Branding | Russell Brightwell

Doing Dallas

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The Library on Parry Avenue with books, collectibles, ceramics, and silver on display.

I’m the guy that moved into the loft directly across the street from Fair Park in Dallas the day the State Fair of Texas commenced. For the next three weeks, it was mayhem down here. Not to worry, I was a prisoner of the loft anyway, getting everything from the TPRB office and the Inwood Manor condo that had been in storage in Houston for past six months sorted and stowed. It was all the more important that everything be just so, since the loft is my home AND my livelihood. That it is so beautiful is due to the talent and hard work of interior designer and dear friend, Alice Cottrell, and her trusted jack of all trades and all-around miracle worker, Steven Hauser.
The loft is “done” and I’ve been working to launch my new endeavor – selling artist and architect designed objects; original art and editions; vintage ceramics; collectibles; rare art, photography, and fashion books; fashion and design collaborations; and commissioned objects by Texas artists to interior designers and directly to clients. I’ve gone to every event [“He’d go to the opening of a drain!”], talked to everyone, and have had enough delicious meetings/meals with fantastic people to need bigger pants. With a job providing thoughtfully chosen accessories for Alice’s latest Museum Tower project under my belt, some press coming out in January [fingers crossed] and a collaboration with the Donghia showroom in Dallas [see my next post], things are coming along. This gig is certainly not a “sure thing,” but people and the universe keep stepping in just when I wonder if it “will ever happen.” It has happened. It is happening.

A MOVING STORY

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Dallas bound

I moved from Houston, where I grew up, to New York in August of 1983, ostensibly to attend Parsons School of Design, but really to become the person I was meant to be – creative, sophisticated, artistic, chic and ultimately open and honest about who I was in all areas of my life. New York did the trick – it was everything I had hoped for and so much more.
In June of 1995, I moved to London to get away from both a contretemps at the ad agency I worked for and my best friend’s gruesome lingering death from AIDS. London was a great distraction. It was all familiar, but all a little different. A New York with more age and more green space, London in the mid 90s was THE center of design, theatre, pop music and culture in the world. It was so much fun to be a part of it all for a few years.
In June of 1997, I returned to New York – the ad agency having closed the London office. I settled in for an increasingly unhappy few years. Nothing was doing the trick anymore. Not the job, not relationships (such as they were), not even the things I loved – art, theatre, fashion. I resorted to what had worked for me in the distant past to change the way I felt. It worked until it didn’t.
In the last days of 2001, my father scraped me up off the floor of my apartment near Madison Square Park and took me back with him to Houston. I did recover from what ailed me [and continue to] but I was horrified to be back where I started. The place I had run from. Feeling I had little choice, I made the best of it. I opened an ad agency in Houston with a terrific business partner and made a good life. I had close friends. Dated. Traveled. Bought and sold beautiful homes. Made my peace with not being in New York and returned 3 or 4 times a year.
The agency was great for 11 out of the 13 years we were open. The last year was not one of them. We closed the doors in March of this year. I sold my apartment in February, and a few months later, moved into the garage apartment of a friend’s home in Broadacres, a leafy inner loop neighborhood in Houston. I began to look for employment and talk to everyone who would speak to me. It was a terrific experience. The universe met me more than halfway by bringing me a lot of lovely, smart, creative, and to a fault, generous, people. What I didn’t find was a job in Marketing or Advertising. Free of the agency and real estate [and, sadly, my lovely 17-year old American Eskimo dog Holly, who had passed away at the end of 2016], the universe seemed to be telling me that I could be free of my career as well, something I hadn’t really considered.
As I continued to look for a job in my “chosen” field, I began to consider what I might really choose. I’ve collected architect and artist designed objects, fashion collaborations, art and photography, and books on all of it for decades. It’s what I love. I love the stories behind the objects and artworks – the designers and artists, the makers and marketers, and how these works fit into the whole of their output and the world. Inspired by an article about a gentleman who sells design objects from his home in Brooklyn, I started to talk to people about creating such an endeavor myself. The response was overwhelmingly positive – a chorus of “it’s very you.”
At the end of this week, I’m moving to Dallas to pursue my new business there, perhaps along with an advertising or creative gig – I’m open to whatever the universe brings. A full 34 years after I first left “home,” I’m leaving again to strive to be even more of the person I am, without apology or obligation. There is a pretty good chunk of risk involved, but I have a lot of love and support including that of a lifelong friend, a sister really. And at this stage, “success” is whatever comes next, as long as I let the universe move me.

Chicken Little

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Tapio Wirkkala’s Pollo Vase, Rosenthal Studio Line, Germany 1970

Tapio Wirkkala (1915-1985) was perhaps Finland’s most famous internationally known designer. He brought his optimistic minimialism to thousands of objects from banknotes to cutlery, from plastic to porcelain, for some of the world’s most sophisticated manufacturers.
Wirkkala worked with Rosenthal AG in Germany for decades beginning in 1956, producing 15 porcelain tableware services and over 200 different objects. He carefully considered the ergonomics of these utilitarian pieces and he also developed an etched porcelain finish that was pleasing to the eye and touch that would be known as “silk matte.”
The “Pollo” vase pictured, designed around 1970 is one of my favorite Wirkkala designs. Available in a variety of sizes, this, the smallest “chicken,” fits comfortably in my palm. Made in black or white porcelain, all share Wirkkala’s silk matte finish – they are wonderful objects to handle. Rows of raised dots eminate from the “neck” opening that sits to one end of the “body” of the bird-shaped vase. Its bottom is rounded, so it rocks gently back and forth – an animated little thing.

A New Mood at Rice

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Rice University’s new Moody Center for the Arts

I was thrilled to meet Rice University Moody Center for the Arts’ Executive Director, Alison Weaver, and tour the facility a little over a week ago. Alison explained that The Moody’s mission is to foster connections across disciplines and to connect art with science, performance, community and more. And to go “beyond the hedges” to connect Rice University itself with Houston through the arts. [Another example of a mash-up or collaborative approach – seems to be part of the zeitgist these days.] The striking building was designed by Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan and includes areas for “making,” exhibitions, learning and performance. With the work of Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Struth, teamLab and Mona Hatoum already having been featured, The Moody is well on its way to becoming one of Houston’s premiere arts institutions.

Art to Wear and Sell

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Order/Chaos: Garments from “18th Century Punk AW 16/17”

I was in NYC this past weekend. On the top of my must do list was the “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between” exhibit at The Met. She and Issey Miyake and Yojhi Yamamoto (among others) changed how we looked at fashion AND how we dressed when they burst onto the scene in the 80s.
Kawakubo especially seemed more interested in ideas than wearable clothes, but nonetheless, she has made a long, lucrative career out of challenging norms in fashion. In fact, she has been quoted as insisting that she is primarily a businesswoman rather than an artist.
In many ways just as compelling as the garments were the wide range of “hair” pieces created by long time collaborator Julien d’Ys and Kawakubo’s exhibition design itself – in places hulking white washed Richard Serra sculpture like enclosures and in others glass vitrines hanging overhead and in still others, simple house shapes showcasing garments.
At 74, and despite this being a 35-year retrospective, she’s not done yet. I’m looking forward to her next collection already.

The Japanese Garden in Hermann Park – Celebrating 25 Years

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I’m just getting back into the swing of things after moving house, so this is definitely a latergram. As a happy supporter and Executive Board Member of the Hermann Park Conservancy, I was thrilled to attend this year’s Evening in the Park Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of The Japanese Garden. [I and Art Directors David Sloat and Leah Justice created the branding for the event.] A roaring success, the event raised over $600,000. Those funds will be split between the operation of the Conservancy and the Japanese Garden itself. These galas are parties to be certain, but they raise funds to actually run these not for profit organizations – staff salaries and expenses – that aren’t typically covered by patrons’ generous capital campaign gifts.

Take a look at the Chronicle’s coverage.

Collaboration Is Cool

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LV + Koons Masters Collection Da Vinci Mona Lisa Shawl, complete with dualing LV JK monograms and Konns’s signature across the middle

Yesterday, I stopped by the Louis Vuitton store for an early morning presentation (in association with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston) of the new Masters collection, a collaboration with Jeff Koons. The latest in a string of LV collaborations, beginning with Stephen Sprouse and including Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, Yayoi Kusama, Cindy Sherman and The Chapman Brothers among others, this collection is a extension of Koons’s “Gazing Ball” series. Bags and accessories are printed with old Masters paintings, including Titian’s Mars, Venus, and Cupid and Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. This collaboration, like those that came before, burnishes the LV brand by association with in demand artists, generates a ton of press and presumably sells product – the ultimate goal.

I’ll Start at the Beginning

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The moment pictured – the Astor Place Diner in 1984 with my friend Alice (and that waiter) – wasn’t quite the beginning, but it was fairly soon after my move to NYC and Parsons School of Design after two years at Rice University in Houston. It was the beginning of my life in the applied arts and my love of art, design, architecture, photography, fashion, and eventually advertising and marketing. And as all my friends like to point out , “Look at that hair!”