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Stellar Works and Calico Wallpaper Come Together in a Showroom
Stellar Works has gained renown for fusing top-notch Asian craftsmanship with modern manufacturing, but has yet to enjoy a physical presence in the United States. That changes with a showroom the brand recently inaugurated in Manhattan inside the former Pearl Paint building on Canal Street. The showroom will actually have two storefronts—one that presents the brand’s latest furniture, lighting, and accessories, and another that hosts installations that highlights their roster of design collaborators including Jun Aizaki and Michele de Lucchi.
In the spirit of collaboration, Stellar Works invited Calico Wallpaper—the Brooklyn studio founded by Nick and Rachel Cope that elevates wall coverings to high art—to establish their first-ever physical outpost within the showroom. The duo’s wallpaper appears throughout, changing seasonally and in dialogue with Stellar Works collections. Currently blanketing the walls is Noir, a papier-paint pattern designed with Sam Baron inspired by the work of French artist Pierre Soulanges. It offers a pleasant contrast to Luca Nichetto’s whimsical “Space Invaders” collection of colorful Murano glass pieces that are currently on display.
Nashville’s Hotly Anticipated Audrey is an Ode to Appalachian Cuisine
The James Beard Award–winner Sean Brock has been a fervent ambassador for southern culinary customs as the founding chef of the restaurant triumvirate, Husk. His latest project, Audrey—his grandmother’s name—adds a more personal element into the love affair while expanding the idea of what constitutes a restaurant altogether. With the helping hand of interior designer Katie Vance, the sprawling space in Nashville’s Cleveland Park neighborhood is an ode to Brock’s native Appalachia. In the first-floor dining room, the walls are adorned in museum-worthy pieces from his Southern folk art collection such as quilts from Gee’s Bend and paintings by Butch Anthony and Mose Tolliver, as well as original photography shot by Brock. From the furniture to the tilework to the host stands, every interior detail was custom fabricated by a cadre of local artisans, including the second-floor bar with lighting fixtures doubling as speakers and herb dryers.
Brock has higher ambitions for Audrey than merely a place to serve food. (Though anticipation is high for the daily rotating menu showcasing ingredients from organic, bio-dynamic, and sustainable producers.) An on-site research & development laboratory will host specialists to preserve the history of Southern cuisine and push it into the future by experimenting with techniques like oil and fragrance extraction and mold cultivation. The compound is outfitted with both a podcast studio and a staff wellness area for meditation and massage. Aubrey opens October 15.
BIG’s Burning Man installation, “The Orb,” heads to the NorthSide festival in Denmark.
Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange’s gargantuan inflatable mirrored sphere, dubbed The Orb, which debuted at Burning Man in 2018, will re-emerge at Demark’s 2022 NorthSide festival next June. Set to be held at Eskelunden, a park near the city of Aarhus, the outdoor music festival will take on a sharper focus on sustainability this year. “Since 2010, we’ve worked intensively with making NorthSide the heart of sustainable initiatives within the field of international festivals,” director of atmosphere Peter Skoven said in a statement. “We do so by taking tangible and measurable actions like running all of NorthSide 2022 on 100 percent green energy and adding artistic means like The Orb. The goal is to make all of us stop and remember that we need to take care of each other and the world around us.”
Trump DC hotel incurred more than $70 million in losses while Trump was president.
After years of claiming his grand Washington D.C. hotel was making tens of millions of dollars, new documents released by the House Oversight Committee show the property in fact lost $70 million from 2016 to 2020. The documents also unearthed millions of undisclosed foreign government payments and loan deferrals, raising questions about potential conflicts of interest during his presidency.
Tunnel-like vaults house cafes and workshops along a revitalized Prague waterfront.
After years of abandonment, a series of vaults on banks of Prague’s Vltava River have been retrofitted by Architect Petr Janda of Brainwork studio in an effort to revitalize the waterfront embankment. Numbering 20 in total, the mix of glass-fronted shops, galleries, steel-doored cafes, and workshops represent the city’s largest investment in public spaces since the end of communist rule in 1989. Future phases will see the addition of street furniture, freestanding toilets, a floating pool and terminal for cruise boats.
Lisson, Lehmann Maupin, and other galleries open at a new free-trade hub in Beijing.
Setting up shop inside the new Blanc International Contemporary Art Space, the three-month pop-ups will take place in the Tianzhu Free Trade Zone and is the result of a partnership between a group of influential dealers. “We believe their initiative can add a unique dimension to Beijing’s art scene,” says Greg Hilty, curatorial director of Lisson Gallery. The shows will kick off on October 23.
Theaster Gates will create an introspective monument at Tom Lee Park in Memphis.
Inspired by the heroism of Tom Lee, “A Monument to Listening” will consist of two stone and brick plazas with functional bronze sculptures designed by acclaimed artist Theaster Gates. Throughout the year, the monument will be activated by a robust program including poetry and spoken word contests. Gates describes it as his “attempt at leveraging the traditional monument to new potentials” while commemorating Lee as “the human who saw other human lives as equally valuable as—if not more valuable than—his own.”
3.1 Phillip Lim debuts a sustainable weekend bag made with Volvo interior materials.
Known for accessories made from bio-based sources, 3.1 Phillip Lim debuts a weekend bag called Nordico made from a new sustainable material for Volvo interiors. It follows recent news that all new fully electric Volvo models will be completely leather-free starting with the C40 Recharge. Nordico consists of textiles made from recycled material such as PET bottles, bio-attributed material from Scandinavian forests, and corks recycled from the wine industry.
Untitled Art launches a sector with progressive pricing to support emerging galleries.
Chosen by artistic director Omar Lopez-Chahoud, each participant in the fair’s “Nest” initiative will only pay a fraction of normal booth fees. In doing so, Untitled Art aims to ease the burden on emerging galleries while offering them a creative platform amid a landscape that often favors large corporation-backed fairs and mega-galleries. The initiative will launch during Miami Art Week; participants include Aperture, Casa Hoffmann, and Monica King Projects.
Today’s attractive distractions:
This Japanese toy maker purposely designs tiny replicas of mundane objects.
