new images: bonney goldstein + michael deragon

thanks to the photographic talents of m. winters, we have uploaded more artwork by bonney goldstein and michael deragon. though their show won't be officially installed until wednesday, july 11th, we're offering a sneak preview of their work online! we have most of the work here, hidden in our back room, so if you absolutely have to see see anything before the 11th, stop by and ask really, really nicely...

cello benefit

at the acting out studio in newburyport, ma on saturday, there will be benefit for juliet nelson who is in need of a new cello. unfortunately, just before she was due to perform at a sotto voce event a couple of months ago, her cello was irreparably damaged in an unfortunate mishap. so, head to newburyport on saturday night and listen to some great live music, bid on some fantastic art, and help a deserving and very talented musician.

[poster courtesy of dan blakeslee]

goodbye, peggy! we hardly knew ye.

this last week, i bid adios to my 1982 GLT volvo. it was bittersweet to the very end. after showing my beloved peggy to many volvo fanatics and a few guys "just looking for a cool beater car", peggy eventually ended up purchased by a portsmouth resident who was displaced by hurricane katrina two years ago. lydia, peggy's new owner, was (and is) the ideal person to have taken over possession of my sweet volvo - she's a filmmaker and freelance writer and was totally smitten with the volvo. um, how could she not be? check her out! so shiny! so angular!
in my lame defense, i've never been one for naming cars. nicknames for humans? yes. naming your automobile? no. however, when i bought the volvo in january, she came with the name "lulu", the abbreviated moniker of the silent film star with the spectacular bob, louise brooks. i wasn't crazy for the name, and had been reading out of this century: confessions of an art addict by peggy guggenheim at the time of purchase. her name seemed to suit the volvo. and thus, lulu became peggy.
adios, peggy! sigh. we hardly knew ye. i hope that portsmouth continues to treat you well.

two more by jennifer hodges

jennifer hodges emailed us images of two more paintings that will be in her july show. according to jen, they are two of the bigger pieces in the show (one of them is 5' x 7'). i love the way any space is totally transformed by a large piece of art, and ms. hodges always astounds us with her ability to create huge pieces!

vacation

well, rc, michael d and i just spent three days having a ridiculously good time at the cape. we read, ate, relaxed, sunned, visited provincetown galleries, were awed by the welfleet scenery and generally felt inspired and reinvigorated by some time away. i posted some photos on our flickr account here. did i mention that we had a great time? hopefully a more detailed report of the art portion of our trip will follow this brief post.

i have to add that we stopped off at the peabody essex museum on the way home yesterday to see the joseph cornell exhibit. it was incredible and absolutely worth seeing. amazing. rc will do a much better job at writing about it, i'm sure (rc, help?).

amy palmer paintings

amy palmer just delivered some of her paintings for our upcoming august landscape show and i just had to post them on our flickr account so you can see how beautiful they are. they are a big departure from the work she typically does, and we're always excited to see artists trying new things! she describes them as:

...really minimal and blurry but layered with beautiful colors.

amy warned me that they were hard to photograph, and um, she wasn't kidding. after many adjustments, they are as close to the actual paintings as i can manage. so, see them for yourself in person if possible so you can be properly wowed. there are a whole batch of 5" x 5" pieces that she also dropped off but i ran out of steam trying to photograph the larger pieces. sorry.

'til death do us part.

the average wedding in america costs $30,000. (did i hear you gasp or was that just me?) as a "business", it rakes in about $161 billion dollars a year. rebecca mead's book "one perfect day: the selling of the american wedding", is a wonderful, journalistic jaunt through the madness. jonathan yardley writes about the book here. and then maybe get the book. weddings fascinate me in how defined they are by socioeconomic status, culture, familial wishes, and fueled by fantasy and cash. and how perfectly normal, funny women can willingly take part in such events as depicted below. disney nuptuals. it's enough to keep me awake at night, clutching the covers to my chin, eyes wide with horror.

perch!

brooklynite amy adams was booked solid after some recent gift shows, so we breathed a collective sigh of relief followed by a jubilant "hooray!" when she called to tell us the good news - our order was ready to ship out! in descending order, perch's hobknobs, shake-a-leg salt and pepper, and birdfeeder are shown. love, love, love her stuff. here's the story, according to miss amy adams:
"perch! products are handmade, but not necessarily crafty.
most perch! products are multifunctional objects that allow the owner to decide what to do with them. we like birds, but we like fish, too. perch! products are environmentally friendly - low impact materials and processes, non-toxic finishes and byproducts. perch! products are not to be taken too seriously - but please don't call them whimsical. please?"
amy's frida lamps were recently featured on designsponge, too!
more soon!

lower level gallery

the new lower level gallery has been repainted, reconfigured and reopened! we chose a neutral yellowish floor color called "camelback" but stayed with the white walls. it looks so much better and more inviting, now with the angela adams rugs and gus design furniture. currently, paintings by teresa mccue and photographs by alexandra de steiguer grace our walls (we still have to hang one more wall, which we'll get to soon!).

but, we did get some interesting feedback today from a very talented interior designer (thanks, karen!) who thinks that a nice pistachio green on the walls would make the room even nicer. we're open to suggestions on this front, so please weigh in! the tricky part is choosing a color that will go well as a backdrop to paintings, so do keep that in mind. thanks!!

new work by jennifer hodges

jen hodges just emailed us two new pieces that will be in her upcoming two-person exhibition at nahcotta. both are incredible - i can't wait to see the rest of the work!

jen hodges - slant

what's the last exhibit you saw?
jennifer hodges: the last exhibit I saw that I really liked was a show of dana shutz paintings at the rose art museum.


what could you look at for hours?
jh: water in motion.

give us three words describing your process.
jh: want. more. paint.

what was the last song stuck in your head?
jh: "summertime when the living is easy..." a jazz song. I don't know the title.

what weather pattern best describes your work?
jh: the little red hurricane symbol the weatherman uses.

GOOD does porn.

when GOOD magazine was first unleashed some time ago, waggling its tagline "Welcome to GOOD, media for people who give a damn", i was skeptical. another magazine claiming to acknowledge a collective desire to change the world and managing to be intelligent, creative, engaging, clever, and amusing. all this without being hokey or blowing proverbial smoke? no way. well, this girl stands (or sits) corrected. the GOOD people are definitely good. they collect interesting and provocative bits of information and send it out into the world in unusual and, well, provocative formats (see above).
and they take risks. we love that, too. GOOD does give a damn!

september tiny art show

well, we have been absolutely inundated with tiny art submissions! so far, there are 25+ participating artists from across the country, in europe, and in japan (wow!) thanks in part to holly at decor8 who mentioned the show on her fabulous blog. we thought that the last show was tip top, but this is shaping up to be even bigger and better. the list is still growing, but to date, the participants are: daisy adams, christopher aja, wednesday aja, sofia barao, katie baum, tim beavis, gordon carlisle, liza corbett, michael deragon, elizabeth doherty, sam faix, susie ghahremani, marisa haedike, robert herdlein, jennifer judd-mcgee, dan-ah kim, ann kirchner, keith maddy, emily martin, kelly moore, marissa moore, kate o'leary, beth pearson, lillianna pereira, amy ruppel, matte stephens, and susan schwake-larouchelle.

i know, impressive, right?
(pictured above is a piece by sofia barao)

angela adams news

this past week, our new angela adams rep, ann, dropped by nahcotta to give me and doo an extremely early preview of the fall/winter angela adams bags. holy cow! so beautiful! i, of course, immediately claimed a brown and black manfred hannah for myself. doo claimed a light blue manfred laptop bag. (neither of which we'll receive until august, when the bags will be released to retailers, so don't be jealous.)

angela has gone all green on us, too. she's abandoning the leather bags (so, if you're reading this and you love angela's leather bags, scoop 'em up quickly, because they're the last of their kind!) in favor of sustainable fabrics. her fall/winter color palette is subtle and gorgeous. and ann, the aforementioned rep, is spectacular. when betsy, our rep for five years, left us for a promotion into angela's marketing department, we were saddened that there'd never be a replacement of such superb caliber. well, ann has proven us wrong. she kicks serious a-s-s. thank you, ann!

p.s. we'd love to show you the new bags, but they're too new to share! stay tuned. we'll give you the scoop as soon as we can!

porcine

doo and i were recently discussing the work of wim delvoye, a belgian artist whose work has involved barium, "shit", and lunchmeat (not all together, of course.). his project on tattooed pigs was recently covered, albeit briefly, in art news.
delvoye's pigs, while being "saved" from the fate of handbagdom, are used as living works of art, emblazoned with the ink renderings of iconic disney, harley davidson and other versions of high and low brow visual elements of american culture. delvoye sidestepped animal cruelty laws in europe and started his art farm in china. so, is it cruelty? they're under light sedation during the tattooing and they, evidently, live a happy life on the art farm in china for the rest of their days. and when they pass on into the netherworld, they're continually considered works of art through taxidermy. which begs the further query - is this "art"?

also on the pig tip, the art news blog just featured this bit on "accidental art" created by piglets:
"Trotters Independent Painters began their career by accident when the piglets broke loose at a craft fair at their home, and began investigating tins of non-toxic paint with their snouts and trotters. The artists reside at the Pennywell Farm in Buckfastleigh and are working to raise money for the Farm Crisis Network charity."

"these piglets are so damn adorable, it makes me feel extremely guilty about my affection for bacon.
so, what's up with the pigs lately? are they a new art movement?

sam faix

our good friend sam faix just emailed us the announcement for his new show that's opening on friday in brooklyn. congrats, sammie! the sarah bowen gallery is in williamsburg and is including sam in "the submissions show." here's what they say about it:

Sarah Bowen Gallery presents “The Submissions Show”; an exhibition of 32 artists who submitted portfolios in the past year. The show gives a preview of the abundance of working artists striving to gain gallery representation. The idea of a gallery or exhibition space can be debated as a conundrum, however exhibiting in a gallery space is generally perceived as a point of access to the important tastemakers and consumers of our time; the critics, writers, philanthropists, other acclaimed artists, and more importantly the market.

hope any of you who are in the area will be able to stop by and check it out!

portsmouth magazine

this month's portsmouth magazine features a cover story called "pray for surf" by rebecca! though she writes two regular columns called, "seacoast sounds" and "seacoast culture", this is her first cover story in this magazine. of course, it's brilliantly written. would you expect anything less?

vacation, live music and new paint

it's been quite a week! i spent two fantastic days in south harwich, ma with my family for our annual memorial day weekend gathering. we dug in the dirt, read in the sun, and consumed delicious food. it was a welcome break. i headed home on monday, in time for our weekly trip to the red door. this week there were four bands: eric lindley, red heart the ticker, cara connolly and lo fine. lo fine has a brand new cd out called "not for us two", which is great. everyone should buy a copy. seriously. it's really good.

we spent the week gearing up to re-open the downstairs gallery. michael d is painting the floor today, and we hope to have it ready for foot traffic by sunday! we're getting a big furniture delivery this afternoon, so some newly added floor space will be helpful.

robert herdlein is dropping off his work on sunday, and we'll post images by the end of the weekend. soon enough, we'll also have some exciting news about our enormous tiny art show ii (scheduled for september)!

gifts

well, wedding season seems to be wholly upon us. deb and i have decided that simon pearce is absolutely without question indubitably the best can't-go-wrong wedding gift. why, you ask?
because it's handblown glass, not mass produced. it's made in queechee, vermont, so you've got a bit of the "new england" appeal therein. also, it straddles both contemporary and traditionalist design sensibilities, so almost every recipient loves it. the woodbury bowl, at left, (and its vase version) is one of the most popular sellers, as are the thetford bowls (right). the low hanover bowl (bottom image) is pretty striking, too.
simon pearce also has an unbelievable collection of wine decanters, glassware. and lamps.
we just got in a veritable boatload of simon pearce, so we're stocked up!
by the way, anything you see on their site, we can get for you. and we won't charge you shipping. isn't that nice? happy shopping!