In case you were wondering what that big wall of old shutters is doing near the beach in Seminyak, it’s a multi-faceted development called Potato Head Beach Club brought to you by the makers of Potato Head Jakarta (above), a description-defying place that opened back in January 2009. The brainchild of Indonesian international art collectors, Ronald Akili and Jason Gunawan, Potato Head (Jakarta) is an arty party place (bar, resto, music venue, hang central) frequented by socialites, creatives and neo-yuppies. Akili and Gunawan founded Ark Galerie in Jakarta first, then exploded their ideas outwards into the world of food-bev-tainment with Potato Head, calling in cordon-bleu trained foodie Sandra Budiman as exec chef and co-conspirator. Rumour has it the same faces are behind the soon-to-launch Potato Head Beach project in Bali. And that’s what makes it so interesting.

Akili and Gunawan think globally, have a million stamps in their passports, plus one successful partnership under their belt already before Potato Head — Ark Galerie. This edgy art space was recently renovated (below), with witty irreverance, by Andra “Aang” Matin (above), the celebrated Indonesian architect with a list of recent awards and nominations as long as his arm. He also worked with Akili and Gunawan to design Potato Head Jakarta, which sports an Indo-eco-urban, funked-out-Fornasetti kind of style. Seems the same is happening at Potato Head Beach here in Bali. We’ve noticed a vast wall of disused-reused window shutters rising near the beach. Same material seen on the ceiling at Super Potato Jakarta.

We know that they will use the same bar consultants here in Bali as they did in Jakarta (Bar Solutions of KuDeTa, Karma Kandara and Istana fame), so we can assume they will follow suit in the kitchen as well, with Ms. Budiman as exec chef. That would make sense, of course, since Akili and Budiman were married earlier this year in Bali.

Jungle drums suggest that the Bali version of Potato Head, being right on the beach, will allow Akili and Gunawan to extend their format even further and take it outdoors more. We hear of a beach club to give KuDeTa a run for its money, at least one art space, a coffee house, retail, music venue, restaurant, and (yes), rooms. About fifty of them, if we’re not mistaken. Refugees running from the rough-shod herds of camera-clutching stampeders at KuDeTa might as well just move in at Potato Head Beach.

The Potato Head concept comes as a relief on a beach that is increasingly being co-opted by soulless multinationals. And it’s certainly most welcome since it’s bringing at least one new, serious contemporary gallery to the Bali table. Good timing there, with Kendra, Biasa Artspace, and Gaya all experiencing trouble and flux at the moment. If Ark Jakarta (above) is anything to go on, we can have fairly high hopes for Potato Head Beach Club’s art space(s).

You may be forgiven if you happened to confuse the Potato Head milieu with Japan-bred Super Potato, the master atelier of Asian brut which has its own offshoots here in Bali. Specifically, we refer to Nobuyuki Narabayashi of Bali studio, Desain9 (The Junction, Casa del Mango, Indi-vie, etc.), who is a veteran of Super Potato, Japan. And Seiki Torige, Bali-based glassmaster, who has worked on Super Potato projects in Japan. Evidently, there is no connection, although there may be friendships, and certainly there are overlaps in design-philosophy.

Our gallery of ancestral arts, ornament, weapons and textiles in Seminyak has been open for more than a year. Better late than never, at long last we have our website up. At present, there are 66 pieces from our inventory shown in the “collections” area of the site. We’ll be adding more material, and improving the site on an ongoing basis, so do bookmark it, and come back often to see what’s new. Expect refinements to design, additional functionality and fresh content during the weeks and months ahead. www.iconasianarts.com.

We’ve been applauding the Fowler Museum at UCLA for years. They’ve shown a keen understanding of Indonesian culture, and nobody beats the Fowler at curating and hanging a great show. Their shows always balance the aesthetic and the didactic in the best possible way. Now they’ve done it again, with Nini Towok’s Spinning Wheel, an exhibition of the traditional batik of Kerek, Java (above). Hats off, once again, to the museum’s curator of Asian and Pacific collections, Roy Hamilton.

In typical Fowler fashion, even their press releases and website writing are so good, that I have nothing more to say. Go read about the show here. It will be up until December, so if you will be anywhere near LA, don’t miss it.

We are in Brussels today, where the arbitrary is deliberate, and the unexpected is . . . well . . . expected. Eccentricity is ordinary, serendipity is a ubiquity, and we keep bumping into people we know, as if it were all scripted . . . for the theatre of the absurd. We love it. Discovery du jour, after a stroll through the marvelous Marolles flea market, was the showroom of K. Loan on Rue Blaes.

Bruno says it is like a set from Luc Besson’s Le Dernier Combat. In Brunese, that means, “it’s great.” It is. The photos here do not do it justice, nor does their tiny website. Here is a master of mise en place, who takes weathered industrial steel and juxtaposes ordinary objects and extraordinary ones against them in such a way that voilà! it is a still life. Everybody thinks they can do the same these days. But they are wrong. It takes the eye of one such as K. Loan. A very rare eye indeed. Delightful.

We must salute these lawyers in Bangkok, Tilleke & Gibbins, who proudly display their collection of Southeast Asian textiles online and in-office. They even put a “Textile Collection” page on their official website to show off their woven assets. The collection includes this marvelous antique head cover from Cambodia (above), as well as numerous other heritage textiles from Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and Laos.

The firm has garnered significant publicity related to the textile collection, including in-depth articles in the Asia Times and the highly-respected magazine of world carpets and textiles, HALI, which gave them four pages. Naturally, we would love to see law firms and other businesses in Indonesia follow suit.

Contemporary textile arts don’t get any better than this. Check out Weavers Studio in Kolkata for kantha cloth, felt, applique, embroidery, hand prints, kalamkari, zardozi, chikanwork, pintucks, pleats, shibori, and more. This is much more than a production house, it’s a textile study and development centre, devoted to fine handwork and learning from the legacy of world textile traditions.

They have more than 20,000 wooden blocks, 1000 textile reference books, 500 old and rare textiles from India and abroad, plus an R&D team that has delved into many textile topics, including Indian trade textiles, khadi cloth, and African Jamdani indigo dyeing.

The variety of cloths available from this organisation is amazing, and inspirations abound on their website. For fashion. For furnishings. For fine art. For everyday life. For exceptional events. Wow. Hats off to Weavers Studio.

The recent mass mania for rigorous modernism has tended to vivisect what is most human in our homes, workplaces and public spaces. When the seminal modernist, Le Corbusier (above) declared, “a house is a machine for living in,” the operative word was living. The intention was to shape structures, spaces, and their contents intelligently, to support human life, human dreams, and human necessities – - and always with a weather eye to nature, its rhythms and its imperatives.

Of course, human life is messy by nature. So it does call for some ordering, some rigor, some alignment, some structuring. But not to excess, lest living itself suffer. And so, after the onslaught of sterile steel and plastic and glass in CAD-begotten forms, one yearns this year for design that is more living than dead, that supports living in ways that are intrinsically human and natural.

I mean, how smart is it to force ourselves to live in depersonalised environments, like prisoners of war or alien abductees? We are not stick figures or avatars, after all. So where do we go from here?

One place to go is Bleu Nature (above, and below). Consider their declaration that “Bleu Nature inhabits a space where time is material, where the evolution of objects and forms is the concept, and where erosion is a quality. Here, the natural erosion of a fragment of wood is a source of inspiration.”

We’ve been working up ideas for a large outdoor space at our Bali home. We’ve been working and overworking ideas for renovating our antiquated ski chalet in the Italian Alps. Bleu Nature’s collections resonate in both environments, in ways that are elemental and right.

Being natural doesn’t have to mean being chaotic. Being human doesn’t have to mean being dirty. On the other hand, creating more natural, human environments doesn’t have to mean revisiting the squalor and sentimentality of a hippie yurt commune, stuffed with broken dream-catchers and mildewed moccasins.

The manifestation of pure modernism is not fascist furniture, but natural, honest furniture (with a touch of whimsy of course, as we humans would still be living in unadorned caves and heaps of peat, were it not for our whimsy). Modernism as it was conceived was not cruel or inhuman. It was about being smart, rather than sloppy, or sentimental or decadent. It was intended to be rigorous in the way that nature is rigorous. It addressed the fact that there are tendencies and even imperatives which it is wiser to work with, rather than against – - particularly if one aspires to create a good “machine for living in”.

Humans were not meant to live in operating theaters or morgues or microchip manufacturing plants. Or in sci-fi concept-pods of contorted computer-generated techno-weirdness. We are not sterile, we are not rigid, we are not rectilinear, we are not computer-generated. We are utterly, organically human. We want to feel well, we want to be comfortable, yet want to enjoy a certain order and rigor.

Then sometimes it rains . . .

Isn’t it inherently better to welcome weather and its artistic effects, than to spend one’s energies struggling to preserve audaciously inappropriate pristine patio furniture? In order to fulfill the desire for order and control, why not simply design beautiful yet rigorous patio furniture suited to the situation out there on the patio (where time and weather are implicitly welcome, since they cannot be refused)?

And isn’t it inherently better to firmly grasp the hand of time and welcome its contributions, than frantically push the pause button on everything around us, and on our souls in the process? I kind of think so. And I think Frank LeFebvre of Bleu Nature does, too.

Just look at what he did at the Mystique in San Torini (above and below, now part of Starwood’s Luxury Collection). Bravo. It’s alive.

Or is it? Are we too “modern” for authentic living? Perhaps Adorno was right in the opening salvo of Minima Moralia, when he declared, “Life does not live.”

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

His grandfather was a master Chula kitemaker, now Korakot Aromdee makes masterpieces of bamboo using the same fine materials and craftsmanship. His work includes large-scale sculptures, lighting, decorative accessories and architectural pieces.

I appreciate Korakot’s work, not only for its beauty, but for the way he makes bamboo fly up to the stratosphere of sophisticated style. And because he proudly flies the flags of Thai identity, community consciousness, and environmental awareness.

Korakot’s work is available through his website, at international design and interiors exhibitions, and in New York at Establishment, an innovative retail showroom/gallery in the Meatpacking District.

Linda Garland has daringly directed the design for director Rob Cohen’s new island retreat in the far east of Bali. In case you missed it in Architectural Digest, read the story with photos here. The district around of this rustic retreat on the shores of Seraya, is looking to become the next Munduk. Only eleven people in the world will know what we mean by that. Fine.

The fully-themed feeling of the quirky property is befitting for a Hollywood director (and producer, and writer). It’s Minangkabau meets Shaggy from Scooby-Doo meets Made Wijaya in Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Lounge for a coconut cocktail. Plenty of accessories. Glad I’m not doing the dusting there. And heaven help them when the rainy season sets in or the trade winds blow a spanker.

In the name of disambiguation, this tinseltown Cohen is listed in the credits for TV series like Miami Vice and thirtysomething, and for films including Mahogany, The Wiz, The Legend of Billie Jean, and The Witches of Eastwick.

Oh, Linda’s own home popped up in Marie Claire (Italy) this month, too.

Images © 2009 Architectural Digest

I rarely long to go anywhere in particular. When you live in Bali, the travel bug doesn’t bite so hard. But now, after all this stress and the complexities of making and decorating a house, I really want to get away to something completely different. And simple.

The Perivolas in Oia on the Greek island of Santorini looks exactly right. Simple. Without the formality and rigour of a modern-minimalist tropical house, which is what I live in. That’s a change I could welcome right now.

Bali-dwellers, please don’t get excited by these images and try to emulate it. Bali is far too damp to try this kind of thing. It’s been tried, especially in the 70s and 80s, with dire and disastrous results. We all know those moldy, decomposing, dripping hippy dream houses. Don’t even think about building into a hillside or a cave here, or going for the free-form lumpen look. 

Unless you build on Nusa Penida, and have a hundred guys to roll limewash on your walls and floors dawn to dusk. And a huge account with PLN to pay for all the dehumidifiers.

So it’s off to Santorini, then, for me, the would-be minimalist cave dweller. Imagine that’s me in the picture above. I’m certainly trying to imagine it.