I'll be posting my shoot with Agnes and her kiddos (Manon and Lucas) after this one but I wanted to preface that blogpost with a little snippet about my friend Agnes. In a nutshell, she's cool. REALLY cool. The kind of cool you are either born with or you aren't. You can't DEVELOP or LEARN this kind of cool. Her whole family is incredibly artistically inclined and that gene certainly didn't skip her. I immediately fell in love with her apartment, decorated with the perfect combination of art, funk, color, style, originality and totally infused with her wacky and edgy personality. To say I instantly felt at home is an understatement. I was ready to move in permanently. In fact, I'm still trying to figure out how to make that happen.... :)
The very first thing I noticed where these INSANELY awesome chairs that she designed/created herself using old beat up wooden chairs she found at the various flea markets in town and upon which she covered with french comics and applied a lacquer over the top to seal them. If I could have found a way to transport one of these home, I would have. Seriously. I NEED this. NEED. Then again, my house is so NOT cool that these chairs would be the equivalent to the Sesame Street song: "One of these is not like the other" and I'd end up looking like someone TRYING to be cool when they're so NOT cool. So, I basically can't pull this kind of stuff off until I find a money tree which allows me to move into a really awesome old victorian house that I can decorate from scratch however I want to..... yeah. So. In the meantime..... Having said that, my kids rooms are pretty cool and I think I could find a way to integrate this idea into their rooms. I'm going to have Agnes send me a stack of french comics and I am going to send her a stack of American comics and we are going to have our respective chairs made sometime this year!
Here are a few pictures of Agnes's AWESOME chairs. Oh and also a picture of us walking back home from the annual "garage sale" in the Montmartre neighborhood where she managed to score yet another chair, soon to become gloriously reborn by her! Try picturing all of us walking onto the local bus with a big chair in our arms. Yeah, it was pretty funny. :)
Oh and the mirrors. I LOVED all the old, intricately detailed mirrors she had all over the apartment. And books EVERYWHERE. Sigh.
The next coolest thing ever? This lamp she made using the X-Rays from her broken leg a while back. Awesome. :)
Every wall is covered in art she's either made or acquired. I love this series of small canvases put together to cover a large space. All of the small canvases were done by her and the kids. I love how they seamlessly fit together despite all being so different and unique!
I also think their cat Ming deserves his own little feature as he himself could be considered a piece of art. This little cat has a BIG personality!
A limited overview of the living room. I should have photographed every room (especially since the kids' rooms were so amazing too) but I was just too busy having the time of my life. Sorry!
