A few months back, NY Mag did a feature on the apartment of friend-of-many-friends and art world gadabout Yvonne Force, her husband Leo Villareal.
They put an awesome crystalline wall sculpture by Stephen Hendee over their kid's crib. [note to self: ask Yvonne about that crib scroll down at least half a page on articles you post about, you lazy know-it-all. It's Ikea.]
Coincidentally, we have a Hendee sculpture in the corner of our bedroom in DC, and putting the kid to bed usually starts with turning off the lights and turning on the Hendee's dim, green/yellow glow.
A Museum Of Her Own [nymag]
From the same issue: Architect builds tripped out dreamhome--then has twins
Sweet nightlight.
I'm pretty sure the crib is the IKEA Gulliver. It's been "temporarily oversold" for at least a year. According to the IKEA in Philly, it's due to come back sometime in September. I think it's about $129.
In the article it says:
And Baby Furniture?
ìMost is so terribly designed, but I saw this incredibly simple crib at Amanda Brooksís house, and she was like, ëIkea. Eighty dollars.í Itís the Donald Judd of cribsónone of the terrible, mediocre woodwork.î The Stephen Hendee light sculpture doubles as a baby-distracting device.
But she also says:
Can Kids And Fine Art Coexist?
ìItís difficult. We say ëArt!í if he touches a painting, and then we say ëNo,í and then heíll get a one-minute time-out. We thought about it a lot and decided that we want to continue to live with art, and continue collecting images that arenít necessarily for a childósome of what we have is a little tough. But weíve decided that itís good for a kid to be around it, because it isnít violence: Itís about violence. He should be contemplative.î
And I must say, if my kids can't touch the damn stuff, then I'd better move it. The only thing out of limits is the Casson which belonged to my grandmother. I wish I could say the 'Rodin' in the arboretum, however.........
Gah! It looks like some giant alien fungus slowly creeping its way into the poor unsuspecting child's bed!
[sounds about right, actually. Or wasn't there some Kurt Vonnegut book where some creeping crystals took over the whole earth? -ed.]
The Kurt vonnegut was "Cat's Cradle".
Re: art in the house and kid's room. We have stuff on the wall, and won't want the kids to touch it, but it wouldn't be the end of the world for those few selections. the rest of the art in the house is however a bit different. I'm not quite sure how we'll set it apart, but we're still dealing with 4 month olds, so we're allowed to be idealists in thinking we can "train them". :)
when we were in Miami last year for Art Basel, we went on a tour of the Margulies (i think) household. Apparently Japanese art was the in-thing last year because they had kid-like Takashi Murakami's and sort-of kid friendly Nara pieces all over the place. but the craziest thing was probably a 15 foot long multi-hundred thousand dollar piece in the kids room from Shintaro Miyake (who i don't particularly like). It's a very childlike drawing of a star wars scene. The kids like it, but I had to think, wouldn't it be better in that case to let the star wars crazy kid just post his own drawings on his wall, and let the parents be proud of that?
We have this crib from Ikea and find that it has a simple modern look that fits into our loft quite easily. I have never heard of Ikea overselling stock. I guess that I am from a smaller city.
As for the art piece, my husband would love it and my daughter would stand up in her crib and try to grab it! Maybe I will stick to my salt rock lamp instead!