Architectural Salvage

Architectural salvage places are some of my favorite warehouses to go to and just roam around.  It's also something that I haven't done very much of recently because I don't have that much space to store any pieces I might find and want to take home!  But that doesn't mean I don't keep track of where they are in hopes that I'll have more space one day.  :) 
Places like this really are the best for unique things like vintage signs, beautiful chandeliers, old iron gates, stone sculptures off old buildings, even old arcade games or soda machines.  In fact I bought a beautiful old wooden door at a place like this a few years ago (more on that find later...).  Despite that, I don't typically look for those larger pieces, I tend to look more for smaller accents that will fit subtly into the decor of our home.  Old door knobs, stained glass pieces, small windows, tin wall hangings, wall hooks, iron wall hangings and vintage sconces.

Homage to Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper died a few days ago.  Until I worked at the Orange County Museum of Art on a exhibition of California art from the 1960s, I wasn't familiar with Hopper's work, outside of the big screen anyway.  But he was a very talented photographer, and it doesn't hurt that some of his subject were among the most famous of artists coming out of the United States at the time. 
Here's a few of my favorite photographs he took, as well as a self-portrait of his which I think captures him brilliantly. 

Ed Rusha (photo by Dennis Hopper)

Christo + New AT&T Commercial

For those of you that were astounded as me to see AT&T wrapping things with bright orange fabric in their latest commercial, you'll be disappointed to know that this wrapping was not done by artists Christo & Jeanne-Claude.  They just, pretty much, stole the idea.  But I can't be too upset, in fact I appreciate this new marketing campaign.  For those who haven't seen the commercial, here it is.

If you love Christo's work like I do you might be pleasantly surprised by the new creative things they wrapped in the commercial!  For example, the Hollywood sign and the St. Louis arch.  Both excellent choices for wrapping I thought.
I had the unexpected fortune of seeing his work The Gates when I was in New York City in 2005.  I say unexpected because we weren't expecting to get to see it.  The installation was to end a week before we were in town, but thankfully for us, it took them about 2 weeks to tear everything down, hooray!  I even got one of the swatches they were giving out!

His work in central park was, a really nice way to 'wrap' the park.  His work is typically more literal, like this (pictured below, my personal favorite) when he wrapped the pont neuf in Paris, but I liked the play on wrapping he came up with for The Gates.

I first learned about Christo's work when watching the documentary film made about his piece Running Fence. A lot of what the documentary shows is the struggle he went through to get permission to build this fence.  It's really fascinating, I've never seen such an uproar over art before, it's pretty incredible. (If you want to watch part of it, check it out here).

This fence ran the length of 24.5 miles, across the property of 59 ranchers in Sonoma and Marin counties in northern California.  Talk about ahead of his time, he created this piece in 1976.  I appreciate and really love his vision.  And of course Jeanne-Claude, his perfect help-meet and her brilliantly bright red hair.

Typography

I've always loved typography, especially looking at newly designed fonts.  I get this weekly newsletter from MyFonts.com and this week the featured font was called Brandon Grotesque.  Crazy name I know, but it's a font that I'm loving right now.
Also recently I stumbled across this website of a firm that design fonts called Sudtipos.  They have about 100 fonts listed and I'm pretty sure I looked through each and every one of them.  I would go so far as to say that all of them are innovative and most of them are beautiful. 
I'm really into slab serifs lately and turns out my favorite on this site is is called 'In Love'.  Perfect. 

Garden Trinkets

We just planted our garden this past weekend and I, at long last, got to put my new garden markers in their pots!  I can't tell you how excited I was, I've been wishing and wanting these for a long time and finally I got them (a happy promotion present to myself!) and they are now in their pots and looking beautiful.  The artist that made them uses old silverware and pounds the letters right into the silver. You  can buy these from her shop here. 

As I was purchasing these, I stumbled across many other really cute garden markers that I wanted to share.  These are for those that aren't into the vintage/re-purposed look.  These you can buy on etsy. 

  And for those looking to something similar to mine (I purchased mine from monkeysalwayslook) there's these cuties (from etsy also). 

I just think there's something to be said about the small things.  Granted, some of these could be considered a needless expense, but for me when I see them it makes me smile so it's worth it.
Another cute example, but different then the others.  Find them here.

And the last few. (You can find them here, and here).