October 2018

At A Glance Greetings Upcoming Art Shows Featured Design Project Travel: 36 hours in Rome From Our Clients

Dear Clients, Supporters, Colleagues and Friends, Thank you for a very busy summer season! The year is flying by and we can't believe it's time to start getting ready for our winter art shows! On the design side of our business - exterior color consultation season is wrapped up for most of our clients around the country and the focus is on interiors and design work for old home remodels, some adaptive reuse commercial projects and a period inspired new construction home.  On the personal front, we were gifted an incredible opportunity to meet friends in Greece for a week last month. We ended up with flights connecting in Rome and Barcelona and took advantage of an opportunity to extend our stays in both cities. We have lots and lots of art and architectural inspiration to share with you over our next several newsletters! As always, we thank you for following our work and for supporting our efforts to create beautiful and meaningful living environments through our design and art! Sincerely, Barbara and CJ

Come See Us in December

Winter Art & Craft Shows are Coming Soon!

If you are in the Northeast, we hope you will save the dates to see some of the best handcrafted work being made today! For our followers elsewhere in the country, please share with friends and family in the area. The first full weekend of December, we'll be with fellow Roycroft Artisans at the Roycroft Winter Festival in East Aurora NY. The Following weekend we're in NJ for Craft Morristown with 165 juried artists exhibiting paintings, ceramics, glass, metal, wood, jewelry, and more.

The Roycroft Winter Festival features 33 top rated artisans working in the Arts & Crafts Revival and Contemporary Craft traditions. Potters, Furniture Makers, Painters, Textiles Artisans, Printmakers, and Metal and Jewelry Makers unite under the Roycroft banner for what has become Western New York’s best venue for kicking off the holiday shopping season. Celebrating its 28th year, Holiday Craft Morristown is a juried show featuring 165 artisans from across the country. Exhibiting: Painting, Printmaking & Mixed Media, Ceramics, Textiles, Furniture & Wood, Leather, Metalwork & Jewelry, Glass as well as various demonstrations and a gourmet specialty food boutique.

We will have new paintings, prints of our most popular Arts & Crafts paintings, and note cards – plus our portfolio of old house and architectural services. Roycroft Winter Festival December 1 & 2, 2018 10 am to 5 pm both days East Aurora Middle School 430 Main St, East Aurora NY Holiday CraftMorristown Friday-Sunday, December 7-9 430 Western Avenue Morristown, NJ 07960

Original Drawing for CJ's latest piece The Forest House

CJ at work in his studio putting final details on The Forest House

The newest paintings unveiled at our open studio earlier this month.

In other show news....If you are in Portland, stop by the Portland Art Museum's Sales Gallery Opening Reception this Friday, 5-8pm . Although we can't be there, the gallery represents CJ's art. The receptions are always a great opportunity to see a range of good work and meet many of the artists.

Featured Project

Our Own House: Painting the Exterior

It's long been our practice to live with the houses we’ve owned before beginning projects. Often, delayed projects were more a result of lack of time or budget, but over the years, we've learned that such delays gave us an advantage! Taking the time to get to know a house, and how it functions – getting a real grasp on where it works, and what it needs, is important to our preservation ethic.

View of the Back Porch after structural work was completed and before painting

Detail View of the Back Porch after painting

This practice applies to painting as well. Like we do for our clients, we want to give thoughtful consideration to how we use our spaces, and contemplation of what colors work for the architecture, the homes's use, and our personal color sensibilities. We have been in our new home for a little more than 2 years, and in terms of the exterior, it was difficult to be patient! We knew when we bought the house that there was quite a bit of deferred maintenance and there was some work that needed to be done immediately. Although we hoped to paint last summer, we first had to take the time to find the right contractors who were well suited for the work we need. It can be difficult to do in a new community and that was true for us the first year!

Prior to painting, we had some very rotten window sills replaced, major work done to re-secure the back porch to the house, rebuilt the furnace exhaust chimney, various masonry repairs and quite a bit of work to do on the front porch. All of this general maintenance gave us plenty of time to live with our exterior. How and when we use the porches, contemplation of what we’ll be doing to the landscape down the line, and the coloration of the natural environment in different seasons all came into play for our final color scheme.

Our painter began his work in June but we took on some of the final details and touch-up work which we completed a couple of weeks ago, just in time for everything to have curing time before our cold weather set in! To see more and larger photos of the house and work in process, click here .

CJ doing touch-ups under the eave.

Barbara working to mask the white paint that a painter got on the bricks decades ago.

CJ working from the inside on final window touch-ups and painting to mask old white paint on the bricks.

For our clients, we offer a flexible approach to color consultation that allows us to provide a range of services to meet your needs and budget . Our basic and affordable color consultation package addresses the architectural style and the setting of the home while meeting homeowner goals. For those needing more in-depth assistance, or for homes that require many colors and elaborate painting schemes, we offer a reasonable rate and exceptional personalized service.  See more of our projects here .

Our Recent Travel: 36 Hours in Rome

As many of you already know, we spent the latter part of August and early September in Europe. The trip was inspired by the Birthday of a dear friend. You may remember author Susan Smith, narrator from our documentary, “From Dystopia to Utopia: The Artistic Visions of CJ Hurley.” Well, Sue turned 50, and her dear wife, the remarkable cabaret singer, Kerrykate Abel-Smith, booked a Villa in Greece and invited close friends to join! For a significant savings in airfare, we were lured into making stops along the way; Rome on the flight to Athens and on our way home, Barcelona. We saw many incredible things, many ancient things, which was amazing enough; but those who know us, already understand, the Art Nouveau we saw is what won our hearts the most! We’ll be visiting highlights of our travel over the next several newsletters, and we will begin in Rome where we started.

When you think of fin de siècle Italy, Rome is not the first site to come to mind for Art Nouveau – more than likely, Turin or Milan come to mind first. Art Nouveau in Italy was called the Stile Liberti – named after the fashionable London style house, Liberty & Co. And in Rome, the place to see the New Art in architecture is the Quartiere Coppede.

The Coppede is a residential neighborhood in Rome’s Doria district that was named after the Architect, Gino Coppede [1866–1927], who spearheaded the construction of the quarter beginning in 1917. One of Rome’s best planned districts, the Coppede was originally conceived as a residential neighborhood composed of single-family dwellings, apartments and, what we would call today, condominiums. It is still a residential neighborhood, but today it houses a large concentration of international embassies where people from countless countries make their livings, and their homes.

It is truly an amazing amalgam of around 40 picturesque buildings built in the Stile Liberti, replete with decorative tiles, iron-work, woodwork and fresco paintings. The neighborhood is entered through a massive gated archway that connects two of the buildings across a cobbled avenue. Once inside, each building is unique with stunning characteristics all their own.  Most of the buildings were locked and closed to the public, but somehow Barbara managed to talk her way into the first floor of a few!

The buildings are both whimsical and substantial, many composed of stone, stucco, brick and mortar, or a combination thereof. The amount of thoughtful detail, creative usage of a wide range of architectural materials, and well-designed symbolic ornamentation stunned Barbara and I. It was very overwhelming [in a good way] to be surrounded by so much concentrated splendor in so vast an area. Truly a highlight of the many architectural adventures we’ve had in our lives! To see an album with more pictures from the Quartiere Coppede portion of our Rome visit, click here . Stay tuned for the next segment of our travel to Rome, Greece and Barcelona!

Fine Art Prints and Cards

Packages of our fine art notecards and matted prints are available on our website. Order Prints here

Cards available as packages of 5, 12, 25, and 40. Custom size packages available upon request. Order Cards here

Thank You! We Love Your Feedback & Referrals

We normally use this last section of our newsletter to share feedback from clients about their experience with us or about their specific project. But this time, we wanted to share with you the note on our favorite check ever!

About this time last year, we drove from Oregon to California to meet with a new client. We spent a day together in the most idyllic setting along the northern California coast and provided color and design consultation for the finishing touches of her newly built getaway. We left with more work to be done, and inspired by a woman dedicated to beauty, a meaningful and contemplative living space and honoring the natural environment. Earlier this year, CJ set about designing the final architectural detail for the home—a built in eating and reading nook. This final detail was left undone during construction of the rest of the home because our client was looking for the right person who could interpret her needs and goals while also working within a fixed space with design challenges. We have really enjoyed this project and were touched to see the note below when her check arrived.

Happy clients and word of mouth referrals are important to our business. Please share us with your friends and family and encourage them to call or email us for their design and consultation needs! We welcome your inquiries and look forward to seeing you at our next event or on our Facebook page.