WYLIE'S WERKSTÄTTE: THE NEW COMFORT ZONE Would you like to wait here in the sitting room or sit here in the waiting room? - Firesign Theatre We spend a considerable chunk of our existence(s) sitting and waiting, waiting for doctors, lawyers, clients, (potential) employers, jury foremen, auto repairmen, planes, trains, restaurant seats, ad infinitum. Why do we dread such down time? Because everything about the spaces in which we wait reinforces our sense of suspension, our sense of lost time, our sense that, no matter what work or reading we manage to accomplish in these interstices, we are doing nothing but aging. We sit in waiting rooms. Cynthia Wylie would have us wait in sitting rooms. She re-Imagines the transitional space as a welcoming locus, a warm and lively-looking environment whose smart and charming details are boldly described and, ultimately, reassuring, reintroducing natural forces otherwise conspicuous by their absence. It doesn't matter whether these handsome prints and delicate images define a public or a private room; they enliven the domestic setting no less than the common. Wylie's approach to design - her dedication to an integrated approach to interior elaboration no less than her complex but highly ordered and carefully stylized "language of form" - harks back to concepts and styles we regard as from a much different time and place. But, if we know that the decorous yet sensuous approaches of Art Nouveau, the Craftsman style, and the Wiener Werkststätte - not to mention their progeny, including Art Deco and the Bauhaus - are the day-before-yesterday's avant garde, we find that the spirit, and even the manner(s), they unleashed upon a thirsty world a century ago not only remain fresh, but quench the same thirst now. Everything old is new again - and not a moment too soon. Call it win-win Werkstätte. Cynthia Wylie has rescued and renewed the transitional space, allowing us precisely the happy transit we need.
About the Author: Ms. Wylie most recently was a partner in the avant-garde clothing company, X-Large. Moving to Southern California twelve years ago, she was immediately smitten by the unique tropical landscape including the year round blooms and rapid growth of plants. Ms. Wylie's diverse background includes being raised on a farm and a subsequent degree in agriculture where she first developed a love for all things green. She was one of the artists featured in the Ghetto Gloss art catalog sold in all MOCA stores. Her tropical plant oil paintings were in the Girltag Space group art show in Venice, California. Recent shows include the DCA Fine Art Gallery's Arthaus show in Venice, the Ghetto Gloss all-girls show in Silverlake, and a solo show at the Baby Blues venue for emerging talents. You may have seen her original paintings in the movie, "You, Me and Dupree," released in the Fall of 2006. Her Public Art Project from the Wallcovering Series, was featured in St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. An exclusive boutique chain used her Wallcovering designs for its stores in Tokyo. In January of 2008, four of her paintings were made into 1,400 numbered and signed fine art lithographs. Ms. Wylie, who received a full fellowship to Georgetown University, also attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Her paintings and prints are included in the collections of Mr. and Mrs. Sandy Kliman (producer of "The Aviator") and Mr. and Mrs. Elliot Stahler (founder of Kaplan, Stahler, Gumer Literary Agency), among others. Her first art book, "As The Crow Flies, The Art of Cynthia Wylie," was published in 2006. Her influences include: Charles Rennie Macintosh, Andy Warhol, Frida Kahalo, Henri Rousseau, Aya Takano, and Kehinde Wiley.