A question for the ages: do highly styled rooms help or hurt?

I look over many, many room photographs as part of my job. As a designer, I look at these photos with a different eye. Usually, I want to see how things fit together both structurally and aesthetically. I find cleverly styled rooms to be distracting. A big glass bowl of Froot Loops on a bed makes me roll my eyes and wonder what someone was thinking.

But that's me. What about you guys?

modern home design

Does seeing a line up of Campbell's Tomato Soup cans make you think of Andy Warhol and pine for some pop art? or do things like that come across as literal ideas?

kitchen design

Do abnormally well-organized pantries inspire you to get more organized or make you feel inferior? Does it come across that the subjects of these photos are fantasies?

modern home design

How about that big glass bowl of Froot Loops? Interesting because it's an interesting shape, color and texture? I'm I being too literal in not being able to see it out of its Froot Loopy context? How about that ladder? Think it's there all the time or was it popped up there just for this shoot?

traditional dining room design

Please don't invite me to dinner if this is the centerpiece. I'm kidding of course. Sort of.

eclectic dining room design

Do dead and spray painted starfish add interest or are they unappetizing?

eclectic living room design

Do stacked, old children's books, a DIY lampshade and a Russian nesting doll make a nightstand complete?

Do you find cleverly styled rooms to be helpful or distracting? I'm curious.

I am testing my blog by phone feature

If this works, I will be happy. Blogger lets me phone in blog posts and this is my first attempt to do so.

A backstage tour of St. Petersburg's Chihuly Collection

The Chihuly Collection in St. Petersburg opens officially today and I was fortunate to attend a preview for the press yesterday. Chihuly himself was scheduled to lead the press tour but unfortunately, his health prevented him from being there. In his place, the tour was lead by Chihuly's friend and project architect Alberto Alfonso.

The Chihuly Collection in St. Petersburg is presented by The Morean Arts Center and it's the world's first permanent Chihuly installation, and Alfonso's brilliantly, thoughtfully designed space reflects the fact that this collection is here for keeps. The facility and the art interact perfectly and the impact of both is magnified exponentially.

Chihuly's best known for his work in glass, but he works on paper and neon as well. There are installations in all three of his media in the collection and the combination of the three in one space fleshes out he vision and talent of an artist who practically invented the studio glass movement.

Because I attended a press preview, the collection staff hadn't erected all of the barriers and velvet ropes that will protect Chihuly's work when the public are welcomed in today. I was granted a once in a lifetime opportunity to see this work close up, barrier-free. It bordered on the unsettling to walk around ten feet tall, suspended chandeliers with a value I'd be afraid to calculate. What a thrill!

The collection starts in the street with a Chihuly sculpture that pays homage to the iconic tower of The Vinoy Hotel in  the background.

In no real order, here are some of the works on display.

St. Petersburg's Chihuly Collection opens today and you can find out about operating hours, ticket prices and information about how to get here and where to stay on The Chihuly Collection's website.

Dale Chihuly sets up shop down the street

All photos of the 2004 Chihuly exhibit at the 

Fine Arts Museum in St. Petersburg, FL from Dale Chihuly.

In 2004, glass artist Dale Chihuly brought a huge exhibition to St. Petersburg's Museum of Fine Arts. Unlike most of the visiting exhibits in that museum, Chihuly's work wasn't contained in a single gallery. Instead, his work was integrated into the rest of the museum and seeing his fantastical glass work in the context of other art forms allowed me to see it as art for the first time.

On its own, blown glass as art never spoke to me before. I found the graceful shapes and bright colors to be distracting, I couldn't see the artist through the work. It didn't dampen my appreciation for it as a beautiful thing, but I saw it differently than I do a compelling painting or sculpture. However, seeing a pile of Chihuly's orange glass sitting next to a Georgia O'Keefe poppy brought the whole endeavor into sharp focus for me.

Chihuly's work is studied and it does fit into the long, glorious narrative of art history. Chihuly's work above pays respectful homage to the Georgia O'Keefe behind it, but it lacks the morbid and menacing core of the O'Keefe painting. Chihuly is pure exuberance at this point.

A lot of art critics tend to keep his work at arms length, probably because blown glass is such an accessible medium. Blown glass can be beauty for beauty's sake and it's that same beauty for beauty's sake that endears his work to so many non-art patrons. Say what you will, but the man is everywhere and it's due to his efforts that American art glass is an art form reborn. Chuck Boux (a local glass artist whose work I own) and every other working glass artist out there owes their career viability to Dale Chihuly.

So it's with a great deal of fanfare that St. Petersburg's Morean Art Center is opening the Dale Chihuly collection this weekend. The Dale Chihuly collection is the world's only permanently housed Dale Chihuly collection, it's a single artist museum for all intents and purposes. Part of the collection is a working Chihuly glass studio and hot shop. At the hot shop, regular people can see fine art glass being made before their eyes and people who want a bit more intense experience can take a glass blowing class.

The new Chihuly Collection is housed in a space designed by architect Alberto Alfonso and as luck would have it, I've been invited to the press preview later today. I'll meet the architect and get a guided tour of the collection led by Chihuly himself. He'll have a Q&A after the tour and if I think of something pithy I'll ask it.

I'm looking forward to this preview of the latest addition to the art scene here in the 'burg. I'm fortunate to live in a small city of 250,000 people and to be surrounded by such an embarrassment of cultural riches. Dale Chihuly has a new museum five blocks down the street from me. How many people can say that?

If you're local to me or if you find yourself on the coast of west Florida, check out the Morean Arts Center's Chihuly Collection.

Take a shower with an ax-murderer

Beautiful bathroom but the guy standing in the shower would freak me out in the middle of the night.

But as disturbing as it looks when it's just standing there. It's even worse when it comes to life. This thing is somewhere between creepy and obscene, I can't figure out which.

It sprays!

It spits!

It can make what's probably the strangest product photo I've ever seen.

This Shower Sculpture is the Aquantass by Bagno Sasso. I understand being provocative but this is really taking provocation to the edge. Bagno Sasso ought to change their name to Bagno Sesso.

About the mildest thing this shower reminds me of is an ax-murderer. What do you guys think? Is this the only option left when a body pillow won't cut it anymore?