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!

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/

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.........

Wary Meyers Painting Pillows

Off the wall and onto the sofa! Our latest project is a collection of hand-painted (by me) and sewn (by Linda) down-and-feather-filled painting pillows. The first collection is all Abstract Expressionist, inspired by the works of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. Approximately 18" square, the acrylic paint is thick in parts (like the actual paintings) and nicely pliable. $145 each.

Click here for the entire gallery and order information.

Progettazione 1x2

Gustav Eiffel/ Enzo Mari- inspired 1x2 plank mantel ("Eiffel Mantel") just after completion in the summer of 2008. Highly mathematical instructions on how to build it are in our book Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found.

Below that is from the following spring, when a winter outside oxidized the nails and they leached into the wood grain, but I like it even better that way. It shows more of "the hand".

Above, a pig working on a Mari-esque progettazione (interlocking end table/s) in the illustration for the book's last page (the end).

also:

Enzo Mari at DesignMuseum.org

Enzo Mari at Reference Library

Enzo Mari at Daddytypes, and Greg.Org

Keith Kustard and Macaron

Introducing Keith Kustard and his little friend Macaron,

via the pencils of John and the needles of Linda.

The two plush compadres are destined to make starring appearances in some future Wary Meyers projects, and have a permanent gig hanging out in Fletcher's room, but for right now they're lounging on the second floor gallery of Corduroy Surf Boutique in Portland, who also have prints (below) and a couple of original watercolors for sale.

Keith & Macaron in the Florida Keys: 20x16"(15x12"image) archival print $35

Keith Kustard and Donavan Frankenreiter.

Pool Noodle chair

Part Bibendum, part 24-pack koozie.

From Wary Meyers Tossed & Found.

À la table

Vintage Gucci napkins-and-tablecloth, old Gio Ponti silverware, and an early set of Julia Child, from yard sales.

And from the flotsam-filled dock undersides of Portland came the wood to make the chevronned Jean Prouve esque Tropicale (Nauticale?) Farm Table, called "Picnic Table" in Tossed & Found, only because we were watching "Manon of the Spring" when we had to come up with a name.

Super Sweet Diamonds

Motified bottle

from the basement of an estate sale.

Knitted Landscapes

Two fantastic projects- the picture sweater and landscape rug- from the 1978 British book

The Needleworker's Constant Companion.

Are you ready for some football, task lamp?

Superbowl Sunday project from the book Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found

Happy Thanksgiving!

Chaiseburger in our dining room.

Happy Halloween!

1x2

We wrote another guest post for Apartment Therapy, this time about the easy, gratifying aesthetic solutions 1x2 boards can offer your blank walls. Above is a photo I took behind the Shell Man, in Islamorada Florida earlier this year. The 1x2s are used to ship fragile coral and shells, then thrown away out back. If you're ever looking for wood for a project, check behind places like this, or places that have free pallets, since there could be packing crates there as well.

From top: The 1x2 opening spread from Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found in a NY apartment we did; more 1x2s in another NY apartment we did; Mrs. Mark Hampton's apartment by David Hicks (inspiration); a concept page from WMT&F which includes typographic 1x2 ideas in English, Kanji, and Cyrillic.

Fireplace Type

 Brick openings alphabet (monograms), an outtake from our book. 

(click to enlarge)

Wary Meyers multi-compartmented dresser (in progress), or, What Would Donald Judd Wear?

Inspired by Moshe Safdie's Habitat '67, Donald Judd, backpacks, and cancerous growths on trees. We just needed to decide whether there should be doors or drawers on the added wooden boxes, and unfortunately this indecision kept it from the tight deadlines of Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found, although we did use an unfinished shot as a chapter opening. It's now keeping company with other unfinished projects in our basement, but the plan is to finish it before it gets too cold outside to saw 25 drawers and doors. (We now think drawers up top and doors at the bottom).

Useful things on the side of the road

If this were a yard sale we would have bought nearly everything. As it happens, what we did take were the old rubber hose, since our cheap store-bought one popped a few days ago, and you can't beat the fleshy patina on this one, the basket, which, we're not so much into baskets, but this one had been in a fire and looked kind of cool in a Maarten Baas/Maarten Baas' mother way, and it smelled great. 

Not smelling great however was the overflowing plastic bag of damp Fozzie Bear-like sheepskin, but a few weeks hanging outside on the porch and a few bottles of Febreeze should freshen it up. 

Sometimes we're not sure of what to do with any of this, but if we ever need it it's there. Or conversely, we didn't know we needed it until we found it. For example, we didn't know that a perfect Halloween costume would be a ginger Chewbacca sitting in a gold directors chair with his entrails hanging out holding a burned basket of candy. Imagine seeing that when you open the door.

New Painting

Italy (detail)

Our print shop will be up and operational next week.

The Rain in Maine

Another lame forecast again this weekend, to add to the already drenched summer.

Above: A great, huge, older (80's) L.L. Bean umbrella, bought from a nice older (80's) couple who both worked at Bean for years.

Next to that is a really nice Swaine, Adeney, Brigg, and Sons, Ltd. fortuitously found at a yard sale last summer when we were looking specifically for umbrellas to stick in Tossed & Found's umbrella holder project. Interestingly at the time we were also working on a project called the Eiffel Mantel, which involved hammering hundreds of nails into 1x2 boards, a la Enzo Mari, who wrote, "...two nails should never be planted along the same grain of wood." Advice Swaine & co. should've heeded when they nailed their name plate onto the handle. (click to enlarge).

$1.50 and $3, respectively.

Enzo Mari

The Salty Sea

From a quick trip out to Long Island (Maine) on the 4th-

1. speedboat

2. The Corto Maltese, Hugo Pratt's sailor. When I lived in Italy I had a girlfriend who wrote his name, in gum, on the bottom of a bookshelf. The shelf was only about 2 feet over her face when she was in bed, and before she fell asleep each night she'd stick her gum on it. I remember she proudly showed me the multicolored cursive Corto Maltese, among other dots and asterisks and swirls. 

3. A broken stool at the boatyard. I actually took this photo last year, and the stool was going to turn into a bike rack for Tossed & Found, but I left it on the island and never found it again. 

4. The Rime of The Ancient Mariner, illustrated by Alexander Calder. We found this at the bottom of a box, at a yard sale with kids, kids, everywhere. 

5. The ferry back, Casco Bay looking a little like the Mekong, with a crowded whale watch boat.