Esoteric Survey

I came across this painting I've had for years in storage while I was pulling things out for Downtown Modernism. I decided I would sell it. I don't remember when or where I bought it but it was several years ago. Anyway, after second thought, I decided to leave it at home and do some research. It turns out there's an interesting story. The artist is Ivan Bartlett, who was California-born and a Graduate of Chouinard Art institute of Los Angeles. He is most known as a textile designer but was also muralist. This includes a number of  WPA murals .  His work was also exhibited at the San Francisco and New York World Fairs. He was the winner of the 1947 award of the American Institute of Design. He also had a piece in An Exhibition for Modern Living, which was curated by Alexander Girard and held at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1949.  The painting shows points of interest around Chicago, including the Ambassador East hotel. For some reason that stood out to me  The Am...

  It's a great weekend when a new Jack Boyd is involved. Ceramics, including Amy Donaldson and Hal Fromhold Noguchi and another three legger. Robert Josten table Catalogs

Carl Auböck egg and Isamu Kenmochi Bauhaus dishes. It was a tough weekend on the picking front. Although the dishes do complete a set. 

In the late 1960s Mexican architect Juan José Díaz Infante Núñez (1936-2012) designed an all-plastic modular house for farm workers in Mexico. The f iberglass-reinforced polyester shell made them easy to produce and to construct.  My friend Arquetipo de Cambio has discovered a number of them around the Tijuana area. This example is the best so far. It is currently being operated as an  AirBnB  by an architect in Tijuana. The structure has been at the current site since the 1990s. He has plans to remodel the interior, but in the meantime he was generous enough to let us in to check it out.   Photo:  Air BnB In Tlayacapan, Mexico, architecture firm PRODUCTORA constructed a house with shells the client had inherited.  Originally, they were from the family's 1970s weekend house. Side note: Some years back, a friend of mine found some of these just south of Tijuana. They have since been installed at another friend's house in Valle de Guadalupe.  ...