Here's Stacey's

Pretend_Farmer's

The art at the top is a signed/numbered serigraph by Pegge Hopper. We love her. If you've ever flown into Honolulu, you can see enormous murals by her in the airport. She mostly does native Hawaiian women, many with cats, many with local tropical flowers. We have 3 of her pieces in our home.

I made the frame from a large teak 3" diameter dowel—cut in half and then rabbeted down one edge to receive the glass, linen matt and art. The serigraph is hung floating on the background acid free paper.

Just to the right of the picture, as you face it, is the entry to our home.

The dimensions, including the frame are 51" W  x  41"H (130cm x 104cm).

Patchwork Gandalf's favorite. (My bride's too.)

A painting I did for my bride some years ago. Acrylic on back framed masonite, 44" W  x  52" H (112cm x 132cm).

It's a façade of an adobe church in Santa Fe.

The three images above are from a husband and wife team of photographers. Ray Hartl and Nancy Schieferstein have a studio in Wisconsin, take photographs around the world and have a gallery on Maui, where we found these. I made the frames from cherry—they are half-lapped joined and the pegs in the corners are made of Andaman padouk.

The last of the images, of the blurry girl running reminds me of this image of my daughter, found here

The top image, including frame, is 30"W  x  34"H (76cm x 86cm). The other two are the same dimensions in landscape.

I think this is the first thing that my bride and I bought together. We were making a trip along the coast in CA and stayed at the Buck house in Pacific Grove. We had fun checking out the galleries in Monterey and Carmel and came away with this lovely little piece.

She is 16" tall.

This is a portrait done of my beautiful bride by renowned portrait artist and friend Martha Nowlin Jorden. This was done in 1981 or '82 near the beginning of Martha's career. The portrait was done in oil pastel. It has two artist's signatures as it was in one of her shows and matted differently than what we had done. Walnut frame by me. Dimensions, including frame, are 23"W  x  26"H (58cm x 66cm).

This is a charcoal sketch done by R.C.Gorman, the Navajo artist, now sadly passed away. Another purchase by my bride and me; we got it at Gorman's gallery in Taos, NM. Gorman had a bevy of acolytes that helped him, cooking, companionship, etc. and this is a Three Graces rendition of one of them. It became a cover or some other art in one of his cookbook series "Nudes and Food."

When our children were little, we were often in need of baby- and house-sitters. One time we placed an ad at the Dallas Theological Seminary, thinking that poor theological students would jump at the chance to stay in someone else's home and eat their food in exchange for some money and the pleasure of minding our brats. On the return from our trip, they had forgotten to restore this art to it's normal position in our home having been turned to face the wall. It seems the image was causing the husband to stumble. Which is ok—to each his own.

The frame is white ash, with a bit of a whitewash finish on it. The tops of the rails and stiles are slightly rounded. I used a huge roundover bit in a 4 hp router—it sounded like a P-38 taking off—and took my time. The process gave me the heebie-jeebies.  

Including frame, this is 28"W x 34"H (71cm  x 86cm).

Not every piece of art is hanging on the wall or up on a pedestal or shelf. I made this dresser for my bride some years ago. It's sapele pomele, a mahogany cousin, usually from Africa. The material came from a job that came to an abrupt conclusion. A lawyers office in the then Texas Commerce Bank Tower was scheduled to have panels of the pomele grace their board room. The firm went bankrupt before the office was done. Since we weren't going to be paid for our work to date, we took the materials we'd already paid for back to our shop. This dresser was made from two meeting room wall panels.

The grain flows from the back of the top to the front, and then down the face of the drawers in a waterfall fashion. The drawers have full extension hardware. An interesting aspect is that the dimensions of the face and the sides follow the rule of the golden rectangle, a subliminal effect to enhance the viewing pleasure of an object. The golden rectangle, or golden ratio information can be found here. On the front, it's 29.5"W  x  47.75"H (75cm x 121cm).

The bedroom doesn't have enough room to take a shot without some distortion, this shot was taken with the nikkor 14-24 f/2.8 at 20mm and f/5. The image below is a rendering ported to Photoshop and using the lens correction filter, probably at around -57 on the trapezoid adjustment.

You can't see it in the photos. But there's an interesting phenomenon that has to do with the placement of the brass pulls in an arc and the nature of the grain that creates an optical illusion. When you look straight on in person, the drawers or the spaces between the drawers seem to curve in an arc bowed upward, but in fact, they are straight.

Yes, that's my head in the reflection of the photo above the dresser.

A framed poster from Mediterranean photographer Georges Meis, in a frame I made. Dimensions including frame are 16.5"W  x  22.5"H (42cm x 57cm).

Detail of frame miter—figured maple with Andaman padouk splines.

A painting my bride bought over the interwebs from an ex-pat artist in Hong Kong...usually a risky proposition. It turned out well, eventually. It seemed the artist's assistant sent the painting we ordered to someone in Ohio. There seemed to be no response from the Ohioan recipient. So the artist painted a new canvas and sent it to us. It ended well. I still need to make a frame for it. Acrylic on stretched canvas. 28"W x 28"H (71cm x 71cm). 

This is in a corner of the living room, just near the Hong Kong painting, you can see the lamp in both pics, and is where I read the morning paper and have my cup of coffee. 

Yes, that is an OS mug. Thanks Derek!

This is the other end of the living room. The mirror makes the room seem a bit bigger and adds reflected light diffused from the fabric blinds. I made two of the three wooden bowls on the console table, but the fluted bowl was a gift from the master I attached myself to as an apprentice after college. A degree in Medieval European History is not readily marketable, but I couldn't have done it any other way. The master, a nearly retired cabinetmaker, taught me the ways of the craft, left me to carry on the commercial end of the business in his small three man shop, while he pursued esoteric joinery. The fluted bowl was made on a lathe with an indexed head and fitted with a router on the lathe bed in a jig that allowed lateral movement. It was a great time, and a lovely gift from him—one of many.

This is a garage sale find of my bride. I don't know the artist and I'm pretty sure it's a poster—nicely framed. It looks like something that could have come from Z Galleries. It's mounted above our fireplace in the den. (The daughter doesn't care for it and says it doesn't match anything else—and being a fashion and design student carries some weight, but I think it's a keeper, evoking calm and peaceful thoughts. If any of you know the artist, I'd be very much in your debt to know. Including frame 43"W  x  31"H (109cm x 79cm).

Above is one of my favorite pieces, but it has a history where yours truly wimped out. My bride was invited to a conference up near Rockland/Rockport on the Maine coast—I got to attend. We went wandering through some galleries in her free time and found this piece. The only problem was that the gallery refused to ship it. We had to take it as carryon baggage on the plane. Now, the flight home was on a regional puddlejumper to Chicago, then change to a 737 to Dallas. The gallery owner said he'd package it up for us to take the next day. When we returned, we found a huge wooden crate. It is in fact very delicate and probably wouldn't survive going as checked baggage. But how could we get it on the plane? It was much larger than carryon allowances. Well, I was a mess—I hate doing stuff like this—breaking rules and imposing on other passengers, but the bride was determined. It was too large to go through the x-ray machine, and the gallery owner gave us a sacrificial screw driver that let us undo one side of the crate so the TSA people could see what was inside. (This was post 9-11.)

We made it through security, but then had the formidable task of asking  permission of the head flight attendant. She refused. The bride broke into tears, and the sympathetic attendant said she'd ask the captain. He listened to the story of the delicate piece of artwork and said he'd find a save place for it. The bride got it done—I was a wet noodle wimp.

The piece itself is 21"W at the base and 16"H (53cm x 40cm) but in the crate it was much larger. The shorebirds are made of some lightweight, delicate, friable material—the beak on the bird at far left needs some repair—I've done a few small repairs already. The base is slate and rests on a suspended mahogany shelf.

A larger version can be seen here.

Above our bed. Another wandering purchase, this time from a small hole in the wall gallery in Washington DC near the Hilton on Connecticut northwest of DuPont Circle. The artist is Vera Verdonk b. 1949 and lives in Vilvoode, Belgium.

A piece commissioned by my late father-in-law, now hanging in my daughter's bedroom. Yes, her walls are that vibrant red—her choice. The art is acrylic on canvas and is a copy of some well know piece-the name and artist escapes me now, but I'm still looking for the info—we have it around here somewhere. Gary may know. 60"W  x  44"H (152cm x 112cm).

Update: My daughter sent me a text with this info: It's by Franz (or Frantisek) Kupka called "Discs of Newton" painted in 1912.

My daughter's name in Korean street art iconography writing—it probably has a name of some sort—the style, I mean. And one of my flamingos—my daughter likes my photography and has several pieces in her room and in her dorm.

Not a very interesting shot, but it shows the hallway leading to the den. I keep some current favorite photos of mine on the hallway walls. Not the best gallery for viewing, but it's nice to see some pretty shots.

Just added this: I forgot to show you where I do my work—my digital work. My office in a stitched photo. If you click on it you can see it in a larger version, or just click here. It has some additional work up, but they represent my photography, not art we've acquired from other artists. 

I'll end with two more of our Pegge Hopper pieces. The top one again shows the garage saling abilities of my bride. It's a poster, but the frame is made from Koa, a now restricted species of hardwood native to Hawaii. You're no longer allowed to harvest the wood, but you can use lumber from trees that are felled naturally, by storm or old age.

The bottom one is one of our first expensive purchases. It too is a serigraph like the first image. The frame is also teak with walnut splines at the miters. We fell in love with Hopper after seeing this image in a gallery here in Dallas.

The kitty Hopper is 34"W  x  25"H (86cm x 64cm). The reclining wahine is 43"W  x  27.5"H (114cm x 70cm).

Thanks for taking the journey with me, if you made it to this point. I'd love to see the artwork in your home too—to see the expressions of your loves and passions.

Really—thank you. And a special thanks again to Gary.

(Oh, and a note on the lighting. I sometimes take nice pictures. These are not among them. The framed art has a lot of different protective glass or plastic and they all reflect different amounts of light. I really appreciate now the science that must go into museum lighting. But in spite of the inconsistent lighting, I hope you enjoy the art I tried to capture in the photos.)

Addendum: Not every piece of art we have is shown. We are also storing some of my son's pieces. But they are larger than life images, acrylic on canvas that were part of his one man show at the Dallas Contemporary Art Museum when he was a senior in high school. You can see some of that show here. The nude sold for big bucks and a couple other pieces found a place in a buyer's home as well.