atop the rammed earth structure, Japanese Zen gardens, eco fireplaces and gorgeous views. Photo via Huffington Post.

My third pick is a rammed earth solar house that captured my imagination when I read about it in a blog called Carrie’s Design Musings.  Designed by Studio B Architects and built by Quentin Branch, it’s the first – and only – rammed earth home in Aspen. Rammed earth building has been around for hundreds of years; to make rammed earth, the builder compresses a mixture of damp earth with sand, gravel, clay or cement.

The process was used to build the Great Wall of China and pyramids in Mexico, and this house is only slightly less humble. It has won three awards and has been featured in Elle Decor, as well as in Carrie’s blog. It’s for sale – for just $10.8 million. (Take a look at the photos in Carrie’s “My Aspen Love Affair” post; the interior by Larry Laslo is also stunning.)

My Own Love Affair with Aspen and her Valley

I have known and loved Aspen for decades. I grew up hiking and skiing in the area. In my teens, I graduated from the Outward Bound wilderness school in nearby Marble. After my first year at CU in Boulder, disillusioned and wondering what Beowulf had to do with the rest of my life, I dropped out to find meaning. I sought it in Aspen, and wound up living the Roaring Fork Valley for a year.

The Holden/Marolt historic barn, owned and maintained by the Aspen Historical Society, houses a ranching and mining museum. It's available for event rentals. Photo: Aspen Historical Society.

What appealed to me about Aspen years ago is what appeals to me again: the stunning setting, the town’s walkability, its sense of history, its artsy feel and its scale. (The AIA panelists, who included local entrepeneur George Stranahan, builder Steve Hansen, and Amy Guthrie of the Aspen Historic Preservation Commission, were chuckling over whether three stories would be too much on Main Street!)

In many ways, Aspen reminds me of Mendocino, California, a small town perched prettily above the Pacific. It’s similarly filled with artists, artisans, hippies and holiday makers, and it has taken similar pains to preserve its Victorian-era architecture. Like Mendocino, Aspen is filled with folks who love the setting, and who by extension, want to preserve the natural environment.

But arguably, what has set Aspen apart is its devotion to ideas. Aspen, and by extension much of the Roaring Fork Valley, is a place where leading thinkers come to converse and solve the vexing problems of our day. It’s a cultural crossroads, a place where Albert Schweitzer, Arthur Rubinstein, Mortimer Adler and Ansel Adams have all come to speak and perform. The place has attracted presidents, statesmen, diplomats, judges, ambassadors, and Nobel laureates.

That’s why I think that it’s not enough for Aspen’s architecture to be attractive or avant garde. This is a place that matters, a spot filled with people worthy of taking on a significant challenge. And heaven knows, we certainly have one before us.

Sketch of a historic barn on Four Mile Road in the Roaring Fork Valley. I sketched this during a snowy visit at Christmastime. I was wearing gloves at the time!

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Resource Links

• A Green Stamp of Approval – Does it Pay?
• Nicolette’s architectural illustration website, Comfort and Joy Design
• Nicolette’s green blog for National Realtors Association HouseLogic site
• AIA, Colorado Architecture Month
• Aspen Historical Society
• Rocky Mountain Institute
• Aspen Institute
• International Design Conference at Aspen
• Aspen Music Festival
• Edward Mazria’s original article from Solar Today (1MB PDF)
• Turning Down the Global Thermostat, article in Metropolis Magazine, comments on Mazria’s article

AFTER: Here's how the west kitchen will look after the remodeling. This side of the kitchen features wheelchair-accessible counters and sinks, and there's a handy counter where the kids can eat.

BEFORE: Here's what the west kitchen looks like now. It houses six refrigerators. In the new design, triple-wide, side-by-side commercial style refrigerators will as hold just as much food while taking up far less space.

I recently volunteered to redesign the kitchen of a domestic violence shelter. Quite a challenge!

Picture your own kitchen after a party, a potluck where a dozen people prepared different dishes. Now, imagine how it would look if it were used by 50 people every day! That’s roughly how many people use the kitchen in a domestic violence shelter, which provides a safe haven to as many as 25 women and their children all at once.

A shelter’s kitchen needs to be as tough as a restaurant or hospital kitchen. But considering the tough times the residents been through, I didn’t want it look or feel institutional. Having taken some similar lumps myself, I think I know how these women are feeling. They want to feel safe, cared for and valued. They need a warm, welcoming space.

Architectural plans and interior designs can’t fill all those needs, but the spaces in our homes – even temporary ones like this one – do carry strong messages. I wanted this one to deliver a very positive message.

I hope to do it with the golden glow of maple cabinetry, Formica 180 FX backsplashes, and counters that look like rosy granite. (A tip of the hat here to kitchen designer and fellow blogger Paul Anater, who suggested using Formica FX for backsplashes.) A handsome floor of Daltile Passagio Nocino ceramic adds an Italian flair. I opened up windows and let the light pour through, and opened doorways and pass-throughs to link the rooms.

Giving Back

I did this pro-bono job over the Christmas holidays. It was an offering I gave in recognition of the good souls who helped me through a crisis similar to those experienced by the residents of SAVE. SAVE, (Safe Alternatives to Violent Environments), is located in Fremont. California, but the address is kept secret to protect its resident women and children from stalking and further violence.

As I told Diane Anderson, Grant Writer and Counselor at SAVE, “What goes around comes around. I know that good will come from this for many people, me included.”

AFTER: The southwest corner of the kitchen will feature a pass-through that enhances safety by reducing kitchen traffic. A newly widened doorway and pocket door on the south wall will open the kitchen for wheelchair access. On the west wall, a Dutch door will prevent collisions and allow moms to keep an eye on kids in the dining/living room.

BEFORE: Here's how this cramped corner looks now.

My kitchen design is a contribution to SAVE’s “Raise the Roof” campaign, an accessibility and remodeling effort that began in 2010. I hope that my plans and drawings will help SAVE win a reconstruction grant from the City of Fremont, and to raise funds from private donors. If there was ever a kitchen remodel that deserved doing, this is it!

As SAVE writes in their grant application:

The kitchen was last renovated in 1998 after a fire destroyed it.

Since then, the kitchen has been used by about 25 people daily (resulting in more than 120,000 uses) and is in need of significant upgrading.

Our kitchen is also not wheelchair accessible, but this renovation will significantly improve our accessibility.

A New Life for the Kitchen

The SAVE kitchen is part of a large house that originally was home to a doctor’s practice and family. The kitchen wasn’t originally intended for the amount of traffic it now receives, and the strain is showing. The counter around the cook top has cracked and there’s a big gap in the surface. The vinyl flooring is curling and pulling up around the edges. Cabinet hardware is loose, and the cabinets are nicked, bumped, and bruised. The finishes and surfaces throughout the kitchen look very, very tired.

In addition, the kitchen suffers from accessibility and traffic problems.

SAVE’s leaders have been gradually upgrading the house to make it accessible to those who are disabled. The shelter usually serves two people each year who are wheelchair-dependent, and many more who have mobility limitations. As they write:

These residents can remain with us for up to 90 days. We recently had a resident who decided not to bring her teenage wheelchair-dependent daughter into our shelter because of the kitchen accessibility limitations. This event really highlighted for us the need to do what we can for all our residents to be as accessible as possible.

The need is especially keen because none of the other three other domestic violence shelters in the area are accessible to those who are mobility impaired.

To fill the gap, SAVE has already installed ramps in the house and built an ADA-compliant bathroom on the first floor. The kitchen is next. My plans will enable SAVE to  make the kitchen wheelchair accessible with widened doors and passages, a pocket door and a wheelchair-height sink and cooking area.

SAVE: Providing More than Walls

The damage that is inflicted on the body in cases of domestic violence heals faster than the emotional, social and financial wounds. As one woman told me eloquently years ago, “The bones have long since healed, but the nightmares remain.”

This visualization was created by the author, interior designer Nicolette Toussaint, using the Revit software program and Photoshop.

Women who muster the courage to escape from their abusers must often leave behind friends, family and jobs, severing ties for their own safety and that of their children. (Although men do sometimes suffer domestic violence, more than 90% of the victims are women.) To survive, some women must leave with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

To understand how hard this is, I ask men and women to visualize the process: Put your wallet, your keys, your credit cards, and all your money on the table. Now walk out of your house. Leave your car. Keep walking. Could you do that? Could you go to a new city where you know no one and start over? Could you leave all your friends and family? Call no one? Ask for nothing? And could you do it without using any part of your identity – education, licenses, business contacts – that could enable your abuser to track you down?

Tools for Starting Over

Because the clients of domestic violence shelters face the daunting task of re-creating virtually every aspect of their lives – as well as those of their children – domestic violence shelters try to offer far more than the safety of their four walls. Here, again quoting from the grant application, is what SAVE has to say about the enormity of the challenge, and what they provide:

Victims of domestic violence suffer hunger, homelessness, underemployment, psychological trauma, substance abuse and a range of mental health issues secondary to the abuse. Children suffer too, with a myriad of problems from poor academic achievement to increased rates of depression, anxiety and conduct disorders. Our program addresses the barriers that victims of domestic violence face on their path toward safety and self-sufficiency.

Formica has changed! This handsome surface is the new FX 180 from Formica, Red Montana pattern. Extremely beautiful, but durable enough to stand up to lots of kids.

Daltile Passaggio 12 x 12 Nocino, a beautiful floor that will withstand traffic and water.

We provide safe housing, food, clothing, financial literacy, employment readiness, and counseling among many other services.the period between July 2009 and June 2010 we received over 4,000 calls to our crisis hotline and provided more than 7,500 shelter and motel bednights. We served about 250 women and children where 94% of the families served had an annual income below $35,000.

Putting a Face on the Issue

Who are these women?

Statistics say that nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. I was once one of them, despite having two university degrees and the social privilege that comes with white skin.

The fear sparked by that experience led me to leave my home state of Colorado, severing ties with all but one friend and my parents. I moved to Illinois. Years later, I became a domestic peace advocate and spoke and wrote publicly about the topic in California and other states, but I always remained wary of publicity in Colorado.

The physical bruises fade, but the emotional ones can linger for years.

Thus, I feel a kinship with the women of SAVE. I met a few of them in the process of measuring their kitchen and drilling a few exploratory holes in the wall. The women’s names, like the address of the shelter, must remain secret to ensure their safety. But profiles of some of them are sketched on the SAVE website, and I have taken the liberty of reprinting them here, so that my readers can meet them. Please meet:

1. Sara, who graduated from SAVE’s transitional housing program,  got a great job with the County and is raising her son in a violence-free home.
2. Elena, who told SAVE that the first night she spent in our shelter was the first night she had slept without fear in 10 years.
3. Annie, who got her son back and who told us that the people at SAVE were the first people who believed that she could be a good mother.
4. Hosina, who told the staff at SAVE so matter-of-factly about all the terrible things her daddy had done to her.
5. Shelly, who just today got the keys to her new apartment, after 17 years of abuse and almost a year in shelter.

If you would like to help these women, and others like them, I encourage you to visit SAVE’s website and make a donation. The shelter could certainly use your help. Last year, SAVE served more than 4,500 clients while having to cut staff due to loss of funding. What’s more, they desperately need a new kitchen (plans below)!

I encourage any reader who has a friend or relative who has suffered from domestic violence to donate in the name of their loved one.

If you’re a contractor or manufacturer of appliances, cabinetry, tile or stainless steel countertops, you could do a good turn by making an in-kind donation of your products (hint, hint).

You will find links to SAVE’s website below.

Links for SAVE

• About SAVE
• Monetary donations to SAVE
• In-kind donations to SAVE (they need everything from food certificates to diapers and coloring books)
• Facts about domestic violence

Links for Author Nicolette Toussaint

• Nicolette’s Interior Design firm, Comfort and Joy Interior Design
• Nicolette’s architectural illustration
  • Revit portfolio
  • Marker renderings
  • Watercolor and Illustrator renderings

• Nicolette’s paintings
  • Nicolette’s shop: prints on Etsy
• Nicolette’s painting blog: The Nature of Things

The homes in question are for our friends, the honeybees. The painting under discussion is called the “Passion of the Honeybee.”

The weirdly amazing flower shown here is a passion vine. Its Latin name is Passiflora, and some varieties bear fruit. In Hawaii, for example, you can buy  passionfruit jam.

Bees are very fond of passion vines, and I planted them in my garden for that reason. Like many gardeners and scientists, I am concerned about colony collapse, and for good reason: virtually all of our food crops depend on bees for pollenization.

Some scientists believe that the recent and drastic reduction in bee populations – which is called “colony collapse” – has to do with a lack of variety in bees’ diets. Fungi and disease may also play a role.

Because humans have uprooted many native plants and cultivated a narrow range of plants – creating “monoculture” – the bees no longer have enough variety in their diets. Citizen gardeners across the US are planting crops to help the bees, and a wonderful nationwide planting and bee census has been organized by the Great Sunflower Project (in which I’m participating).

What’s in a Name?

Being a writer as well as an artist, I sometimes incorporate plays on words in the titles of my paintings. This one - Passion of the Honeybee - has multiple layers of meaning.

The passionflower got its name because of the odd configuration of its petals and sepals and how the numbers of those plant parts relate to Christian history. The ten petals of the flower are supposed to represent the ten apostles in Christianity (excluding St. Peter and Judas). The filaments around the flower – blue in my painting -  symbolize the crown of thorns. As the fruit develops, the plant also grows a chalice-like ovary that, to Christians, recalls the Holy Grail.

I’m not a Christian, but I do like the fact that the term “passion” refers to death and rebirth. My friends, the bees, have been dying. In planting for them and creating this painting, I am seeking their rebirth.

By the way, I have a message for anyone reading this who happens to be affiliated with an organization working to save bees. I would be happy to donate this painting, or a print of it, to your fund raising or publicity effort. (Contact me by writing: comfortandjoydesign@gmail.com)

Links for Nicolette’s Artwork

• Purchase prints of Nicolette’s artwork on Etsy
• Artist biography on Galiara
• Illustration portfolio
• Nicolette’s Living in Comfort and Joy Interior Design blog
• Drawings and rapid visualization
• Nicolette’s architectural illustration
  

City Hall side chair, Geiger. Design by Brian Graham. Photo courtesy of Geiger.

He hums a few insistent bars. Ta dah, dah dah dah dah. Ta-dah dah dah dah. “I have plates spinning on sticks in the air. One here. Another there. And another the. Oh oh, the first one’s wobbling…”

“Three plates,” I say. “You only have two hands.”

He smiles. An eminent furniture designer — Graham has received awards from the  American Institute of Architects, the Institute of Business Designers, the International Interior Design Association, and the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture & Design, among others — he’s nonetheless a very approachable, witty, and refreshingly unaffected man.

Last fall, just prior to the NeoCon interior design show in Chicago, Graham’s saber dance involved balancing three high-profile projects: 1) Reff Profiles for Knoll furniture, 2) seating for Martin Brattrud, and 3) the City Hall and Advocate side chairs for Geiger. “I loved balancing the three projects,” he says. “They were all so different; each for a different area of interest, each a different scale, each for a different design culture.”

Brian Graham in his San Francisco studio.

The understated beauty of Graham’s design shines through each of these projects, but my favorite is the City Hall side chair, shown above. Its angular arms and legs are in counterpoint to the gentle curve of the back, and the interplay of positive and negative spacial planes creates a spare elegance. The composition works because the weights, the ratios and lines are just right. As Graham put it, “with a wood side chair, there’s no place to hide.”

The Bandon swivel chair Graham designed for Martin Brattrud captured a silver award at NeoCon, a laurel that celebrated not only good design, but also an enduring relationship. More than two decades ago, Brattrud’s response to Graham’s ideas opened the doors to Graham’s furniture design career. At the time, Graham, a humble graduate of Cal State Long Beach, was working at Gensler design in a role that he describes as “low man on the totem pole.”

Brian's sketch in Nicolette's notebook

The task at hand was the design of some custom banquettes for a law firm. Graham knocked out some informal sketches; he shows me what they looked like by making a couple drawings in my notebook. Soon, Brian suggested that Brattrud produce its own lounge chairs with the firm’s name on them.

Currently, Graham has designed the Bandon, Dominique, Earl, Homestead, Keating, Nancy, Raymond and Wynand line for Martin Brattrud, and today, 26 years after his original collaboration, a couple of the orginal banquettes he designed are still in the Brattrud catalog.

Graham’s first design job was for a small husband-and-wife remodeling firm, and it was there he first started drawing furniture. He was also sent out in the field to help a guy named Wayne install window blinds, much to his distaste at the time. “I was working with all those small metal fittings. Realizing that ‘this thing is too close to the end and can’t be installed without scratching the window’ caused me to design differently,” he said. “Today, I want to see the guys installing my furniture, because if it’s taking too long to install the overhead, I know I need to change it.”

Brian Graham's business card reclining on a furniture model.

Graham next worked at Gensler for nine years, then worked in partnership with John L. Thiele, AIA for another six years before starting his own studio, Graham Design. Today, Graham designs furniture and related products for firms such as Knoll, Halcon, and Decca, and for clients such as Apple Computer, Collins & Aikman and U.S. Trust.

Graham did not grow up in a design-oriented family. “No one in my family was in the arts or in design. The only one who remotely understood my desire to draw was my grandfather. He was in advertising in L.A”

“My father said I should be a cartoonist. Fast forward 20-some years and in a way I am, except that most of the things that I draw are made of metal and wood.”

Since I too have been in the advertising business, and Brian and I are really interviewing one another — he’s kindly agreed to give me some advice about me career and I have volunteered to write about his — he asks about what job I have liked most. When I mention the three years I worked for Dailey and Associates in San Francisco, he says, “Is that related to Dailey and Associates in L.A.?” Yes, it was.

Models in Brian Graham's office

Turns out that our networks overlap. At a long-ago Christmas party, the Creative Director of San Francisco’s Dailey and Associates, John MacDaniels — still my favorite all-time boss — once introduced me to his Los Angeles’ opposite number, Cliff Einstein. Einstein, I learn, was a client and friend of Graham’s father. I think I was probably so over-awed by Einstein and MacDaniels, two towering ad men, that I was tongue-tied at the time.

But I have had no trouble talking to Graham, who’s now a renowned figure himself. Brian and I talked our way through two cups of coffee, and at least a demitasse of design philosophy.

One Graham’s design heroes is Florence Knoll, who would design pieces because she couldn’t find them. She designed what she called “fill-in” pieces that would complement, rather than compete with, a building’s architecture.

Reff Profile office group from Knoll. Photo courtesy of Knoll.

Brian Graham’s approach is similar. “My specialty is about understanding the market,” he says. “I consider myself first an interior designer, and I’m concerned with how someone is going to use a chair, or a desk, or table in an overall space and project. I find that lots of products need to be quiet and understated, and not shout for attention.”

The oxymoron that comes with this minimalist approach is that it often produces designs of such elegance that they not only stand beautifully on their own, but have also stood the test of time. This is certainly true of Florence Knoll’s work, and I think it will also prove true of many of Brian Graham’s designs.