We recently asked three California-based designers from the Remodelista Architect/Designer Directory to share their thoughts on selecting, framing, and hanging art in their clients' homes.
The trio's favorite sources for art? In San Francisco, Heather Hilliard suggests SFMOMA's Artists Gallery at Fort Mason and Dolby Chadwick Gallery. Laura Clayton Baker likes a non-profit exhibition space in Los Angeles called LAXART; and Meg Joannides likes M+B Art in West Hollywood and Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills.
Above: Heather Hilliard found this affordable painting in a consignment shop in San Francisco; a simple, dark wood frame highlights the blue gray colors featured in the piece. (For frames, Hilliard suggests natural maple, black painted, and white-washed wood.)
Above: Laura Clayton Baker of LA-based The Uplifters likes visual extremes. In the project above, she paired a large Ross Bleckner painting with a small print on a neighboring wall; both painting and print are from her client's existing collection. The room's textures and subtle colors complement the artwork; bolder colors (as in the moss green Ico Parisi chairs) are used sparingly. Photo by Laura Clayton Baker.
Above: Baker mounted a film poster low enough to interact with the furnishings in this office; the desks, made of construction-grade Douglas Fir, were designed to appear unfinished. Photo by Dominique Vorillon.
Above: Meg Joannides of LA-based MLK Studio designed this living room as a backdrop for a dramatic James Nares brushstroke painting.
Above: Joannides mounted a single piece of art on a 40-foot-long wall in this Brentwood home. The piece, a digital screen print of actress Katie Holmes, was hand-painted with nail polish by Paul Rusconi. Photos by Art Gray.
Above: "I love mixing old and new, sleek with rustic or primitive," says Hilliard. "Each piece shows better when it is next to something that has an opposite visual effect." Oil painting by Bonney Meyer from SFMOMA Artists Gallery; Milo Baughman bench; and a fragment from a South Indian teak boat, c. 1900. Photos by Michele Lee Willson.
N.B.: This post in an update; the original story ran on May 22, 2011.