HOW THE WORLD IS LOOKING AT COLOR FOR 2016

WE'RE ALL LOOKING FOR A LITTLE LESS STRESS 

It seems everyone has an opinion when it comes to choosing the color of the year. Certainly every paint manufacturer has an opinion. We did a post near the end of last year when Benjamin Moore came out with its choice: OC-117, Simply White. I was all in on this pick back in October 2015.

Here's what I had to say then:
Time to acknowledge Benjamin Moore's color of the year 2016. In the past the color picked has always had a more terminal feel. The colors have been trendier. This year's selection is hard to disagree with, I mean who doesn't love white? Simply White OC-177.  It's not a harsh white. It never looks muddy or dingy. It's not the white your teeth turn when you smile in a room lit by black lights.
Here's how Benjamin Moore describes it: "It works equally well with cool or warm palettes and retains its neutrality, remaining as constant as possible under different light sources."
Now as we slide into 2016 a whole plethora of voices have added their two cents to the name game of choosing their color of the year.

Sherwin-Williams has followed a similar track to Benjamin Moore going with their SW7008, Alabaster. Their description of Alabaster rings the same bell as Benjamin Moore saying,

"It provides an oasis of calmness, spirituality and 'less is more' visual relief. Alabaster is neither stark nor overly warm, but rather an understated and alluring white." I can buy into this in the same way I bought into Simply White.

Glidden was the third American company to weigh in on a shade of white for 2016. They selected their Cappuccino White, 45YY 74/073. They describe it as "a delicate, creamy neutral that creates a peaceful calm in any space."

Maybe it has something to do with all the craziness that went on in 2015 from terrorism to the Kardashians to Donald Trump the design community seems to think we all need to calm down and find that place of peace in a white home devoid of distractions and contrast.

The Europeans have also weighed in and deservedly so they've chosen to mourn with Fine Paints of Europe choosing Piano Keys #0029 as their top choice,

a high-gloss rich black. It is the opposite of  America's white but the effect is very similar.

Now it is time for the color czar, Pantone, to come out with their selection and for the first time in their history they've announced a double winner: Rose Quartz, Pantone 13-1520 and Serenity, Pantone 15-3919. They chose to explain their choice this way: "Rose Quartz and Serenity demonstrate an inherent balance between a warmer embracing rose tone and the cooler tranquil blue, reflecting connection and wellness as well as a soothing sense of order and peace". It does seem peace is on the minds of everyone but pink and blue. I'm feeling more like I've been invited to a baby shower. Where the white (and black as well) have a very strong message of regeneration, going back to square one and starting over, the very wishy-washy choice of pink and baby blue seems an odd throwback.

 
One can go all the way back to the eighteenth century and Thomas Lawrence's Pinky alongside Gainsborough's Blue Boy.

This gender specific choice of side-by-side Rose Quartz and Serenity Blue seems like such a step backwards to the 1950's when we were all swaddled from birth in pink and blue. I know that as a generation ages there is frequently a desire to turn the clock back and wax nostalgic about the times gone by but this combination baffles me. The colors appear very old-fashioned and perhaps by themselves could be interesting and soothing but together they don't seem to help each other out. It's almost an institutional vibe good only in giving a hospital maternity ward a safe non-threating feel.

In spite of my unenthusiastic response I have seen that some major lifestyle stores must have had forewarning of the color edict for the year and have rushed these colors into their product mixes in upholstery and accessories. It will be interesting to see whether the trend sells out or ends up on the discount and sale counter.

So here's the challenge. I've done what research I could to see if I could find any designers who might have found a way of combining these colors into a successful design concept. I couldn't find much. This was the best I could add to this blog: a restaurant where both the pink and blue have been ramped up to a playful level that seems to speak to fun rather than contemplation.

But most attempts ended up looking more like a candy store, way to sweet even for my sweet tooth.

Even Jamie Drake, the master of color, had to emphasize the rose as a complement to grey relegating the blue to the floor to make it work. If anyone else would like to give it a stab I'd be delighted to see your responses.

Good luck hunting!























THE GALLERY

Sleeping Child. 1950
Arthur Leipzig, photographer
Represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery

LAST BIT OF CHRISTMAS 2015

CHATTANOOGA, REVISITED

Time to close out the holiday season so we can move on to the New Year. We closed out the year with the week between Christmas and New Year spent in Tennessee where the weather soared to the mid-seventies, the grass was emerald green and all but this one Christmas tree was made of plastic.
Chattanooga remains a city that has transformed itself into a major cultural hub for the South. Every time we get a chance to visit there are a couple of sites that are mandatory stops no matter how short our time on the banks of the Tennessee River. The holidays and the requisite required family affairs didn't leave for a lot of free time but we still managed to hit the Hunter Art Museum and our favorite shopping space, Warehouse Row. We've written about these two attractions before but I can't help repeating the travelogue because each time we come and the tour the experience is different.
THE HUNTER MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

For years the Hunter Museum of American Art remained a little collection of regional works and Hudson River School paintings exhibited in a classical revival mansion perched on a cliff overlooking downtown Chattanooga and the Tennessee River. For almost fifty years beginning in 1952 when the Hunter opened the museum's biggest draw was less the collection but its Christmas tree display that attracted locals to the mansion on the hill.

In 2002 the museum partnered with the city of Chattanooga expanding the museum with an addition designed by the architect, Randall Stout.

This raised the museum's visibility to where it is now considered to contain one of the most extensive collections of American art in the Southeast.

I love roaming the rooms of the new addition with its collection of works by such art world icons as Thomas Hart Benton, Robert Rauschenberg, Mary Cassatt and Frank Stella.

There is also an extensive collection of pottery, tabletop and glassware but a large part of its attraction is the building itself.

From the old world charm of the 1904 mansion

to the award winning metal cladding of the exterior of the new addition

to the beautiful simplicity of the interior exhibition halls it remains a must for us every time we travel to Chattanooga.
CHATTANOOGA'S WAREHOUSE ROW 2015

Warehouse Row has had a very up and down history ever since its original repurposing in the 1980's. I've envied the industrial heritage of Chattanooga ever since we started coming here. The architectural history that industry has left to cities like Chattanooga is something we Madisonians have missed out on.
The Warehouse started out as a high-end outlet mall that slowly sank into disuse with the fall of the economy. In 2006 the buildings were purchased by a development company, the Jamestown group, and reinvigorated into what they have labeled: a community retail concept.

They employed the same kind of attention to the architecture's humble grandeur that can be seen in other Jamestown properties like Chelsea Market in New York City and with this a new success story has been written in Chattanooga.

Jamestown's attention to incorporating the manufacturing style of the building into its public areas goes way beyond any mall you'll see across the rest of America.

There is a high style projected through out the building utilizing industrial materials in ingenious ways: recycled metal sheets as wallcovering and then bent into cones as a lighting pendant.

A huge nautical rope suspends a chandelier made from leather straps, a metal barrel rim and Edison light bulbs.

Even the painted floors in black and white stripes are integrated in a way that reflects the retail stores that line a part of the interior.

The shops that have now taken up residence all qualify as unique boutiques. The only chains posting a storefront are Anthropologie and J. Crew yet both seem right in place here.

Even though there wasn't a bookstore on board many of the shops used books as an adjunct to their blend of products. Some of my favorites were published by one of the South's most famous magazines, Garden&Gun.

Who could resist a copy of The Southerner's Handbook, A guide to Living the Good Life.

We once again crossed the threshold at Revival, one of the best-orchestrated home design stores anywhere in the U.S.

Their product mix of furniture and accessories both vintage and new is amazing.

There are exceptional pieces left to stand on their own,

small vignettes of collected memory pieces

and areas set up to replicate rooms showing customers how they can mix pieces together to get the Revival look.

It's impossible to walk through Revival with Billy, one of the owners, and not be inspired. As I mentioned in the introduction this is not the first time we've done a blog on Revival and my guess is it won't be the last.

If you find yourself in Chattanooga or even near it stopping by Revival and Warehouse Row is worth a stop and don't forget it has one of the South's best regional restaurants, Tupelo Honey, for some fresh, scratch-made southern comfort food.
THE MOUNTAINS AROUND SEVIERVILLE

On our way back to Wisconsin we had scheduled a New Year's Day stop in Sevierville to see friends who had just moved there the past fall. Sevierville rests in the mountains where Dolly Parton grew up. On the first turn of our journey up the mountain we passed the Blowing Cave  Mill built in 1880. It was only the start of our postcard trip up the mountain.  The roads to get to our friends cabin in the sky was over some of the most heart-stopping hairpin turns I've had to drive on but the scenery was worth the damage to our collective nerves.

Having gone to the top of the mountain we could understand why our friends decided to move to Tennessee where the air is cool and fresh, although they are planning on coming back to Wisconsin once the heat sets in and the bugs get too overwhelming. Still its hard to resist this amazing natural beauty.
THE GALLERY

Robert Frank's Studio, 2011
Christopher Rauschenberg, photographer
Represented by Laurence Miller Gallery

COCA-COLA CAKE

MY SOUTHERN OBSESSION

They all sat around the table tucked into a sunlit corner of the breakfast room all seven of them while Rena, Rick's mom, held court smoking Camels, the unfiltered kind.  She'd sit there her legs crossed an overflowing ashtray in front of her and as one Camel started to get too short to hold she'd light the next from the remaining stub picking bits of tobacco off her tongue with her perfectly manicured fingernails. Her attending children and some of their spouses would sit transfixed in both reverence and intimidation, most adding their own circles of smoke to the white cloud that hung over the table leaving a nicotine film on the windows. The conversation at the table was a buffet of tales from the past mixed with little bits of gossip but mostly it was about food. If it wasn't the meal at hand it was planning the next meal and who was going to do what. I can't remember where we ate, the breakfast room table was way too small to hold all the siblings, their spouses and off-shoots but the planning for meals was always plotted out at that little colonial table. My memory of that table remains quite vivid although it's long gone. It's where I learned about a menu I'd never heard of or imagined having grown up in the north where meals were made and planned by color. Like the winter wonderland I came from most meals were white or a pale yellow with a huge glop of spring mud: mashed potatoes, white gravy and corn served with over-cooked beef and maybe some baked beans. At the Shaver table I heard about who made the best fried chicken, that people actually ate okra or even that there was such a thing as okra, what made a garden grown tomato so good they could be made into a meal on their own and something called a Coca-Cola cake.

Rick's sister Bev was the out and out head baker. She was the one  charged with producing the Coca-Cola cake for all the major events. She made a sheet cake version of the dessert. Since they really had no idea of what to make out of me being the favored son's "friend" I remained the mysterious foreigner here in this little Georgia town and my visits were considered a major event worthy of a Coca-Cola cake production. Rick's family was eager to apply every ounce of southern hospitality they could muster to draw favor with Rick's new friend. They had all figured out very early on that I had a sweet tooth and had taken a shine to this southern version of a chocoholic's obsession.
Rick has since taken over the tradition of the Coca-Cola cake at our special events. His version shows up in the form of a Bundt cake. The process is not very complicated and this year in keeping with the tradition of having a Coca-Cola cake at our little family gatherings Rick did not disappoint.

Here's how you can make one using Aunt Bev's original recipe:
Cake ingredients:
 2 cups of sifted flour
2 cup of sugar
3 tbsp of cocoa
1 stick of unsalted butter
½ cup of vegetable oil
1 cup of Coca-Cola
½ cup of buttermilk
1 tsp of baking soda
3 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla

Icing ingredients:
1 stick of unsalted butter
2 tbsp cocoa
6 tbsp Coca-Cola
1 box of powdered sugar

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

Mix the dry ingredients for the cake (flour, sugar and cocoa) until well blended and then put aside. Bring to a boil a stick of butter along with the vegetable oil, and of course the Coca-Cola.

We think the cake tastes better if the Coca-Cola comes from one of those 355ml glass bottles from Mexico still made from pure cane sugar instead of a 2-litre plastic one made with high fructose corn syrup, but that's just us. Pour the boiled mixture over the dry ingredients and beat until smooth. When you've finished blending these ingredients add the buttermilk, baking soda, eggs and vanilla. Mix well and pour into your well greased & floured Bundt pan. Place the pan into the heated oven and let bake for approximately one hour.

Once baked rest the cake on a cooling rack until the cake is cool enough to drop out of the pan to be iced.
For the icing put the butter, 6 tablespoons of Coca-Cola and cocoa in a medium sauce pan and bring to a rolling boil on your cook top. Then in a mixing bowl pour the mixture over the powdered sugar and beat until smooth.

Place your cake on a cake plate then slowly pour the icing over the cake.

You're done. Slice up a nice big piece of cake, grab a fork and enjoy.












THE GALLERY

Two Men Stand by a Coca-Cola Delivery Truck, 1910
From the Coca-Cola archives