His ornate woodworking was also a part of the Arts and Crafts style Read more
Category: Uncategorized
Making Old Arts and Crafts New Again
A recent lighting project teaches about John Hudson Thomas’ evolution of Arts & Crafts style Read more
A True Craftsman Art Form
Tramp art is a true American Folk Art (made by some pretty interesting folks) Read more
Unsung Hero of the Gamble House
A tribute to Randell Makinson, the man who preserved Pasadena’s Gamble House.
Perhaps when you hear the names, Charles and Henry Greene, the name Randell Makinson doesn’t automatically come to mind. However, the Arts and Crafts movement lost its last great champion on August 13, 2013, when Randell Makinson died at age 81. their brilliant and intimate designs would never have happened. I owe him a vast debt.
Read a full article and interview with Randell Makinson in the USC Trojan Family Magazine.
Email or call Jeff at 626-221-5244 to create beautiful Arts & Crafts lighting and furniture for your home.
Alternative Custom Frames for Rockin’ Art
Rock, Punk and Alt Music inspire breaking the flat Oriental front told.
My workshop used to be near a frame shop and I’d watch the Frame Guy make stock frames eight hours a day. As he cut frames and mats for whatever art walked through the door, all with perfect 90-degree corner cuts, I knew there had to be another option.
Cutting frames creates a lot of leftover scrap. As I watched all those pieces being tossed aside, I thought I could break outside the box, or frame, so to speak, and create unusual patchwork art frames. I needed a frame for a Sex Pistols poster I’d recently acquired and thought this was the perfect artwork for a custom frame that completed the punk rock experience.
Custom rock n’ roll frames are born
I salvaged some frame stock scraps from the frame shop’s trash bin and added some filler scraps of metal (hinges and the like) to close gaps in the wood. I thought it was appropriate that the glass covering the image be cracked. I did that, then sealed the glass with silicone so that the pieces wouldn’t fall out. I then distressed the finish on the frame and there it was: punk rock art. Framed.
I got more posters and used more found objects to “hold” the frames together, like scraps of leather, belt buckles or twisted wire used as hangers for the frames. I continued to distress the surface of the frames by scratching them up with wire brushes, singeing them with torches, and aging the metal used on the frames to create a scuffed, worn-out, abused look.
It was fun putting these things together as mismatched puzzles. On most of them, the glass was strategically cracked, partly to enhance the punk rock look, but partly because
none of the frames are square. Chances are good that there are no 90-degree angles in any of them.
The art of sharing your craft
I have a friend who worked at New York City’s Hotel Chelsea in his younger days. The hotel is famed for its eclectic clients; many of the residents are and have been rockers. Probably the most notorious was Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols.
My friend was on staff at the time of the infamous Sid-and-Nancy murder/suicide attempt. As an homage, I made a punk rock frame for a Sid and Nancy poster and sent it to my friend. As was my habit, I put a carefully placed and sealed crack in the glass. When my friend opened the package, he thought, to his dismay, that the shippers had damaged the glass. My friend’s wife, an artist and former employee of Andy Warhol’s Factory, spent two days, a lot of gas (and a couple of cut fingers) chasing down new, uncracked glass, to custom fit the frame with no 90-degree angles.
My wife, who heard their broken-glass tale of woe, was reluctant to tell them that the cracks were purposeful. I had no such compunction. When I saw what they’d done I said, “What the HEY!! those were SUPPOSED to be there! Don’t you get it?”
Email or call me at 626-221-5244 to create art objects of any style for your home.
Plein Air Living – A Natural Rocky Mountain High
Durango, Colorado’s natural light and beauty inspires art and furnishing Read more
Plein Air from The High Sierras to The Western Shore
Edgar Payne’s plein air mountain paintings brought him to Laguna Beach, CA where he helped establish the city as an artists’ colony. Read more
Cowboy High Style
From a romanticized Western lifestyle comes furniture fit for a high-end cowboy Read more
Gustave Baumann — Revered Arts and Crafts Printmaker
This New Mexico treasure has the “hand of a craftsman, heart of an artist.” Read more
The Progression of Greene and Greene’s Stained-Glass Designs
The Greenes’ stained-glass work was inspired by Wright’s stylized natural elements and Tiffany’s copper-foil technique Read more