We’ve made it to 2022... And LEGENDS is ON!!! So… what to do as a ‘design installation’ for my favorite paint showroom?!? Well….

Like most things, the answer came to me in the middle of the night… Chaos Arrows!

No doubt, we have ALL just been through a crazy time… the ‘arrows’ were a ‘doodle’ that just kept flowing from my pencil during the early days of the pandemic - I can only assume as a manifestation of the chaos swirling around me… SIP allowed me a little ‘extra time’ to return to a favorite hobby, painting… and the ‘arrows’ burst to life in crazy color… bringing some fun to those days that seemed to drag on endlessly! When my friends at CA Home and Design tasked me with the LCDQ window display at Farrow and Ball, our team had the perfect opportunity to explore this weird and wacky COVID by-product, to see what else it could become…

We thought about the orgin of the arrows and what we were doing during that time… gardening, painting, baking… WORKING FROM HOME!! What could be more appropriate for this Design Industry event than to recreate some of those familiar vignettes, but through the lens of the incredible color palette of Farrow & Ball!?!

Repurposing vintage furniture pieces as our canvas, was the obvious choice! It’s no secret that one of the major challenges that has affected our industry is (that darn) supply chain… Creating ‘new’ out of ‘old’ has become necessary as we try to pull off projects for our clients… giving way to spaces filled with more history and character than ever!

As we have tried to maintain our sanity during all of this, perhaps one of the greatest lessons learned is, when all else fails, return to the basics… the creativity that allows it all to come together in the first place!

SO Grateful to be back among the Design Community for this very special ‘IN PERSON’ Legends 2022! We hope you enjoy our colorful display!

More about our ‘Chaos Arrows’ collaboration with Farrow and Ball…

When we were trying to decide ‘what colors’ we were going to request for our ‘special project’ from Farrow & Ball, we decided we needed to go BRIGHT… this needed to be eye catching and FUN in the windows! So we returned to the original painting (‘Coronavirus Press Conference’, 2020) for our inspiration… however, since those colors were mixed with (I can assure you) no rhyme or reason during the depths of ‘shut down’ - we needed to reconstruct! Starting with a ‘new’ sketch of the arrows… one that could be digitized (perhaps turned in to a pattern down the road, naturally), and matched our hues to the F&B palette….

Team work is an incredible thing… and I always say… I’m nothing but an idea, without the team that makes it happen! I might be selling myself a ‘little’ bit short… I’m pretty good with the pencil, too ;) but honestly, I love to see what comes from the team effort! Below is the digitized arrow template with F&B colors…

Ok! So now we have our colors… and I lucked in to a vintage ‘work’ table as well as a fantastic gate leg table and English Secretary at the antique shop around the corner from our studio! I had grand plans of painting the Arrows all over the furniture, like a ‘graffiti’ wrap… but reality, and the constraints of time set in (also regular work… natch). After a little bit of prep, we called in some professional help to give the pieces their ‘base coat’ of color… and then I got real with my paint brushes on the furniture backs and drawer boxes to recreate those ‘Chaos Arrows’… whoa!

The secretary… our WFH centerpiece of the LCDQ Farrow & Ball installation, painted in F&B ‘Arsenic’ 214 in Modern Eggshell.

I love the color ‘Arsenic’ but I have never had the right project for it! This Secretary was a perfect canvas!! Like the original ‘arrows’ artwork, the back and the inside of the piece became a little bit of a color experimentation…

‘WFH’ anyone? What a situation the WFH moment has become… one of the biggest pivots of the whole pandemic was the search for dedicated space to work in the home… yet if Zoom taught us anything, it was to accept the imperfections of ‘real life’ that were on full display… Chaos Arrows all the way!

Any good window display needs to be, not only interesting from the street, but equally compelling from the inside of the showroom! The Secretary became the perfect three dimensional slate… with its amped up graphic also displayed on the usually forgotten back!

The gate leg table, ensconced in F&B ‘Charlotte’s Locks’ 268 in Estate Eggshell… the perfect ‘painting’ table for our ‘Chaos Arrows’ project. Bright, yet decadently rich, this orange color is inspiration unto itself!

Original ‘Coronavirus Arrows’ pieces, experiments during the Shut Down, are unexpected accessories in our Legends Farrow & Ball installation… but… waste not, want not! :)

So, that’s it… I painted during COVID…

But it’s not quite done yet… The arrows were FUN… and a total departure from our portfolios ‘design-ethos’. What else could we do with them? Could this pattern we established become something more?? I always marvel out of how fun the Design world is… and how a simple request to doll up a window can lead to… who knows where!!

I see beach towels or maybe some wallpaper in our future… stay tuned! :)