Congratulations to my Friends, Brent and Josh!

I love seeing history in the making! My friends Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell were married today at their farm in Sharon Springs, New York. I have blogged about this intrepid pair often, and their 'fabulous' business Beekman 1802. I visited Brent and Josh last month and was invited to their wedding today but could not make it, sadly. Brent and Josh have worked so hard to make their dreams come true and this is one dream made real that will carry them through their entire life together: commitment and security as a couple recognized in law. I am so very happy for them!

 

Even though I was not there, several people I know did attend the wedding and they are sharing some their photos with you here on the blog. Jeff White and Kenn LaFramboise took the photos below. I am told it was a very special day - despite the rain. You may notice a certain statuesque blond who happened to be at the wedding... Her name is Martha Stewart!

The happy couple!

Brent with his mother, left, and his grandmother, right.

Proprietors of The American Hotel in Sharon Springs, Garth Roberts and Doug Plummer were at the wedding and brought a lot of color! Doug was recently named the mayor of Sharon Springs!

Martha was at the wedding!

Guess who brought the colorful hard-boiled eggs from her chicken coop in Bedford...

My friend Kenn got a Martha Moment with the lady herself! Martha was very charmed by the buscuits Kenn brought to the wedding and asked him to send her the recipe! Maybe we'll see it in the pages of Martha Stewart Living in a future issue...

Inclusion: A Special Thank-You to Martha Stewart

With Gay Pride celebrations happening in cities all across North America this week and the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to abolish the Defense of Marriage Act, which sought to prevent gay marriages from being recognized on a federal level, I see no better time to express my sincerest gratitude to Martha Stewart and her team for being important champions of gay rights.

It is no secret that Martha is a gay icon. Subjects like flower arranging, catering, baking, decorating and just general, all-round fabulousness are the cornerstones of Martha's gay allure. She has been captivating a wide gay audience since the early 1980s, sharing her creative vision with this curious and equally-creative demographic through her various media and merchandise. A substantial portion of Martha's male readers and viewers are gay (I certainly count myself among them!) and a relatively large percentage of her male colleagues are gay as well. Many of the male readers of this blog - the most vociferous ones, naturally - are gay and her influence on gay culture remains indelible, although it has never been accurately described or acknowledged

Just yesterday, to show their support for the Supreme Court's decision to abolish the Defense of Marriage Act, Martha Stewart Weddings posted this photo to its Facebook page, saying, "We support love!"

Evidence of Martha's support for gay rights abounds in the pages of her magazines and the archived episodes of her television shows. I can think of at least ten articles in Martha Stewart Living magazine that have proudly showcased the homes, gardens and businesses of gay couples in the United States. The fact that these couples are gay is editorially incidental, but the cultural impact of sharing their stories in a mainstream, internationally-circulated magazine is vastly important. Putting the ordinary lives of ordinary gay men and women under a title like "Living" is hugely meaningful - for the brand, for her audience (gay and straight) and for the much wider sphere of lifestyle media. Imagine a young man, perhaps confused about his place in the world, seeing people like him leading successful, happy lives together. Imagine the importance of seeing that positive image and how it may influence this young man's vision of himself in the world and his future goals of happiness.

The truly exceptional work, however, belongs to Martha Stewart Weddings magazine, which was the first mainstream American weddings magazine to showcase a gay wedding. That was in 2009. Since then, there has been a gay wedding featured in almost every issue, including the marriage of Martha's nephew Christopher to his partner Tim Long, which took place at Martha's farm in Bedford. Martha Stewart Weddings has been the leading pioneer in profiling gay weddings in its pages, widening the aperture of inclusion by featuring love - in all its forms.

To show my appreciation, I have written to GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) to suggest they nominate Martha Stewart for their annual Excellence in Media Award, which is presented to a new media personality each year. Former recipients have included Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Diane Sawyer, Billy Crystal, Harvey Weinstein and many others. I think Martha deserves to be on this list.

Thank you, Martha, and to all the editors of Martha Stewart's publications and the producers of her television shows for being inclusive, for being brave, for being so inspiring to me and so many other gay men and women.

The Summer Issue: Thumbs Up! (A Review)

The arrival of the summer issue of Martha Stewart Living on newsstands marks a significant departure from the magazine's former distribution schedule and from its former design. For the first time since 2001, the magazine will not be releasing a stand-alone August issue, opting instead to sandwich the July and August content into one summer issue. The magazine has also undergone a significant design makeover, led by Cybele Grandjean, Kevin Brainard, Jenn McManus and Jaspal Riyait. My copy arrived in the mail earlier this week and I've been browsing its pages, making notes on some of the design changes and compiling some thoughts. 

Readers will be greeted by a clean, sparse cover with some notable design changes. The title is now flat (without the outline) and the ''g'' has reverted back to its pre-2004 font. The name Martha Stewart is now slightly larger and bolder, as shown in the photo below that compares the title from an earlier issue to the current issue. A new, stencil-like font is showcased and is seen throughout the issue, and the abundance of white space on the cover hints at what is to come in the pages beyond. 

Inside the magazine, editor-in-chief Pilar Guzman describes the design changes: "You will notice more white space around the pictures,"she writes in her letter, "balanced by pages that use every opportunity to teach...and connect you to additional content on our website and through social-media outlets. We've brought back detailed illustrations where we felt pictures wouldn't suffice...to turn inspiration into immediate action." Additional changes include the removal of the Ask Martha column and the introduction of a new section at the back of the book called the "How-To Handbook," which is where you will now find the columns on healthy living, petkeeping, homekeeping and advice from experts. Below are some examples of page layout and graphic design from the Summer 2013 issue. Continue reading below for my take on the design changes.

WHAT THEY ARE GOING FOR:

 

Martha Stewart Living has always been a pioneer in lifestyle photography and graphic design, always at the forefront, which is why I first fell in love with the magazine. I started reading it because it was different and offered information about subjects no one else was talking about. As it grew in popularity so too did the offerings of its competitors, such as Real Simple, which is now surpassing MSL in newsstand sales, ad sales and subscriptions. Martha Stewart Living, which is struggling to support itself, had little choice but to differentiate its appearance in a market that is now saturated with copycat magazines that have pushed the "Martha Stewart look" into ubiquity.

 

In an effort to change, the designers at MSL have turned to younger lifestyle publications that are emerging as the new leaders in magazine design. Many of them have won design awards in categories previously dominated by Martha Stewart Living and all of them are being read by a younger demographic - readers who are more discerning, more particular about their content and more interested in design than ever before. And these readers will pay more to get their fix. (I know, because I'm one of those readers!)

 

In my first entry of the year on this blog I suggested a design overhaul of Martha Stewart Living and mentioned several magazines that I was reading. By looking at some of them (below) you can see what the MSL designers were going for: cleaner, more minimal designs, the use of linear elements to separate, stress or designate various themes, more impactful photography and layouts that are more honed to the subject, more succinct.

 

I actually really like the new design changes that have been made to Martha Stewart Living, although I may be a minority. I think the look of the summer issue of Living feels fresh and alive, like a breeze has blown through a previously-stuffy room. I felt energized by the layout - awake. I felt drawn in by the photography and captivated by the minimalism. And this from someone who has been reading MSL for nearly 15 years. I found myself looking forward to the next issue, to see how the layout would cradle subjects like decorating, Halloween and the Holidays. My imagination was stirred.

 

On the other hand, I still miss the writing. I miss writers like Susan Heeger and Bunny Wong, Pete Mars and Laura Wallis. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Pilar Guzman (MSL editor-in-chief) recently said that the "days of the 1000 word front-of-book stories are over" - a sentiment echoed by Joseph Lagani, the company's chief revenue officer. "We understand that people are coming for short, consumable bites of information. People are not spending an hour with you. They’re there to get something.”

 

These sentiments certainly do not speak for me. I am looking for content to treasure, to return to again and again, for content so good and so rich in quality that I will spend an hour with you, and hopefully two. I'm looking for something more than a soundbyte. (The world is full of meaningless, disposable soundbytes.) I want stories. With the exception of the Good Things column and the Our Finds section, I see no need for a front-of-book section at all, frankly. Martha's article should be part of the back section of the magazine and expanded greatly, since so many of us want to hear about her life, her tastes and her homes. The Good Living section could similarly be parlayed into a monthly feature story, highlighting (in depth) one aspect of good living, whether it's gardening, decorating, crafting or entertaining.

 

One very nice touch in the summer issue was the article on page 114 about the garden of George Schoelkopf, a garden first featured in the May, 2003, issue of Martha Stewart Living. It was a garden that deeply inspired me when I first read about it ten years ago and to see it again was very enjoyable for me. Editorially, this connection to a past issue through a visit to an evolving garden was ingenious. I also really enjoyed the essay by Monica Wood.

 

Overall, the design team has achieved a very good renovation - a redesign that is forward-thinking and on target with what is trending in the lifestyle publication market. This bodes well for MSL's survival. It demonstrates a willingness to change and evolve. And I like that. Watch for a complete redo of the MarthaStewart.com website in the coming weeks, which will reflect the changes made in the magazine. Also watch for a new special Halloween issue this fall! (Very exciting!)

 

INSPIRED BY...

These are magazines I read and that seem to have inspired the redesign team at MSL. Notice the page layouts, the use of bold fonts, the use of line and white-framed photography and compare these to the layouts in the summer issue of Martha Stewart Living. Magazines below include Milk, Pure Green, Gather Journal, Kinfolk and Bon Appetit.

 

 





Martha's Favorite Crafts For Kids

If you were a subscriber of Martha Stewart Kids magazine you are familiar with the ingenious and imaginative craft ideas that appeared in its pages, issue after issue. Finally, there is a compilation book containing some of those best-loved crafts and it comes out this Tuesday. 

 

Martha Stewart's Favorite Crafts for Kids focuses on craft projects that children, aged three to twelve, can make with their parents. These projects are fun, yet serve a practical purpose; children can wear, decorate, and play with what they make. Filled with ideas for a range of ages, skill levels, and interests, this book lets children's creativity run wild, while creating precious memories as parents and kids learn and create as a team.

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 The book, which is 352 pages, has seven chapters - each based around its own theme: Create A New Character, Build A New World, Make Your Own Fun, Design It Yourself, Experiment And Explore, Keep It Together, Give Something Handmade. At the back of the book there is a list of tools and materials needed to make the projects, a source guide and templates for tracing. You can order the book here. Below are some photos from its pages.

 

Eric Beare: The Making of Martha's Mural

In the 1970s, not long after moving into Turkey Hill, Martha Stewart painted a mural in the front hall of her home, inspired by the primitive, stylized landscapes of nineteenth-century American muralist Rufus Porter. Depicting a pastoral scene of hills and valleys with swaying trees, Martha's mural occupied the wall adjacent to the staircase, ascending to the second floor. Its palette was made up of light terra-cotta tones mixed with deeper browns, punctuated with verdant greens on the branches of the trees. By the end of the 1980s, Martha painted over it, opting for a more streamlined, minimalist look for her front entrance. In 2001, however, Martha decided it was time to resurrect her beloved Porter-inspired mural and this time she enlisted the talents of a brilliant young muralist named Eric Beare.

I wanted to learn more about the Turkey Hill mural so I reached out to the artist to find out about the methods and mechanics of its creation. (Above is Eric's original sketch of the full Turkey Hill mural. You can really see the details, including the small house at the far left near the dining room door, which was eventually covered up by Martha's grandfather clock.) Below, Eric explains how the mural came about and describes his process. He also shares advice for those of us who may be considering creating our own mural at home. Please visit Eric's website to see more of his outstanding work.

1. How did Martha come to hear about you and how did the Turkey Hill commission come about?

I did an internship in the crafts department at Martha Stewart Living during my junior year at Rhode Island School of Design. When I moved to NYC upon graduation in 2000, I began working for MSL in a freelance capacity. I also started painting murals around this time for decorators such as Diamond and Baratta. Kevin Sharkey was an ealry proponent of my artwork. I worked on a mural story with him for the September, 2002, decorating issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine. There were to be three murals for the story: stamped leaves, decoupage shells, and early American grisailles. Martha was always a big fan of Rufus Porter colonial era landscape murals and when she saw the sketches I was working on, she decided her stairwell inTurkey Hill would be the perfect location to execute it.



Various photos of the Turkey Hill mural from different angles taken by Eric shortly after its completion.

2. What was your inspiration for the Turkey Hill mural? Did she have any specific requests?

I checked out all the Rufus Porter books I could find from the New York Public Library and photocopied all the landscape murals. She circled all her favorite elements in red ink. She opted to focus on the natural landscape rather than include the colonial villages and farms which were also heavily featured in Porter murals. We did include one small house on an Island but that ended up disappearing behind Martha's big antique grandfather clock. She had also originally asked me to include her two Chow Chows, Empress Woo and Paw Paw. I painted them in the section below the stairwell. I think they lasted about a week before Martha decided they didn't quite look right with the style or genre and I came back and painted over them. I remember she was in Japan when I started painting and called to see how it was coming along.

Martha signed this photograph for Eric. This was during the photoshoot for the September, 2002, issue of Martha Stewart Living. The comment reads, "For Eric whose mural graces my walls! Best Wishes! Martha Stewart"

 

 

3. What do you generally use as materials? What kinds of paints do you use? What do you reference in terms of inspiration?

Martha picked the color herself from her original "Everyday" paint line. It was called Morel (after the mushroom) and it gave the monochromatic grisailles palette with the slightest of sepia tone, which warmed it nicely. That was standard matte latex wall paint. I diluted it with water and added a glaze medium to make it transparent. I used natural sponges to create the foliage, which was a technique borrowed from the early American painters.

4. What advice do you have for someone who may be considering a mural for their home?

Choose a theme and palette you'll enjoy living with. It could be the backdrop for your life for a while. Sometimes choosing a limited palette that compliments your decor is a safe way to go. You don't necessarily want it competing with the rest of your decor. Spend some time gathering inspiration from decorating books and magazines, blogs, etc. If you are planning on painting a mural yourself, make an elevation of the wall/ walls you plan on painting on graph paper. An elevation is a flat, vertical drawing of the wall with any other architectural elements drawn in: doors, windows, stairs, etc. Make sure to measure things accurately and write the dimensions on the elevation. This helps to make sure things will get translated properly from your sketch to the wall. You can make photocopies of this elevation and try out different compositions while sketching.

On the left is a photograph of the original mural at Turkey Hill, painted by Martha. On the right is Eric's mural, photographed during Martha's move to Bedford.


5. What (and who) are some of your inspirations and influences?

I'm inspired by art history. I love Maxfield Parrish skies and landscapes, Gauguin's bold us of color and unexpected interpretations of natural forms, Zuber's elaborate historic scenic wallpapers, Audubon's birds, botanical paintings, Pompeii's frescoes, the cave paintings at Lascaux, Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling, Dutch master still lifes, early American primitivism, and much much more. Nature is always a big inspiration. My garden inspires me daily.

Eric was a guest on the Martha Stewart Show and demonstrated his techniques.

Here is Eric posing next to one of his very colourful murals in a grand home. See more of his work here.



A Closer Look at Martha Stewart Living Thailand

As an avid collector of all things Martha, my collection was destined to include several international volumes of Martha Stewart Living magazine. A friend of mine was generous enough to send me three volumes of the Japanese edition of MSL, which published 13 issues between 2001 and 2003. These are treasures! But it is the Thailand issues of MSL that I want to focus on here. It is not just that the editors have taken the Martha Stewart brand and interpreted it with unique editorial content specific to their nation, but they have also connected with a growing community of readers by hosting Martha Stewart events for the public, such as crafting and decorating seminars, flower-arranging classes and much more. They also sometimes supply giveaways with their issues; a recent issue on colour came with its own stenciled pillow case. I must give kudos to the editors of Martha Stewart Living Thailand for their devotion to their readers, for supplying them with community-based events, giveaways and for printing such a beautiful magazine on such beautiful paper. Even though they are written in Thai, which I do not know how to read, and even though there is a lot of repurposed content from the American version of the magazine, the Thailand issues of MSL truly are favourites of mine. Below are some photos of my collection. To read more about international editions of Martha Stewart Living, click here.

I Scream, You Scream...

It occurred to me while sitting on a park bench the other day, holding a chocolate-dipped waffle cone in my sticky hand, that nothing beats a good, old-fashioned ice cream cone. And while summer may not have officially arrived, I can't deny my weekly urge for mint chocolate-chip or wild cherry or double-chocolate chunk. I am by no means advocating a steady diet of the creamy cold stuff (it's extremely fattening and my sensitive stomach often laments having to attempt to digest it) but every so often one must indulge. There is just something about the way the flavours dance on your tongue as they slowly melt in your mouth. Everyone has their favourite flavour, naturally, and usually a favourite brand (for me, it will always be Haagen Dazs) but ice cream lovers can all agree on one thing: summer just isn't the same without it. I just wanted to share some goodies with the ice cream enthusiasts among you. Enjoy!



Anthropologie has a great little 'ice cream shop' this summer with a variety of exclusive ice-cream accoutrements, such as the ceramic waffle ice-cream bowl and the ceramic ice-cream cone. Each comes in red, yellow or blue. The metail ice-cream scoop, shown here in teal, is sleek and modern and also comes in a bright chartreuse. A more rustic alternative is the teakwood scoop.

Kinfolk magazine - one of my favourites - put together a beautiful photo editorial with Parker Fitzgerald and Amy Merrick using flowers as ice cream for its seventh volume, the spring issue. It's such a simple idea but it's expressed so beautifully in these photographs, above. 

Cherry ice cream is one of my all-time favourites. It's rivaled only by mint chocolate-chip... and Rocky Road...and double chocolate...and Tiger Tail...and Vanilla. Below are two books containing some great recipes for homemade ice-cream written by the experts: San Francisco's Bi-Rite Creamery and Seattle's favourite Molly Moon's.