Barbara Bahr Sheehan is known for the fresh approach she takes to the traditional architecture of New England. “I love it,” she says, “but I like to freshen it up, make it a little younger and more stylish.” Barbara Bahr Sheehan Interior Design, Norwell, Mass., (781) 659-2514, bbsheehandesign.com
If Henry Bowen had a carriage accident in New York, you read about it in the Los Angeles Times. Born into modest circumstances in Woodstock, Connecticut, in 1813, he became one of the celebrity one-percenters of his day: a businessman, publisher, insurance company founder and kingmaker whose life personified the social, business, political and religious elements of the American mid-nineteenth century.
The quirky beauty of Annette Lemieux’s work gets you looking. Her deep exploration of the universal human tendency toward ambivalence grabs your attention and doesn’t let go.
Let us begin our studio visit with something light to think about—like the human condition. What exactly is that condition? Artists often say the human condition can be defined as a state of constant ambivalence. Humans are blessed (and cursed) by being able to feel at least two ways about the very same thing, often at the very same time.
Pantone’s top color pick for spring 2013 is Monaco Blue. We asked three local designers what items in that bold hue had lately caught their eye.
Judy Fisher
With a background in custom textiles and corporate interiors, Judy Fisher studied at Parsons School of Design, Fashion Institute of Technology and New York School of Design. She established Fisher Interiors in 1992 to focus on fine residential design.Fisher Interiors, Fairfield, (203) 331-1098, fisherinteriors.com
Anne Arnold and Stefano Bruni may not have set out to build a business together, but a mutual affection for woven leather transformed their fledgling relationship into a full-blown labor of love. Bruni and Arnold, he a Modena-born Italian, she from Connecticut by way of Virginia, met in 2009 when friends introduced them. Like many other couples, they soon acquired a puppy—a happy-go-lucky springer spaniel they call Lance—whose love and affection would eventually earn him their company’s namesake. “Anne and I simply wanted to name the company Lance,” says Bruni.
His own art took a back seat while he attended to a teaching career and family. These days, Rex Prescott Walden is back on track, following the muse he detoured from so long ago.
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Adam Waimon’s path to becoming an artist was, well, as clear and smooth as glass. With an artist mother—Connecticut printmaker Deborah Weiss—and grandmother, he grew up in an art-focused environment.
If the word oomph embodied furniture, just what would it look like? To Amy Rice, the answer is simple. “Traditional pieces with a twist,” she says, emphatically.
Wearing a battered brown Borsalino fedora and flashing a thousand-watt smile, Michael Krauss escorts a visitor through the converted toothpick mill that now houses Authentic Designs, the reproduction lighting fixture company that he and his wife, Maria Peragine, own and operate in southwestern Vermont.
Pointing to the elegant lighting fixtures that adorn almost every square inch of the showroom’s ceiling, walls and tabletops, Krauss explains, “They are all hand-made. We are all about quality, not quantity.”
Images of the ordinary take on a transcendent, almost mythic, quality through the lens of Boston photographer Christopher Churchill.
