The Best of Modern In Dallas - issue 10 - June 2020

may ‘20

// alice cottrell interior design photo: stephen karlisch

1019 Dragon Street | Dallas | Design District | 214.350.0542 | www.sminkinc.com

Home IS WHERE THE a r t I S by Kendall Morgan

// garden aptartment - photos: stephen karlisch

// marfa hotel lobby photo: casey dunn

Dallas-based designer Alice Cottrell makes magic in spaces of every size and every style.

The very best interior designers have honed their aesthetic into something instantly recognizable—regardless of architecture or a particular client’s taste. And, with her use of oversized furniture and love of epically patterned walls, Alice Cottrell has perfected her luxurious mix. One that looks just right wherever she employs it—be it a Turtle Creek townhouse or a modernist Marfa hotel.

Before she ever took on a private client, the native Houstonian mastered her methodology in New York as a hotel designer, including (funnily enough) a stint working for a firm that created all of Donald Trump’s properties in Atlantic City.

A graduate of Texas Christian University, Cottrell returned to her home state in 1990 to work for Wyndham Hotels.

Post 9/11, the economic downturn meant her bigger jobs were on pause, but a serendipitous offer from a friend led her to an entirely different part of the industry.

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// bachelorette pad

“I designed a restaurant for a friend, and she said, ‘I don’t have a hostess, will you help me fill in for a couple of weeks until I find somebody?’ I said sure, and ended up helping her for a couple of years. That’s how I started getting clients. When people see your work when they’re dining in the restaurant, they already have a connection to the type of work that I do.”

Hotel. Today, Cottrell continues to office out of the top floor of the very same century-old building on Elm Street.

That eatery was chef/owner Tracy Miller’s pioneering Deep Ellum bistro Local. Cottrell’s warm mix of industrial with mid-century modern garnered her fans from the moment it opened its doors in 2003 in the historic Boyd

“The one thing I absolutely LOVE about residential is, when I was working on a hotel towards the end, there would be 30 people giving their opinion on one color board,” she laughs. “They can’t decide what they want

Though working in residential wasn’t an ultimate goal, Cottrell found she took to it like a duck to water, employing the tips and tricks she garnered over 20 years in the commercial realm.

// connoisseur’s loft

for lunch, much less what color would work for 15 years. In residential, it’s a snap—there are four people max who have an opinion, so that was a dream right there.”

Cottrell developed a hyper-organized system that starts with Post-it® floor plans and ends with organized three-ring binders that hold every detail of a client’s project. By moving a piece of furniture via sticky note, she can avoid the cost of creating a CAD drawing while making sure every piece has it’s proper place.

“If we don’t like a chair in the master bedroom, we peel it up and move it over the guest bedroom,” she explains. “I don’t want people to buy anything they don’t absolutely need. We’re mindful about the space and flow of how much furniture to put in the room.”

Cottrell loves small spaces—her apartment is a dainty 750 square feet—but she is equally fond of oversized furniture. She tends to anchor her rooms with lavish sofas covered in stain-resistant commercial fabrics

by A. Rudin in Los Angeles or Kisabeth in Fort Worth.

“I’m known for big custom sofas,” she says. “I want everyone to be really comfortable when they get home at night. Everyone who can afford an interior designer works really hard – I want them to be able to sink into a down-wrapped sofa when they get home.”

The designer tends to prefer her furniture to speak softly, to let a client’s art, book collection—or even the walls—have their conversational moment.

// mid-century house

// bachelorette pad

It wouldn’t be untoward to say Cottrell never met wallpaper she didn’t like. From Andy Warhol murals by the Brooklyn-based Flavor Paper to more demure designs by Hermes or David Rockwell for Maya Romanoff, the designer makes the most of an accent wall or guest bathroom, yet functionality is always top of mind.

“The commercial-grade vinyls are so good in powder baths when you have a lot of little kids peeing it up on the walls. With a lot of our jobs, the clients have grandkids, so you have to be mindful. With Flavor Paper, you can wipe it clean with Windex!”

This mix of beauty and practicality has her client base returning to her year after year. Because she doesn’t take jobs just for the money, she has built deep relationships that endure as families change and grow through starter abodes to second homes to smaller, empty nester spaces.

“We grow to be part of the family. I know that sounds trite, but people actually say, “Do you want to come over for Thanksgiving?’”

When Cottrell defines her work as durable, contemporary, timeless, and elegant, one has to agree with her. By avoiding trends while embracing color and comfort, her work is ready-made to withstand the test of time.

“Just like you walk into Local, you can’t say it’s the ‘80s or the 40s; I want my jobs to feel like you don’t know what decade it is.”

alicecottrellinteriordesign.com // connoisseur’s loft

KATHLEEN PACKLICK MISPLACED MEMORY

SARAH HUTT MY MOTHER’S LEGACY

JULY 11–AUGUST 22, 2020 KIRK HOPPER FINE ART • DALLAS

THE LINE & THE SHAPE

by Kendall Morgan

// otis jones studio photos by allison v. smith

l: white square twice, 2020, acrylic on linen on wood 17 x 17 x 3 in m: faded circle with red edge, 2020, acrylic on linen on wood 15 x 15 x 3 in r: white oval with Two coffee circles, 2020 acrylic on linen on wood 20 x 13 1/2 x 3 in

Physically impactful yet subdued in hue, the works of painter Otis Jones enchant the viewer with a unique visual depth.

In his current show, “New Paintings” at Barry Whistler Gallery, the Dallas-based artist builds on a considerable legacy while relishing a career pinnacle Jones himself could never have predicted.

In the last year alone, he’s garnered new representation in Copenhagen (Sunday S), Belgium (Sorry We’re Closed), and New York (Marc Straus Gallery). Currently prepping

for a major January 2021 retrospective alongside Ron Gorchov at the Fondation CAB in Brussels, he also has a show slated for Los Angeles’ Nino Mier. To be hitting one’s peak at the age of 74 might not be an everyday art world success story, but for Jones, it’s well deserved— and not a moment too soon.

Born in Galveston in 1946 and raised in a peripatetic family who moved all over the southern United States, Jones was never encouraged to be creative by his parents. Yet he picked up an impulse to work with his hands courtesy of his grandfather, who made a living as a sign painter.

// left: red oxide and gray circles on black wash, 2020 arcylic on linen on wood, 56 x 47 x 4 inches // right black circle gray edge, 2020 acrylic on linen on wood, 61 x 58 x 5 inches

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Museum Tower 1918 N. Olive Street Dallas, TX 75201 Missy Woehr + Ilene Christ missy.ilene@compass.com M: 214.213.9455

/// tan with black and white circles, 2020 acrylic on linen on wood, 21 x 33 x 4 inches

“I think for a while as a kid, I wanted to be a cowboy, but soon after that around age 6 or 7, I decided to be an artist,” he recalls. “I loved to draw and I loved objects, and I understood at the time these objects were art in some way. On the farm, I was influenced by a lot of utilitarian things that were handmade crudely, like the milking stalls or the patina of the stanchions where the cows would put their heads. I could somehow visualize them out of context in a room.”

Because Jones had no way forward into a career as an artist, it wasn’t until a fortuitous visit to the Nelson Adkins Museum in Kansas City in his late teens that he realized

his destiny. When he gazed upon an abstract expressionist work, the painter-to-be, “got chills.”

Jones attended Kansas State University before moving onto the University of Oklahoma in Norman for his MFA, an institution he chose for their wide-open graduate program. Finally, he had plenty of space and time to experiment. Coming of age during the heady days of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the artist found himself responding more to post-minimalists whose work was more about the materials themselves.

Balancing his practice with stints teaching at Texas

// white painting with two white circles, 2020 acrylic on linen on wood, 56 x 47 x 4 in

Christian University and the University of Texas in Arlington, Jones ultimately took a leap of faith to seek out representation, going on cold calls to galleries from Austin to Houston to New York, and eventually landing at local spaces such as Whistler and Fort Worth’s William Campbell Gallery.

Though he has been pigeonholed as a “Texas minimalist” (a moniker that annoys him), Jones’ vocabulary of circles, squares, rectangles and lines owes as much those longago farm objects and the colors of nature as it does to artistic influences like Eva Hesse.

Describing his process as “almost like a dream,” Jones // back and red circles on white, 2020 acrylic on linen on wood, 47 x 15 1/2 x 3 inches

fine mid century and modern design

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circa20c.com

// vernon fisher, who am i, 2020 acrylic on canvas 73h x 83d in

// black circle with two raw canvas circles, 2020 acrylic on linen on wood, 15 x 15 x 5 3/4 inches

// gray band with ivory center, 2020 acrylic on linen on wood, 10 x 12 1/2 x 3 inches

draws a cartoon of the shape he envisions on a large piece of white paper until it resolved. He then turns it over to a carpenter he’s partnered with for many years who builds his three-dimensional structures.

Once he is satisfied with the raw yet refined forms, he mounts a canvas and begins the dialogue between color and form, building and sanding down the paint to be perfectly imperfect, a process he compares to “geology—it’s like digging down or seeing the earth in a segmented way.”

The show of hand and lack of precision reveals a deeper level of soul that Jones hopes will inspire inspirational reflection in the viewer. Perhaps it is the very way his pieces

cut through our current clutter of imagery that makes them so well suited to our particularly fractious times.

“If I had to label (my work) it would be as more essentialist,” he explains. “I want to pare things down not for the sake of the paring, but for the sake of trying to get to something direct and essential. We’re so bombarded, in this day especially, that images have become a little less meaningful. That’s why I do my best to create something you can look at a long time. I’m investing some of my soul and instinct into that, and I hope it comes through in the work.”

“Otis Jones/New Paintings” is on view through July 25 at Barry Whistler Gallery. // barrywhistlergallery.com

laura moore, nada, tweaked oil on canvas 72x48 in

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An Education in All Things Modern

by Leah Shafer

If your design aesthetic has you appreciating Hans Wegner and admiring Alexander Calder, then you need to know Wlodek Malowanczyk, owner of Collage 20th Century Classics in the Dallas Design District. He offers a beautifully curated selection of modern furniture and accessories, including a serious selection of midcentury modern and Scandinavian treasures.

Originally from Copenhagen, Wlodek was one of the original dealers of modern furniture in Dallas, a nascent movement when he opened a Routh Street store in 1990 with his late wife Abby. Influential early adopters frequented the space, including Stanley Marcus, designer Emily Summers, designer Mil Bodron and architect Svend Fruit (of Bodron/Fruit).

“In Dallas, there was always an interest among educated people who knew architecture and art,” Wlodek said. “We started traveling around the country doing modernism shows as the movement got very popular.”

The shop soon outgrew itself as interest grew in these pieces from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1980s. The Malowanczyks moved to Henderson Avenue, but within a few years, that neighborhood turned nightlife-centric. In 2001, they fixed their gaze on the Design District, buying an almost 9,000-square-feet building on Riverfront Boulevard (then called Industrial).

Working with legendary Dallas architect and friend Russell Buchanan, the Malowanczyks created a striking space to showcase everything, even the pieces in warehouses.

The Design District of the early 2000s was a bit rough

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// cassina 551 super beam sofa

around the edges, quite unlike the live-work-play environment of today.

“I wanted a space to both live and work in, but the neighborhood was still developing,” Wlodek said.

After their two children were grown, the Malowanczyks made their fourth and final move, settling at 2034 Irving Boulevard on the edge of the Design District eight years ago. Working again with Buchanan, they created a dream space with a shop in the front and their home in back.

“Russell did an amazing job – he separated the business from the living by opening up the whole roof and making

// vladimir kagan floating curve sofa

an atrium between those two areas,” Wlodek said. “When you step into the living part, it’s like being in a different place. You could be at a loft apartment in New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco, but it has a homey feeling, too.”

As Wlodek approaches a milestone birthday in July, he’s reflective of his seven decades.

“Abby passed away a little over three years ago and I have continued my journey,” he said. “With coronavirus, it just puts you in different thinking mode.”

Twenty-eight years ago, he was dealing antiques with a Danish partner in Dallas, where he met Abby. They

married and moved to Denmark, and a career-defining moment for Wlodek came at an auction house in Copenhagen. While waiting for a lot that included chairs from the late 1800s, a set of midcentury Hans Wegner chairs came up for auction.

“They sold for an incredible amount of money, much more than the other chairs I was looking at,” he said.

It opened his eyes and started his education in all things modern.

“A friend of mine in Copenhagen, an antique dealer and visionary, told me, ‘This twentieth-century stuff is going to be taking off and you guys should spend all your money and buy it,’” Wlodek said. “I went home and started thinking and opening up books about Danish and Scandinavian design.” // golgotha chair by caetano pesce, 1972

In 1986, the Malowanczyks sold their part of the antique business and, with their young son, moved to Laguna Beach, California. They opened a modern shop on Pacific Coast Highway.

“Antiques were too old already and the interest in twentieth -century furniture was starting,” Wlodek said. “It was the beginning of the movement.”

Tourism slowed down in Laguna Beach in the late 1980s and, after their daughter was born, the family moved back to Dallas in 1990.

“Slowly, I started looking around and buying a little bit here and there – you could find [modern furniture] everywhere,” he said. “Then I found the shop on Routh Street,

// mira nakashima “conoid” table

// hans wegner table/desk and chair

which was about 400 square feet. It was a very particular kind of client looking for this furniture.�

More people were beginning to see the architects and designers of the twentieth-century as artists, recognizing the aesthetic value of their pieces, as well as the cultural importance, Wlodek observed.

One milestone was their invitation to participate in the Manhattan Armory Show. This led to doing business with decorators in New York City and around the country, as well as selling to museums. At their Henderson space, the Malowanczyks did a show for Peter Shire, an original member of the Memphis Movement, and attracted international clients.

// �itera� bicycle 1981 made by volvo first plastic chair in

Engage Educate Experience Enjoy

The Dallas Architecture Forum is for everyone who wants to experience inspired design. The Forum presents an award-winning Lecture Series that brings outstanding architects,interior designers, landscape architects and urban planners from around the world, as well as Symposia, Receptions at architecturally significant residences, and Panel Discussions on issues impacting North Texas.

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// george nakashima - conoid bench

// commons club

Throughout the 2000s, the modern movement had its ascendency, boosted enormously by Mad Men, which ran until 2015. Names like Herman Miller, Isamu Noguchi, and Charles and Ray Eames are mainstream.

But the market has been changing, in a way that Wlodek says is disappointing. There’s still the demand, but people want to buy online and often don’t seem as concerned with long-term value.

“By opening the computer, they can look at everything in front of their noses,” he said. “But people need to be careful and know about quality and dealer and what has been done to the piece.”

The value of a piece comes from myriad factors, like

designer, number produced, method of production, materials, condition, and any changes made. Buying online, all of this can be harder to ascertain.

That said, Wlodek still sees brisk business and buys globally for Collage 20th Century Classics.

“Modern is worldwide and every country had its own architects and designers with its own phenomenal designs,” he said. “I’m buying French pieces, Italian pieces, even some pieces from Holland, Brazil, and Mexico.”

As long as there is an audience and appreciation, Wlodek Malowanczyk will continue his education in all things modern. // collageclassics.com

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modern

cravings // vladimir kagan sofa in cotton velvet. available at circa20c.com

// bau 28 pendat available at tech lighting

// strings credenza designed nika zupanc available at scarletsplendour.com

your modern

calendar

Modern events and activities make for fall fun around the Metroplex. jammie holmes Dallas Contemporary

Barry X Ball: Remaking Sculpture Nasher Sculpture Center

Looking In: Photography from the Outside The Amon Carter Museum of American Art

For a Dreamer of Houses The Dallas Museum of Art

Alonso Berruguete: First Sculptor of Renaissance Spain The Meadows Museum

Mark Bradford: End Papers Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Beili Liu The Crow Museum of Asian Art of The University of Texas at Dallas

Sandra Cinto: Landscape of a Lifetime The Dallas Museum of Art // through Jan 31, 2021 Due to the current COVID-19 restrictions, please confirm availability of viewing these exhibits.

modern

art galleries

Modern art, exhibits, around the Metroplex.

Lindy Chambers + Luke Sides Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden

New Texas Talent Xxvii Craighead Green Gallery

Patrick Turk Cris Worley Fine Arts

Xxavier Edward Carter Cydonia

My Corona Group Show Ro2art

Women We Have Known Pdnb Gallery

A Group Exhibition: A Posteriori Liliana Bloch Gallery

Linda Ridgway Talley Dunn Gallery

Otis Jones + Allison V. Smith Barry Whistler Gallery // view current shows online or appointments maybe available