News From Cram’s CornerUPDATED DECEMBER 2023 - click images to enlarge
As ever, it's the variety of commissions that keeps Carlisle Decorative Arts fresh, and me on my toes! I began the the year creating a logo for Molly-O's restaurant in York, Maine. For use on signage, menus and t-shirts, this was meant to be a companion piece to the logo I designed for Nick's Beachside Grille in '22. It's always fun devising mascots for logos, and these two amorous seagulls were no exception! Then, in a complete shift of gears, my friend Peter Lamb commissioned me to add my graphic and painting sense to his replica of a traditional New England fire bucket. Fire fighting tools like these harken back to the days of the old bucket brigades. He fashioned the leather bucket and helped tweak my design, while I did the painting, front and back.
Sharyn and Michael Amberger came to my 2022 Open Studio event and we struck up a friendship. That eventually led them to commission me to create a mural on an old barn door on the side of their house, just down the street from here. Together we honed in on a design, based on Michael's connection to an owl he routinely saw and photographed at a zoo in New York. We brought the door back to my studio, where I stripped it of its previous paint layers, then repainted and varnished it. Pictured below, a team of us then reinstalled the mural on the house. Michael passed away before seeing the fully installed mural, but he was very much a part of the process.
While all of this was happening, I was waiting for my next Percent for Art commission to kick in. I've been contracted to produce a small, interior mural for the entrance foyer of the NHDES/Dam Bureau's new base of operations in Concord. These are the people who build, maintain and dismantle the state owned dams in New Hampshire. After much research in the field, the committee and I honed in on the design below, where we're honoring some of the tools of their trade as well as the site of their previous home, the old hydropower plant on the Merrimack River. That plant, and a giant timber crib dam upstream, once supplied electricity to the City of Concord. Currently under construction, the mural is due to be installed by July of '24.
Thanks to impeccable weather, the year ended with yet another successful Open Studio, which we typically host the second weekend of December. Again, we saw a steady stream of folks all weekend, many leaving with purchased artwork. Susan encouraged me to devote one portion of a wall to self portraits I've done over the years. That's what you see below. As usual, it was a ton of work producing the event, but fun and well worth the effort. Thanks to all of you who dropped by!
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