art for the art walls

One thing we've hoped for in the house is having good spots for art. Of course, there's always places for art in a house (haven't met one yet that didn't comply [although Mies's Farnsworth House comes close). Nonetheless, one of the items in our program for the architects was "places for art". They've accommodated us with an art wall at the entry and, through the electrical plan, we've added lights and moved thermostats and whatnot to free up special spaces for art.

Despite our Modern architectural tendencies rooted in the 1930s (people see the house design and ask "Mid-century Modern?" and we reply "Third-century Modern.") our art preferences are decidedly more contemporary, leaning toward "family friendly" outsider/underground/street art a la Juxtapose. We had a goal years and years ago to upgrade our prints to "real" art. As a result, many of our upgrades are (drumroll please...): prints! But real (limited edition and signed) prints.

We've become collectors of sorts of Tara McPherson's prints, owning some four of them (and a skateboard). Here's ole Tara signing a book we bought from her at this year's Flatstock event during SXSW:

and here are the prints we have:

We're also very fond of Fafi, a young lady from Toulouse, France, who has turned her early street graffiti days (when we first "met" her) into something of a career (Hey look! There she is now defacing private property! [Don't worry: It's in France.]).

Unfortunately, the Fafster hasn't done prints up until very recently, so all we have at this point is a framed shopping bag:

and photos we took back in 2000 when we walked the alleyways of Toulouse in search of Fafiness.

However, she has just started selling prints, so we might pick up this one:

We are also collectors of sorts of The Amazing Hancock Brothers. One brother lives here in Austin and the other up near Waco, and they do some outsidery stuff of a Texas flavor. Pieces we have include the zombie bandido:

a nice young lady dreaming of pig:

a bugbox:

and a three-breasted two-headed woman who is presently in storage.

We have plans to perhaps commission a piece such as this for the dining room:

And we just picked up this piece this last weekend by Daniel Burns, an oil of the old streamline moderne'd Austin Power Plant:

And then, of course, there's the pencil drawing by a friend of my cat that lived just three months shy of 25 years:

We gotta find a place for that!

And then there's this masterpiece by our cat CT using an iPad app:

Magnifico!!!!