Boro Sweet Boro

With a little help from us Urban Outfitters has boro'd the Japanese Boro Jean Quilt project from our book and made it into a cool hippie wall hanging. "Boro" is Japanese for rags, and is most often used in reference to the resourcefully mended, endlessly repaired indigo cotton futon covers of the farmers and fishers of Northern Japan. (See much more info here, and here was our primary source of inspiration during the original project). Our quilt version was made from salvaged old jeans.

Although Urban's is a slightly smaller size quilt it would also make a cool dog bed or a kind of tami mat or boro blankie for a kid.

The plum blossom-y peasant print on the back fabric (above) was also designed by us.
The middle photo is the Urban's sample, on top of our larger original, as it came to us to be okayed. The top photo is a spread from our book, taken near Linda's parents' house Long Island, Maine. The old hippie anthropomorphic shack being a "sweet home" ;-)




Home Sweet Home by Wary Meyers Denim Wall Art at Urban Outfitters

Happy First Birthday Fletcher!!

You've come a long way, baby!

Happy Holidays!

Have a ball!
we'll be back in a few days!

Silver and Gold

Victor Vasarely silkscreen serigraph, from a thrift shop. They had no idea what it was but the $35 price they said was because of the nice (teak) frame. Signed by Vasarely and printed by Editeur Denise Rene. 79/150. Awesome!

Linda spotted the Anglepoisian task floor lamp the other day on somedody's curb, out with the recyclables. It's in perfect condition, just a little dusty, and although it's tough to tell, huge- each of those arms is 42". It also has a gold metal cover for the base, but I removed that for the more Brutalist concrete look, a la Ivan Chermayeff, who sunk his task lamp into a cinderblock.

David Hicks on...

A boxed holy trinity of decorating books by the Headmaster of interior design,

 from an estate sale in England a few years ago.

David Hicks at a Schweppervescent tablescape in his London home, 1972.
From an old W Magazine.

wary meyers plastic crumpled paper ball

Another of our installation projects for the old Baxter Library building/ Via Ad agency. This is our giant crumpled, ripped-from-a-spiral-notebook style polymer "paper" ball. (It's hard, formed plastic, not paper).

Seen here being blowtorched into shape with our fabricators Jeff and Bill. 

Currently suspended above the conference table at the ad agency, representing the creative process.

Smaller crumpled balls are in the works......

Motherwell-esque

Motherwell-esque 2 from the Wary Meyers Painting Pillows shop

18" square, hand painted, handmade, down and feather filled.
$145.00 The perfect gift!

More (3,4,5...and  Frankenthaler-esque) in the works!

Pen & Ink

Our fiberglass and steel sculpture for the entrance of the old Baxter Library building in Portland, Maine. Part of a series of writing/books/pen/ink-themed installations we've designed and made for the building, newly occupied by the Via Ad Agency.
 more photos soon!

Twisted Tales

Incidental display for the old Baxter Library building in Portland Maine,
newly occupied by the Via Ad Agency and newly decorated with some Wary Meyers installations.

more soon!

Where is this place?

And what does it have to do with my story? And what are those pink bulbs?

All questions J.R.R. Tolkien asked when he saw Barbara Remington's cover painting for The Lord of the Rings.

In her defense she hadn't had time to read the books as the publisher was rushing out the paperbacks to squelch the sales of a pirated version. (see here also).

Anyway, the question I asked an indifferent Linda when we found the giant poster in the basement of an estate sale was "Oh my God! Can you believe it?????!!?"

Hoodoo?

Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Shirley Temple, Ray Collins, and old Harry Davenport, from The Bachelor and The Bobbysoxer. I must have said this bit with my friends a hundred times when I was a kid, always cracking up.
Funny!!

David Hockney, Vogue Paris 1985

Speaking of David Hockney, in Paris, here are a few of the 40 pages of fantastic photo collages, paintings, drawings, and writing he contributed to French Vogue for the Dec 1985-Jan 86 issue. I bought this on the newsstand when I was going to college in Paris. I've always loved the desk photo, mostly because of the Pistilli Roman book and the Lubalin Graph Dog Biscuits, but looking at it now I think what a cool project that would be to make a desk like that, that looks like a Google street-view of a desk, as taken by a Corgi toy. It looks like it's taped to the wall with its own cubist, fragmented sides. (Mr. Hockney, let's make some furniture!)

Also, check out our friend J.B. Taylor's post "When David Met Celia", which was the catalyst for these Hockney posts.
... and that's Hockney's cubist portrait of Celia Birtwell on the cover.

And also visit other friends' Dominic Lutyens and Kirsty Hislop's blog:
http://flashinonthe70s.wordpress.com/

plant + levelor + sun = Hockney

Director Mike Nichols' New York City apartment, 1980. Besides the big Josef Albers painting, what I've always liked about this room is the simple plant in front of the sun splashed Levelor blinds, and and how it looks like a room David Hockney might've wanted to paint. It also helps that there's an actual David Hockney drawing on the bookshelf, and the upholstery looks like a Celia Birtwell design. And although it looks like a close-up of the window, below is actually Hockney's newest work- on iPhones and iPads, which, if you're in Paris before January 30th you should check out. It's nice to see him getting back to his plant/blinds/sunlight roots, but in such a crazy
 sci-fi way.
Watch the interview here

Think minimalist. It's more intellectual.

And other state-of-the-art advice from 1984's The Yuppie Handbook.

click to enlarge.

Herb Lubalin Ampersand

Ampersand designed by Herb Lubalin for Upper & Lower Case Magazine, 1970. 

This 3-D version is a leftover from a type/writing themed installations project we've been working on lately for an ad agency. More soon.........

Bulloww-Up

We don't usually buy records anymore unless there's a poster inside, but here are the latest exceptional exceptions.
Lalo Schifrin's Bullitt and Herbie Hancock's and the Byrds' Blow-Up.

The Ghost and Mrs. Snowblood

Squeaky-voiced 1930's actress Jean Arthur's house in Carmel California, 1976.
Equal parts Lady Snowblood and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,
with a little helping of the Mines of Moria and Fangorn Forest.

And that's just the living room.

Boing Boing

Awesome cantilevered hangout with springy net seats from Joan Kron and Suzanne Slesin's seminal 1978

industrial style & design opus, High Tech. 

Which, if I had to choose only two design books to have in a library,
would be one of them. 

Mezzanine into the woods made by Michael Jantzen (of Illinois, who has very lucky kids).

click to enlarge.

this old thing

Recent yard/estate sale acquisitions of the clothing variety:

Top: Vintage Patagonia Gore-Tex raincoat, with a Patagonia decal where the front patch usually is.

David Hicks wallet, of the softest kid glove leather ever, with a tiny leather address book. Never used, from Japan in the 70's.

Vintage New York Times t-shirt- almost as soft as the wallet- promoting their classifieds section.

1940's Hermes silk scarf featuring a pack of antsy hunting hounds chomping at the bits.

The ubiquitous L.L.Bean hunting boots, this time with leather kilties- that fringed tongue, and a 1976 Maine Road Atlas which has little dots showing every farm in the state. Kind of fun if you're out in the country and you want to show the kids some cows and goats. Also good if you go out and forget the GPS.


related: Mainer and founder of Patagonia Yvon Chouinard on finding his own way and building a successful and responsible business here, from a talk he gave at University of California Santa Barbara in 2005. It's an hour long, and well worth watching.