With knobs on

Spend a day with the artist Fiona Connor in LA and you’re going to see some good art (and we did) but there's more. We also got to visit some of the stores that Fiona uses as references for her work - those sources of hard-to-find details like an unusual hinge or decorative lighting panel. The epitome of this kind of place is Liz’s Antique Hardware in mid-town. This large store is packed floor to ceiling with every item that ever went into fitting out houses in LA from around the 1920s on. The proprietors not only know exactly what is in their remarkable stock but they can lay a hand on it instantly. If you’re into replicating architecture, as Fiona often is, or you're home decorating or you just want to experience one of the great visual treats of LA, Liz’s is the go-to place.

Images: top, Fiona Connor at Liz’s. Middle, the shop on 453 S. La Brea and all the keyholes in the world and bottom, ‘electric candles, you want electric candles?’

Down sizing

With public and dealer galleries building bigger and bigger spaces it’s hard to figure how artist are going to be able to fill them with enough art to keep things going? Will we see a return to tiny art? Photographer and art director Tatsuya Tanaka obviously thinks so. You can see more of his work here.

Not a good sign

In Grand Junction, Colorado an object lesson in caution for any public sculptor contemplating fountain action. Along with this visual litany of don’t icons on one of the five signs surrounding a fountain sculpture other warnings included instructions not to climb, wash diapers, sit, loiter, smoke, spit or bathe (with or without a dog). And the fountain? It was was turned off - water restrictions.

Dollars and sense

If you ever wondered how much it cost to put up a public sculpture in the middle of nowhere in Queensland here are some figures to help you out. These are the commissioning and construction costs for Andy Goldsworthy’s sculpture Strangler cairn a 3.7 meter high granite sculpture funded through the art+place Queensland Public Art Fund.

Total cost $874,000 of which $421,500 went to the artist, $64,000 to helicopter the stone to the site and $388,500 for production costs.

You can view a clip of Andy Goldsworthy talk about the sculpture here.

Image: Andy Goldsworthy's sculpture Strangler cairn