Mid Century Design...A bounty of goods.

After deciding to buy the Fonville building, I was faced with financial design challenges.  Although the building itself had a "sky is the limit" design aspect to it, my budget did not allow for it.  The commercial space where the Fonville family had been selling jewelry out of for over 70 years (great feng shui), had dated lighting and shelving units.  Sadly, I'm just not a fan of verneers and mirrors, but after talking it over with my Architect, Jonathan Card, I decided insteading of trying to re-design, I needed to rethink my vision.  So I decided to go in with a "if you can't beat them, join them" attitude. Thus, we decided to go with Mid-Century design.  If there is one thing that I find amazing about the Wild Wild West is how time has stood still in the design world.  Mid Century pieces are everywhere as long as you have the eye and knowledge to spot them.  So I decided to take the design of our gallery/studio/cafe to a level of extreme.  Somehow I live life that way..it's ALL or NOTHING.

After buying books on Mid-Century design, 1940's to 1960's Home Magazines and surfing the Information Highway to absorb all that I could, I started to buy.  One piece at a time.

As I buy, i just BUY!  The piece doesn't have to have a complete set, it doesn't have to have a destination or a purpose, it just needs to be in our space to see if there is any organic growth to the fruition of the project. 
Along the way I started encouraging Abel and my daughter Serena to study some of the books with me and it has now become a family project.

Serena is the "owl and mushroom" expert.  She can spot those pieces a mile away, she can bring in milk glass and she has a tendency to be attracted to depression glass and Fenton hobnail pieces.  My precocious 8 year old has decided she is going to be a fashion designer when she grows up.  Vintage fabric really rocks her world!

Currently we are still in the "buying" phase of the project.  We are applying for a HUD 203K Rehabilition Construction loan which is very admistrative, but the ONLY loan that was created for our situation, so I have had to learn patience.  Instead of getting frustrated I have used this down time to go on Mid-Century hunts and somewhere in the middle of all of this chaos I decided to open an Etsy Store.  http://www.winkingowl.etsy.com/

Winking Owl is a family venture, Serena likes to "match vignettes", Abel does the photography and I do the listings.  We are in the middle of nowhere so we have some hiccups to deal with but, I think for that exact reason we are finding amazing things that are shaping the sculpting of our living/studio space.  Each piece has the potential to change the design outcome. 


You can see my artwork at http://www.sandrarenteria.com/
Make sure to support a foundation I co-founded  http://www.artforhaitianchidren.org/
http://www.thewinkingowl.com/


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