Wharton Esherick, Mid-Century Design

I ran into this information on the Blick Art Supplies website, "12 Ways Artists Can 'Go Greener'". Thought that they made some good points.

While at Barnes and Noble yesterday,  I found many more interesting books, I would like to share a few of them with you. Unfortunately, the Borders Book Store near us is closing...very sad.

The images and information about the books are both from Amazon.

Wharton Esherick: The Journey of a Creative Mind - Mansfield Bascom
 

Wharton Esherick (1887–1970) lived to create. He found his true voice in sculpture, working primarily in local woods he gathered from the forest surrounding his home and studio in rural Pennsylvania. The spiritual father of the contemporary studio furniture movement in America, he pioneered the way for successive generations of woodworking artists to develop their original designs. His work blurs the traditional distinctions between sculpture and furniture, form and function.

Wharton Esherick: The Journey of a Creative Mind is the first and only comprehensive look at the colorful life and work of this seminal artist. Written by Esherick’s son-in-law, and lavishly illustrated, it features photographs of Esherick’s most important artworks as well as the woodland studio he designed, built, and furnished over the course of several decades. Now a museum, preserved as Esherick left it, this remarkable structure and its contents are testament to the warmth, poetry, and passion of one of America’s most influential and celebrated craftsmen.

About the author: Mansfield Bascom, a retired architect and structural engineer, has been married to Wharton Esherick’s daughter Ruth for more than 50 years. Bascom served as the Wharton Esherick Museum’s director until 1990, when he became its curator. He and Ruth live in Esherick’s former workshop in Paoli, Pennsylvania. (info & image from Amazon.com)

After re-connecting in recent years with my cousin, Margaret Milliken's son, I learned  that Wharton Esherick lived or worked at the art center in Rose Valley, Pa. where they lived.  Evidently, he was friends with my aunt and they swaped her paintings for his wood working creations. Facinating to me, because when I visited my aunt's home, I always loved their furniture. I found out years later why. They had very wonderful modern, unique pieces throughout their home. I have always loved mid-century modern design.

Here are 2 more new books that are available now:

Handcrafted Modern: At Home with Mid-century Designers - Leslie Williamson

An intimate and revealing collection of photographs of astonishingly beautiful, iconic, and undiscovered mid-century interiors. Among significant mid-century interiors, none are more celebrated yet underpublished as the homes created by architects and interior designers for themselves. This collection of newly commissioned photographs presents the most compelling homes by influential mid-century designers, such as Russel Wright, George Nakashima, Harry Bertoia, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eva Zeisel, among others.

Intimate as well as revelatory, Williamson’s photographs show these creative homes as they were lived in by their designers: Walter Gropius’s historic Bauhaus home in Massachusetts; Albert Frey’s floating modernist aerie on a Palm Springs rock outcropping; Wharton Esherick’s completely handmade Pennsylvania house, from the organic handcarved staircase to the iconic furniture. Personal and breathtaking by turn—these homes are exemplary studies of domestic modernism at its warmest and most creative.

and another book about Wharton Esherick:

Wharton Esherick: Studio & Collection - Paul Eisenhauer

(The information and images of the books above are from Amazon.com)

I hope that you enjoy these books. Of course, there are many available on these subjects but I thought that I would share these new ones with you.
Be well,
Sondra

Margaret Milliken - Abstract Expressionist (1913-1968)

I wanted to share some of the paintings of my aunt, Margaret Milliken. She was a very important person in my life and left us all too soon. Here is some bio information from her son:

Margaret Milliken was part of the American Abstract Expressionist group of painters of the 1950's and 1960's. She was born in Cres, Yugoslavia in 1913, an island off the Dalmatian Coast, and at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When still a young child she and her family emigrated to the United States where they settled in Chester, Pennsylvania.

In the 1940's she married T. Harry Milliken, a scientist and inventor who designed and built one of the first solar-heated homes in the United States, in which they lived in Rose Valley, Pa. where they raised their three children. In 1959 the family moved to New York City where Margaret became an active member of the vibrant arts community of that era, studying with Hans Hoffman, among others. Her work encompassed pure abstract forms to more figurative representations. Some of her most beautiful paintings were the abstract florals she painted in the years just before she died in 1968 in New York City at the age of fifty-five.

I apologize, in advance, for the quality of the images.

The floral oils are approximately 7' x 6' or 4'.

Margaret Milliken, 1967

I don't tend to write personal stories on my blog, but I decided to do so here.

I wish that she was here. But, she "is" with me. In 2004, I was struggling with the decision whether to leave a very high paying job as an pediatric occupational therapist or develop my own business that was growing and I started in 2001. I loved working with the children and still miss them and my co-workers, but the politics and resulting stress was overwhelming.

One day I was doing the dishes and thinking about what to do and a strong whiff of a familiar scent came my way. I remembered that scent from my Aunt Margaret. I truely felt her presence and support. I had a warm feeling throughout my body and soul to move on to something positive in my life, develop my store and use my right brain......creative energy.

It was my best decision.

Thank you, Aunt Margaret. I miss you but I know that you are with me.


"In my earlier paintings the brushwork is free, but the forms,
restricted to the flower I saw, limited the blossoming of the canvas
as well. In the development of my work, I have been trying to
transform the flowers into a flowering canvas; to turn naturalistic
forms into pictorially expressive light."

Margaret Milliken (1913-1968)