Art Tour: The Living Room
I have this wildly annoying habit of needing to re-arrange the items in my home every 6-8 months. Why? Who knows. Is the effort worth it? Sometimes!
The most recent recipient of my mercurial reshuffling was the living room. Impending knee surgery was about to require that I spend 99.9% of my time walled-in to one couch-containing square. When all of one’s time is going to be spent in a single room, I think it’s rather important for the room to be one that you love, which for me, means a room filled with art that I love. So, out of the many items filling my pre-surgery to-do list, Picture-Tetris was at the top.
Now two weeks post-surgery, I don’t regret it in the least. In the times when I haven’t been binge-watching The Great British Baking Show, I have been grateful to be surrounded by art that does the mystical work of filling my soul.
And since I’m spending so much time with these small treasures, I figure’d I’d share them with you. So here we go - it’s a house tour!
I am very grateful to have a few pieces that came from family. Sitting just above me is an etching that was a gift from my grandmother. The artist was a friend of hers, and it is based on da Vinci’s flight studies.
This one was handed down to us from Seth’s grandmother. It is part of a larger set of prints, and many of his family members also have pieces from the set hanging in their homes.
Directly across from my couch-perch sit two oil paintings by North Carolina artist Nancy Orcutt. I happened to see this sweet pair at Patina, a furniture and design shop here in Durham. The moment I saw these I knew that they had to come home with me. If passed them up, I’d regret it forever. So home they came, and I adore them.
This gentle pair of prints is from Juniper Print Shop. The cheap frames I put them in are slowly giving way, but frame-swapping is low on the priority list at the moment, so they’ll need to hold steady a little longer.
Resting behind me is my most “grown up” art piece and goodness do I love it. This one is an original linocut by printmaker Laura Boswell. Her work dazzles me.
Okay, I could fan girl over illustrator Victoria Semykina all day long. Her work is luscious, vibrant, and free. I currently have two of her prints hanging in my home, but it’s only a matter of time before I find a way to squeeze in a third. (Also, how about that chair…)
This Charlie Macksy print was a 2020 pandemic purchase. It felt optimistic at the time… a choice to believe we’d eventually come out of that particular storm.
The mantle holds a rotating cast of characters, but currently we have:
An old ink drawing that was an impulse Etsy purchase… I have never quite been able to make out the artist’s name from the signature.
An Andrew Wyeth canvas print that I found at a Habitat Restore.
A Morgan Harper Nichols framed print, which I happened to see just after we relocated to North Carolina from California, and her words struck a chord.
The lamp post piece I purchased at a holiday market in NYC back in 2016. Boy do I love a good pen and ink line drawing.
And what can I say about “Me Time” from the delightful Jane Massey… it not only captures the entire essence of my being, but it also inspired the purchase of the yellow armchair.
To be perfectly honest, I haven’t hated being holed away these last couple weeks, resting & recovering… hiding from reality and taking comfort from the many wonderful neighbors, friends, and family members who have gone above and beyond helping, feeding, and caring for us. But now that I have some energy again, the stir-craziness begins and I’m eager to get back into work-mode.
So three cheers for inching back into the swing of things!
But for now I’ll leave you with well-wishes for a happy (and delicious) holiday week ahead. 💛
‘til next time,
-agc