Art and architecture. Kids and collections. The melding of these four themes created a house like no other in the Pacific Northwest. The extraordinary home has been praised in the pages of Elle Decor.

And now it’s being appraised on the marketplace: For the first time in the artful Seattle home’s history, it’s available for sale, for $5.5 million.

The property has come to be known as “Art Haus,” a collaboration between art collectors Craig and Linda Fiebig and the forward-thinking Vandeventer + Carlander Architects.

The Fiebigs wanted the ideal spot to raise their four kids and display their art.

They planned to simply renovate the home they had bought in 1997 for $1,275,000, located on a leafy corner lot near Lake Washington. But the renovation went awry, Linda told Elle Decor, and they decided to tear the whole thing down and start anew.

The project took seven years and was completed in 2006. One look at the listing photos, and you can see it was worth every bit of time and expense. It’s a house unlike any other.

A glass entryway gives you a peek of the art inside. The dwelling consists of two parallel, rectangular boxes and a glass-ceilinged atrium in between.

There are five bedrooms and 4.5 baths. The interior spaces are filled with light and flexible for use for living or entertaining. Almost everywhere you look, there are prime spaces to display a collection of artwork.

The home was constructed from Cor-Ten steel, cedar blocks, glass, wood, and aluminum. The patios and porches are flagstone and cement.

It’s described as “modern industrial” in style, yet everything, everywhere you look, is bathed in color, and the organic materials add a sense of warmth.

More family-oriented spaces exist in the home as well, including the game/media room downstairs. The lower level cleverly receives natural light through the glass floor of the atrium above.

The home is nestled in the Washington Park neighborhood of Seattle, but it’s close to Madison Park, the Arboretum, and many other city staples.

You might wonder, after so much work and thought, how the owners could part with their unparalleled creation.

“All four children are grown and out of the home. Their time there had run its course, and they would love for a new owner to enjoy it now,” says listing agent Shawna Ader, of Windermere Real Estate Midtown.

You also might query if the furniture and some of the artwork might be included in the listing price.

“It’s not,” says Ader, “but the seller may consider selling a few of the larger pieces, as the home was built to house them.”

What were you doing in 2003? If you were ultra-wealthy, you might have booked a seat on the final flight of the supersonic Concorde. If you were tech-savvy, you might have posted a profile on the freshly launched social-media website Myspace. If you were a film aficionado, you might have attended an opening-night screening of Pixar’s Finding Nemo. And if you were in the art trade, you might have toured the first ever Frieze Art Fair in London.

Despite its long-held status as a global art capital, London did not have a major contemporary art fair until Frieze launched in 2003. This shows how dramatically the trade expanded in just one generation. By 2018, the number of international art fairs totalled almost 300, according to Art Basel and UBS’s Art Market report, but back in 2005 it was only 68. Even fewer were staged when Frieze debuted in Regent’s Park two years earlier.

The fair grew out of frieze magazine, established in 1991 by longtime friends Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover. The duo hoped the publication could widen the appeal of serious contemporary art with the type of approachable writing, lush imagery and smart design found in popular magazines about music, style and other cultural touchstones. Once Sharp and Slotover saw the international art crowd swarm London for the opening of Tate Modern nine years after frieze’s first issue, founding a fair with the same spirit became an obvious way to continue the mission.

The unusual venue set London’s upstart event apart from the beginning. “An art fair in a tent in a park was a bit like a fairytale,” says Millicent Wilner, a senior director at Gagosian since 2001. At the same time, the inaugural Frieze felt “serious, dynamic and super relevant, much like the contemporary art scene in London at the time”. No wonder it was one of only three fairs in which Gagosian exhibited in 2003, when the gallery operated just four spaces worldwide (compared with 19 in seven countries today).

Although the setting was an act of imagination, it was also a matter of necessity. Sharp says the buildings available in London in October 2003 were not suitable for a serious contemporary art fair. A tent erected atop a large green space seemed like the only solution. “I don’t think we understood what a folly it was. You’re doing more than half your work before a gallery even walks in the door,” she says with the benefit of hindsight.

The purpose-built tent, now synonymous with Frieze London, was ambitious from the start. The first structure made liberal use of glazing and incorporated a translucent ceiling, which welcomed natural light into the fair throughout the day and emitted a warm glow of its own come nightfall. Its designer, fresh from working with Chris Ofili on the British Pavilion at 2003’s Venice Biennale, was described by this publication at the time as a “hot young architect” called David Adjaye.

For all the tent’s design virtues, however, many of Frieze’s first exhibitors recall some room for improvement in its practical elements. “In 2003, if you took up your carpet to create a less corporate look to your stand, creepy crawlies would come in from the ground below, and you prayed it would not rain. Otherwise it was time to wear your thermals,” says London dealer Alison Jacques. “Now, it’s slick and insect-proof.”

The grand ambitions of the original Frieze fair belie the humble resources available to actualise it. Asked about the staff assembled to produce the 2003 event, Sharp says: “It was a skeleton team.” She remembers the dedicated, full-time fair staff consisting of no more than five people. Aside from Polly Staple, the first curator of Frieze’s artist projects programme, the group included a site manager, a head of press and PR, a VIP relations manager and a finance specialist (whose duties were split between the magazine and the fair).

The rest of the workforce was made up of on-site temps and an array of sub-contractors, some of whom were as new to staging art fairs as Sharp and Slotover. The company hired to build Frieze’s walls, Sharp says, made much of its revenue working on theme parks.

This motley crew nonetheless managed to create an event that drew 27,700 visitors, according to a Frieze spokesperson, with general admission costing £12 (around £21 today, after adjusting for inflation). For comparison, a general admission ticket to the 2023 edition of Frieze London is priced at £46 (though early-bird and student tickets are cheaper), and in recent years the combined attendance at Frieze and Frieze Masters—the tandem fair launched in 2012 for objects made from antiquity until the 20th century—has totalled around 60,000 visitors.

No one was more surprised by the first fair’s popularity than Sharp. “Nowadays, if we build a new fair in Korea or LA we can work out pretty accurately how many people will come out on day one. Then, we had no idea,” she says. “There was no algorithm for it.”

Print outs and fine dining

The technological limits of Frieze’s 2003 debut now sound almost primeval. “Everything was analogue, from the application process, to the invitation of the VIP guests, to the presentation of the art,” says Gisela Capitain, the founder of the namesake Cologne gallery. There was no public wifi, and possibly no private wireless network either. (The Frieze spokesperson says the records are inconclusive on this last point.) Anyway, smartphones and tablets were niche products at the time; Apple did not launch the iPhone until 2007 or the iPad until 2010.

Marianne Boesky, the New York dealer, unknowingly speaks for Frieze’s entire first cohort of exhibitors when she says she “spent significant time and effort” ahead of the event assembling physical binders on each of the gallery’s artists containing print-outs of current press and works available offsite. Unholy amounts of artist monographs were also delivered to the tent to hand out to clients during the run of the show. Frieze even printed a “yearbook” featuring capsule profiles of two to three artists selected by each participating dealer.

More rudimentary communications tech translated into radically different strategies to entice buyers, too. “We didn’t send previews like you see now. We reached out to people for sure, but at the fair on the opening day it was more of a surprise for the visitors,” says Thaddaeus Ropac.

One defining trait of Frieze was present from the start, however. Sharp and Slotover bucked convention by working with Mark Hix, then the chef of beloved London restaurants Le Caprice and The Ivy, to ensure that there would be high-calibre dining to match the high-calibre art in the tent. Frieze brought in other elevated food-and-drink vendors as well, including Gail’s Bakery. Sharp says it was part of a plan not only to “keep people enjoying themselves” so they would stick around but also to instil a local identity by “bringing the city into the fair”. The move made an impression on exhibitors used to stomaching less inspiring options at rival expos.

“This was really the top end of London food at an art fair,” says the London-headquartered dealer Timothy Taylor. “I think it was unique. You go to the Basel fair and you get raclette, if you’re lucky, or a sausage. In Miami you get a Cuban sandwich.”

Frieze’s approach to food reinforces that the company has risen to the apex of the art-fair sector, partly thanks to 20 years’ worth of savvy choices about which of its elements it should maintain and which it must evolve as the global art market has grown and professionalised around it. Now owned by the US entertainment conglomerate Endeavor, the company operates Frieze-branded fairs in Los Angeles in February, New York in May and Seoul in September in addition to London in October. It also recently struck deals to acquire US regional art fairs The Armory Show and Expo Chicago, with more changes sure to arrive.

Yet what motivated Sharp and Slotover to risk producing their first fair may be the simplest explanation for Frieze’s two subsequent decades of success. “Our theory was that if you had good galleries, then collectors would come,” she says. “It was pretty unsophisticated, actually. But it was proven true by the fair.”

Stretching across more than 160 miles of Victoria’s central coast, Port Phillip harbors a diverse marine ecosystem. In recent years, though, the Australian bay has experienced widespread development that’s damaged the vegetation protecting the land, leading to mass erosion and habitat destruction. At this rate, some of the current shoreline is predicted to be entirely underwater by 2100.

As a remedy, designer Alex Goad and the team at the Melbourne-based Reef Design Lab have created a series of conical modules that break waves and re-establish healthy ecosystems for aquatic life. Titled Erosion Mitigation Units and installed near the city of Greater Geelong, the two-meter-wide structures are made of concrete and recycled oyster shells layered into molds. Once removed and submerged in the water, the undulating, organic shapes offer small caves, tunnels, and hiding spaces for shellfish, octopus, sponges, coral, and other creatures. Overhangs provide resting spots for stingrays and globefish, and one-centimeter-wide ridges on the surface are designed to attract tube worms, mussels, and oysters. “After six months of being submerged, the modules have already been colonised by several shellfish species, sponges, and cold water corals and are visited by stingrays and local snorkelers,” Goad shares.

Both a buoy to conservation efforts and an alluring addition to the waters, the units serve several purposes, Goad says, explaining further:

Not only does creating more complex geometry lead to better wave attenuation and habitat for marine life, but creating a softer sculptural aesthetic for these types of structures is essentially like underwater gardening. Just like how we design our landscapes and public parks, I think the same sort of effort and respect should be paid when building in the marine environment. I wanted the installation to be enjoyed in a similar way to a public park, but instead of walking, you can swim through the undulating forms, each with its own ecosystem developing. Over time, the installation will be completely overgrown, and the sculptural forms won’t be noticeable, but I think that is part of the magic of the project.

Dezeen recently longlisted the Erosion Migration Units for the sustainability category of its annual design awards, and the lab’s MARS project, comprised of modular structures to restore coral reefs, will be on view at National Gallery Victoria in the coming weeks. The team is also working on several new designs at the moment and collaborating on the U.S. government’s Reefense project. Find more from Reef Design Lab on its site and Instagram.

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Serbian superstar Marina Abramović has achieved cult status in the art world over the past decade or so, culminating in her current major retrospective at the Royal Academy (RA)—the first time a woman has had a solo show in the historic Main Galleries in the London institution’s 255-year history.

Her market has yet to reach such highs though; according to data provided by Art Market Research, only six works have achieved more than £50,000 at auction. This is perhaps unsurprising, given the chronic undervaluing of female artists throughout history as well as the fact that her practice has been chiefly rooted in performance, a deliberately temporary and transitory medium that fell out of fashion several decades ago, only to see a mini-revival in the 1990s. As she says on The Art Newspaper’s The Week in Art podcast: “At the end of the 1970s, performance was not popular any more… Galleries weren’t selling it and museums weren’t showing it. There was huge pressure on artists to start making paintings and objects.”

Abramović’s RA show demonstrates how her work cannot easily be pigeonholed; there is video, photography and re-stagings of her performance art. There is also sculpture, which Abramović began to produce in the late 1980s with her “transitory objects”, pieces that ask for the audience’s participation in the absence of the artist’s body. Then there are the works she created with Ulay, her former partner and collaborator. Her market is similarly kaleidoscopic. For example, she might sell a clay pillow and then a small edition of photographs and an iron chair, all within two years.

Prices

Abramović’s auction record came in October 2020 when Christie’s sold The Life (2018-19), a mixed-reality installation first shown at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 2019. It achieved £287,500, well below the £400,000-£800,000 estimate and a snip of the £1m it reportedly cost to make—a reminder that the art market is slow to adopt innovation. (It was the first time a mixed-reality work had come to auction.) Consigned directly by Abramović and Todd Eckert, who directed the piece, The Life was acquired by the Faurschou Foundation in New York.

A key turning point in her market came in 2010, says Claus Robenhagen, a director at Lisson Gallery. That was the year of The Artist is Present,Abramović’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As part of the show, for eight hours a day for three months, Abramović sat at a table, silently holding the gaze of whoever was sat opposite her. The artist Antony Gormley and the actor Alan Rickman were among the thousands who queued for the experience. That was also the year Lisson began to represent the artist, though the gallery’s relationship with Abramović dates back to the 1970s. “She went from being an important figure within performance art to becoming possibly the most famous and celebrated woman artist of her time,” Robenhagen says. “There was a big shift in the market; she created these large photo editions, and they started selling for good amounts of money.”

Robenhagen notes that, unlike a performance artist such as Tino Sehgal, who sells his performances via verbal instructions, Abramović’s performances are not for sale. “Marina prefers to keep ownership of the performances herself,” he says. “Institutions can exhibit them on loan, but that is done in dialogue with her in her studio.” In terms of her legacy, Robenhagen says Abramović’s studio will define how her performances will be re-staged for posterity. At present, there is no catalogue raisonné of her work.

Instead, collectors can acquire photo or video documentation; early performances are most coveted. At auction, stills of her best-known performances range in price from $30,000 to $100,000. Photographs of Balkan Baroque (1997), the critically acclaimed performance in which Abramović sat amid a pile of cattle bones, scrubbing them methodically with a metal brush, have fetched between $21,590 and $44,121. Winning her the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Biennale, the work was created in response to the war in former Yugoslavia.

Primary market prices for Abramović’s more recent works are much higher. In 2021, Lisson Gallery mounted two related shows by the artist, originally scheduled to coincide with the RA show, which was postponed due to Covid-19 restrictions. One featured a cinematic film, Seven Deaths, in which Abramović enacts the deaths of seven protagonists in famous operas—usually at the hands of a man, played by the Hollywood actor Willem Dafoe. The installation, which exists in five editions, starts at €250,000. The second show consisted of seven alabaster wall sculptures, each relating to a death scene in the film. Prices range from €250,000 to €400,000.

Alongside Lisson, Abramović is represented by Sean Kelly in New York, though she also has more fluid working relationships with Luciana Brito Galeria in São Paulo, Lia Rumma in Milan, Vienna’s Galerie Krinzinger and Galleri Brandstrup in Oslo.

Collectors

Abramović’s work is gaining traction with a newer generation of collectors. According to Robenhagen, in more recent years private museums and patrons in China and Brazil have begun to acquire her work. Historically, the artist has had a big following in Europe and the US, particularly among institutions. They include the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent. The Tate in London owns a single work by Abramović: one of three editions of Rhythm 0 (1974), a table draped in a white cloth set with 69 objects, the remnants of a harrowing six-hour performance in which the audience was instructed to use the objects on Abramović as they wished. Another edition was sold at Sotheby’s in March 2022 for £52,920.

The German collector Julia Stoschek first acquired a work by Abramović in 2004. Today she owns 33 videos and photographs dating from 1975 to 2001, 26 of which were made together with Ulay. Stoschek notes how Abramović was one of the very first artists to have entered her collection, adding: “Building a media and performance art collection, you simply can’t ignore Marina’s pioneering work.”

Critics

Some reviewers criticised the RA show for its use of actors to re-stage her performances, which raises vital questions about the meaning of a practice so rooted in the artist’s own body, but also about how Abramović’s estate might be handled. Like her nebulous market, it is no mean feat to present work that largely exists as documentation. But, as Robenhagen puts it, “Marina is without a doubt one of the big, big artists of art history. And as that history is re-written, her importance will only become even more apparent.”

COGNAC, France and NEW YORK — Hennessy, the world-renowned cognac brand, and the National Basketball Association (NBA) today announced a multiyear extension of their global marketing partnership, spanning the NBA, Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), NBA G League, USA Basketball and the Basketball Africa League (BAL).

Through the agreement, Hennessy and the NBA will continue engaging with NBA fans around the world through immersive and premium experiences and NBA events, including NBA All-Star and NBA Summer League, while Hennessy will additionally expand its presence as a partner across preseason and regular-season NBA Global Games around the world.

“We are thrilled to extend our global marketing partnership with the NBA,” said Laurent Boillot, President and CEO of Hennessy.  “This collaboration is not just about shared values but also a strategic alignment with the cultural fabric that defines our fans and communities.  Together, we will continue to push boundaries and deliver exceptional and meaningful moments that celebrate excellence in all its forms all over the world.”

“Our collaboration with Hennessy has brought NBA fans around the world closer to the game of basketball through immersive, one-of-a-kind global experiences,” said Kerry Tatlock, NBA Executive Vice President, Global Marketing Partnerships and Media.  “We look forward to continued celebrations with our Official Spirit as we bring unforgettable moments to our fans worldwide.”

To tip off its renewed marketing partnership with the NBA and the 2023-24 NBA season, Hennessy introduced a series of limited-edition Hennessy x NBA bottles, in VS, VSOP and XO cognacs, exclusively available for purchase at local liquor stores and select e-retail boutiques beginning this month.  The bottles celebrate basketball culture, with the packaging design including nods to asphalt, hardwood and leather to capture the essence of the sport, where passion meets excellence and where community meets culture.

Through its “Courts Beyond Limits” program, Hennessy unveiled a series of basketball courts at iconic settings across Africa, Asia-Pacific and Europe, showcasing the NBA’s global reach.  The initiative featured a floating basketball court in Lagos, Nigeria, a floating court on London’s River Thames, and a beachside court at Sydney, Australia’s famed Bondi Icebergs, among other iconic locations around the world.

The renewal builds on Hennessy’s marketing partnership with the NBA, WNBA, NBA G League and USA Basketball struck in 2020, the brand’s inaugural deal with a North American professional sports league.  A global extension followed, further expanding Hennessy’s presence to the BAL and around the world through immersive fan experiences.

Fans of the NBA and cognac enthusiasts can anticipate exciting new experiences and events from the two iconic organizations.  Hennessy will unveil innovative collaborations and activations that celebrate the NBA’s cultural resonance across fashion, music, art, and design. Additionally, Hennessy will introduce new products, including iterations of their esteemed VS, VSOP, XO and Paradis cognacs.

For the latest updates on Hennessy’s marketing partnership with the NBA, visit Hennessy.com and follow @Hennessy and #HennessyxNBA.

Illuminated by lightning or the setting sun, Santiago Borja’s dramatic photographs (previously) capture storms from a unique perspective: right beside them at eye level. As a Boeing 767 pilot, he observes stunning meteorological phenomena on his travels around the globe, spotting towering cumulonimbus clouds and powerful lightning strikes. “As long as we learn about nature and never underestimate its power, we can safely navigate through its features while enjoying the views,” he says.

Prints of some of Borja’s images are available to purchase on his website, and you can follow his ongoing travels and storm sightings on Instagram.

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“Before there was America the country, or the individual states and the ensuing territorial identities and resulting politics, there was the land that America occupies,” writes artist Adam Silverman about Common Ground. Born in 2019, the ongoing project is ambitious and optimistic, seeking to connect people separated by ideology, geography, and culture through the shared land we occupy.

While its goal is lofty, the premise of Common Ground is simple: Silverman harvests clay, water, and wood ash from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the five occupied U.S. territories—Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and Northern Mariana Islands—and then blends the materials together so that the substances and their origins are indistinguishable. That mixture is the basis of the artist’s ceramic vessels, which encompass two series of tableware and ceremonial pots. He explains about the latter: “The forms are not subtle, and although they stand on strong feet or foundations, they are battered, scarred, leaning over, showing the processes that got them here. The tops are open, symbolically ready to receive.”

A new book published by Inventory Press celebrates Silverman’s ceremonial pots, which are paired with sweeping arrangements made by ikebana students and teachers. Common Ground: With Sogetsu Ikebana Los Angeles documents the artist’s process and explores the impulse behind the project, particularly as it bridges American and Japanese making traditions. Spreads are full of diagrams explaining differences in materials, images of Silverman collecting and preparing his substances, and photos of the completed collaborative works that show myriad Ikebana creations emerging from the vessels.

Common Ground: With Sogetsu Ikebana Los Angeles is currently available from Bookshop, and you can explore more of the project on its site.

“Maryland.” Photo by Joshua White

“Pennsylvania.” Photo by Joshua White

“Louisianna.” Photo by Joshua White

“West Virginia.” Photo by Joshua White

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Ikebana Connects Creative Traditions in ‘Common Ground,’ a Ceramic Project Tying People Together Through Earthen Materials appeared first on Colossal.

The 2023–2024 public lecture series at Cranbrook Academy of Art brings together an innovative group of artists, architects, curators, and designers to address some of the most urgent issues of our time through performance, object making, curation, and critical writing. Together, they encourage us to think expansively about the role of creativity in building community and in shaping the world around us. Each speaker will spend several days on Cranbrook’s campus in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, conducting studio visits and sharing insights into their creative practice. 

The visiting artists include:

• October 19, 2023, 6 p.m.
  Risa Puleo, Independent Curator
• November 9, 2023, 6 p.m.
  Norman Teague, Designer and Educator
• November 30, 2023, 6 p.m.
  Hamza Walker, Director of LAXART
• December 14, 2023, 6 p.m.
  Cannupa Hanska Luger, Multidisciplinary Artist
• January 11, 2024, 6 p.m.
  Yolande Daniels, Associate Professor in Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of studioSUMO 
• February 1, 2024, 6 p.m.
  Ghada Amer, Artist
• February 22, 2024, 6 p.m.
  Andrianna Campbell-LaFleur, Art Critic, Curator, and Historian
• March 21, 2024, 6 p.m.
  Yuri Suzuki, Sound Artist, Designer, Electronic Musician
• April 4, 2024, 6 p.m.
  Roberto Lugo, Artist, Social Activist, Poet, and Educator

All lectures are free and held at Cranbrook Art Museum. Recorded lectures will be available on the Cranbrook Academy of Art deSalle Auditorium YouTube channel. The lecture series is supported by the Gilbert Family Foundation.

Cranbrook Academy of Art is a dynamic community of architects, artists, and designers working together to shape the future of visual art and material culture. Ranked as one of the country’s top graduate-only programs in art, architecture, and design, Cranbrook is a place for students looking to earn their MFA or MArch within a program free from conventional classes and a fixed curriculum. Instead, we offer an unscripted approach to graduate education that centers the questions and interests of artists who choose to study here. The 11 disciplines of study include 2D Design, 3D Design, 4D Design, Architecture, Ceramics, Fiber, Metalsmithing, Painting, Photography, Print Media, and Sculpture.

Applications are now open through February 1, 2024.

Nearly 80 percent of Cranbrook Academy students receive financial aid in the form of gifts and scholarships to assist with the cost of study. This includes up to ten full-tuition Gilbert Fellowships for students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, intended to provide resources and pathways to increase equity within graduate education. 

To learn more, visit cranbrookart.edu.

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