Vol. 24 - Solving Puzzles by the Bay
Our Monthly Newsletter
What’s New
All Showcase Photography by Jose Manuel Alorda
Putting the pieces together in San Francisco
Designing an interior can be like solving a puzzle. To make it all work, you've got to:
1) Find an eight foot sofa to go between the windows with blue accents.
2) Now add a chair upholstered with a sensational fabric next to it, but you've already got a bar cart there. Both can't be right.
3) And this stunning bronze sculpture simply has to fit in, but where?
4) How about wood and leather wall coverings?
5) And a chandelier!
6-8) Then, once it's all in, it's got to feel eclectic and new, but also like Milan’s famous Villa Necchi Campiglio, while still honoring the room's existing architectural details.
9) Most importantly, make it comfortable.
Easy, right? It's a bit like a giant rubix cube with many more textures and a much chicer* color palette. But we love puzzles, and we love solving them, in San Francisco. If you'd like to review our solutions to the enigmas posed above, the San Francisco Decorators' Showcase is open through May 29th. We'd love to see you.
*We had to look it up ourselves, but The Oxford Dictionary gives the comparative and superlative forms of chic as chicer and chicest. Good to know!
FEATURED PIECE: Cerus Bronze
One ace that we keep up our sleeve is that we don't need to find every perfect puzzle piece. Sometimes, we make them! For San Francisco, we needed a piece with sharp lines and gentle curves. Like Cerus, but more decadent. The shapes were there but the textures and colors weren't a perfect fit. So Kim conceived the Cerus Bronze, a new take on an old friend. For us, the Cerus Bronze is the lynchpin of the whole Showcase design. The key to unlocking the cipher of the room. At the moment, it's a one of a kind piece. But that could change...
What We’re LOVING
On the PAGE
Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore
By Robin Sloan
Why, when puzzles move into literature, does someone always end up dead? Do all mysteries have to be murder mysteries? Why does it always take such a gristly deed to get Poirot to put on his thinking cap?
Happily, in Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, a riveting mystery that unfolds all across San Francisco, from dusty old independent bookshops to the googolplex, intertwining technology, cryptology, and fonts, all without a drop of bloodshed, no one gets axed.
It's a mystery for our time, tackling questions of progress vs preservation, privacy vs piracy, and processing power vs human ingenuity as it frolics through San Fran.
On the SCREEN
The Game
Directed by David Fincher
No one dies in this one either...we don't think. That's half the fun of this oft forgotten Fincher classic, that also happens to take place in San Francisco.
The Game is a film about...well of course we can't tell you that. Suffice to say it is rather a bit more anxiety inducing than the aforementioned Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookshop, and time has only proven this twisting and turning thriller more prescient in terms of how far big tech might go next "for the benefit of its users."
In 1997, the metaverse was only a twinkle in Silicon Valley's all seeing eye, but Fincher could already imagine the dystopian possibilities.
Catch it now on Starz.
Featured Artist: Marty Schnapf
Marty Schnapf’s work is available through Diane Rosenstein Gallery in Los Angeles.
There's absolutely nothing puzzling about why we are so drawn to Marty Schnapf.
Schnapf is a Los Angeles-based multi-media artist who works in drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and performance who we are quite taken with. The mystery here is how he gets it all done. His recent exhibitions include David Zwirner’s PLATFORM, UNIT LONDON, a public sculpture at the Soulangh Cultural Park in Tainan City, Taiwan, and Think Pinker, at GAVLAK Los Angeles, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody. And of course, his work is featured in our San Francisco showcase until May 29th.
If You’re Going…
... let us leave with this thought: What if we started thinking about problems as puzzles? Problems lead to conflict. A conflict implies that one party will win, and one will lose. But puzzles have solutions that solve for every variable. Solutions may be hard to find, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look. Be sure to come back next month, for more comfort, culture, and style. Until then...
Stay Chic,
Kimberly + Laurent