Indian Springs

While growing up, I spent the majority of my summers at my late grandmother, Elizabeth “Betty” Blake’s, home in Rhode Island, which heavily influenced my love for design and art. A renowned contemporary art collector with an artistic eye way ahead of her time, my grandmother opened the first contemporary art gallery in Texas in 1951, the Betty McLean Gallery in Dallas, during a time when others thought she was crazy: "But everybody wanted landscapes and bluebonnets," she said. "I had Picassos, but nobody bought them." She also brought her eye for modern flair home with her and boldly decorated her homes with splashes of color and eccentric pieces from her art collection— nude paintings and sculptures were definitely not the norm in Texas during the ‘50s. After her passing my father put a few pieces of her collection up for auction at Christie’s, including her iconic Syrie Maugham furniture pieces which to this day I still reminisce being perched upon as a young girl opening presents on Christmas morning—what a shame it is that back then I didn’t realize the real present was right below my tush! Through the auction I was fortunately able to obtain a certain set of hers I had always held in high esteem, her Claes Oldenburg Collection, for my own.

Although I admired every piece of her collection, this particular set was something I was simply and steadfastly infatuated with since I was a little girl for I was so intrigued by the peculiar sketches and objects within the lithographs—I had never seen anything like them before. A set of twelve lithographs, three of which are featured in the slide show below, are now my favorite pieces I own and something I will cherish forever. The set arrived to my New York apartment with a handwritten note from Christie’s which I thought was so sweet until I saw there was a smaller, around 4x6, framed sketch packaged along with the set of twelve lithographs. The artwork, which wasn’t included in the auction description and whoever had bought the Oldenburg set wouldn’t have known it would’ve come with it, was a personal sketch for my grandmother signed by Claes, which I only then realized upon opening it that it had hung above my grandmother’s bedside table her entire life, and which now hangs above my own bedside table. My grandmother had four lithographs of the set hanging on the pale yellow wall to the right of her bed, images I grew fond of falling asleep to when I was younger after crawling into her bed in the middle of the night. The rest of the set were hung in the “Green Room,” a guest bedroom upstairs, adjacent to the “Orange Room,” another guest bedroom, which were connected through a shared bathroom featuring a vibrant wallpaper pattern of lime green palm trees against a clementine-colored background which married the two rooms together in such a fabulous fashion. I have always been fascinated by my grandmother’s juxtaposition of colors and her unique vision of spaces which I increasingly took notice of as I began to grow up within the art-splashed walls held so perfectly together by the red brick exterior.

Betty, or rather ‘Boopie’ as her friends called her, was reupholstering until her mid-nineties, a goal I hope to achieve myself. Never afraid of change and always trusting of her eye no matter what anyone else said or thought, she taught and inluenced me more than she probably every imagined she had about design.

One of her favorite sayings was, “Is there ever a time not to enjoy good design?” to which I will forever reply: never.