Córdoba Floor

At a Gramercy Park duplex apartment YVStudio stenciled two floors. In each area the wooden surface background played a prominent role in the design.

The foyer features a two-color creation inspired by a Córdoba floor, while the kitchen received a diagonal checkerboard pattern.

Both painted surfaces received a transparent brown glaze to soften the effect and blend it more with the underlaying wood color.

The deadline to complete this was very tight, and experienced several stumbling blocks along the way, but the project was delivered in time to great satisfaction.

Before the owners’ current expansion / renovation YVStudio had stenciled two other floors in the apartment.

Click here for our other stencil projects.

YVStudio’s client were Wilkins Studio and Headwater Contracting.

Easter Egg Hunt

Rockefeller Center is hosting an Easter event on April 21, 2019.

YVStudio was commissioned by The 4×8 Workshop to paint 7 foot high sandwich boards for the egg hunt event.

Easter event: sandwich board at Rockefeller Center

Some of the Easter activities at Rockefeller Center:

The Easter Parade is a promenade of festive folks walking up Fifth Avenue, a tradition that’s over 140 years old. Whimsical hats and colorful, outlandish outfits, many of them hand-stitched.

Another prime block on the Easter Parade route holds the entrance to the Channel Gardens, which leads to the heart of Rockefeller Plaza. The Gardens’ new installation celebrates the rebirth of spring, bursting with lilies, birches and willows, with sculptural birds overhead and even a giant robin’s nest.

Toy store FAO Schwarz is hosting Easter egg painting parties.

If you’re thinking life-sized, you can skate with the Easter bunny at the Rink at Rockefeller Center.

Easter event: sandwich board at Rockefeller Center
Painting at the Workshop

Sutton Place Glazing

At this floor-through apartment near Sutton Place, NYC, YVStudio custom-mixed a glaze color to match the Palmyra wallpaper by De Gournay in the dining room, and the fireplace mantle in the Master Bedroom.

After various samples were created, its perfect equivalent in oil glaze was painstakingly produced, and applied to the walls.

The result was a very sophisticated texture, which subtly changes colors depending on the lighting.

Master Bedroom
Master Bedroom
Master Bedroom
Foyer
Foyer
Foyer

Woolworth Building Restoration

YVStudio just finished restoring the elevator doors on the 5th floor of the iconic Woolworth Building.

Built in 1912 this National Historic Landmark is still one of the 30 tallest buildings in New York. It was designed in the neo-Gothic style by architect Cass Gilbert, who was also responsible for the United States Supreme Court building.

In recent past the 14 sets of elevator doors on the fifth floor had been painted over. YVStudio stripped the old paint layers and recreated the original green color and gold design.

Doors restored to their original state.
Elevators before.
Elevators after.
NYC Law Department
Doors were stripped of their old paint layers down to the metal
Woodwork was painted gold
Metal primer applied
Painted green, the gold design was applied in stages
Woolworth Building elevator doors
Finished doors (14 sets of doors all together)
233 Broadway, NYC

YVStudio was hired by BAR Construction.

The fifth floor will become home to the New York City Law Department, Office of the Corporate Counsel.

Today, the rest of the building houses, among other tenants, TTA Inc., Control Group Inc., AIGA, and the New York University School of Professional Studies’ Center for Global Affairs.

 

Highbourne Cay Heaven

HIGHBOURNE CAY, a beautiful 250 acre private island in The Exumas, is where Rod Winterrowd designed 6 cottages.

YVStudio was commissioned to paint 6 mural canvasses, 1 for each cottage, inspired by the Exumas, an archipelago of 365 cays and islands, southeast of Nassau, the Bahamas.

Each room has its own unique scheme, but Winterrowd also created an environment throughout with the same living rooms, terraces, bathrooms and kitchens.

“Palms” mural, 6 x 6 feet.

Rod Winterrowd said: “All 6 paintings really made the living rooms Each one uniquely represents some intrinsic aspect of the island’s gorgeous topography”.

“Sharks” painting on the left wall, 6 by 6 ft.

 

Rod Winterrowd created 2 two-bedroom, 2 three-bedroom and 2 4-bedroom cottages. Whether you stay in a 2 bedroom or 4 bedroom, the experience and luxury is the same. It’s a heavenly place for a true escape, a corporate retreat or destination wedding.

Sharks
Palm Leaves
Stingray
Surfer

Full Moon Fest

YVStudio was hired by Marc Barold of Strangeways to paint the centerpiece for the legendary Full Moon Fest.

In its 8th year, Full Moon is one of  New York’s largest independent festivals, celebrating music, art, leisure, and NYC’s “restless spirit.”  It is inspired by the epic Full Moon Party that goes down in Thailand every year.

Marc built a staircase inspired by Mayan ruins, topped with a Full Moon headstone.

Full_Moon_Fest_Step2_web
In progress at the workshop

The materials were foam, which was carved and then coated with hardcoat.

YVStudio painted the prop to resemble old moss-covered stone.

Full_Moon
The piece installed at the venue

 

Full_Moon_entrance

Taking over The Knockdown Center in Queens for 2018, Full Moon Fest spotlighted a diverse lineup of performers, including Metronomy, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, GE-OLOGY, and Jackmaster across three stages.

The inspiration and sketches for the staircase:

Full_Moon_Fest_Sketch_web

Full_Moon_Fest_Inspiration2_web

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flatiron Flair

The client and her family recently moved into the Flatiron area of Manhattan. Their apartment was your basic boring white box, with no distinguishing architectural features.

How to liven up the space? Solution: paint the accent wall as if it is a large abstract artwork.

The colors were custom-mixed in accordance with their fabrics and rugs: teal, sand and white.

 

Before: beige boredom

 

 

 

 

After: Dynamic brush strokes were softened by transparent color washes, and blended into one glorious canvas.

It is a rare treat when residential clients are willing to do something less conventional!

This is the glowing review the client left on our google page:

“We had such a positive experience with YVStudio. We had two very creative but VERY SPECIFIC asks for two rooms in our apartment. Yvonne was able to replicate exactly the “inspiration” photos that I provided and was so focused on providing the exact customized painting style that we wanted. She did one room with a very unique plastering/texture layer underneath the paint, and she did another room with a very subtle distressed Anthropologie-catalogue-like background.

Prior to painting, we met 3 times, and she created multiple customized samples for us to review and select, and continued to refine them until they were exactly what we wanted. We gave her the keys to our apartment and went away for a week and we came back to a completely cleaned up apartment that was beautifully done. She even went above and beyond and touched up areas of the baseboard and radiator that weren’t included in her original estimate. She sent us fun photo updates and checked in while we were away as well.

She is truly an artist and I so appreciated her color and tone advice as we worked on the project. She is also an absolute pleasure to work with. I would highly highly recommend her work and am happy to provide additional information.”

 

Tribeca Striae

Striae painting is a technique that gives your walls, or woodwork a striped appearance. You achieve this look by dragging a dry brush through a glaze mixture that was applied over a base color.

You work your way around the room applying your striae finish and slightly overlap adjacent sections to provide a seamless appearance.

This technique was executed by YVStudio in the Master Bedroom of a luxury condominium loft in Tribeca, New York.

Blue striae

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although striae is often seen in traditional settings, it also makes a terrific backdrop in contemporary interiors.

In the den I brushed a warm beige colored glaze in 2 directions, vertical and horizontal, to achieve a linen effect.

“Linen” look on library walls

 

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Shared Sacred Sites at the NYPL

For more than 100 years, The New York Public Library has collected thousands of religious books and manuscripts in order to preserve and make accessible the rich history of world religions, including the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Drawn from divisions across the Library’s research collections, the objects on display represent centuries of creativity that tell the story of these religions and the varied interactions among followers of different belief systems.

“Jerusalem” at the NYPL

Several major figures central to the Torah, the Bible, and the Qur’an have inspired interfaith encounters. While chronicles of the three monotheistic faiths are full of examples of intolerance and conflict, they also tell of coexistence and mutual understanding. Such acts are modeled on the hospitality of Abraham, the motherhood of Mary, and the heroic deeds of other holy figures, including Moses, Elijah, St. George, and Khidr.

Shared Sacred Sites highlights the importance of these figures—and the shared worship they have inspired—by tracing them through texts drawn from the rich collections of the Library.

I helped Alise Loebelsohn of Pompeii Studio with painting the display tables for this exhibition.

Tables in progress at Pompeii Studio

ONE EXHIBITION, THREE LOCATIONS 

Different versions of the Shared Sacred Sites exhibition have been presented at the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (Mucem) in Marseille (2015), at the Bardo Museum in Tunis (2016), and in Thessaloniki (2017), Paris (2017), and Marrakesh (2018). This year, the exhibition is being hosted at three of New York City’s renowned cultural institutions. In addition to the The New York Public Library, CUNY’s James Gallery is displaying items depicting contemporary instances of believers practicing their faiths in shared spaces. Plus, at the Morgan Library & Museum, a single but significant work is on view—the 13th-century Morgan Picture Bible—which demonstrates how members of the different faiths interacted through shared biblical stories.

Shared Sacred Sites is a collaborative project that seeks to bring together scholars and curious individuals to promote and inform the study of shared sacred spaces and symbolism. Learn more: sharedsacredsites.net

Detail of the painting in progress by Pompeii Studio.

 

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