Happy Holidays from AP Projects

What a busy year 2018 was! Just some of the highlights are listed below. We are going to rest on our laurels a bit, so please be advised that AP Projects will be closed for the holidays from December 21 through January 2, 2019.

Nick Cave, Crystal Cloudscape (detail), 2016, MASS MoCA (from the exhibition entitled Until)

2018 HIGHLIGHTS


- Addition of a new fabulous Production Manager
- Successful partnership with Specified Agents - Hospitality Solutions
- Transition to a new office space within Little Tree Art Studios (complete with water cooler!)
- Countless custom mirrors
- Custom art package referencing Atlanta history and it's influential figures
- New collaboration on a major hotel brand's forthcoming roll-out
- Fun seeing our Hotel Clermont guestroom art in numerous guests' social
media posts
- Hands on production for hundreds of colorful original pieces now in Aruba
- Hosted an amazing Designer Studio Visit with Atlanta Artist Sonya Yong James
- First Sports Arena installation
- Gallery purchases of work by some of our favorite artists 
- Coordination of Programming Events for the Atlanta Chapter of NEWH (Including a visit with Elizabeth Ingram at Golden Eagle Diner's Club and Designer led tour of the Omni Hotel at The Battery Atlanta)
- First BDNY experience


Here’s to an equally exciting 2019!

Amy Parry Projects

Currently Inspired By...

More and more we are honoring requests to show art options with greater depth and texture. For this last Inspiration Board of the year, we would like to share a “few of our favorite (dimensional) things.”

There is so much to love about three-dimensional art; how it can punctuate a space and accentuate the overall design. Please click through these options in wood, glass, metal, fiber, porcelain and even just thickly applied paint.

Happy Thanksgiving | What We Gathered at BDNY

Amy Parry Projects is enjoying a relaxing week in celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. Wishing the same for all of our many friends and contacts!

Thanksgiving Turkey + Math Lesson, 1917, uncovered in an Oklahoma City Elementary School classroom. Read more about this fascinating 100 year old art discovery here.

APP Out of Town

In the spirit of gratitude, we are thankful for our work within the highly creative
Boutique Hospitality Industry.


We had a very inspiring trip to this year's Boutique Design New York (BDNY trade fair) where we could see and hear firsthand from leaders in our industry. The work of a lot of creative minds goes into each and every hotel and it was greatly affirming to see how much collaboration is truly happening.

The public spaces of our global hotels are being designed with greater connectivity in mind. There are amazing innovations in lighting, A/V and modular furniture. Accessories and mirrors are truly standing out. And punctuating all of the spaces, artwork is still cited as the icing on the cake - offering guests a sense of time and place which is an essential element of memorable travel. We saw inventive design elements that allow endless possibilities for integrating art. We are moving so far beyond the framed print these days!

BDNY proves this industry to be flourishing, with an abundance of exciting resources. Not surprisingly, the most fruitful part of our trip was the face time we had with some of the great Designers who bring all of these resources together. We are grateful to be one part of creating successful hotel experiences that guests will remember and we cannot wait to see what collaborations 2019 will bring about.


We were also fortunate enough to catch Nick Cave at Jack Shainman, the Salon Art + Design Show at the Park Armory and an absolutely incredible showing of Hilma af Klint's "Paintings for the Future" at the Guggenheim. Inspiration overload! (please visit our IG feed for more images from our trip!)

Women's Work

As we close out March and Women's History Month, we want to give a shout out to some women artists who are still killin' it at basketry, typing, dress-making, porcelain painting, quilting, weaving, floral arranging, stitchery, pottery, etc. even though they don't have to.

Because "women's work" is always FINE ART.

Enjoy!

(Still) Taking Care of Business - International Women's Day 2018

Reflecting on the journey with this still-relevant 2016 post. Happy International Women's Day, everyone!

It is with great pride that I announce that Amy Parry Projects is now Certified as a Women Owned Business by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC).


The news last week brought literal tears to my eyes. I didn’t realize how much being certified meant to me until I got the official notification from WBENC that I had been validated. I felt like Sally Field receiving her 1984 Oscar - “You like me! You LIKE me!” But more so, the memories of all the crazy moments that added up to this point in my business flashed before my eyes: furiously quoting a job as I was in labor at the hospital…bringing six-week-old baby James to Hirsch Bedner & Associates to work a project deadline...schlepping him to the shipper to deliver a custom work of art for a hotel…vacations spent pushing back beach time until I had wrapped up an important email…It’s been a hectic few years. And rewarding. And fun!

I have the pleasure of working with my friends, who are amazing women with their own families and dynamic lives. We work together as a team. We support each other, respect each other and dream for each other. We work hard and into the night when things need to get done. And we feel good about our aesthetic choices and the fair way we make decisions to complete our tasks at hand.

I am so proud to be a professional woman; a mother, wife and friend. I do the job because it’s my passion but also because it supports not only my family, but artists I care about and all these other women that are working with me in the same busy, multi-tasking way. We are a powerful bunch and it is clear that women-owned businesses are creating a new normal in American society. I am thrilled to be part of this empowered generation of ladies who are taking care of business and making things happen from our brains and our souls.

Thanks to WBENC for the approval of our application and for the future opportunities we will discover because of it.

So sincerely,

Amy Parry

The Wonderful Work of Eileen Braun

A couple of weeks ago we had an amazing studio visit with mixed media sculptor Eileen Braun and were fascinated by her transition in materials - from ceramics to rattan - in the creation of her extraordinary, otherworldly vessels.

Eileen Braun, Smoke, 2017, rattan reed, wax, pigment and string



We are sharing here, her description of the work and a glimpse at what she has been working on.

"In 2016, I put my clay work on hold and sought a new media less demanding of material constraints. After a lot of experimentation, I found it in encaustic wax and rattan weed. As I make the work, the forms grow increasingly more complex. Their sizes range from 3 - 7 feet high and the deep shadows (not easily shown in images), provide a completely different personal experience. The work is deceivingly light, weighing in at a mere 2- 6 pounds.

My art mirrors natural forms with a biomorphic edge. Often the exact life cycle stage one is viewing is too complex to pin down.  Is it focused on seed, mature growth, or the desiccation of this system? I leave that up to the viewer.

Movement, texture and complexity of form are integral to the work as well.  My hope is that the viewer will be drawn in by the shape. While approaching, they will be intrigued by the ever-changing views because one can see both through and around the form simultaneously. The texture, shadow and line created by the materials add to the multidimensional cornucopia of delights.

Process: The sculptures are constructed from rattan reed, encaustic wax, cotton string, and glue. In some instances I have added dress-makers pattern tissue - influenced by my research of Japanese Akari lamps.  The rattan reed is left natural or occasionally pre-stained; soaked, manipulated and secured at all junctions with cotton string.  Additional elements to the sculpture are constructed or texturized with encaustic wax. The exoskeletons in many instances have been en-robed in wax, giving them the appearance of metalwork."

Enjoy the work and imagine the possibilities - tabletop installations, wall-hangings, ceiling installations...

Just exquisite!