Love It..Hate it..Can('t) live without it

There are things I notice, things I love, things I hate and things I can't live without.  I thought, pondered and even stewed about letting in a bit of mixed culture into my home and life, you know, to stir things up a bit and create new vignettes and moments into my everyday life.  I have thought hard and deep and realize that those things that I like, even love, have no place in my home or work life.  For instance, I love when great photos are perfectly framed and hung cluttered on walls.  I especially love when photos are clustered on walls from floor to ceiling.  However, I just don't like it in my home, at all.  Perhaps its the clutter?  Perhaps its the daunting task of the actual act of hanging them all.  But, in thinking hard and deep and even laying out a perfect plan to hang the collected works of photography and art, I happen to realize that I just don't like pictures.  I have one photo picture of an old French, 1930's mannequin set upon my mantle at a resting tilt.  That is my extreme of photos.  No friends and family pictures clutter my tables or walls either. I find them to be freaky and weird as they stare at me in the same gaze day after day, so they all have been edited to a box in the closet.  Thus, I love a good wall of pictures hung in perfect harmony in someones home, work or hotel, but I will never allow such wall covering in my home.

Green Walls!!! I LOVE them! When the color green is the perfect blend of depth and vibrancy, magic happens and life begins. Again, not in my home please.  I have admired walls like these since, well, I think I was a teenager.  I love the guts it takes to take a white wall to big levels. This boldness acts as the walls make-up.  Its like that daring green eyeshadow I have seen only a select few women wear..and it works for them.  I prefer a muted color palette in my home and I go as bold and deep as warm charcoal Grey.  I have often collected deep, bright paint swatches and hung them in all rooms in my home thinking I would jump off the pantone bridge.  I always come back to and realize my daily waking, occasional lounging and peaceful slumber requires paint colors of timelessness and understated composer. 

My all time favorite, as a guest in a home or hotel, is white furniture. Clean, bright, aloft...white furniture is, to me, an all time F you to commitment.   I get it, yes, some love to live a life of bright white and void of color, much like those who choose black as their safety zone.  I, on the other hand, prefer, again, muted colors or textures like Belgian linen and colors like coffee, grey, taupe and dove.   I was once told that the color white is the beginning of making decisions, a non-commitment, the start of moving forward or changing.   Could it be that the homes of white and  hotels of the same decor are places of rejuvenation and self-discovery?  Not sure about that, but I do know its not right for my home and I will admire it from afar.  Side note: I love white sheets if that matters.

Finally, flowers.  Okay, about a decade ago the trend to tilt flowers en mass from the tops of vases became all the rage and still, to this day, I have noticed that many of my colleagues still choose this design to create "edgy" and "big statement" event decor.  HAAAAAAAA!!! I laugh at them all.  A couple things before I digress into dogging the competition: First, I love the was this flower design looks at the George V in Paris.  Its truly amazing and a must see on anyone's visit to the City of Lights.  Why it looks good there?  Because of the generous budget. Also, I like Jeff, the designer behind the global trend.  Here, hotels/floral designers, copy the "look" halfheartedly.   How boring to walk into a hotel and see the same flowers as the competing hotel around the corner...ahh, yawn. They clearly don't have the budgets to perform a ballet of en mass "tippy" flowers, thus losing the impact and "wow".   Same goes for weddings and events, if you're going to do it at all, do it right or leave it in the pages of a book.  I don't even attempt this design for the main reason of not copying someone's signature design.   I choose to create a style of flowers that are more beautiful and just as interesting.  So, again, although I admire the work of Jeff Leatham, I won't tip my flowers. 

I sometimes wish I could paint a room grass green and load the walls with pictures and paintings and fill it with blank faced furniture and red roses bundled and tipped to one side out of a vase on the coffee table, but as I look around my environments, I take pride in my solace and simplicity.  In fact, because I have a muted private world for which I live and work, I am more creative, more ambitious and more focused.  Those are the integrated "who I am's" that I can't live without. 

Wait a Moment

Lately I have been asked what defines my style and outlook when creating either interiors or floral sculpture/designs.  I respond slowly, trying to find the quickest,easiest translation without trying to sound pompous or overly descriptive.   Its a task of organizing, in my head, the correct response without spewing out contradictory points of creative, pointed arrival.  I have finally found my response: My thoughts and designs are composed in "Moments".

Now, let me take a moment to explain the moment of conception and throughput.   My second job was when I was 15 and I had crossed the street to work at McDonald's (my first being at Hardee's where I was fired for "not being cut out as a burger flipper").   While at McDonald's,one of my jobs, if you will, was working the drive-thru.  We were told that when we told a customer "please hold a moment", that meant we had exactly 1.5 minutes or less to return to that customer for service.  The Old English "moment" was 1/40th of a minute and today's modern "moment" is any express time limit - I call it quickedness.  I never loved the process of interior design because it took too long to come to fruition and then, at that point of arrival, something would fail and minds would change.  Therefore; I found complete satisfaction in the moments created when I design with flowers.  The flowers are bought fresh in the morning, designed soon after and sent out for exhibit immediately after completion.  I don't believe in or have coolers for this exact reason.  Nothing prolonged, nothing over thought, nothing left for debate; just a guttural response to my medium.   

I have never been one to like the confusion of walls, corners, floors and ceilings being cluttered with "stuff" to fill in the blanks.  I design for creating moments.  In a home, for example, we take for granted our space and walk by many of our possessions because we forget to stop and admire their beauty or story.  Empty walls with a single great piece for furniture that hold a simple vase of a single Japanese maple branch lit like a work of art: is a moment....to stop what you are doing, look at it and continue with your day.  More compulsive would be a stone dish holding a topple of goats milk soap set next to your tub waiting for its dip into a hot bath of inviting water.  Yes, I have that stone dish at the ready for my next bath.  And, admittedly, it is compulsive and obsessive, but it makes me happy while I scroll it over my limbs into cleanliness.    

Its a simple way of living when life is racing around you.  My dad always said that when I trip or stub my toe or fall down when rushing, its life's way of telling me to slow down for just a moment and "smell the roses".  As life gets faster and people walk quicker and cars race frantically and media bombards us with chatter, why not take those moments, less than a minute, of each of our days to stop and look at what makes our living so great.  I have always said: I don't care if people love or hate my flower designs.  What is important to me it that they stopped and looked at it.   I have created moments in my home that make me happy when I glance at them.  I love the way a floor lamp in my dining room stands proud at the tables end and the way the ghost chairs surrounding  my table float as if they aren't really there.   The charcoal walls and the grain of the table play off each other like a leaf to a tree.  And I love the odd, teardrop shape of the matte white vase that holds a single giant leaf.  Nothing cluttered, nothing overly thought, just plain simplicity which slows down my always tumbling thoughts, for just a moment.

                                                     photo courtesy of: Dries Van Noten

My favorite designer of his fashion shows is Dries Van Noten - simple moments with lasting impressions.  That is life!! That is living!! Sounds simple. Because it is simple.  I urge you to take a moment of each of your days and enjoy it.  Find those things you forgot to look at yesterday and within less than a minute of your time, you may just change the outlook of  your entire day.