Vandelay Industries

I just want to make an announcement. We are officially artists. Here's the story:


For the past, I don't know, since we've owned our house, we have struggled to figure out what to do with this wall... this photo was taken during our remodeling project. It is a wall in our dining room that has a fireplace, and brick all the way across the bottom, with a shallow wood mantle. It's very simple and (in my opinion) kind of elegant in a subdued way. Anyway, the wall above the fireplace has always been a tough one to decorate, mostly because it's so long and narrow. And the mantle is so shallow that it doesn't allow much depth for anything above. I've tried putting stuff on the mantle, but it just looks cluttered. And anything that fits on the mantle ends up being way too small for the scale of the wall. A while back I found some square fruit pictures that we had there for a while, but still, they were just not nearly substantial enough. We finally took them down because we were just so dissatisfied and wanted to start with a clear pallette.



So for about six months... maybe even closer to a year... we have been staring at this blank wall. We've looked and looked. One of our problems is that we find it very hard to commit to art. We both find it essential to have our art speak to us. It has to evoke some kind of a feeling. And although we will occassionally come across something that is interesting or cool... it's usually just not enough. Which is also why we have very little art on any of the other walls in our house either. We've tried coming up with our own plans to make something. But nothing stuck with us. There was nothing that really stood out as "Yes, we have to do this." Until a couple of months ago.

We went to a couple of exhibits on a local art show called the Art-a-Whirl, in northeast Minneapolis. It's a weekend where galleries and studios open their doors to the public to show what they do, and to meet people who are fans of their work. One of our stops was at an old warehouse, which had been converted into artist studios. We probably walked through about twenty studios that day, saw some interesting, beautiful, and some just plain bizarre work. We were making our final pass before leaving and happened to glance into a door that was half-open, into a studio that wasn't so much displaying work, but rather had it strewn about. We asked if we could come in and take a look. The guy was busy painting, so we didn't want to disturb him too much, but we just had to get a closer look. His paintings were amazing. Really spectacular. I don't describe many things that way, but these paintings were truely amazing. They had a three-dimensional quality that I just couldn't compare anything to. We asked a girl that was hanging out in the room "What is that?" She explained that they were created by layering paint and epoxy resin in order to get their depth and he would add his own handpainted details as he went. She said he wasn't really participating in the Art-a-Whirl because he was getting ready for a gallery show he was doing in Seattle. After staying a few more minutes to quietly observe and look at more pieces, we got his info and decided to leave him alone.

His name is Stephen Filla and you can check out his work at http://www.stephenfilla.com/, although the photos don't begin to show the depth. We couldn't stop thinking about those paintings and decided to contact him about price. Well, we'll just say they are way out of our price range, although for someone who can afford it, they would be well worth the money.

After a few days of being dissappointed that the only thing we could see above the fireplace was unattainable (for us), we decided to try it out for ourselves. We priced it all out, came up with a plan of attack, and said "here we go!"

It took pretty much all of one day two weekends ago, and a couple of hours here and there the following week, but this past Saturday, we were finished and got them hung up! They look so completely awesome. I cannot even describe how proud I am of ourselves, and how cool these paintings really are. They have a completely different feel than any of Stephen Filla's work, but we love them. And they are even more "us" than anything we would have gotten from him. We each did three panels, then intermingled them on the wall.

So here are a few photos I took last night. Unfortunately, even the close-up photos pale in comparison to seeing them in person (so you'll have to come over to get a better look!). And now we are thinking we will have to kick up the rest of our super-safe decor a few notches... which is fine by me, since I've always felt less than thrilled about a lot of it.