John Alexander

Texas claims three giant sons of the modern art movement of the 20th century: Robert Rauschenberg, Julian Schnabel, and John Alexander. Of the three, Alexander is the least known, and possibly, the one who remained closest to his Texan roots. Born in Beaumont and educated at SMU in Dallas, Alexander ended up in Houston, a professor at the University of Houston during the 70s. And although he's been in NYC for 30 years, his Texas ties remain strong and show up time and again in his art work. Affable and endearing, Alexander's art is known for it's humor and societal commentary. Not easily categorized, he is as famous for landscapes and nature studies as he is for his satirical commentaries on everyday life. Recent works of birds resemble a modern day Audubon, and his flower canvases rival any 18th century botanical study.

A retrospective of John Alexander's work is now underway in Washington D.C. at the Smithsonian's American Art Museum through March. After that time, the show will be on display at the Houston Museum of Arts, a fitting place for one of Texas' prodigal sons. The New York Social Diary today featured a recently held celebratory party given at the museum for Alexander. The reception was filled with the high society names that support the arts with their pocketbook. There is one major dissenter to all the rave reviews the retrospective is getting: the Washington Post's Blake Gopnik panned the show in a scathing review here. Despite this, Houstonians are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Alexander and his paintings. His fans here are legendary, as are his friends. Below are images of paintings by Alexander, some for sale and some sold in auction recently.

John Alexander on the right with Caroline Kennedy and her husband Edward Schlossberg at the reception for his retrospective at the Smithsonian's American Art Museum.

"Hiding from the taxman," 1986

"Man with two lives," 2007.

Recent nature study, influenced by Alexander's country home on Long Island, NY. I love this painting.

Oil by Alexander.

Early landscape by Alexander.

"Wine and roses," 2006.

"Fires of Xanadu," 1991, recently sold at auction for $17,250.00

"Christina's world," 1986, recently sold at auction for $19,550.00

Alexander's haunting "Topsy Turvy"

"The great horned owl." Recently sold at auction for $12,650.

"Troubled waters"

"Salwatch in the bois de boulogne." Recently auctioned off for $26,400.

"Keep your feet close to the fire."

Alexander and the singer, Paul Simon, at the reception in Washington.

Photo from the retrospective. You can get a feel for the size of the some of the canvases from this picture.

The famous painting, "Melon fields" from the retrospective.

A close up detail of "Melon fields."

The catalogue of the retrospective can be purchased from Amazon books.

And, finally, a bit of fun: native Houstonians may remember Alexander and this piece of gossip - he was once rumored to be the boyfriend of Houston's widowed, long-time mayor Kathryn Whitmire. In actuality, they were probably more friends than lovers. Whitmire was famous for her big glasses, power suits and neckties, and a peculiar resemblance to Dustin Hoffman's Tootsie.

Former mayor of Houston, Kathryn Whitmire, aka Tootsie. Long time friend of John Alexander's.

Today, Whitmire no longer in politics, lives in Hawaii. Obviously, she's also thrown away her powers suits and grown out her hair. Thank God!

Blogger News

Lots of new happenings are going on in design bloggerland:

First - The Washington Post has started a new Blogwatch column. Recently named as blogs to watch: Girl Meets Glamour, The Peak of Chic, Style Court, Mrs. Blandings, and Things That Inspire, among others. Congratulations to you all!

And more kudos go out to Jennifer of the very popular design blog - The Peak of Chic. Peak was recently voted by Atlanta Magazine as Best Design Blog. And to top that off, another magazine,

Romantic Homes, did a feature on Jennifer and things she finds romantic for their Valentine's Day issue. Pick up a copy to see what makes her life romantic, though she confessed to me that her life really doesn't feel too romantic these days. Who's does?

And, Canadian Patricia Gray of the blog Patriciagrayinc was featured in this month's Canadian House and Home magazine. Patricia gives her New Years resolutions - including the promise to buy "fewer things, but better quality." I watched her try to live up to that promise in Dallas last week. Not sure she's following through after almost buying out the shoe department at Nordstrom's. But, she's trying!

Lately, two new bloggers have caught my eye and the attention of a lot of other people too:

Topsy Turvy writes on design from her home in Tampa, Florida. Her blog is bright and interesting, written through the eyes of an interior designer. It is peppered with beautiful photographs on home, fashion and jewelry design. Topsy is busy getting her house ready for a photo shoot and I'm anxious to see the finished pictures.

Topsy wrote this entry on geishas which featured pictures of subtle and exotic beauty.

Another entry featured pictures of all white subject matter. These snow pictures capture the still beauty of a gray, winter day.

Another entry by Topsy featured hand crafted jewelry, including this blue coral necklace. Isn't it stunning? I would love to own it! Be sure to visit Topsy Turvy if you haven't already.

Another new blog is Julie Neill's, Bayou Contessa.



If you love New Orleans, you will love Bayou Contessa. Written with intelligence and joie de vie, Julie takes her reader on a sensuous tour of her home town before and after Katrina. Julie, a designer of gorgeous lighting fixtures (who is pretty gorgeous herself), also has a web site you need to stop by and drool over. I've already sold one of her chandeliers to a client and I'm working on a second. Enjoy these recent photographs from her blog:

The French Quarter of New Orleans with its typical silk curtains and antique furniture.



Another interior shot from The Bayou Contessa. Love the skirted table! ;)

And here is Julie's Elizabeth chandelier, one of my favorites (wonder if the name has anything to do with it?). More wide than long, it makes a great choice for lower ceilinged rooms.

And lastly, ever wonder what Anna Spiro of the luscious blog, Absolutely Beautiful Things, looks like?

Anna recently posted a photo of herself for the first time and wow - she's looking great - all tanned from the Australian summer sun while we suffer with winter! ABT is one of my favorite blogs of all time. It was one of the first ones I ever read and so I have a special affection for all things Anna. Her pictures are always dreamy and truly are absolutely beautiful. Never, ever has she written a word of negativity - it's all positive on ABT and that's refreshing to say the least.

For Anna's 30th birthday, she set the table with white daisies. Isn't this the cutest table ever? Notice how she ties her napkins into bows.


Another tablescape by Anna, this one in her beach house in Australia. I love the shells in a basket. Anna's style is all about bright colors such as hot pink and kelly green.

Dallas Trade Mart

Visiting the Dallas Trade Mart, with over 14 floors of To The Trade Only showrooms filled with everything imaginable for the home can be just a little intimidating and tiring to say the least. This week, Patricia Gray and I attempted to do just that. Suffice it to say, we didn't make it to too many showrooms - you could take a week and still not see it all. We quickly decided to forgo shopping in any showroom that looked gift-y and headed for the floors that specialized in home accessories and furnishings. Still, even though limiting our scope tremendously, we managed to see only a few of the biggest names in the business.

Just as in a real shopping mall, the window displays and outward appearance of the showroom was what caught our eye and drew us in. There were plenty of tired, dull looking showrooms filled with the last decade's faux Italianate and Old World goods. Those showrooms looked so dreary, passe, and empty - totally devoid of any energy at all. Who still buys that stuff, we wondered? Cyan, the first showroom that caught our attention, had a bright turquoise facade (naturally). You actually could find that showroom with your eyes closed, it was so bright. Inside, the merchandise was equally bright, lots of mirrored tables and shiny surfaces.

Mirror from Cyan Showroom that Patricia really liked.

Next we made our way to the In-Detail showroom. This is a super sized business that carries lots of labels. One label really caught my attention: Guildmaster - all cream painted furniture, very casual, lots of natural wicker, and an oversized chair that instantly reminded Patricia and me both of that gorgeous red chinoiserie chair by Ruthie Sommers. Was this the same frame of her chair? Couldn't it be taken into a paint shop and lacquered, we wondered? At less than $400, it's a steal compared to the $3,000+ price tag of the famous red chair.

Guildmaster furniture: great wicker items.

More Guildmaster cream painted furniture. Light furniture was hot at this year's market.

Oversized chair - frame is similar to Ruthie Sommers' lacquered red chair.

Ruthie Sommers' famous chair.

Shine Home was next. Lots of bright, contrasting colors - heavy on the Kelly Westler look. We both decided that it suddenly looked a tad dated and the end of the Westler reign seemed very apparent. There wasn't a lot of buzz around the merchandise either, another sure sign of buyer fatigue.

Shine Home, bloggers buzzed about this line all year.

Close up of Shine Home furniture.

Next, Patricia and I both noticed Lacefield Designs, a slipcovered upholstery and softgoods company, whose fabrics were a flagrant knock-off of Raoul Textiles, at a 1/10 of their cost. The color of their window display, chartreuse and brown, was bright again, but toned down in intensity. I particularly loved their gray-brown toned zebra patterned fabric. We both were taken with the line. Chartreuse was a hot color this year at Market and gold was the metallic shown everywhere.

Lacefield Designs window display. Note how similar the front fabric looks to Raoul Fabrics.

More Lacefield Designs. I loved the color of this fabric, muted grayish-brown.

The next showroom we stopped at was Two's Company/Tozai. Tozai is the higher end division of what has to be the most successful accessories company ever. My showroom rep (who happened to be there) told us that the Two's Company showroom space is completely redone with each market. It shows. It was a knockout. At Tozai, the blue and white porcelains caught my eye, of course. Patricia lusted after a set of gray toned botanicals. We both loved just about everything in the space.

Next door, Two's Company was all bright chartreuse and Tiffany's blue and white. Stunningly beautiful. Just wonderful. Each division of Two's Company was showcased separately and the decor matched the merchandise, of course. Their garden room merchandise was delightfully displayed, as was their Paris line - all pastel pinks and mauves and lilacs. But the icing on the cake was the Tiffany Blue Wedding Room. Done up in a Dorothy Draper vintage style with oversized blowzy flowers in blue and greens, it was impossible to not stop and ooh and ahh over merchandise that Two's Company has carried for years. The draw of their display was just that strong.

Two's Company Garden Room in chartreuse.

Two's Company - everything is artfully displayed in this showroom that is completely redesigned with each market, unlike most of the more boring showrooms.

The showstopper: Two's Company Tiffany blue wedding room - A nod to vintage designers like Dorothy Draper.

More Tiffany blue wedding room. All the items displayed in this room is mainstay Two's Company merchandise that they have carried for years and years.

Our final stop was the Global Views showroom, which I dragged Patricia to see. Global Views is a favorite of mine and I've blogged about this company before. They make the most wonderful accent tables and accessories and I think every one of my clients has a piece of theirs somewhere. Their prices are just unbeatable. The front of the showroom was all ready for Valentines Day - red and black and roses. High contrast to the max. As you walked through the showroom, the tone shifted to fit the merchandise. Patricia loved Global Views and was really disappointed they don't ship to Canada. We both decided we'll figure a way around that somehow. I pointed out to her merchandise I had bought for clients or myself and we met my rep who noticed from my huge name tag that I was from Houston. Everyone at the market was overly friendly, as Texans always are.

Hollywood Glam merchandise at Global Views.

The merchandise at Global Views was stacked to the ceiling. This center hanging console is new, supersized from their previous version pictured left and right.

By this time, it was after 4:00 pm and we were both exhausted and in need of coffee and a bite to eat. No big surprise - but I had to order room service that night, I was that tired. This was the first time I had been to the Dallas market in a long, long time. I'm not sure I'll go back again so soon though. With the internet, all companies have their inventory online and ordering in cyberspace is so much easier. It was fun, though, to see the merchandise in person for once, but I think it will hold me for a few more years.

A Meeting of the Blogs

Well, well, well - look at this: who are these two gorgeous looking ladies? ok, ok, well maybe not gorgeous, but for their age (mumble) - they're looking pretty good, if I do say so myself!

The story behind the picture goes something like this - after months of endless emails getting to know each other, it seemed impossible to believe that someone from Canada would get together with someone all the way from Texas. Well, impossible things do happen sometimes. The main event took place this week: Patricia Gray, interior designer extraordinaire and author of the Patricia Gray Inc. blog, managed to make her way down to Texas to meet up with me, Cote de Texas. This high-powered blogger rendezvous took place on neutral ground (sort of) in Dallas, not Houston - my hometown.

Personal business at the Dallas Trade Mart drew Patricia from the frozen environs of Vancouver (even though it actually was colder in Dallas than Canada!). Many meals, long talks, laughs (and tears!), screwed up hotel plans, a talkative GPS lady, lots of Starbucks coffee, a broken tooth, crowds of Market shoppers, and confounding traffic detours later -- Patricia and I decided that we:

1. Actually like each other.
2. Get along really well!
3. Have similar temperaments.
4. Don't get on each other's nerves, AT ALL!
5. Have compatible tastes.
6. Possess about the same amount of stamina (not much!)
7. And travel very well together.

We spent a day at the Dallas Trade Mart visiting the showrooms of places that bloggers have buzzed about all year - the Shine showroom in particular! And we spent a day just clothes shopping in Highland Park Village. But I think Patricia will agree with me, that the best time we had was late last night when we discussed our blogs together over the computer. We realized how competitive we were about our stats! A word of advice to bloggers - never, never, EVER look at your readership or Technorati stats with a fellow blogger - your friendship might not survive THAT test! But despite this, it was really great fun to finally share the blogging experience in person after sharing it for months via back and forth emails. This experience is one that I highly recommend. We looked at magazine pictures and web sites of designers we both admire and just talked about blogging in general until late into the night.

So, you might be wondering, (probably not, but I'll tell you anyway), will Patricia and I ever get a chance to meet up again? As I pulled away in my car, Patricia informed me that she was going to force me to go to Paris with her. Ok, so twist my arm, I'm game! Name the date, Patricia!

Power purses on parade! Outside the Tory Burch store in Highland Park Village.

Inside the Tory Burch store.

Ikat print shorts by Tory. Needless to say, we didn't buy these!!

The velvet tented dressing room area.

Inside a wallpapered dressing room.

Patricia's beautiful and charismatic daughter who joined us in Dallas. I thought she looked adorable in Tory's pink T shirt, but apparently she didn't agree - she didn't buy it.

Major shopping purchases!!! That's Charmaine reflected in the mirror to the right.

Patricia Gray buying shirts at Anne Fontaine beneath an antique French gilded mirror.