From The urban villa - Stamford CT 21st  August 2014

Hi Guys,

I know it’s been forever since I’ve posted anything on here, but life and work have gotten away from me.  With all that has occupied my time, I have managed to squeeze in painting time. As many of you may know my specialty /style is historic landscapes. For inspiration I use many sources, from pictures I have taken myself in my travels, to several online groups that I participate in, weather on FaceBook or from various blogs that I follow.

I will share with you my last few paintings –the first is “Wooding Manor” inspired by a picture from a FB group.

My Painting

inspiration pic

Please note that I am saying ‘Inspired by “, as my painting are my interpretation of the pictures. 

Once I gave a little TLC

As found

    

Next inspiration is an interesting twist – the house model  shown above,  my partner & I found in an antique store in Clinton CT – I had actually made this 15 years ago to donate to an auction that benefited a local animal shelter. Imagine my shock to be reunited with it! The model house has become the inspiration for two pieces – a painting and a diorama type piece that was used as our Christmas card for 2013

2013 Christmas Card

Painting :"Tea Time stroll"

Just an overview of my work

Next topic?   Probably something on Interior Design

Talk to you soon.

To all my friends out there in the Blogosphere, I do apologize that has been so long since I posted anything. Time got away from me with the many changes that the spring and Summer brought, among them 2 new jobs and a wedding. Mid-summer found me accepting a “design “position with a well-known furniture store, a job that I soon HATED! Luckily a month into the job I got a call from a small independent kitchen design company in Mamaroneck NY, offering me a position as their designer/production manager, which I accepted a week before my daughter’s wedding.

 

A week After walking my daughter down the aisle in August  , I started working for Dreamwork Kitchens and have spent the last few months settling in. during this time ,

I also agreed to be in charge of designing and making decorations for a Victorian Masquerade Halloween ball at the House Museum that I volunteer at.  This was on Oct 27^th –it was wonderful and those of you that are FaceBook friends, you saw the pictures.

 

 

Soooo back to my Ramblings on design and other things, 

 

Among the groups that I belong to on FaceBook is a group called “Mansions of the Gilded age” in the last several days there has been quite a bit of discussion over a room from an apartment carved out of a decommissioned church in New York City. The discussion has centered around nor so much the décor of the rooms shell, but on the furniture and placement. I enclose a few pictures below.

 

 

As you can see it is a wonderful space, BUT the flow is horrible.  If you look closely

At the particular pieces, some including the club chairs about have decent lines. However it really appears that either this room was assembled from “stock” pieces bought from a department store, or that the furniture was brought from a previous residence. Looking at the first picture you can see the wonderful fireplace, which is completely ignored in this arrangement. Generally and in particular with a historic space such as this, if there is a fireplace or a major architectural feature to the room, that becomes the main focal point.

 

Not even getting into fabrics, the furniture placement fails on many levels. The clubs chairs floating in the middle of the room between the loveseat and the sofa do not relate to either piece. There is also no place to set down a book or a drink if you are sitting in these chairs. Generally it is a kindness to your guests as well as yourself to have such small conveniences nearby. Another failure is the distance between the upholstered pieces. A person sitting on either these chairs or the sofa or loveseat is a considerable distance from the person in the next piece of furniture, making conversation all but impossible.

 

A simple first step salvage of this room is to first shift the carpet parallel to the fireplace.

Next flank the fireplace with the club chairs and place the large ottoman perpendicular to it. The sofa and the loveseat will then be placed parallel to the newly positioned ottoman.

The sofa table can remain behind the sofa with the pair of lamps but the 2 large round tables will need to be re-used elsewhere. The mahogany table to the right can be placed in front of the window directly opposite the fireplace, flanked with the shield-back chair

(You may want to raid other rooms for its mate) Finally the two tiny tables either side of the love seat become side tables for the club chairs.

 

 

This will work for the immediate future – the sofa and the loveseat will need to be either replaced or recovered, as the print does not compliment either the rooms nor the carpet, both of which work very well together.

 

 

The next step would be to bring in a pair of classic wing chairs to use in place of the club chairs, perhaps in a muted flamestich if the sofa and loveseat were recovered in a solid fabric of a color “pulled” from the rug – perhaps a copper or terra cotta. The club chairs could then be used behind the sofa placed in front of the console table at an angle facing each other.

 

The dining room end is not that bad, but the chairs kind of dated. For a small investment a set of antique Chippendale or Shield-Back chairs and a mahogany table would give much more character to this majestic space.

 

And final thought on this room, even thought there is a lot going on visually with the walls, the space directly above the chair rail could use some artwork. Such a space would be a wonderful opportunity to display a collection of portraits or Lush Victorian landscapes. Just be certain not to be stingy with the frames! Thick and gilded is called for here. 

 

 

Well my dear friends, that’s all for now – I will try to post more soon.

In the mean time remember … the only bad room is a room that is boring and lacking in comfort.

 

 

David

 

The Rambling of the a Nomadic Designer

Painting

I have been painting for a number of years, yet had never been in an Art show until December of 2010. In the spring of 2010, I was starting to get overwhelmed by the growing pile of paintings that I was amassing, and had begun to run out of wall space in both houses. The time had come to try to learn how to get into shows, but how to do it? After a lengthy online search, I found the Fairfield county Artists Association (FCAA) {http://fairfieldcountyarts.com/} and started to get involved.

I've enjoyed the fellowship and creative feedback.

My first show was the Members holiday show in December 2010 – I exhibited 3 pieces and was nervous like never before. My parents, my daughter, grandson & many friends and colleges attended, although I did not sell anything, I was hooked. Since then I have been in several more shows and had a few sales.

Then came a stumbling block……. The show I was to be in at the Stamford library wanted a  BIO! What was I to say about myself??? This is what I finally came up with:

 BIO

David Messner

d.r.messnerinteriors@gmail.com

A Connecticut native, David divides his week between the Stamford Condo he shares with his partner Rob and his Family home in Beacon Falls that he shares with his Parents, his Daughter and his grandson. Although he has been painting for many years, he only started showing in the past year, since his involvement with the Fairfield County Artists Association, where he holds the position of treasurer.  A graduate of Paier College of Art, David works as a free-lance Interior Designer.

“My style has been referred to as Historic Landscapes, and I have been told that I paint in happy colors. I find that I have started to paint events, weddings, harvest celebrations etc. I am drawn to paint buildings that in some way speak to me, to allow me to tell their story. “

In his free time David enjoys gardening, photography, reading and can often be found on Facebook-where he does maintain several galleries of his work.

Not bad I guess.

My paintings have been divided into 3 collections; The Village, Fairfield County, and Provincetown. Those of you that want to see all the pieces –Email me & I’ll send you the link to my Facebook page. 

The Village: 

These paintings in this series depict the fictional village of Wooding’s Landing and are my more primitive pieces- for the most part these pieces tend to be somewhat rougher and have no people depicted. 

The piece below is titled; Wooding's landing- upper green

Fairfield County; 

This series I started in conjunction with the show that I chaired last summer at the Lockwood-Matthews mansion. The theme of this show was “Summer in Fairfield county” while researching and working on this series, I started to learn to paint people in my pieces. This has now become favorite part of the paintings. I have been doing a lot of research to find new figures for my pieces- I’ll talk more about my research in a future blog 

The piece below is titled: Ridgefield Victorian

My current series revolves around Provincetown Massachusetts. Rob and I traveled to Ptown over Halloween weekend in 2011 for an  event with the Northeast Ursamen (the best bear group),

 called SpookyBear. We enjoyed a wonderful romantic weekend and I took hundreds of pictures with my digital camera. I’ve done 10 pieces of both buildings done from my pictures and a collection of vintage photos I’ve found on line. I am hoping to do more in person research when I return to the cape this summer

Here is one of my Ptown pieces- 

The title of this piece is: Captain's House 

I will continue to show at art shows, Perhaps do a few art fairs this summer, But an exciting thing for me is that I now have a store! This week I opened my Etsy store to sell pieces on-line – check it out!

The link is:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/DRMessnerInteriors

Gotta run- will post new thoughts soon,

Hugs

David

From The urban villa - Stamford CT 3^rd February  2012

Collections and Design

A friend recently posted on Facebook the following picture of aquanauts rather large depression- ware glass collection, and much comment was made of the sheer size of the collection .Also of  the lack of display due to the number pieces crammed into several curio cabinets. The only seemingly order was to mass the pieces together by color. What a shame that what is probably a wonderful collection cannot be fully appreciated due to sensory overload. How often in my carrier as a designer have I encountered clients who desire help to manage a collection or to edit the inheritance of a loved one that may not be to their own taste.

Here is the photo I was speaking of:

A lovely collection to be sure, BUT as you can see it is almost impossible to concentrate on a single piece as there are so many competing pieces. Also the only color in the room is from the glassware itself. I would edit out at least half of the pieces and a third of the shelves. A collection needs breathing room, and the addition of negative space. It is also necessary to mix pieces for visual interest. For example I use this Welsh Dresser that I made for my own kitchen at the country house. Notice that there is still space around the pieces of Willow-ware and that I have mixed in other items other than making this a solid mass of Blue & White.

Sometimes it takes adding rather subtracting. In this case , the bookcase sat a little forlornly by itself on the window wall of rob’s condo- add a pair of open back antique chairs , and the area works much better.

Often it just takes looking around the other rooms of a client’s house to pull a project together. In this case I was helping a dear friend in NYC pull together a brownstone full of inherited pieces. Rather than let pieces reside where his mother had always placed them in this parlor, the first thing I did was to place these wing chairs in front of the wonderful tall windows. However this end of the room was still not working till I found the charming secretary desk being used in the dressing room. Once we placed the desk between the windows, the whole room fell together!

 

Sometimes it is just a small thing, like the dining room pictured here – after much discussion – the table rotated giving much more room.

Before

After

Or even thinking outside of the box- for the living room at the country house I decided that due to the small size of the room that I did not need to add a sofa to the 2 wing-back chairs already in the room. Instead I picked up a pair of shield-back chairs inexpensively at a thrift store and added a family heirloom marble-topped table. The open splat backs keep the open feel that I wanted and do not block my view of the backyard.

One last thought I will leave you with, among the comments made on the first picture at the top of this post, where that the man posting must be straight as opposed to be a gay male. I’m not sure if being gay gives you a better sense of style or not, but my partner and I have found that most of the gay households that we have visited do tend to have more style than their straight counterparts. Just a thought.

Hugs

David

1^st February 2012

From the Country Cottage

Technology

It’s a great thing, but sometimes we lose things that our kids will never know. The folks are getting a new bigger television, so they asked for help in altering their entertainment cabinet. Because the new unit will be wider, the portion that had a door and several shelves to the left of the television must go. We cleaned out the accumulated stuff and altered the cabinet; the new TV will come soon. What we were left with however was all the stuff that had been in the cabinet that is now gone.

The brickabrack was no problem, add it to the already mostly full china closet in the kitchen, BUT what to do with the boxes of other stuff. First 3 boxes, fifty some-odd years of greeting cards got sorted into 3 piles, Mom, Dad & cards to both- Mom would sort these. The challenge was the boxes of loose pictures!

With most of us having a digital camera, when was the last time most of us developed a roll of film, and walked away with an envelope of pictures?? Between my 2 sisters and I ,we have 6 children, and I have the only grandson. These boxes contained not only the pictures that Mom & Dad had taken & never got into an album (there are about 40 of those in another storage area), but I realized as I was sorting the pictures ,that there were also all of the pictures that had been given to my grandmothers over the years.

Loose pics, about 11 tri-fold wallet inserts, odd envelopes, the pictures kept emerging…. I saw my children as babies and toddlers, my nieces and nephew, cousins I had not even thought of in years. I even found a tiny copy of my own wedding picture. Goodness sakes- I had hair then!

Then came the ones I only dimly remembered or had never seen. Myself as a child , my sisters as babies, my grandmother Ada as a young women and as a toddler. There was even a picture of my maternal great grandparents! I was shocked to see that my mother’s brother strongly resembled his grandfather and that Ada was her mother’s image- no wonder she was momma’s pet!

What I am getting to is that with our advances in technology- what will we leave behind for our children to discover?? A tiny box of memory chips??? Files on a computer???  I loved looking thru all those old pictures, remembering the faces looking back at me, wishing in the case of my grandmother to hear her voice again so badly. Here are some of the pics that I brought home.

I also found among the pics some pictures of the Village in it’s original location

Enjoy.And now- Maybe I can get to the easel!

Hugs

David