Judd might be the rare artist you can think about in your home during a lockdown nearly as well as you can walking through a pristine gallery space. His aesthetic has filtered so thoroughly through American culture that its fundamental principles are often distorted, diluted, or lost in other ways. His ideas, his life, and his trajectory as an artist offer a fuller way to understand the promise of Minimalisminside and outside the museum. Judd and his cohort made the visual qualities of industrial mass-manufacturing as worthy of aesthetic appreciation as a Michelangelo. Even if they didnt create our material world, Minimalist artists invented how we see it.

After a sojourn in Korea with the U.S. Army, Judd studied art in the 1950s under the GI Bill. His own art practice, sustained by a side-career of writing art criticism, consisted of derivative Abstract Expressionist paintings that gradually reduced into linear abstractions in saturated solid colors. Then the two-dimensional image began projecting out from the wall, in a reverse of Ab-Exs race toward total flatness. Judd embedded found material in his paintings, like a baking pan that makes a shiny divot in a field of black in a work from 1961. The works jump off the wall into three dimensions in the box structures that Judd fabricated with the help of his father (an executive who also happened to be an experienced carpenter) and painted a blazing, inorganic cadmium red.

Theres a poignancy to these early pieces, the handmade joints and seams straining to look more industrial than they are. This vanishes in the mid-1960s, when Judd begins to outsource his work to local manufacturers like Bernstein Brothers Sheet Metal Specialties. The boxes that result are slick, gleaming, and perfect, such as a smaller brass number at MoMA from 1968. You could almost call it cute; it looks to us like a pedestal in a Prada boutique only because retail later adopted (or appropriated) Judds style. In the 60s, such work was perceived as alienating and obtuse. Critics argued over whether to describe the work of Judd and his compatriots like Dan Flavin, Frank Stella, and Yayoi Kusama as Boring Art or Literal Art.

Cantankerous and reclusive as Judd was, he became a kind of Martha Stewart of the avant-garde, a tastemakers tastemaker.

The term Minimalism came from the British philosopher Richard Wollheims 1965 essay Minimal Art. The work contained minimal art-content, Wollheim wrote. If Abstract Expressionism moved from figuration to nonobjective abstraction, then Judd et al. were going even further. Painters like Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning still purported to express stuff with their canvasesmessy things like love, disgust, nature. The whole point of Minimalism was that it didnt express. There was no narrative, no feeling to communicate, no lesson to teach. What you see is what you see, as Stella once said. Instead of dramatic brushstrokes or extravagant symbolism, artistic decisions were limited to a premade paint color, the size of a box, or the finish of a material.

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The Minimized Life - The New Republic

Today it is a virus that has left the museum empty, but long before it was the artists. In fact, the destruction is inscribed in the origins of the museum, an institution that was born from the secular and republican looting of the assets of the monarchy and the church of the Old Regime. The disagreement comes from far away. Since the 19th century the Impressionists still scream when they are remembered complaining about the official juries of the Parisian Salons. While Claude Monet blurted out the dont go to the museums, be like children!, Eugen Kalkschmidt wrote in 1906 The museum of the future inviting to create the Anti-Visitation Union of Museums to fight the boredom that produced him traveling from above downstairs rooms full of Etruscan sarcophagi. We want to destroy the museums! Said Marinetti from the Futurist Manifesto in 1909. Paul Valry, a notorious enemy of the art galleries, also missed the good weather outside. He was not without reason. It was what led Valry to write in 1927 The Conquest of Ubiquity, a short text, quite prophetic, where he announced the advent of a society for the distribution of Sensitive Reality at home , a society where the supply of the images guarded now The museums will function as the supply of water, gas or electricity. A network that predicted the service of art at home. A utopian idea that today seems like an omen.

Tristan Tzara also supported this idea from the Cabaret Voltaire, which opened its doors in Zurich in 1916 under the idea of anti-museum. There is a destructive task to be done; sweeping, cleaning, he said in 1918. That year, when the Spanish flu broke out around the world, Dada was also a virus. Also the assemblies that Duchamp made as curator brushed against the fair booth. At the International Exhibition of Surrealism, held in 1938 in the central hall of the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he did everything he could to make access to works of art an almost impossible endeavor for the visitor. He hung 200 sacks of coal from the ceiling and a brazier in the center. The truth is that neither the sacks contained coal nor the ember brazier, but the heavy presence of the sacks made the public suffer under the threat of three thousand kilos of coal on their heads and the possibility that everything would explode into the air.

View of Urs Fishers Day for Night at the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Sheldan C. Collins

That idea of exposure-nightmare took another turn in 1942 when he staged First Papers of Surrealism at the Whitelaw Reid Mansion in New York. 16 miles of twine was spent making a spider web that was not accessible. An exaggeration that had all kinds of reactions among the artists included in the sample: Remedios Varo could not find comfort while Man Ray was angered for not being invited. Years later, New York was filled with irascibles, a group of dissident artists who exploded against the Metropolitan Museum in 1950 and whose history awaits confined to the rooms of the Juan March Foundation in Madrid.

Other artists, instead, opted for negation from the opposite side. Yves Kleins empty room dates from 1961. Those sixties were the time when the assault on the museum as a paradigm took the big leap. Institutional criticism leaves great examples of clear opposition to the establishment of cultural institutions: Daniel Buren, Michael Ascher, Lawrence Weiner, Dan Graham, Marcel Broodthaers, Hans Haacke From Argentina, Graciela Carnevale proposed a running of the bulls in 1968, within the Cycle of Experimental art. He placed an ad in the newspaper and brought the public to his exhibition at number 22 of the Melipan shopping arcade. Once they were all inside, he went out and locked the door, and left. Breaking the glass was the only way to get out of that also empty exhibition. In 1970, Emilio Hernndez Saavedra, left from Peru one of the mythical works regarding the idea of the museum void: The museum of erased art. An empty center that in 2002 Sandra Gamarra retakes as Limac: a museum that does not exist in a physical headquarters, but that is presented as real through the various ways in which real museums arrive in Lima: through souvenirs, catalogs and cards .

View of the exhibition First Papers of Surrealism (1942), at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia Museum of Art / Art Resource

Although if there is a key name in the idea of destruction and museum that is Chris Burden. In 1985, and for the Henry Art Gallery, he presented Samson: a 100-ton motor connected to an access winch and an extendable wooden double girder that pushed strongly against the gallerys load-bearing walls. Every time a visitor passed the access lathe, the beam pressed against the gallery walls until it cracked. The more visitors, the more destruction. An installation that he repeated in 2004, in the New York gallery Zwirner & Wirth. Urs Fishers gaps at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, titled Day for Night, went along those lines of pushing the museum to its limits. A year later, he raised the floor of the Gavin Browns Enterprise and called it You. A giant hole for $ 250,000. In 2008, the most unique So Paulo Biennial arrived, when Ivo Mesquida left the third floor of the Oscar Niemeyer building empty and was assaulted by young people who filled the walls with graffiti.

A reflection on the possible disappearance of the museum cannot be separated from examining its goals and objectives, its limits. The Antoni Tpies Foundation in Barcelona dedicated an extensive colloquium to this in 1995. I remember one of the curators, Thomas Keenan, defining the museum as a declining institution and inviting all of us to a museum that is responsible for its loss and it emerges from its deconstruction in the form of a museum of museums. That sounded like a phoenix of modern culture. Perhaps from that dysfunctionality you can read the wedding of Shristi Mittal and Gulraj Behl at the Museu Nacional dArt de Catalunya held in 2013. Beyonc and Jay-Z remembered it from the Louvre and Rosala sings it from her Fucking Money Man, looking at I glance at the Macba. Museum excesses and defects. The lights and the shadows. Martin Creed winning the 2001 Turner Prize.

.

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From Monet to the coronavirus: a history of attacks on museums | Babelia - Explica

Lenore Tawney: Dark River, 1962, linen and wood, 164 by 22 1/2 inches.Museum of Modern Art, New York. Lenore Tawney.

IN HER 1965 TREATISE ON WEAVING, the pioneering weaver Anni Albers praises Coptic and ancient Peruvian textiles for their sophisticated formal structurea quality she argues is lacking in contemporary weaving. Yet, she writes, certain recent fiber works do hold interest, including some that trespass into the realm of sculpture. She illustrates her point with photographs of Lenore Tawneys Dark River (1962), a commanding, flawlessly executed weaving that is considered one of the artists masterpieces.

Dark River hung at the center of the exhibition In Poetry and Silence: The Work and Studio of Lenore Tawney. The show was the main event in Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe, a four-part project on view last fall and winter at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The project also included Tawneys 1983 installation Cloud Labyrinth; a display of archival materials such as her journals and letters; and a group show comprising contemporary works that take up strategies that the artist, who died in 2007, at age one hundred, employed in her practice. Dark River is insistently verticalan elongated form, composed of some forty sections woven in black linen, that descends almost fourteen feet from the ceiling and calls to mind lancet arches in Gothic cathedrals. When the work is viewed up close, the particulars of Tawneys hand take precedence: the deft way she created a selvage edge, or repeated the same knot, perfectly, over a span of hundreds of threads, or how she used a single type of yarn to elevate the works formal elements, erasing distracting variations in color, texture, and weight. The overwhelming impression is that of a singular devotion.

Such devotion was central to Tawneys artistic practice, and guided the presentation of her work in the exhibition, which was organized by Karen Patterson, a curator formerly at the museum and now at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. In addition to more than 120 of Tawneys assemblages, drawings, sculptures, and weavings, the show featured an installation loosely re-creating the artists studio in New Yorkwhere she renovated seven lofts between 1957 and 1973complete with her furniture and curios, including ceramics, metal gears, rocks, tortoise shells, wooden shoe molds, and woven baskets. Tawney displayed such objects, many of which she collected during her travels, in highly aesthetic arrangements in her spare, white studios, creating a world of her own, in which she could work in solitude. In interviews, she spoke of losing herself in complex weavings that poured forth like a river, or precise drawings that took entire days to complete. Her solitary tendencies were also a response to her liminal position as a female weaver in postwar New York, stuck between the rigid categories of art and craft. The way forward, Tawney apparently felt, was not to conform, but to do exactly what she wanted to do in her cloistered studios. What emerged was an unexpectedly radical vision of what weaving could be.

TAWNEY WAS BORN IN LORAIN, OHIO, and moved to Chicago at age twenty. She took evening classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while working as a proofreader. Her first marriage was unhappy; her second, to psychologist George Tawney, ended after eighteen months, when he died from pneumonia. In the fall of 1946, Tawney enrolled at the citys Institute of Design, which functioned as a refuge for European artists, many of them associated with the Bauhaus. She studied drawing with Lszl Moholy-Nagy, drawing and watercolor with Emerson Woelffer, sculpture with Alexander Archipenko, and weaving with Marli Ehrman. After spending the summer at Archipenkos studio in Woodstock, New York, Tawney threw all her sculpture into a cellar in a theatrical moment of self-realization, smashing most of it. Fiercely independent, she did not want to be beholden to anyone elses style. The three small-scale clay works from this period that survive, which were juxtaposed with her early weavings in the exhibition, bear the influence of Archipenkos formal simplicity, Cubist-style planarity, and figural abstraction. Despite Tawneys forceful rejection of sculpture, her training in the medium would guide her approach to weaving in the 1960s and contribute to her most significant artistic innovations.

Working on a secondhand loom in her home in Chicago, Tawney initially wove utilitarian items like shawls and table mats. Her weaving was sporadic until she attended a workshop taught by modernist tapestry weaver Martta Taipale at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina in the fall of 1954. Upon returning to Chicago, Tawney completed her first pictorial weaving, St. Francis and the Birds (1954), a somewhat crudely rendered depiction of the patron saint of animals surrounded by three birds. To make a traditional work like this one, the artist builds up the design with threads known as the weft, lacing them through a set of threads called the warp that is stretched longitudinally on a loom, and pulling them tightly into each other with a component of the loom called a beater or batten, so that they cover the warp. The warp threads are held in a fixed alignment with the looms reed, a closed, comblike implement that is usually attached to the beater. Soon, Tawney was pushing against the constraints of this process.

A 1955 work titled Birds and Flower, included in the recent exhibition, is an important transitional piece that demonstrates just how quickly Tawneys sense of weaving matured. Executed in black and neutral-toned linen and wool threads, it is a chromatically subtle work in which Tawney created textural effects using threads with different weights, surface qualities, and sheens. Four birds appear in profile against a series of overlapping squares in a neatly color-blocked composition that morphs into something else entirely toward its center, where Tawney depicted a flower. She left the petals nearly transparent, with lengths of warp threads hanging loose and exposed. Discontinuous weft threads provide the flowers outline and create patterning on the petals. The delicate petals are counterbalanced by the thick tangle of fluffy yarn that constitutes the blossoms center. Tawneys energetic portrayal of the flower makes the careful silhouettes of the birds in the tapestry suddenly appear staid, even old-fashioned.

Tawneys technique of leaving portions of the warp to hang unsupported by crossing weft threads, known as open-warp weaving, signaled a shift in her work toward a looser, more expressive approach. This style reached a high point in her 1957 piece Shadow River, which could easily pass for an abstract painting if looked at quickly in reproduction. Largely transparent, Shadow River is hung ninety degrees from its orientation on the loom, so that its silver, cream, and white warp threads run lengthwise. Thick woven vertical bands at the sides of the weaving hold the warp threads in place, giving the piece structureto a point. Due to the lack of consistent weft threads throughout the composition, the warp threads sag, creating rippling forms that, while beautiful, compromise the weavings structural integrity. (Tawney collaborated with glass artists Frances and Michael Higgins to encase the work between two pieces of glass, so that it would be stable.) Curving forms made of black and dark purple weft threads appear to float across the weaving, defying the linear matrix produced by the loom. In a virtuoso passage beside this series of arcs, Tawney achieved the lyricism of a freely drawn or painted line using thin black thread.

TAWNEYS FORMAL BREAKTHROUGH COINCIDEDwith an equally dramatic rupture in her personal life: her move to New York. In 1957, at age fifty, she left her comfortable life in Chicagoher friends, her home on the North Shore, her workshop with three loomsto move to a derelict cold-water loft on Coenties Slip, a street in a seaport area on the southern tip of Manhattan. Tawney felt that her life in Chicago was holding her back, and she wanted to focus solely on her art, without distractions.4 She planned to stay in New York for a year, but never left.5

Tawney rented the loft from painter Jack Youngerman and his wife, the actress and filmmaker Delphine Seyrig. What the raw industrial space lacked in amenities, it made up for in its proximity to the East Riverwater was a recurrent motif in Tawneys work, and in Chicago she had lived near Lake Michiganand to other artists. On the Slip, Tawney came in contact with a loosely affiliated group that included Robert Indiana (then Robert Clark), Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, and James Rosenquist. The artists were distinguished from those in Greenwich Village by their isolated location, their respect for one anothers privacy, and a general aversion to the raucous scene at Abstract Expressionist hangouts like the Cedar Tavern.6 Tawney maintained a close relationship with Martin and, to a lesser extent, Indiana, but her role as a weaver set her apart from her Coenties Slip colleagues. In 2017, Youngerman recalled, regretfully, that he had dismissed Tawneys work at the time because as a woman and as a weaver, she was maybe the most outlier of all of us on Coenties Slip. The rest of us were working with paint on canvas, and except for Agnes Martin, we were men.7 That Tawney was left out of Hans Namuths iconic 1958 Life magazine photograph of the artists on the roof of a building on the Slip reflects her outsider status.

In the fall of 1961, Tawney studied Peruvian textiles and gauze weaving techniques with the German fiber artist Lili Blumenau. (Ancient Peruvian textiles were a source of inspiration for many weavers at the time, not just Albers.) Around this timewhile preparing for an exhibition at the Staten Island Museum of works she made since 1955Tawneys aesthetic shifted. She purged her studio of old yarn, and custom-ordered a linen variety that was plied and polished to be hard, dense, and smooth enough to create a woven surface of substantial weight.8 She reduced her palette largely to black and natural-colored linen, expanded her works scale, and, most important, created a new reed for her loom. Whereas standard reeds are closed, Tawneys could be opened at will, enabling her to reposition the warp threads mid-weaving and thus to produce works with shifting geometric formats.

Tawneys open reed had enormous implications for her practice. The complex shapes of pieces like The Bride (1962)a dynamic 11-foot-tall form with variously angled sidesquickly superseded the rectilinearity of her prior weavings.9 The process of making this work, for which she employed three weaving techniques to create different levels of transparency and texture, required exacting concentration and focus over extended periods of time. That she could see only a foot of her composition on the loom at any given time further complicated the process.10 Tawneys ability to execute demanding patterns at such a consistently high level of finish, at such a large scale, further cemented her position at the vanguard of weaving in the United States.

In 1963, Tawneys new works were featured in Woven Forms, an influential group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Arts and Design) in New York. Paul J. Smith, the director of the museum and curator of the show, conceived the exhibition as a solo presentation of Tawneys work, but decided to expand it to include the work of four other artists (Alice Adams, Sheila Hicks, Dorian Zachai, and Claire Zeisler) producing experimental weavings. The shows title is a term Tawney used to describe the increasingly sculptural quality of her work. In the gallery, Smith displayed Tawneys pieces away from the walls, suspending some at the center of the room. Viewers could walk among her woven forms, examining their surfaces at close range or stepping back to look at a number of them together. Smiths installation, in other words, was premised on movement and invited the viewers physical interaction with Tawneys works.

THE EXPERIENCE OF MOVING AMONG THE WORKSstayed with Tawney and informed her late Cloud series, which she began in 1977 with a piece commissioned for the lobby of the new Federal Building in Santa Rosa, California. She pulled thousands of threads through a large rectangular canvas in a gridded pattern, knotted their ends, and hung the canvas horizontally from the lobbys ceiling, so that the threads cascaded into the spacea dramatic installation that felt light, almost weightless, despite its substantial scale. Tawneys subsequent Clouds followed this basic format. Created for the International Biennial of Tapestry in Lausanne, Switzerland, and installed in its own gallery at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Cloud Labyrinth is a particularly evocative example. For this work, Tawney tied pink threads to the ends of natural-colored ones to create sixteen-foot-long pieces that she attached to an 18-by-24-foot canvas. She coated various threads with gesso, giving them textural contrast and weight, and left areas of the canvas open in a spiral pattern that produces a pathway through the threads when the work is installed. Cloud Labyrinth nearly filled the gallery, and the subtle pink color infused the room with the evanescent glow of a sunrise. The long, hanging threads, which recalled the loose warp threads of Tawneys earlier weavings, quivered and swayed with the slightest current of air as viewers passed by.

Given the fragile nature of Cloud Labyrinth, visitors were not permitted to walk the pathway in the installation. Laura Bickford, the curator of this portion of the Mirror of the Universe project, included a 1979 film, Cloud Dance, in which dancer/choreographer Andy De Groat spins and dances in and around another of Tawneys Clouds. His movements make the piece come alive, underscoring the extent to which Tawneys art had transformed, over nearly three decades, from practical items to sculptural woven forms to, ultimately, installations attuned to the rhythms of the body.

One might say that the Clouds mark the apex of Tawneys long career as an iconoclastic, shape-shifting weaver, the artist once more pushing against the limits of her medium. But to do so is to sell the far-reaching nature of Tawneys body of work short. While the Clouds are composed of knotted threads, they are not, in fact, weavings. More than just a culmination of Tawneys prior work, these ethereal installations represent a crucial moment of its unmaking. Through her knowledge of her materials, her technical ingenuity, and her repeated willingness to risk failure, Tawney remade her medium according to her own exacting vision until, toward the end of her career, she had no more need for weaving at all.

1 Anni Albers, On Weaving, Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press, 1965, pp. 6970.2 Tawney made various statements conveying this inclination. Referring to her mid-1950s weaving Family Tree, for instance, she said, I thought to myself, it wont be any good. Then I thought, but I dont have to show anybody; its just for myself. And I felt so free! She also noted that she didnt care that her first nontraditional weavings were controversial. Both of these incidents are cited in Glenn Adamson, Student: 1945 to 1960, Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe, Sheboygan, Wis., John Michael Kohler Arts Center, in association with Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2019, p. 59.3 See ibid., p. 52.4 Lenore Tawney, journal entry, Dec. 4, 1967, quoted in ibid., p. 69.5 Margo Hoff, Lenore Tawney: The Warp Is Her Canvas, Craft Horizons 17, no. 6, NovemberDecember 1957, p. 19.6 See Agnes Martin, ed. Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell, London, Tate Publishing, 2015, p. 24, and Nancy Princenthal, Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art, New York, Thames & Hudson, 2015, pp. 6667.7 Jack Youngerman, quoted in Adamson, Student, p. 72, n. 94.8 Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larsen, Beyond Craft: The Art Fabric, New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1972, pp. 26771.9 For a detailed technical description of this work, see Florica Zaharia, Technical Analysis: The Bride, in Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe, p. 170.10 Lenore Tawney: A Retrospective, ed. Kathleen Nugent Mangan, New York, Rizzoli International Publications, in association with New York, American Craft Museum, 1990, p. 24.

This article appears under the titleDevotion and Solitude in the May 2020 issue, pp. 5461.

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Midcentury Artist Lenore Tawney Offered a Radical Vision of What Weaving Could Be - ARTnews

Photo provided by Ornamental Mouldings & Millwork

Transform a dull room by putting exposed wooden beams onto ceilings. More companies are touting it as a more affordable and less cumbersome project that even do-it-yourselfers can perform.

Wooden beams can enhance high ceilings and add a decorative element to a space. Companies are offering faux beams made to resemble the real look of wood to cut the costs. These faux wooden beams are available in a variety of styles and textures.

Photo provided by Ornamental Mouldings & Millwork

Plus, theyre lightweight, which lends itself to a DIY job. Prices vary, but a 13-foot faux wood beam, for example, can cost between $130 to $185. (Google faux wood beams and mouldings for options).

Add them to dress up a family room, master bedroom, or bathroom or even to add a rustic look to a kitchen.

One company, Ornamental Moulding & Millwork, touts DIY options such as its ambrosia maple and prefinished gray, which are lightweight, eight-foot-long hollow, U-shaped beams. They come with mounting plates and hardware for installation.

Photo provided by Ornamental Mouldings & Millwork

Were seeing people attach our beams to ceilings in family rooms, kitchens, dining rooms and bedrooms, says Keith Early, vice president of marketing and new product development at Ornamental Mouldings & Millwork. This definitely is a project a DIYer can tackle. Whether its adding straight beams to a ceiling, creating a center beam with cross beams or crafting a coffered ceiling, these beams provide the ideal way to enhance a familys living space.

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Wooden beams that dress up ceilings: A DIY project - STLtoday.com

In addition to our normal news coverage, What Now Atlanta is tracking ways Atlantas businesses are adapting to the novel coronavirus and the challenges it brings to brick-and-mortars.

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Downtown speakeasy Red Phone Booth will reopen its doors on Monday, June 1 after acquiring the latest in air purification technology and sanitizing solutions, the restaurant Tuesday announced in a press release.

Global Plasma Solutions installed Needlepoint Bipolar Ionization (NBPI) technology that purifies air by eliminating airborne particulates, odors, and pathogens by attacking and killing viruses, mold spores, and bacteria, according to the release.

This air filtration technology is reportedly used in many hospitals like Boston Childrens Hospital, the Mayo Clinic and Houston Memorial Hospital Baylor UMC as well as The White House and major universities such as Clemson and Harvard.

Red Phone Booths new cleaning protocols also include frequent disinfecting measures applied throughout the facility from floor to ceiling using Clean Wells healthcare grade disinfectant MonoFoil D that kills 99.9 percent of bacteria on surfaces.

This EPA approved solution bonds to most surfaces providing an active germ barrier for 30-60 days, according to the release.

Other safety measures will include staff uniformed with masks and gloves, reservations, staggered arrival times, half capacity, and social distancing seating as well as frequent sanitization procedures.

Safety for our guests is of the utmost importance at Red Phone Booth, Stephen de Haan, the restaurants co-founder, said.

We were already utilizing the latest technology in air purification since we offer an extensive cigar program. With the installation of the Bipolar Ionization generators and MonoFoil D, our facility will set the gold standard in guest safety and comfort.

Restaurants were allowed to reopen dining rooms as of Monday, April 27, so as long as owners implemented 39 state-issued guidelines.

[Editors note:The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is rapidly evolving as is its effect on Atlanta, and the Citys businesses and its residents.Click here for What Now Atlantas ongoing coverage of the crisis.For guidance and updates on the pandemic,please visit the C.D.C. website.]

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Red Phone Booth Installs Air Purification, 'Disinfection Technology' In Anticipation of June 1 Reopening - What Now Atlanta

2019 was the year California cannabis brands began experimenting with retail concepts, and Los Angeles was ground zero. Sleek vape heavyweight Stiiizy made its suitably emphatic entry into retail in August.

The 6,500-square-foot flagship store on the industrial edge of downtown L.A.s Arts District is one of three retail locations the brand opened in California last year. (The others are in Davis and the Mission District of San Francisco.) The DTLA store brings to life the brands increasingly well realized East and South L.A. streetwear aesthetic, colored with artistic and architectural nods to the recent past and distant future.

Brands have been tapping maverick interior designers and architects from traditional sectors to reimagine their identity in dynamic retail formats, and Stiiizy enlisted San Francisco-based interior architect Gi Paoletti to help navigate the leap.

After fifteen years working in commercial and mixed-used developments for global architecture firms RMW Architecture & Interiors and NBBJ, Paoletti started her own boutique firm Gi Paoletti Design Lab, which specializes in bars, restaurants, and now, conceptual dispensaries. Some of her recent projects include the Bay Areas Tipsy Pig, Bloodhound, and Barrique. Stiiizy was Paolettis first cannabis client, and she admits being surprised about the lightning evolution of design in the herb retail sector.

I think whats really great about cannabis retail, she said, is it went from these shady stores straight to high design. Weve almost skipped that middle area. I think theres something tremendously exciting about that.

High design is apt beyond the trite pun. Stiiizys striking space is vast and cavernous, with an entirely matte-black ceiling that conveys the feeling of infinity looming above. Divided into four stark-white sales pods in which budtenders preside over more than fifty big-name brandsincluding Stiiizys new flower line Liiit, and edibles Biiitthe space also has a vape pen customization bar and a line of, frankly, very cool, limited-edition Stay Stiiizy clothing.

One of the primary directives from the client, Paoletti explained, was they wanted the entire space to be Instagrammable.

Stiiizy has been one of the most successful and active brands on Instagram, boasting around 319,000 followers at the time of writing. In the past year, the brand has found its social steez, recognizing its sleek-on-fleek metallic vapes have become a fashion accessory for L.A.s Supreme- and Golf-clad audience. The brands online presence no doubt has had a major lift from its legion of influential fans, which includes the likes of Migos, Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa, Joe Rogan, and Post Malone.

When you think about making an entire space Instagrammable, youve got to consider whats going to inspire someone to want to take a picture and to share it with their friends. Whats going to create that wow factor? Paoletti said.

For her, the real question was how do you take an empty warehouse with really high ceilings and turn it into something that blows peoples minds, over and over again, every time they come in?

She focused on changeability, advising her client to frequently offer something new and visually compelling. Stiiizy chose to refresh the experience with rotating art and installations. Among the original works on display recently was a twenty-nine-foot installation by renowned L.A. street artist RETNA. Relic wildstyle pieces from L.A. street artists Mr. Cartoon and Kelly Risk Graval adorn the lobby walls.

To the brands founder, James Kim, art is a crucial part of the Los Angeles location. He explained he wanted the store to be a reflection of the creativity in the Arts District.

Paoletti baked the frequent interior refreshes into her design. In the lobby where you check in, we did these Instagram stations, she said. Theres two of them there, and inside are removable panels, so [store management] could change the interior monthly, every six months, whatever they want to do.

Stiiizy DTLAs Instagrammable-ness starts the moment consumers see its Cannabis for the Culture motto emblazoned across the top of the buildings exterior, proudly looking northeast over U.S. Route 101 and the Deja Vu strip club.

Paoletti admits her laser focus on designing a space that can exist in parallel online and in the real world was an interesting and novel challenge, and she said it is particularly innovative for once-clandestine dispensaries.

This idea of making a space like this public in such a big way is new, she said, adding research for the project took her to Denver to explore the OG recreational states retail landscape.

I toured a bunch of different cannabis stores over a week period, and I would ask, Can I take pictures? And they said, No. Absolutely not. Then I had a couple who said, You can take pictures, but no people can be in them. Thats what made me realize Stiiizys store was really at the vanguard of something new.

Her recent experience with city building departments in Los Angeles and San Francisco suggests a sea change in the desire for transparency. As Paoletti tells it, regulators want to move away from the shady, dank dispensaries that defined the pre-recreational era into something considerably more visible.

Its clear that as an architect working in cannabis retail, Paoletti feels a sense of personal obligation and responsibility for the de-stigmatization of weed. Theres still an intimidation around buying cannabis, she said. A person might be curious, but if they walk in and feel intimidated, they might turn around and walk out. Then, youve just lost someone that could have been a lifetime customer.

I think the designers role is to make this space inviting, beautiful, and also easy to walk through, she added. We talk a lot about the aesthetic, but its really important to consider the functionality of the space so people feel comfortable enough to start asking questions and learning this isnt scary. Its just a plant.

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2019 was the year California cannabis brands began experimenting with retail concepts, and Los Angeles was - mg Cannabis Retailer

William Steele, who lives in Downfield Place, also claims Castle Rock Edinvar (CRE) is responsible for repair work which left wiring in an "unsafe condition," after an electrician came in July to fix bathroom and kitchen lighting which had fused due to flooding from the flat above in November 2018.

Mr Steele, 56, says he plans to take the matter to the Housing Ombudsman and has been in touch with the trade association for the electrical contracting industry in Scotland, SELECT, and the National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting (NICEIC).

A CRE spokeswoman said an Electrical Installation Condition Report verifies that the work carried out by their repairs team at Mr Steele's home last year meets the national safety standard for electrical installations. The Evening News has asked to see this report, which is understood to relate only to improvement work done in December.

Pictures taken by Mr Steele show the condition of the wiring when he first discovered it in November, four months after the electrician came to fix the lighting. It appears to show that the junction box a box containing the flat's wiring has been removed and left on top of his water tank lid in a cupboard.

Mr Steele, who has been a tenant in the Dalry flat for 27 years, says he was also hit by rubble falling from his water-damaged bathroom ceiling when part of it collapsed as he showered - and he made a complaint after workers failed to turn up to fix it in July.

The complaint was upheld by CRE managers who apologised to him for a "prolonged series of service failures" including workmen not leaving calling cards when he was not at home, and ensuring appointment letters reached his address.

Mr Steele said: "Dust raining down during the use of the shower was constant and it became a serious concern when they asked to test for asbestos."

He said in December, a year on from the flood, workmen eventually came round to fully repair the bathroom ceiling.

Mr Steele also said he was satisfied with the work done by electricians in December.

But a second complaint made by Mr Steele, concerning the previous condition of the wiring, was not upheld by CRE who said they could not explain why it was outside of the junction box and that they did not leave any electrics in an unsafe state.

Mr Steele added: "It wasn't an act of God.

"The wiring was left sitting on top of the water tank. There were metal pipes resting on a cardboard lid and I could have easily just put my hand up and touched it.

"The water tank cupboard is right outside my bedroom door and, if a fire had started, I would not have been able to get out.

"The whole thing is completely unacceptable."

A Castle Rock Edinvar spokesperson said: "We take our customers concerns very seriously and have liaised with him to address them as effectively and efficiently as possible.

"We can confirm that an Electrical Installation Condition Report verifies that the work carried out by our repairs team at his home last year meets the national safety standard for electrical installations."

A NICEIC spokeswoman said they working with Mr Steele to understand the issue fully in line with their formal complaints procedure.

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Edinburgh tenant forced to shower while rubble and dust 'rained down' on him as he waited a year for bathroom ceiling fix - Edinburgh News

They say good things come in small packages, which is certainly true of a gallery in Boston. Like other galleries and museums shuttered during the pandemic, it's had to resort to presenting work online, but with a significant twist: The space only measures 20 by 30 inches.

Welcome to Shelter In Place gallery, the creation of Eben Haines, a painter who is also an exhibition designer at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). As he told the art website Hyperallergic, the project began after he lost his job back in March, when the museum closed and furloughed its staff.

Like so many artists, Haines found himself stuck at home, away from his studio. His solution was to launch SIP, which he describes as "as a new platform for Boston artists" on his Instagram account.

SIPwas inspired byHainess participation in a 2018 group show in Minneapolistitled "Art Fair." In something of a send-up of the eponymous mega events that have come to dominate the art world, each artist had to fit their work into an "art fair booth:" A ten-by-ten inch box painted white. Haines realized that a scale-model space could also serve as a tool for his practice going forward; it would let him envision how large pieces would look in an actual exhibition setting by fashioning them first in miniature. And so he created the model that later became SIP.

Once the quarantine began, he started to invite artists to present Lilliputian paintings, sculptures and installations for the showcase, which he'd photograph and post on Instagram. Thanks to such miniaturized industrial-space-turned-gallery details as painted brick walls, windows, skylights, wooden floorboards and ceiling trusses, the images, which are shot in natural light, appear amazingly lifelike, as if they were of a real exhibitionproof that even in these constricted times, imagination has no limits.

More here:
This miniature gallery in Boston exhibits only tiny art - Time Out

Demolition for the $13.5-million Canada Games Aquatic Centre upgrades will begin this week, nearly two months ahead of schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

City of Kamloops capital projects manager Darren Crundwell said the city bumped its timeline on account of swim meets being cancelled. Initially, the city was planning to start the project at the end of June, working the project around competitive swimming. That final meet in late June, however, has since been cancelled, swept up in myriad event cancellations resulting from the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Because the facility is closed, were taking advantage, unfortunately, of the COVID situation, Crundwell said, noting work can begin earlier as the building is empty with recreation centres shuttered due to the pandemic.

Early work, however, is not expected to shave time off of the project completion date, which remains at the end of this year, due to constraints of the pandemic on construction crews required to physically distance. However, it provides a bit more wiggle room.

Our schedule was really tight before because we were trying to do it between the swim meet at the end of June and then there was another swim meet in January, Crundwell said.

We were really compressed with the swim schedule. This gives us a little more time and we know were not going to be as efficient with construction, as well. Were ensuring our contractors are following provincial guidelines with respect to COVID. We know thats going to have impacts on productivity. This gives us a bit more float in the construction schedule.

The project is driven by need to replace the building envelope roof and walls on an aging facility. It was built before the Tournament Capital Centre was added, dating back three decades to the Canada Summer Games in the early 1990s. Unlike the citys Tranquille Road sewer project, the scope of the pool project will not change due to the pandemic.

In addition, it includes replacing the mechanical, electrical and HVAC systems, replacing boilers with energy-efficiency options, repainting interior pool walls and ceiling, offices and other space, constructing a new entrance to improve accessibility and security, replacing and modernizing change rooms and common areas, replacing the hot tub, sauna and steam room with energy-efficient options and safety improvements.

The general contractor is Chandos Construction and the project is being funded through debt ($6.2 million), reserves ($4.3 million), grants ($2.5 million) and climate action revenues ($500,000).

During deliberations, Mayor Ken Christian and Coun. Mike OReilly had suggested postponing the project until a later time, due to the pandemic, but council ultimately decided to move ahead, noting the city can take advantage of closure of the facility.

New turf installation will see Hillside Stadium closed

In addition to the Canada Games pool renovation, Hillside Stadium is getting a new field.

Beginning on Tuesday, May 19, the $600,000 artificial turf replacement project will close Hillside Stadium to the public through late July. The entire facility, including the track, will remain closed for the duration of the project.

Theres going to be equipment running all over the track and everything, Crundwell said.

Council deferred replacement of the track as it analyzed the impact of the pandemic on city finances.

See the article here:
$13.5-million Canada Games Pool project to begin seven weeks earlier than scheduled - Kamloops This Week

Smart home solutions often promise a quick and easy transformation of your home. And, in most cases, it does not require more than a little affinity for technology in order to add some smart to your home.

But do these gadgets, which promise foolproof installations, really create a smart home, or are they just toys? What can a professional system integrator add in order to transform four walls with a ceiling into something intelligent?

What to expect from DIY smart home solutions

The installation of DIY gadgets is mostly very easy and the programming via smartphones or tablets takes, thanks to intuitive apps, a matter of minutes. Within 10 minutes, you can have your light up and running with your phone, a smart thermostat automatically creates a cosy atmosphere and intelligent power sockets only provide electricity to those devices which are currently used. As it is state of the art, all solutions can be controlled from the owners mobile.

This all sounds great, but unfortunately there are some downsides to DIY and ironically, the first downside of all is controlling the smart gadgets from a mobile device.

DIY: One app per solutioneach!

Aside from the fact that some apps are only available for Googles Android and others only for Apples iOS, each solution requires a separate app, leaving the homeowner with a number of apps, for which manuals have to be studied, online accounts created and familiarisation required for knowing what you actually have installed.

Considering that most people do not know all the functionality of their smartphones, not knowing all functionality of your smart home gadget might not only result in a waste of money for solutions you do not use, but also possible inconvenience, which is the opposite of what a smart home is supposed to be.

A solution to this problem would be to buy devices from only one manufacturer, but this would result in a reduction in flexibility, as you would be bound to this manufacturer (who could also stop support for their smart homes products at any time). This problem brings us to the next downside of DIY systems: Compatibility

DIY: Compatibility problems

When it comes to smart home devices, there are many competing technologies, all using different ways of communicating. From the hardware side, the devices might communicate via Wi-Fi, others via cable. And from the software side, some devices might use cloud-based solutions but most established systems require a strong software compatibility.

Imagining there were only two methods of communication (Wi-Fi or cable) and only three established systems with their own software solutions (Apple, Amazon or Google), the chance that you have compatible devices is one in six. Now, in the real world, we know there are more ways of communication and many more manufacturers with solutions on the market so the logical conclusion is that compatibility is almost not-existent.

DIY: What about security and privacy?

The good news is that all gadgets usually include an encryption mechanism, which prevents unauthorised access to the devices settings. And should you have forgotten to close a door through which a hacker might slip, the hacker would only have access to one gadget and not to all those involved in making your home smart.

However, many devices used in a smart home, such as smart TVs and voice activated hubs, are collecting information in order to identify the owners patterns and automate processes (for example, a light goes on according to previous behaviours). The result is that all those companies are collecting data about you, which they might then use for further marketing or further customer service purposes. But if you are not comfortable with companies collecting data about your smart home, then this type of home automation is not for you.

What to expect from professional smart home solutions?

DIY solutions do contribute to the smart of a smart home, but at the same time, they have the reputation to be a hobby for tech-fans or a toy, some more expensive, some less.A professionally installed system, on the other hand, is not an impulse investment in various devices. It requires an initial planning process at which all needs of the home owner are identified, further usage forecasted (for example, when the children grow up and move out) and in some cases require physical work on the home, such as when new cables have to be pulled.

Not only is a professional installation fully customised to the homeowners needs, it also offers a high level of flexibility, as a professionally installed system also comes with a whole infrastructure for the home, which can be extended and modified with new devices at any time. Needless to say, a professional installation also adds greater value to your home as it has transformed the physical building to provide for a smart home infrastructure.

However, a professionally installed system will naturally involve a higher initial financial investment as the cost covers not just a few devices, but by a whole system wired through the whole house.

DIY vs Professional: Whats next?

DIY and professional systems have one thing in common: Both have many technologies and systems, and new ones are released every day. So after you have decided whether to use a DIY or professional system, the next question remains the same: Which technology is the right one?

The answer is simple: Whereas DIY solutions are mostly chosen depending on personal preference (be it design, function or just the colour), professional solutions should be open to many manufacturers in order to provide maximum compatibility and flexibility.

Professional installation: Getting rid of children's diseases

Once an open protocol technology is chosen, the issue of compatibility no longer exists. In the case of KNX for example, all compatible devices are certified and guarantee flawless compatibility, meaning that, for example, one interface can control the entire installation.

As for security, the configuration of devices is mostly done via professional tools, which require proper training in order to use them. For the homeowner, there is still the possibility to make minor changes, which have been agreed on with the professional integrator (although an installation by a professional installer is best not to be touched by newbies).

So what is the right choice for me?

The answer to this question is not at all surprising: It all depends on you! If you only need to have one or two lamps controlled with your phone, DIY might be the better choice. However, if you want to jump on the smart home train and invest in sustainable solutions, the professional installation might be more interesting for you.

These scenarios might help you decide. DIY solutions would be more favourable for smaller apartments, which have been rented. These solutions can easily be taken to the next place, adding some intelligence to the place you live now as well as future homes. Also, when you just want to add a little bit of convenience to your daily life without having the need to go all-in, the respective DIY solution is the right choice.

The recommendation for professional installations goes to home owners, who would like to add value to their real estate and are able to invest a little extra in their house. Basic installations pricewise can start at under a thousand dollars and can range to significantly higher. However, with a basic installation, you can enjoy all advantages of a smart home, totally custom made for you.

Image:https://readwrite.com/2019/12/26/iot-and-home-automation-is-it-the-future/

*Ian Richardson, Chairman at KNX National Group Australia

More here:
How to get started turning your house into a smart home - Architecture and Design