Living room art

All these wood walls needed some art.  The previous owner was a painter, and he left us a large number of hooks in random places.  Rather than pull them all out and start fresh, we decided to temporarily hang art using their nails, just to get stuff on the walls.

Turns out they have pretty good nail-hanging taste:

Thats a grouping of four 11x14 travel pictures in the nails on the heat sink.  The corners of the frames are exactly touching.   From the left: Konza Prairie (~10 minutes from the house), Bar Harbor (Maine), Acadia National Park (also Maine), Bako National Park (Borneo).  

From further away:

The clock to the left was my mother's graduation gift to me.  It has numerals in Chinese and the background is a much-faded landscape from a Chinese painting.  The black boxes flanking it are lights:

We put cool white LEDs in the left one and warm white in the right one.  I like the warm better.  When we put in the bulbs, though, these were the primary source of illumination in the living room and we needed the balance from the cools.  We installed more lights, but haven't changed the bulbs.  

Just to the left of the TV, behind the low bookcase and in the micro-hall, there are two prints.  The glowing beehive is one of the new lamps.  It hangs exactly above the coveted corner spot on the couch.  Not very period, but not horribly off and super cheap while I think about something better. 

Here's a closer view of the two prints on the far left:

These are exceptionally difficult to photograph without glare because they face the wall of windows in the sun room.  But, I have an electronic copy of the one on the left,

because I made it myself.  It's inspired by this youtube.  The one on the right is signed by Tom Baker and is one of Matt's most prized possessions.

Looking in the other direction, here's the view from the black chair next to the TV:

 

Some things to notice: 

• The checkerboard pattern on the wall is because the grain of those panels alternates and catches the light.  It's just like the one on the "Parce que c'est fermee / Docteur Qui" wall.  Those squares are 16" wide.  
• The wall is super tall.  That's a normal-height doorway in the center back.  The wall is almost 9 squares tall (12 feet).
• Another one of those black wall lights is installed.  All three are on the same circuit.
• There are two annoyingly ugly vents.

(Please don't notice the piles of yarn on the dresser or stuff on the leather chair. We live here, we don't like to clean.)

Here's another angle of the grouping on the left.

Clockwise from the glowing thing: lamp, zoo stairs from the extremely talented Josh More, different zoo stairs from Josh (most of his photos are animals in zoos, not stairs at zoos), The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Matt's grandparents standing on a dock when they were our age, and an original painting of waves and pilings from Matt's grandmother.  

On the wall next to these, between the door to the bedrooms and the pantry, is one lonely print:

The print is 3 feet wide, almost 4 with the frame, and the section of wall it is on is 8 feet wide.  Let's marvel for a moment about how my iPhone can take photos that print at 36" wide.  Truly, we are living in the future:

That's the beach at Bako National Park, near the mouth of the Sarawak river, in Borneo. The little figure in the middle is my longtime collaborator, Scott.

I think the wall needs more art, but I don't know what yet and I don't know what I want to do about the vents.