What to do with your Wine Corks

Two more works worth discussing for its popular art appeal are East Grand Rapid's Scott Gundersen's My Wife in Wine Corks and Chicago artist, J. Thomas Pallas' Jordan. According to Scott Gundersen, he was inspired to create something out of everyday pieces that we just throw away. Thus the inspiration for his portrait of his wife made of over 3,000 wine corks. J. Thomas Pallas' ink stamp portrait was created out of Michael Jordan's "Jumpman" logo.

ArtPrize Vignettes

ArtPrize Top Ten

I was hoping that Young Kim's Salt & Earth would crack the Top Ten or The American Barn by Jennifer O'Meara, but the tallying is done and out of 1,262 entries to this year's ArtPrize, it comes down to the Top Ten. Voter's have until 11:59 PM on Wednesday, October 7 to place one vote for their favorite piece.

Allow me to break down my selection process of the Top Ten. Bill Secunda's (Butler, PA) Moose didn't move me though I can appreciate the painstaking task of welding steel nails to create a 1,200 pound behemoth. The same sentiment goes for Grand Haven, Michigan sculptor, Michael Westra's Winddancer 2. Brooklyn painter, Ran Ortner, created a 20' x 5' masterpiece of the ocean entitled Open Water no. 24. Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to study the piece when I saw it last weekend.  Winddancer 2 by Grand Haven, Michigan, scupltor, Michael WestraHere's my take on the remaining Top Ten finalists:

Portraits by Eric Daigh of Traverse City, Michigan, is in my top three. He created three oversize portraits of his wife and two friends completely out of pushpins - yes, the same one you have on your office bulletin board. Each portrait consists of 23,625 push pins!  Eric holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest pushpin mosaic.

Grand Dance by Grand Rapids photographer, David Lubbers, is a kinetic sculpture of 16 arms supporting 16 icons mounted on ball-bearings to allow them to respond to the wind. The sculpture stands on a concrete island in the middle of the Grand River. It is more beautiful at night, when the sculpture is lit in purple, yellow and green. Now, do I like it because its location makes for a perfect backdrop for the JW Marriott? Perhaps...

Ecstasy of the Scarlet Empress is an elaborate latex-balloon piece by New York artists and sculptor, Jason Hackenwerth. I tried to convince Jason to create a piece for the 23-story JW Marriott atrium, but UICA beat me to the punch. Art can be fun and this one is a magnificent example of that. Definitely in my top three.

Nessie Project is a life size Art Deco rendition of the Loch Ness monster. The collaborative work by Grand Rapids own Thomas Birks, Richard App, David Valdisseri and Joachim Jensen created a buzz from the get go. Their marketing campaign on Facebook is a true testament to the power of social media.Nessie Project, along with the Furniture City and Rob Bliss's 100,000 airplanes played a major part in attracting the thousands of people to ArtPrize.

Imagine That! by Chicago inner city art teacher, Tracy Van Duinen, deserves to be in my top three for its vision to involve Grand Rapids Children's Museum visitors and local art students in creating the project.

The Furniture City Sets the Table for the World of Art wins for the longest name and probably the most talked about entry for the magnitude of its size on top of the Blue Bridge. Des Moines, Iowa artist, Sarah Grant, created the giant table and two chairs after local architect, Steve Fry, conceived the idea.

Field of Reeds by Birmingham, Alabama native, John Douglas Powers, is another kinetic piece made of 1,001 vertical "reeds" that sway back and forth. It's 14' long, 10' wide and 4 1/2' tall. I would have loved to have seen this piece in a room by itself. I felt that the wide array of entries that surrounded this piece distracted from the hypnotic energy of the swaying reeds.

Advantages of Pre-Flight Stay Hotel-hotel

Advantages of Pre-Flight Stay Hotel-hotel
We were all there. For sufficient time to the airport for the flight - whether for business or pleasure - can be a stressful event. Flight, an early start even earlier, at the wheel when you feel tired is never a good idea.

Even the possibility of congestion, and it is not surprising we do not expect this part of the route. And if you missed out and break the flight anyway?

That's why more and more people decide to leave the house the night before and stay in an airport hotel than at home. This puts you in close proximity to the airport for travel, which itself offers several important advantages.

First, you can do much more to who gets up late on the day of the flight that if you go all the way from home too. These should be in a state of mind on the road ahead of you. We have a much shorter journey to gain full access to the airport as well.

In addition, many hotels also offer a shuttle service takes you to the final stage of the road. Upon his arrival at the hotel overnight, make sure you know when this service must be booked to arrive in time to get registered

By default, this also means that you do not care of parking your car in a parking lot at the airport. It takes time, and even if you book in advance you have to find enough time to build and to find parking. If you have never experienced before you know it's fun to drag your luggage all the way from the parking lot, bus, and then on the terminal. Airport shuttle bus from the hotels you can often go directly to the terminal.

There's also the advantage of knowing that you have more free time the day before. When you call the delay in completion of the hotel, easy and tell them. Not need to worry about missing your flight because the next day. This gives enough time to be able to experience problems of any trip, to solve them.

And finally of course, you can enjoy a good meal, and maybe some first hotel, too. Example Gatwick has much to offer, in the sense that they have the opportunity to relax and look ahead to the next trip.

Why get stressed if there is the possibility to check that everything is in order?

Paris Hotel meets The Paris Apartment

Once upon a time, long long ago, there were two girls located on the opposite sides of the US, who by chance met on eBay. Paris Hotel had purchased a glistening chandelier from The Paris Apartment. One day the two were chit-chatting on the phone and The Paris Apartment Girl mentioned that she was coming to California to take photos of homes for an upcoming book. Paris Hotel Girl was very excited to meet this "faceless" person from the internet. So, The Paris Apartment went to Paris Hotel's home (in her fancy pink & aqua Paris Apartment van) and they hit it off immediately! The Paris Apartment took lots and lots of photos of Paris Hotel's home.

Fast forward 10 years or so, and Claudia (The Paris Apartment) and I are still friends. Claudia never ceases to amaze me. Yesterday she blogged about my home and included some of the old photos that she had taken all of those years ago. I had never seen them. Oh my, she floored me. Claudia has nothing but generosity to spread around. Aside from being a trendsetter in the design world, more importantly, she is a kind and selfless person with a huge heart. A person you definitely want to know.

Thanks Claudia for the lovely post, which you can read here. Please do visit her website and blog. And congrats to Claudia for her recent spread in Travel & Leisure magazine!

first photo: Lisa Kettell
#2 & 3 - The Paris Apartment

I Can't Knock Twitter

I don't mean to trump my earlier post about the launch of Lonny magazine, but had to share this...

Yesterday I posted about Twitter and asked what you felt about it. Thanks to all for the great comments. Very well put with excellent points. Today I checked my Twitter, only to find a congratulatory "tweet" about Paris Hotel Boutique being featured in the LA Times Home section blog. Perhaps I would have found out eventually, but it took Twitter for me to get the news!

Thanks to the fabulous Lizzie Garrett for the nice spread. You can check it out here.

photos from Paris Hotel Boutique via The L.A. Times

LONNY is here!

Today is the official launch of the much-anticipated online magazine, Lonny. If you miss the (sadly) defunct Domino magazine as I do, this may fill that void!


Michelle Adams, who served as the Market Editor of Domino, along with photographer Patrick Cline, are the forces behind this decorating and lifestyle publication. Michelle is also founder of the textile line, Rubie Green.


Tonight I briefly browsed through Lonny and it looks amazing. Brilliant photography and useful decorating tips. And you can zoom in to see the fine detail. Gorgeous!

Currently Lonny is only viewable online, but you never know...

I wish the Lonny team great success! Now go and check it out here!

photos via ma-belle blog