Successful Design is Attributed to the Entire Experience – Rancher’s Club, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Seasonal trends…seasonal cocktails, seasonal venues…I am a big proponent of season things…I like context – have you heard that from me in the past? So in keeping with that embrace…I like dining indoors in a cozy setting in the wintertime and in the freshest of outdoors in the warmer scenes.

Tonight we visited a local favorite that for some reason does not stay on our radar – and for that reason, tonight was a special treat, a welcome change which made us feel as though we had traveled outside our norm to experience such a wonderful dining experience.

I almost ordered a Manhattan – exclusively a wintertime beverage for me, warm, rich in color and flavor…but opted instead for a Hendricks’s martini – extra dry with a twist, as we began our evening in the lounge of The Ranchers’ Club in Albuquerque. It has a most cozy interior, where the low-lit lounge offers several groupings of over-stuffed leather sofas and chairs with cow hide accents, zoned into seating areas around a live piano with vocal accompaniment and a handsome bar area. The classic ranch décor punctuated with taxidermy paired with Victorian touches, crisp table linens and full china presentation is quite welcoming. It is a manly, yet refined old fashioned dining venue that appeals to the most discriminating of etiquette practitioners.

The rooms are nicely lit – dim, warm golden glow, ample for reading the menu which is printed with a generous font size, but soft and sexy, intimate and comfortable.  And the menu has offerings of domestic game such as bison and fresh catches as tonight’s special, striped sea bass with a curry cream drizzle. Other shellfish and fresh fish filets are offered as well as slow-cooked oso bucco and hearty stews.

When the entrees are presented beneath gleaming silver domes, the stage is set to anticipate the dishes that have been suggested all evening with the wonderful aromas wafting through the dining rooms since we first were escorted to our seats. The unveiling done in unison is a “ta da!”

The service is attentive yet not over-powering. The wine list has a wide range. The deserts are delightful as we experienced in the chocolate pyramid. And the dessert wines were well chosen.

The success of the design is attributed to the entire experience. An attractive dining interior without the proper service, quality of food and smart presentation is flat. A successful interior design has to have life. It has to breathe all of the elements that make the space function as intended.

Cheers to all who make a date a Rancher’s!  Patti’s pick!

Kissing in Public – Designed for Spring!

Valentine’s Day is behind us…but the love continues…chilly February days making way for warming trends bringing new growth and springtime romance…the birds and the bees…reproduction and the cycle of life…Designed to heal, strengthen and move forward. Spring into Spring!!!
With that, look to the new hot pink design trends and perk up your palette with accent colors, fabrics, pillow splashes, accents or painted walls.
Don’t be afraid – take the leap and try something new. Be bold and daring.
Today’s photo – “kissing in public.” Some call pigeons flying rats…I prefer to look at each with their singular personality, color scheme, iridescent feathers, unique identity and their togetherness – mates so apparent. Beautiful if taken individually…but I would like to know how to safely remove them from my office roof as they do tend to gather and splat on my windshield in balmy weather…hmmm…the bitter and the sweet.
Spring is in the air!!! Think design and how to punch-up your interiors!!!

Multi-media Entertainment Extravaganza Designed Around Fantastic Music, and Fabulous Fashion

 

Wow Sir Paul – in that simple white unbuttoned shirt with the killer double-breasted jacket…such casual elegance!  The Grammy’s tonight were a fabulous mix of ages and styles, genres and generations! The contrasts were well distributed throughout the night making it a fascinatingly entertaining stream of the best from the past and present.

Acknowledging the recent passing of Whitney Houston and her indelible mark on the music industry and the world was beautifully interspersed throughout the evening.

The choreography was astonishing and the big production aspect of the show was unparalleled. For the most part it was powerfully tasteful and uplifting – an explosive celebration hosted masterfully by the dashing LL Cool J.

Adele graciously overwhelmed at the “lot” in her so now polka dots…Bruno Mars’ dazzling retro show…Katie Perry’s athletic dance and blue hair…Taylor Swift was sweet and strong in her diaphanous floral little country dress…Lady Gaga partially concealed behind her veil…Diana Ross the big black ball gown and big hair – a regal queen…Glen Campbell carried his part off remarkably well – who would know? And Adam Levine singing with the Beach Boys – was classic!

Loved the creatively colorful Alouette, gentille Alouette ad for Target…

I loved it right down to the Cosmopolitan ad for the hotel in Las Vegas!

The “boys” on stage for the grand finale – what a jam band! “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

It truly was a star-studded night – designed around fantastic music, fabulous fashion, and multi-media entertainment extravaganza.

The Fine Art of the Towel Sculpture

It might be too much for YOUR bathroom…but these towel art sculptures are amazing! Here, as we approach Valentine’s Day I have seen so many lovey dovey things lately and these smooching swans bedecked with floribunda were the bomb!

The art of folding bath towels, hand and face cloths into whimsical animals has been a tropical tradition for many years. The novelty of finding one of these remarkable creations on your bed when you return to your room or perched on the vanity counter always brings a smile.

Where do they give these classes? Can they even be found outside the housekeeping departments of fine hotels? I’m convinced that it’s a secret club that has mastered the art of the origami of terrycloth. We mere mortals can only dream of creating something so magnificent from something so mundane. Who was the first and what did they create? It is now a contest for who can fashion the most outstanding example of the art form.

I think that its best left to those professional hospitality towel manipulators rather than the rest of us attempting such feats and frustrating ourselves while wrestling with the bath linens to no avail.

Intimate Love Treasures Had Me Arrested in My Tracks

I love the surprise and adventure of finding artistic treasures on my travels. Bringing a select few back to share is part of the fun!
I stood facing the marina surrounded by lush mangroves, soft jazz and bacon wafting through the air. The atmosphere was particularly fresh, the sky was oh so blue, and the water was like glass reflecting the boat hulls tethered at the slips and along the dock. It was a perfect temperature, not too hot – just right. The artists gathered in Front of Estudio Café in Nuevo Vallarta www.estudiocafe.net for their ritual Saturday morning art fair and breakfast gathering. Fresh slow food is prepared at a delightful exhibition kitchen where all the action is unfolding right before your eyes. The freshest ingredients, fresh squeezed orange juice, bountiful beverages with spinach, carrot and other fruits and veggies appear in tall spotless glasses of green refreshment and rejuvenation – the perfect antidote to the tequila of the previous night’s indulgences.
I met a charming and incredibly talented glass artist there. Estela Herrera creates architectural pieces – to incorporate into the structure, powerful free-standing sculptures and these fabulously whimsical, sentimental hearts. The manageable scale of these intimate love treasures had me arrested in my tracks. What looked raw and almost tribal adornments – became fun and refined upon closer inspection. The lovely leather with glass hearts – screamed celebration of love and joy!
Dangling from generous lengths of soft, pliable leather, these glass pendants speak volumes. Further adorned with crystal, brass and silver beads the stands of leather of Estela’s heart-throb necklaces have an elegantly bohemian quality that transition from the most formal to the easy jeans and cut-off beach garb. Whether relaxed or decked to the nines, these translucent gems will bring peace, love and joy to all who wear them and everyone who sees them passionately wrapped around the privileged neck of a select few.
Unveiled today – I only brought 10 back from this last escapade into tropics south of our border. I hope to select more in the future – but as Valentine’s Day approaches – these will be sure to make a singular statement – no two are alike – for your special Valentine. Call us at 505 242-7646 or email shop@patriciandesign.com for more information and individual photos of available pieces.

Peace, Love and Valentine’s Day – Comfort and a Smile

It’s funny how a theme gets into your head and you seem to see it everywhere. This is what’s happening to me as Valentine’s Day approaches and I think about it from many different angles. Because of my shop, I focus on the merchandising standpoint as I see opportunities to spread the joy of marking the day with wonderful mementos in the form of art pieces and unique decorative accessories. But then again other things just happen spontaneously and through the window of a bus the other day while toodling about in Mexico I spotted this very animated VW bug adorned with curling graphics ala the 60s with the universal peace symbol and its bilingual version of love and amor.
Like Austin Powers’ spoof on psychedelia, what goes around comes around and if you wait… you’ll see the design trends repeated in the reactionary realm of art and fashion. With our world today getting smaller ,with the increased access of high-speed transportation and cyber communications, instant gratification and homogenizing of cultures, people tend to want to slow down, relax, return to an earlier time – it’s all relative. For some that might mean surrounding themselves with organic materials, and/or slow food, to others it might mean listening to music from a past era or immersing themselves in historical research. Some jump off the grid and really get back to basics. But regardless of the manner in which one reverts to the past or reminisces about the bygone days – one common denominator is true – comfort, wherever one finds it, is a human need. What’s funny is how different those definitions of comfort can be.
As simple as something that makes you smile like this whimsically artistic little love bug did for me the other day, I hope this coming Valentine’s Day brings a smile to your face and that you can, in turn, bring a smile to someone too!

Appreciating, Protecting and Perpetuating Beauty

Auturo Perez Reverte writes about beauty and tradition in El Maestro de Esgrima, The Fencing Master, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa. His richly descriptive narrative is engaging to read. I am currently on a third book by him – I highly recommend his captivating and perceptive work.

It struck me while reading this passage the other day that I had just witnessed something that strikingly resembled his observation regarding beauty. I watched the arrival of a bride (the novia), in a “boda en la playa” a beach wedding.  Well, I don’t know if the services occurred here at the beach but the festivities certainly did, in a spectacular seaside setting. The recognizable traditions of she in her flowing white gown on the arm of her father and the accompanying mariachis in their dress garb made an impressive procession.

Reverte wrote “Beauty, with a capital B, can be found only in the cult of tradition, in the rigorous exercise of those gestures and words that have been repeated and preserved by men down the centuries.”  “But we must always remember that beauty resides in preserving precisely what others allow to fall away.” And as I further ponder this, I find that it has profound application to so many things. What Reverte has observed, I can also embrace. It’s the relevance in and appreciation for preserving things as well as skills and customs as did his character, Jaime Astarloa.

Reverte, through Astarloa, refers to the fine art of fencing – a masterful portrayal of the life and times of an aging fencing master clinging to his nearly lost art and other treasures he held dear in his intimate world in Spain in the middle of the 19^th century. The sensitivity that Reverte conveys through this insightful man, Astarloa, is potent. Yes, as he sentimentally expresses, this same preservation of beauty and lost art can be found in furniture, decorative accessories, written documents, architectural detail and myriad items that have carefully passed through the ages – their masterful attention to detail and craftsmanship still in evidence.

The lost art of stone masons and fine craftsmanship of so many trades – we are losing them. And so timely that I read this novel now, for the first time, when so recently fencing did lose a master, Bob Anderson, the legendary sword-master and Olympic fencer who fought as Darth Vader in the original Star Wars  and who directed many well known movie actors in the finely choreographed moves of their iconic sword fights –swash buckling on the big screen. Anderson was 89.

“Beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder?” Is there not a universal recognition of beauty that transcends individual taste and opinion? The quiet wabi sabi to the crisply refined precision of some things –the graceful carriage to the perfection of mastered moves – I think it’s worth pondering.

Wall Treatment of Scribbles and Scrawls Speaks Volumes of Almost Accidental Design

Scribbles and prose as graphic backdrop

Habana – Cuba that is…reconstructed  elsewhere in the bars of Bogedita del Medio and the resulting fantastic feel that is created by the once unconscious  lexis of ultimately decorative elements that are the walls of words and markings. Graffiti you say? Yes, after a manner. It is an atmosphere of festivity – an interior that speaks of layers of revelers enjoying the music and mojitos. Yet it all blends into a graphic design that is exceptionally unique and interesting.

Salsa – dancing and flavors. The complexity that is found in the movements and ingredients -pairing the dance and the food – both are spicy – and the scene is warm and energized.  These walls of markings, names and poems, tributes and proclamations are a backdrop of expressions from layers over years.

When else might this work? I’m fascinated by the effectiveness of this design treatment – a celebration of reactions, emotions and personalities all marked for everyone to see. Bold or meek, artful or mere blocks the styles speak with the words.

Perhaps the free-form walls of a child’s playroom – if isolated to these wall and not the whole house…it affords a huge blackboard – chalkless board for freedom of expression. For adults perhaps a party room might invite this kind of signature expression – layers of good times recorded on the walls – texture and design in an all-over pattern of script, lettering, lines and figures.

I like it a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed the scene and wanted to share the possibilities for this unusually free-form treatment in your interior design.

Fragmenting a Well Choreographed Interior Due to a Relocation

Moving is a chore. The future might be exciting, the move might be upwardly mobile – or not. Disbanding a home is not fun. We have a client who had no sooner settled into a fabulous loft condominium in the hip urban architecture of her new digs when a fantastic job transfer forced a move.

She transferred into this new environment from another climate – another world. This was exciting, new, challenging and riddled with opportunity to go outside the box for the design choices to feather her nest. She enthused about everything that she encountered that was different, well-crafted, unique, artistically functional, colorful, and textural – all things beautifully combined to create an art piece of an interior.

Moving might not always mean what it does in this instance. She already had a primary place of residence filled with family pieces, nostalgic treasures and gatherings of a lifetime, and this new urban scene was a departure from her norm.  This had been an opportunity to experiment with contemporary design, bold colors, abstract and expressionistic art and sadly there is no place to incorporate it in the tiny new interior where she has placed herself practically and with a purpose – where she now finds herself – in yet another world.

The new place is straddling the design direction of her primary abode filled with lovely traditional furnishings and will be punctuated with her contemporary artwork and a couple of the special pieces that she had crafted for the loft – but after photographing, recording dimensions, laying out the furniture in the new floor plan, agonizing over limitations and choices, the decisions were made. And after all the thorough deliberation it was apparent that many of the recently custom designed and fabricated elements must go.  Fragmenting this well-balanced and choreographed interior has been heartrending.

Among the outstanding functional art pieces that I and my team designed for her – here are a few of the unique items made by local artists and craftsmen that are available for purchase.

Red Lacquer Tonsu Twist 60W x 36H - $3766.50

Triangulated Pedestal Table with Glass Top - $1208.25

Burnished Steel Bench with Cut Plush Striped Base Relief Cushion – 24W x 48L x 23.5H - $887.50

Happy Chest – 21H x 21W x 24D - $1046.25

 

 

The Value and Variety of Good Lighting Effects in Interior Design

We paint with pigments but we can also paint with light. We can actually color a space or surface with a color of light or we can illuminate a color of a space or surface with the addition of light. Accenting items or areas in a space or exterior environment is an exciting element of interior or exterior design. We know that the fact that light exists in a space allows us to visually “read” that space. It makes me think though of the clever Kohler ad with the blind guy at a party coming back to his date from the restroom and exclaiming something like “Wait ‘til you see that bathroom!” Not the manner that most people experience a room – but like the last blog about lavender…there are many senses that comprise the effective or ineffective design of a room.
So lighting in this instance is of key importance. With short days of winter still ahead, the nights are longer and the need for artificial light is not just a design element, it is a functional requirement for utilizing or experiencing the space. Differently from ambient daylight however, artificial light offers many opportunities to manipulate, accent and create special effects.
Shadow and light the two opposing forces in the drama of lighting. The absence and the presence, the voids and depths versus the illuminations, accents and “pops” all contribute to the balance and effectiveness of the area’s influence. It gives us the opportunity to enhance, accent, draw attention to, and remove from the focus.
Inside, bring forward the things to emphasize and send back to the recesses of light or the lack thereof those that you choose not to place in importance. Accent a painting on a wall with a spotlight. Cast an ambient glow around the room from a translucent lampshade. Multiple light sources are often the best. They add variety, interest and balance to a scene.
Some light sources are decidedly decorative and they may or may not contribute greatly to the scene. Decorative fixtures can be chandeliers, table lamps, floor lamps, wall sconces, or surface mounted ceiling fixtures. They are selected not just for the illumination that they provide, but for their design influence in the scheme. How they play a part in the illumination of the space is another story – and variable.
People are best viewed from a light source at the face level rather than down from recessed or track lights in the ceiling, which is why table lamps are an asset when creating a setting in which people gather. Social settings differ from display settings. Lighting from above as an exclusive source can be limiting if not ineffective. The shadows cast are not attractive – rather, they can be ghoulish. It’s like the effects of a flashlight either from above or below on your face in a mirror – test this – you will never want to be on a date sitting beneath a light source glowing down from over your table. Scary.
To set the stage of an interior, determine where you want the viewer to go -where you want the destination of the “read” of the space to be. There are these accent spots – points of interest…and then the harmony of the entire area takes shape. Find the attractive features in various parts of the room…a plant in the corner might be lit from beneath to cast shadows on the wall – an inexpensive and dramatic effect. Buy an “up” light at Home Depot or Lowes – a local lighting store might have a greater price range and variety of lamping types and fixture styles. Also, a spot direct down onto a plant or sculpture on a pedestal or vase on a table – the drama of highlighting amidst the otherwise low-light is powerful.
Lighting creates mood, alters perception, and has subliminal as well as obvious effects. Use it to change the feel of a space. You want someone to linger, soften the light – you want them on edge and ready to leave – up the lighting to an unpleasant range. Restaurants and residential dining rooms are perfect examples of soft lighting providing a relaxed atmosphere – in those same rooms where the light levels are higher, notice the less relaxed sensation that is experienced. Likewise, if you want someone to feel welcome, soften the light rather than blasting it.
Light up you life with really good light!

Casita soft and soothing www.casitadecolorestucson.com

Sheer-shaded chandeliers and wall wash spots