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We Are The Champions

Cindy Allen -- Interior Design, 8/1/2008 12:00:00 AM

Cindy Allen For an artist's vision to become real to the rest of us—or real, period—many requirements must be fulfilled. Exhaustive training and the means to "support the habit" are basic. Consummate knowledge, imparted by multiple experiences, should also be checked off the must-have list. And that's not all. For us to take in an artist's object or intent, to truly live and experience them, that artist needs space and, often, walls. Lots and lots of walls. And here's where you designers come in. We went out to find acres of wall space for our August issue, dedicated every year to art and the interiors that literally hold it up.

Surprisingly, given the strong international presence in most of our issues, we were able to fill this one to the brim with Made in the U.S.A. projects. (Plus two trips north and south of the border, to Toronto and São Paulo.) Brooklyn rules, of course, with an entire town house that Sally Rigg turned into a live-in museum for art so edgy that some publications wouldn't even print the pieces' names. Meanwhile, New York's Haunch of Venison gallery by Steven Learner is getting ready for a heavy-hitting inaugural show with work by Rothko and Pollock, and a Seattle office by NBBJ displays a Stella or two. Things get more contemporary in a New York loft, the work of Hall of Fame member Michael Gabellini's firm, and down in San Antonio, at the Linda Pace Foundation by local architect Jim Poteet. So, writing this letter on the opening day of the Beijing Olympics, I ask you: What's wrong with a little rah-rah for the home team?

Photography by Monica Castiglioni