Vespa!

In case you haven't figured it out, me and B like big animals: elephants, giraffes, tigers, lions, zebras etc.  So a lot of our interior decorating involves these big animals.  It's like we want live in a zoo! 

Here's a vintage poster we picked up on eBay for that obvious reason, but for some other reasons too.  One thing that B always asks when I look at potentially obtaining art is, "where will you put it?"  Well, with this one and Babar-like elephant, that's also obvious, not that we're planning ahead or anything.  It's got great color and it pops.  Plus, I like Vespas.  I don't own one, but maybe one day I'll be that oddball teacher that shows up to work on an old Vespa and my sports coat with the elbow patches. 

The poster was produced by the Piaggio & C scooter company in 1959 and designed by Ditta Giuseppe Lang, S.P.A, which is a graphic arts studio in Genova, Italy.  I wish I could tell you more about it, but I can't read any of the Italian on any of the sites I googled.  If you can help, let me know!

a little of both of us

My friend Mark suggested that if I wanted to get Bethany into poster art, I should consider approaching it from her perspective first by focusing on things she likes.  Well, she's into fashion.  She likes to read about it and look at all sorts of clothes and shoes.  She likes shoes.  One of her favorite designers is Betsey Johnson.  Betsey's style is, as Bethany describes it, "Girly Punk."  From my perspective, Betsey is fun and definitely eye catching, which is what I generally look for in a poster. 

So I looked up vintage fashion posters to see what came up.  A Frenchman named Berbard Villemot did a lot interesting stuff for the Bally shoe company.  One poster that caught my eye is called "Bally Kick," which was done near the end of Villemot's life in the 1980s.  Bethany likes it too.  What do you think?

My current poster wishlist

This is subject to change!  This subject to grow! 

Africa by David Klein (1960s). Great colors that would totally go well in our living room.

Philadelphia by David Klein (1960s).  Because it's Philly, duh.

Cognac Monnet by Leonetto Cappiello (1927).  Great color, great value and it's beautiful. 

Wedding gifts to ourselves

So now that I'm a mature adult with a house and wife (do those things make you a mature adult?), I want to have real art around the house.  What do I mean by that?  We won't just put things around the house we like, but perhaps some with value.  I want to invest, but stocks and business crap bore me and my comic book collection is barely getting my money back, so original art is!  So far, I have convinced Bethany to go with it.  No more dorm room posters! We've transitioned from thumbtacks to nails.  That's how you know something is real art, if it requires nails. 

Speaking of dorm room posters, if you are into the history of posters or follow the poster market at all, which I recently am, it seems that posters that may have been on a dorm room wall decades ago seem to have value now.  Well, as long as they are original printings, no reproductions.  People are paying hundreds of dollars for original printings of the Star Wars movies and Farrah Fawcett.  It's funny, but nostalgia pays.

Anyways, I though I would share some of the new pieces we have in our house.  The first is a sculpture that I bought for Bethany as a wedding present.  In our first year of dating, I was living in Texas and she was home in Delaware.  Since we had to fly to see each other, we would at times meet in other cities.  She saw this piece in Santa Fe years ago and I took a mental picture of it.  Bethany loves Giraffes and family, which I think is part of what drew her to the piece.  It's called "Daddy Long Legs" by Todd Warner.  It's part of series all featuring animals sitting on furniture that has the same print as they do.  If you check out Todd's Website, you'll see how he gives a dreamy humanistic quality to his animals.  We like animals.  Most of our art features animals.  She was stunned when she got this gift.  She couldn't believe that I remembered.  Given that it was five years ago, I'm glad she remembered too!

The next two were wedding gifts we bought for ourselves on our honeymoon in Hawaii.  I convinced Bethany that rather than using our gift money just to pay off our wedding, why not buy some things for ourselves.

The first is a Normal Rockwell print you may have seen before.  I have always been into poster art.  When I saw that the old fishing town of Lahaina had a vintage European poster store, I was hoping to pick up a cool European throwback.  As you can see that's not what we got.  Let's just say that me and Bethany have different tastes!  We looked at dozens of posters and this piece was the only one she seemed really responsive to, obviously because of the faith thing.  It's cool, though because I have always like Rockwell's realism and I don't mind reminders for her to stay faithful.  This one is War World II propaganda piece (1943).  It was part of series of four prints that promote buying war bonds in order to preserve our freedoms.  Maybe I'll convince her to let us get a European piece eventually!

The last is a numbered giclee by Robert Bissell.  It is part of a series called, "Hero."  All of Robert's works feature animals in whimsical manners.  We also got this in Lahaina.  I never get bored at looking at it and it makes a great statement piece in our house.  It's currently above our fireplace.