Friday, August 23, 2013

Della the decorator ????

Designer???  you must be wondering if you have the correct blog because many of you know that I HATE decorating. Eva is the family decorator not me.  However you can add decorating and designing an art exhibit to my list of accomplishments because I am officially a "designer" according to the Jordan River Arts Council.  
SO, a bit of explanation is surely required for this posting. It all started with my wonderful friend MaryAnne.  She does belong to the Jordan River Arts Council and I am her assistant on some projects.  We were asked to participate in the latest show in East Jordan.  The show is called Art Full of Rooms.  The idea of the exhibit was to create rooms of a house in the museum's building and have them filled with art work from local or Michigan artists.  We/she was given the Master bedroom to decorate so we began to try to figure out what to do.  

 Many of the other 'designers' are artists and have a network of connections to draw from and find furniture and art works.  MaryAnne and I are retired teachers with not as many connections so we started by doing what we could with our resources.  I had a bed frame in the basement that I didn't use and was in storage.  We decided to paint the bed a shiny black.  I found a dresser that someone told us we could use and paint so it was painted too.  This is my friend MaryAnne painting the headboard at her house.  It did take 2 coats but turned out pretty nice.
 The dresser was looking better after a couple of coats of paint too.  We just spray painted the old drawer pulls and were all set.  Not bad for just the expense of a can of paint and it took the whole can.
 We had this idea to create a piece of 'art' using twigs from her farm so here is our creation.  It was inspired by a 'real artist's' exhibit that was at our local museum.  I hope the real artist isn't too upset with us.  I didn't see the exhibit but I am sure that his work was a bit more professional but once again, it didn't cost us anything.  We had a good time creating our little piece and are sure that no one is going to want to buy it but maybe it will inspire someone to create something of their own.

The show opened August 11 and that was the week of Brittany's wedding so I wasn't able to go to the Artist Opening event.  I talked my recuperating husband in to driving up to East Jordan this past Sunday.  He was getting a little 'house bound' anyway and wanted to get out. I wanted to see the whole show and see how our room measured up to the other designers.
 I forgot to mention that the original inspiration for the whole room was MY quilt. This is the room that we designed.  The art on the wall behind me is  local artist that I found and it goes along with the quilt very well.  You can see a bit of the dresser in the corner and not much of the bed headboard shows but it does look nice.  The lamp in the corner is one that I found to use too.
 This is just another view of the bed and the furnishings.  The bedside tables and the bench at the end of the bed belong to MaryAnne.  Her husband made them and we just took them from her home.  He also made the music stand that you can see beside me.
 Much of the art work on the walls came from MaryAnne's house.  She has a nice personal collection.
 AND of course, here is the wonderful and creative 'twig art' that we created, dead leaves hanging from the branches and all.  A local potter put these two pieces in the show.
One of the reasons for this show is to feature local artists and offer their works for sale.  Since much of the paintings in our room are from personal collections, we didn't have much for sale.  The vase on the left is for sale though. I also put a price on my quilt in the event that someone wants to pay BIG bucks for my work.  I really don't want to sell it that much so I put a price of $5000 (yes I did type the correct number of zeros in that price quote).  I figured if someone wanted to pay that much, I would sell it to them  I haven't gotten may offers but the comments about the way the quilt and painting go so well together have been flattering.  It was overheard by a good source (MaryAnne's brother) that people wish they could afford the painting and the quilt.
 This was the guest bedroom.  I think my quilt is much nicer.  I forgot to check what she is asking for this quilt.
 This is part of another room, I thought I would just include a picture of the recuperating patient.
 I think this room was called the 'porch'.  A lot of the items in this space were 'rescued' pieces of old buildings or things like that.
The other rooms were fine but I do believe we were one of the best rooms.  I forgot to take a picture of the dining room which was very nice too.  It was right up there with our room.
Anyway, I am glad that we were able to see the whole show.  It is going to be on through September 22 so if you are so inclined, you can drop in and see it.  East Jordan is a pretty small town so not many people will see the show.  I did ask at one time (after we consented to do the  room) about how many people came to see the shows.  They told me that they get about 250 people to stop by and see the shows so I am not planning on being 'discovered' by some design firm and being asked to come and decorate their offices of multi-million dollar cabin or retreat.
It was an interesting project and it kept me fairly busy working on all the collecting, painting and setup for the show.  Most of all it was a great way to spend time with my friend.   We had fun painting and creating together. Time with friends is always a treasure and now I can say that I have been a decorator/designer.  The publicity actually said "Six rooms created by area designers, local furniture makers and artists".  We were the designers and artists but most of all we were two friends working together and having fun.
Bud's reward for going with me to the show was ice cream on the way home.  It was a fun day and a great way to get out and enjoy the country side.  He is doing very well in his recovery.  He went to work every day this week but didn't stay long earlier in the week. Today he spent the whole day at work and went out for a short walk this evening.

I know it was a LONG post but I have been saving the pictures up all summer because I wanted to show the whole project at one time.  Reward yourself with ice cream if you made it to the end of this posting.

1 comment:

  1. Funny thing, I just had ice cream before I read this: ) I'm so excited to be able to say I know you. (Also because if your autograph begins to fetch some money, we'll make a killing: ) Thanks for posting the room pics. I've been curious since the boat.
    Diana

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