This is a blog bringing you Utah's best style & design. Frequent topics include home decor, fashion, interior design, architecture, green concepts, scrapbooking, art, photography, DIY projects, and anything that looks pretty. This blog is owned and maintained by Rachel Hagen. Yup, Utah's most elegant interior designer.
With all this talk on elections I thought it’d be interesting to highlight the White House. All presidents have made their mark: William Howard Taft put in the Oval Office, Franklin Roosevelt contributed the White House movie theater and an indoor pool (in which Nixon covered), and Harry Truman added a balcony to the back of the house. I like this quote from our current First Lady, Barbra Bush, when talking about what kind of rug George W. wanted in the Oval Office:
“George said he knew this was going to be a job of decisions,but he didn’t realize he was going to have to make a decision on what kind of rug to have in the Oval Office. So he did what he thinks is the smart thing for a leader to do—he delegated it to me.”
In 2004, Architectural Digest did an article entitled:
Nancy Reagan and Jacqueline Kennedy:The Private Quarters of Two First Ladies During their Reigns at the White House
It was a very interesting article describing the process the two women went through with the interior renovations of the white house. Both hired designers and both made their special niche in American History with their changes.
The First Lady’s Dressing Room
The First Family Bedroom with Chinioserie Hand painted-Wallpaper
Jacqueline Kennedy wanted the West Sitting Hall to resemble her Georgetown living room, hence the nice sitting area by the window.
This is Nancy Reagan’s office. She wanted to keep the existing furniture, but refurbish it (already thinking Green). The only two new pieces are the mirror and day-bed. I love the botanical prints.
It’ll be interesting to see what our next First Lady will do.
We all could use a little bling in our decor. Baccarat crystal is an understatement of bling.
The Baccarat House in Paris is the headquarters to this crystal empire, and was designed by the great Phillipe Starck. The building consists of a crystal boutique, museum, ballroom, and restaurant and has quickly established itself as one of Paris’ main hubs for the elite socialites.
A history of the building From Baccarat’s Website:
Baccarat has relocated to a legendary place situated at 11, place des Etats-Unisin Paris. The former muse of this unique private mansion, Marie-Laure de Noailles (1902-1971) gave magical parties there and metamorphosed this magnificent place of pomp and tradition into a home dedicated to painters, writers and musicians. Time and again she would reorganize the layout and design of the mansion to suit her mood.
While I’m typically not a huge fan of pink rooms, The Cristal Room Baccara is an exception. This was once where the former dining room of Marie-Laure de Noailles was, and Phillipe Stark did an excellent job in keeping the original design while adding a touch of modern and glam. Lovely.
The size of this chair can be understood when looking at the spiral staircase beside it. Unbelievable.
Banksy is by far my favorite Street Artist. For the longest time, no one knew who he really was. Well…a couple of weeks ago, that all changed. Mail on Sunday broke the story and revealed who Banksy really was. I’ve been meaning to highlight some of his work for awhile now. But first an excerpt from the story. There was also a good piece done on Banksy in Time and also Gawker.
He is perhaps the most famous, or infamous, artist alive. To some a genius, to others a vandal. Always controversial, he inspires admiration and provokes outrage in equal measure.
Since Banksy made his name with his trademark stencil-style ‘guerrilla’ art in public spaces - on walls in London, Brighton, Bristol and even on the West Bank barrier separating Israelis and Palestinians - his works have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
He has dozens of celebrity collectors including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera.
Make sure you check out Part 1 of this series. This is some photography I did while at school in Princeton. More details on the project in the Part 1 entry. Stay tuned for Part 3 in the upcoming weeks.
Using colorful media such as twisting balloons, party streamers, and artist tape, I have begun to add visual representations of sound effects to public spaces as a sort of dimensional graffiti. After embellishing the found scenes and photographing the results, I leave my additions in place to engage passers-by for as long as the materials hold up. For me, this process encourages a reexamination of surroundings and objects that are usually taken for granted, and injects a hint of the fantastical surreality that I have established in my other work.
Or, at the very least, I hope someone thinks these things are kind of funny.
Those British do some crazy stuff. Check out this new Dinner in the Sky concept. It’s exactly what it says…Dinner in the sky. Suspended more than 164 feet in the air by a crane, you get to sit at a table for 22 (and 3 staff in the middle) and enjoy some fine wining and dining. The company can hoist you in the air anywhere where you can get a permit. And they’ll put up another platform the same height if you’d like live music as well. This whole thing probably costs a fortune. Those British…
I love the beach and everything that comes with it. But I was never very good at building sand castles or sculptures. Here are a few amazing pieces of work. The kid at the end is the kid that destroys everything. :)
What’s one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Looks like a pile of rubbish until you put light up against it. Check out the projected shadows. Amazing artwork.
Tim Noble and Sue Webster are an incredible artistic duo based in England who have worked on a variety of related projects experimenting with trash and projected shadows. From looking at the rubbish they collect from the streets of London it is virtually impossible to determine a rhyme or reason to the apparent mess. However, once a projector is set up at just the right angle the art pops to life and animated shades are created with crisp and clear outlines delineating the controlled forms hidden with chaos.
Benjamin Verdonck, a Dutch street artist, built a giant nest on the side of a skyscraper in Rotterdam and is now living there. It hangs 50 meters above the ground and took 6 weeks to build.
What he said the nest was made of:
The crowns of twenty-three silver birches. one birch one willow two straw bales one bucket of spit three bags of sand twelve buckets of glue nineteen cans of polyurethane foam
This is an interesting new campaign by Vespa. They’ve hired Dan Bergeron (aka fauxreel) to basically plaster five Canadian cities with more than 300 seven-foot-tall Vespa Squarehead wheatpastes in an effort to promote their new Vespa S. Will it work?
Johan Lorbeer is a German street performer who basically defies the law of gravity. He has become famous for his “still life” performances which always took place in public places. This is kinda crazy. The secret to his work is at the end.
With his still-life performances, this German artist seems to unhinge the laws of gravity. For hours on time, he remains, as a living work of art, in physically impossible positions. Elevated or reduced to the state of a sculpture, he interacts with the bewildered and irritated audience, whose appetite for communication rises as time goes by, often culminating in the wish to touch the artist in his superhuman, angelic appearance in order to participate in his abilities.
Basically the secret is that the arm you see isn’t really his real arm. He uses the fake arm to support his weight.
