apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

AH! I clicked the wrong button! I meant not! NOT!

Look away.....it's hideous!

this is ridiculous.

This looks exactly like the kind of thing you do to hand-me-down furniture in high school that you end up repainting later on because you can't imagine how you got your aesthetic wires so badly crossed.

As 'furniture', meh -- but as 'art', this is hot...

As most of you know, most serious art collectors today aren't interested in "pretty" art, or even aesthetically pleasing art.
They value art that challenges, disturbs, or provokes.

Case in point: this quote on Lucien Freud's recent $33 million dollar auction record for a painting by a living artist: "Though some regard the painting as shocking -- ugly, even -- that is also the appeal for collectors", said Michael Hall, editor of Apollo Magazine in London.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/05/14/freud.record/

I love it

HIDEOUS.

I love this!

I vote....NOT!

my friend did this to her dresser... when she was twelve or thirteen. this is just ugly.

It's very teenage punk princess. But I think the kind of girl who would want this in her room would find it horribly unauthentic to buy something like this, instead of searching out some old piece of furniture at a flea market and doing it herself. Paying money for this would make you a lame poser. Unless maybe you bought a piece like this at a street fair from an artist with multiple body piercings.

It would've been a little more impressive if it was made from old Jr/Sr High school desks...preferably from late 70's/early 80's.

Overall it makes me wonder if it's held together using used chewing gum.

Yeah. Disgusting.

This reminds me of my Keds from 8th grade.

I think it's very homey.

I mean, homie.

I did this on my bedroom wall when I was about 14. And just like terribleperfect's friend' and this dresser, it was hideous. Actually, this may be worse.

It looks like my binder/notebooks in junior high. NOT.

I like it, but it wouldn't work in just any room. For the right context tho, I think it kind of rocks.

Reminds me of school lockers.

This hot or not puts me in the middle.

Why?

Because if I had an art gallery or a clothing store I would LOVE to have this as part of my office - but not in my home.

I guess I'll go with "hot"

as a mass produced item... i vote ew! there's certainly a place for something like this, and if you have that place I hope you're cool enough to know that this look is always best done genuine. If this is cool to you, do it yourself.

I thought I kind of liked it but realized it seems enormous, and therefore completely obnoxious. A smaller piece might be interesting or cool. I want to add that even if you stripped the paint or painted it white, I wouldn't like this piece of furniture, so there's double 'not' going on.

As someone else said: Art = hot; Furniture = not hot.

Horrible!
Absolutely awful

It's cool if there's only one, and if it was graffiti-ed by Keith Haring back in the early 80s. As a mass-produced piece? Not for me.

On her website it says: "Each piece is fully restored by Anna before she creates her highly individual hand-painted designs."

Am I wrong or does this mean that is a unique piece and not something mass produced as some of you have claimed? I am confused.

When my sister was 3, she did this to her new white French Provincial furniture with a red crayon....
...and we scrubbed it off.

OMG, that's disgusting. Lamps and tables to mix too:
http://www.loveannajames.com/gallery_133442.html
http://www.loveannajames.com/gallery_133445.html

But I like this, a lot:
http://www.loveannajames.com/gallery_91398.html

D'oh! There's a rectangle in with the dots, I don't like the rectangle in with the dots.

Just a plain top (not dots), then, but with the spectrum colors on the sides and front and top and the drawer insides being colorful would be good. Because the rectangle would drive me nuts.

This is pretty neat:
http://www.loveannajames.com/gallery_101931.html

But that we could do ourselves, somewhat, with paint.

As far as the graffiti stuff, I bet you could have anything you wanted done in graffiti style, if you just take the item to be graffitied to some of the local kids.

I'm not sure about this particular piece, HOWEVER, I'm totally inspired!

ugh. as many others have said, doing it yourself = totally cool, if it's your aesthetic (which it obviously would be, if you were doing it yourself).

buying something like this? so horribly inauthentic.

I hate graffiti, and faux graffiti is even worse. I also hate the style, so double euww for me also.

Just when I thought new furniture couldn't get any crappier...

I would say HIDEOUS Plus

Just take it to the landfill now.

It's horrible.

And re this comment: "As most of you know, most serious art collectors today aren't interested in "pretty" art, or even aesthetically pleasing art.
They value art that challenges, disturbs, or provokes."

Well, they can do that all they want. It just means that they actually reduce themselves to being meaningless to anybody but themselves and their misguided clique. So they can be "serious" art collectors if it makes them feel bigger about themselves. They won't budge me from expecting art that takes aesthetics and beauty seriously.

You know what would be fun, though? And might be a great fund raiser for schools...

Getting unfinished furniture, and having the kids go at it. Let 'em carve, paint, whatever. They could do "love armoires" and benches and stools.

Anyone not remember the school and park benches that got carved? There was a sense of history there.

I think it would be utterly charming to have a wooden bench for the garden that had been carved by kids. Kids that are experiencing love (or something like) for the first times, and memorialize it on wooden benches everywhere.

Yes, I know there is a railing that has my initials and a boy's initials carved into it. He carved it. It was somehow IMPORTANT to do this.

It's probably long gone. But I think I'd like to have that part with our initials, to remind me of a youth so far in the past.

Yet, it would be nice to have a bench with various other people's carvings. Knowing they were genuine, not created by one person, like the above, that is what would make the difference. And I'd prefer the plain wood over the painted, scrawled stuff like the above item.

Then I would probably want it to be super glossy finished, with all the nooks filled in with the clear gloss stuff. So it's preserved, without getting slivers in my butt. Man, I hate slivers in my bum.

Kind of like having your own "make out bench" in the backyard. When is the last time anyone here seriously made out with your significant other? Maybe you need a make out bench to encourage it more often!

(trademarking the "Make Out Bench" idea right now, don't EVEN think about swiping it)

I think it's cool.

ha, another white hipster doing "graffiti" on furniture, expecting big bucks and thinking they are so radical. it will be perfect in the apartments that look like they are from the 70's and owned by kids that dress like they are from the early 80's.

I do like the black armoire on her site with the tree etching.

http://www.loveannajames.com/photo_1987153.html

The City desk is cool too.

The graffiti'ed one, no. As KTG said, the piece itself is ugly, even without paint.

I don't like graffiti on the street so I certainly wouldn't want it in my home.

So not hot!

Even my kids said "That looks terrible, we hate it".

I think it's hideous, but it did make me think how cool it would be to buy a small piece of used furniture, paint it white, then have your kids draw on it with crayons or markers. You could cover it with Verathane and it would be a fun, nostalgic thing to have around the house.

This thing doesn't have the emotional element of that idea, though; it's just a mess.

@ STH, ha ha - that reminds me of the afternoon my sister and I spent scrubbing crayon off a white painted dresser my mother had in her room that we'd decided was a good place to draw.

As others have said, some of the other pieces on her site are cooler (well, "hotter") than this armoire. I'd love this if I were to commission an artist to do this, or have my kids do it. I would prefer it if I were part of the story behind it, rather than just buying it. I do really like the concept, though.

When I was little and we were too poor to buy new furniture we'd get hand me downs from family or neighbors w/all types of marks/carvings/stickers/dents/etc. This reminds me of that, so I really hate this thing.