Hopie Stockman Hill and Grier Stockman grew up in an old farmhouse in a sylvan pocket of New Jersey. They played in wheat fields, craggy apple orchards and dense forests; built birdhouses and painted murals. The sisters’ childhood, spent merging art with nature, inspired their latest wallpaper collection from Block Shop, their textile, art and design studio, which combines a breezy California aesthetic with Indian printing and weaving techniques. The seven new patterns, which are printed on paper, fiber and grass cloth, include a peony motif that’s a homage to the blooms their mother grew, while also referencing the Austrian Wiener Werkstätte designer Dagobert Peche. “We envisioned an Anne Bancroft-esque grande dame with a sky-high collection of art books, listening to ‘Madama Butterfly’ while harvesting her beets,” says Stockman Hill, the CEO and creative director of the studio. “These are the wallpapers you find in her home.” The Block Shop store, which opened in Los Angeles’s Atwater Village neighborhood this past December, further extends the sisters’ canvas with a harmonious blend of color and texture. A bronze snail door handle greets you on the way in, while the shelves are brimming with Apuglian splatterware dishes, rare books on décor and semi-fine jewelry, as well as the brand’s signature textiles. From $75 per yard, blockshoptextiles.com.
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A Guesthouse in Rome From the Founders of Chez Dede
The Rome boutique Chez Dede, founded in 2011 by the design duo Daria Reina and Andrea Ferolla, is filled with antiques and artworks, as well as silk-screened tote bags and limited-edition collaborations: wicker lamps created with Atelier Vime and enameled brass jewelry inspired by playing cards with the Italian jewelry designer Allegra Riva. When the penthouse apartment in the same building as the store came up for rent in 2019, the couple and their team decided to create a suite that would further bring visitors into their world. After they got city permits in early 2023, it took them about a year to renovate the two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment, now named Superattico Monserrato. They put in sliding doors, updated the kitchen with steel counters and glossy black walls and added dozens of theatrical Chez Dede touches: 17th-century carved wooden columns, a wall-size 18th-century tapestry, drawings by the 93-year-old Rome-based artist Isabella Ducrot and bed linens from their own collection. Early this year, Reina and Ferolla began renting the flat to a select few. “It’s really about sharing our lifestyle and our taste,” Reina says — and about imparting their tips for Rome: The Chez Dede team has a space at the front of the apartment, so at any point guests can stick their heads in and ask for favorite vintage shops and cafes. Superattico Monserrato also hosts occasional events: Up next is a trunk show with the designer Sara Beltran of jewelry brand Dezso, on May 9. Email superattico@chezdede.com to book; about $1,900 a night, minimum three nights.
For the past 167 years, Parisians have escaped urban life by taking a short boat ride to Chalet des Îles, a wooden structure on a small island in Bois de Boulogne park. In 1857, Empress Eugénie de Montijo transported a cabin from Switzerland to Paris and set it on the tree-filled island in Lac Inférieur as a draw for city dwellers who needed a dose of nature. Destroyed by fire in 1920, the structure was rebuilt with less-charming concrete. Now, the famous chalet and its restaurant have been completely redesigned by the French architect Nicolas Laisné and will reopen this month. The use of hand-carved, honey-colored timber scales in the cladding on the main facade recalls the original Swiss building. The main dining room and its covered balcony open onto lakeside views, while the bar extends onto a ground-level terrace. A custom white-and-green carpet in the main restaurant reflects the colors of the lake outside, and raw-edge wooden tables nod to the forest. Visitors have the option of dining privately in the chalet’s vegetable garden: The reservation-only experience, titled Les Tables du Potager, features a five-course, plant-focused tasting menu by chef Pierre Chomet. Meals in the dining room feature dishes like asparagus with mimosa eggs and Iberian ham, and shrimp tartare in a pad Thai broth, inspired by Chomet’s six years cooking in Bangkok. The restaurant also plans to serve a brunch buffet on Sundays. Chalet des Îles opens April 24, chalet-des-iles.com.
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An Ensemble of Steel Sculptures at New York’s Storm King Art Center
This May, Storm King Art Center — the Hudson Valley, N.Y., sculpture park that hosts works by artists from Louise Bourgeois to Sol LeWitt, as well as a stream of couples on third or fourth dates — will debut a new commission by the New York artist Arlene Shechet. “Girl Group” centers on six huge, swooping sculptures, all between 10 and 20 feet tall, some as wide as 30 feet. (Smaller, complementary pieces in steel, ceramic and wood will be displayed indoors.) While the larger works began as ceramics, Shechet says she employed the material as “a seed … to generate something that I didn’t know.” She riffed digitally on the ceramic shapes, then hand-built models using cardboard and paper. Later, she reproduced those physical experiments as digital drawings, shuttling her developing forms between on- and offline mediums for years. The result, a combination of digital speculation and physical inventiveness, is the collection of two-tone steel-and-aluminum sculptures set into Storm King’s grassy landscape.
“The idea of Girl Group is that each sculpture functions alone — as a solo — and as a member of an ensemble,” Shechet says. While her mighty, swirling structures are spread out widely, they’re never completely isolated: Viewers will always experience more than one simultaneously, glimpsing parts of another nearby. Shechet sees “Girl Group” as a perpetual exchange, an alert and beckoning chorus. “They have gesture, sass and color,” she says of her works. “Seems like a girl group to me.” “Girl Group” will be on view at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, N.Y., from May 4 through Nov. 10. stormking.org.
In late 2022, Sam Nana-Sinkam bought 60 acres of land “right up against the mountainside,” he says, referring to the Andstadt Hill peak in the historic district of Oley Valley, Penn. He quit his job at Google, where he’d worked for 12 years, with the plan to open an agricultural retreat center there named Bloom Farm. Working almost exclusively with local materials, he restored the homestead’s centuries-old farmhouse and turned the barn into a wellness studio for activities like yoga and sound baths. For Nana-Sinkam, Bloom Farm is a return to his upbringing: When he was a child, his father, who worked for the United Nations, helped establish new food systems in sub-Saharan Africa. When Nana-Sinkam was 10, his family moved to his mom’s hometown, Lancaster, Penn., where he was exposed to Amish farming. A self-proclaimed “nerd about soil quality,” he plans to grow native pawpaws, persimmons and wildflowers at Bloom Farm. Those who book a retreat package will stay at the four-bedroom main house (a set of cabins will open later this summer) and will have access to meals made from farm produce as well as programming designed in collaboration with Jenn Tardif, the founder of the wellness company 3rd Ritual. Customizable activities might include flower arranging or tea ceremonies. Day visitors are also encouraged to join communal events such as chestnut-tree planting or dinner prepared by a local chef who specializes in open-fire cooking. (The farm’s original 1760s brick oven is still in use today.) When it’s time to unwind, guests can turn to the 3rd Ritual tools stocked in the bedrooms, including a weighted jacket and aromatherapeutic botanical balms. From $375 a night, bloomfarm.com.
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Lucky DeBellevue Captures Cinematic Tension in an Exhibition of Paintings at Jack Pierson’s New Chinatown Gallery
When the New York artist Jack Pierson opened his gallery, Elliott Templeton Fine Arts, on Henry Street in Chinatown in September 2023, he wanted it to be a homage to the gay shopkeepers who thrived downtown in the ’80s and ’90s. His collections of vintage gay pornography, ephemera and memory ware vessels are for sale in the back, while the front is an exhibition space with shows curated to present a “homosexual aesthetic,” as he describes it. The interior is calamine pink with hopsack-covered wall panels and a 1920s German chandelier furnished by the decorator Fernando Santangelo (who will soon be opening an antiques shop around the corner).
This Sunday, April 21, Elliott Templeton Fine Arts will present “Lucky DeBellevue: Fassbinder Paintings,” which sees the New York artist return to figurative painting after several decades of working with everything from pipe cleaners to pistachio shells. DeBellevue dives into the lush melodramas of the German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, painting psychologically charged snapshots from various films. The director’s singular sense of high-camp beauty and tragedy emerges through DeBellevue’s fine brushwork, a painter’s admiring interpretation of a cinematic vision. “Lucky DeBellevue: Fassbinder Paintings” will be on view at Elliott Templeton Fine Arts, New York, from April 21 through June 2, instagram.com/elliotttempletonfinearts.
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