Is it moral? Amazon.com this Christmas season is launching a full on assault on “buy local” with it’s new App: Price Check allows you to go into your local retailer, find the object of your acquisitive lust, scan it with your smart phone and immediately see the comps on Amazon’s site. Great for the consumer right? What’s it cost? Here in Sarasota there’s an initiative to save our local retailers: “Buy Local or Lose the Choice” is the theme and it makes sense. If Amazon get’s its way, you may never be able to sit on that love seat, feel that fabric, hold that book or test ride that bike BEFORE you buy it. In a way, we’re stealing when we use the time and venue of our “brick and mortar” stores with their employees, rent, insurance and other overheard to test a product without ever having the intention to purchase it from them.

Back to our designer friend: of course, the super rich will always have their all-star designer to jet to the Turks and Caicos to work on their 5th winter home, but how many of us have clients like that? No, the average designer will be competing with the future Amazons that will render the designer’s brick and mortar enterprise useless. Maybe I’m like the curmudgeon that saw the demise of the horse and buggy when Henry rolled out his Model T for the first time, but the unintended consequences of cheap seems to be the extinction of the value people bring to the process of purchase. So this Christmas, let’s buy at least one of our objects of desire from a friend down the street. Shop local, or lose the choice. -EM

“SUMMER CLOSEOUT SPECIAL” : 10 ORIGINAL RUSSIAN PAINTINGS

For avalibility contact Jennifer Balest @ jbalest@smfloida.com

Well I think that’s all I can ramble on for the moment. I should probably get back to work, but I think I will be posting my artwork up so you can see what I do. =)

In the visual world of art, unlike musical arts, the parameters of what makes art “art” seem much less stringent. For instance, if Jackson Pollack had been a composer rather than a painter, how many recordings would he have sold? If the chords struck by his orchestra were streaked, dissonant sounds booming across a vast hall, piercing wails and shrieking violins assailing the masses seated: how long would concert goers sit for a recital before the dissonance overwhelmed them? Yet, Pollack’s truly original, dissonant, screaming paintings created their own movement and disciples. These disciples whether real or affecting understanding revered him as a demigod. His bar, compared to that of a musician seems in hindsight, quite low. His contemporaries had no such forgiveness. Even the modernists in music corralled themselves into something that had a lyrical, traditional western nature. Pollack may have offended some, but others embraced him. Pollack the musical genius might easily have offended all.  So it is that we risk to create new ideas and make them ours knowing that it’s probably been done before. To be truly original may be impossible this late in the game. There are those that are satisfied to be too literal and hope not to get caught. Speech writers and politicians are notable examples. Between the literal plagiarist and the inspired “borrower”, lies the true genius. He is the ultimate recycler. The recycler of beauty, with his own unique point of view. He creates magic in new worlds for fresh, hungry eyes. -EM

It’s not often one has the privilege of watching the creative process in action. Artists demur when his dealer or patron want to experience the master at his easel (as if the voyeuristic experience would give any real insight as to what might being going on)…it does not.

So it was when I had the opportunity to step into the world of one of America’s most sought after Interior Designers. Over the course of meetings and sharing ideas, he displays an uncanny understanding of where he wants to end up, if not exactly sure how to get there…at first. His process, like so many others is rooted in a keen curiosity into how things work, mix, blend or might otherwise conform to fit his aesthetic. He’s a compulsive photographer much like Warhol or perhaps more aptly, Bressai. A chronicler of things: time and space more so than “events or people”. He wants to freeze that thing of beauty or odd shape or interesting spindle so that at some future date, it will avail itself for an alternate purpose. The collection of art we created together is my collaboration with that curious mind at work. We shaped his ideas and images into layers of framing and matting. His approach on this project was the ultimate re-purposing of things that a mind conjures. The result is an original aesthetic in decorative art. The Richard Mishaan collection of art is a cross section of modes: Asian, Belle Epoque France, Classical Roman, American Architecture, Organic Industrial, Pop and Post Modern; they connect to make up this intimate look into the curious mind of an American Icon.

-EM

-B

nature but world class in quality. Until then. EM

Paris Door

Fence

Awning Standard

Floor at Kenzo

Floor at Kenzo II

We had a great turnout, lots of fun and much more. Thank you again to everyone who attended!

-B

Along with this, we’ve have even more stuff on the floor as well, so here is a peak at that too. Hope you enjoy and as always, we would love your feedback!

-B