Lindsey Adelman: 10 Years (with love) and Counting!

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For creative people, inspiration can be found almost anywhere.

At the Rhode Island School of Design all students are required to look at nature, not just a passing glance but to REALLY LOOK, to understand what is at work on a structural level. This is encouraged in a magical place now called the Edna Lawrence Nature Lab.  Edna Lawrence founded the Nature lab in 1937, and it has served as inspiration for many, many generations of art and design students at RISD.

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In discussions I had with fellow RISD alumnus and lighting designer Lindsey Adelman while mocking-up an enormous custom chandelier in a Greenwich Village home project, her profound connection to the innate understanding of structure, learned in the Nature Lab, became very clear to me.

Lindsey’s lighting designs are a wonderful combination of fine engineering and hand-craftsmanship, culminating in fixtures that have the essential structural characteristics found in nature.

But there’s more….

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Art Adventures: B&W Wonders at The Armory Show

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Each year I allocate at least one entire day to immerse myself in the wonders at The Armory Show and VOLTA art fairs where historically I am looking for works for my clients – or myself – however, this year the experience was purely for pleasure.

I took photos of dozens of works that caught my eye for a variety of reasons. Reviewing the images I saw different ways to bring some order to the rich chaos; this post focuses on works that are Black & White both representation and abstract… (more…)

Happy New Year!

 
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Artist Yoko Ono built a memorial called the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER for her late husband, John Lennon, on an island off of Reykjavik, Iceland “which emanates wisdom, healing and joy. It communicates awareness to the whole world that peace & love is what connects all lives on Earth.”
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And it captures my feeling and wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2016, for us all.
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To learn more about the memorial, follow this link to the website, or this link to a live earthcam stream of the tower.
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Happy New Year!

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These are a few of my favorite things…

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I’m not sure about you, but I always seem to find myself doing my holiday gift shopping in the final days of December; maybe it’s a New York phenomenon, everyone finds themselves busy wrapping up the loose ends at work, between parties and social engagements.

Finding the “perfect” gift for family and friends can be a highly stressful and expensive proposition. I have selected some items in the market place that are unlikely to be re-gifted or given away to charity right after the holiday madness is over.

These items resonate for me in how they can impact people’s lives, in the normal course of their days, where the impact may truly belie the cost.

And with the money you have left over I have two recommendations on two charities to make a difference in the world – a great gift to everyone – rather than contributing to the local land fill…

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Travel and Change of Place = New Vigor

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A remarkable ‘sconce’ at the Blackman Cruz showroom

How is it that the Roman philosopher Seneca (ca. 4 BC – AD 65) would know what a good idea it would be for me to go to the 10th Design Leadership Summit in Los Angeles when he said;

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 “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.”

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As it turns out my weeklong trip to the city of angels was extraordinary, and indeed I have new vigor!

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John Singer Sargent and ‘The Shining’?

Glenn Gissler - Blog - 2015 - Portraits-de-MEP-et-de-Mlle-LP-Portraits-of-Edouard-and-Marie-Louise-Pailleron.I think of John Singer Sargent as the masterful “Court Painter” for wealthy and powerful individuals during the Edwardian era; highly sought after, he was commissioned to create grand portraits that served to express and support social position.

NOT as an inspiration for ‘The Shining’…

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And yet the relationship of the figures, both to themselves within each image, and to the person viewing the images above, bear striking resemblance.

But I get ahead of myself.

Sergeant: Portraits of Artists and Friends  (though October 5) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is an expansive show of nearly 100 works focusing on Sargent’s more personal work: portraits he created of artist, writers, actors, and musicians, many of whom were close friends – and which are in stark contrast to the well-known and widely celebrated portraits he painted on commission.

Seemingly effortless, the paintings in this exhibition are not necessarily designed to elevate the subjects’ social position, hence he was free to create more adventurous works that are masterful expressions of his feelings about his colleagues and friends using more experimental painting techniques. It is an impressive, idiosyncratic and truly spectacular show that offers great insight into a master portrait painter.

But to my great surprise, the Sargent’s paintings brought to mind, for me, numerous other and very disparate artists, and the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, many of whom made their work a generation or two later. This, for me, constitutes a thrilling art experience!

Glenn Gissler - Blog - 2015 - Robert Louis Stevenson and His WifeIn Sergeant’s portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife (1885) there is what was seen as an ‘odd composition’ – and I don’t disagree, however what was more striking and very surprising to me was that in this one painting I saw connections between John Singer Sergeant and Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse and George Seurat!

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Stevenson’s wife is laying on a sofa or chaise dressed as Scheherazade – bringing to mind a series of works by Henri Matisse.

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A door is open into a mysterious space with glints of light, and like in some of the drawings of his contemporary George Seurat, Sargent created space within the darkness by offering teeny glints of light from the hardware of metal bars used to hold the carpet runner (perhaps a detail only an interior designer would consider!)

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More striking perhaps is the stance of Stevenson himself – tall, lean, and in motion – I had seen this very stance at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark in Alberto Giacometti’s’ ‘Walking Man’.

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Within the often large paintings are areas of almost complete abstraction, not highly rendered and detailed, but a more modern, masterful application of paint. Enter Robert Ryman.

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It came a big surprise to me that I would ‘find’ contemporary minimalist and monochrome painter Robert Ryman within some of Sergeant’s paintings!

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With the exception of photography, very little of the artwork I own is representational – or portraiture for that matter — and yet the concept of portraiture is something I think about a lot.  Private residential interior design at its best is a form of portraiture, reflecting the values, tastes, point of view and histories of the clients. In this idea, if a number of accomplished designers were to create an interior for the same clients, while they would look different, the clients would still be represented and legible in some form.

It was with great anticipation that I went to see Sergeant: Portraits of Artists and Friends – I did not however imagine such a dynamic art history experience that would reach into the late 20th century.

There are more riches to be found within these works, and I encourage you to see the show yourself before it closes – let me know what you find!

(Here’s the link to the exhibition on the Met’s website for times and dates)