Smink is a go-to for mid-century modern furniture and home accessory designs. But, did you also know they have some amazing art offerings? It’s true. Drop by this Saturday, April 5 at 5:30 p.m. for an opening reception for artist Stephen Lebowitz’s latest exhibition, Second Dialogues. If you can’t make the soiree, you can view the dreamlike paintings by Lebowitz at the store until June 15^.

From Smink’s press release: “The work is a dialogue between Lebowitz and his subjects/ the people that filled his life – it is a second conversation that exemplifies the process of traditional portraiture painting.” Thom Mayne (the architect for the Perot Museum of Nature and Science) and his wife Blythe are fans and avid collectors of the artist’s work.

If you haven’t had a chance to discover the utterly gorgeous 1814 MAGAZINE yet, I would highly recommend that you snap up a copy stat.

The limited edition, biannual photography, design, art, and culture publication provides a platform for established and emerging artists, including local talents Allison V. Smith (above) and D Home and D Moms contributor Maxine Helfman… Oh and the magazine is produced here in Dallas.

This Friday March 15, 1814 MAGAZINE is holding an opening reception for its Pop Up Gallery at 2650 Main Street. The pop up will run through Sunday, March 24 and feature the winners and finalists of the Prix de 1814 MAGAZINE – 2013.

You can get more details here and then go and see the stunning images in person.

I stopped by Smink last week to scout goods for our March/April issue and was stopped in my tracks by the exhibit of works by Santa Fe artist Dana Newmann currently on display.

Newmann’s show, aptly titled “Surrealist Realms,” is a mix of collages, graphic novels, and curiosity cabinets rendered in meticulous detail, which riff on the works of such icons of surrealism as Salvador Dali, Joan Mirò, and Marcel DuChamp among others. Her pieces are at once witty, ironic, often unsettling, and, without fail, utterly mesmerizing.

The show ends next Saturday, February 16. I would highly recommend that you make a beeline to Smink stat to check it out… It’s that good.

We first spotted Carol Benson-Cobb’s artwork at the new Lakewood home store Hess. Her abstract paintings can also be found at George Cameron Nash, Horchow, and Mecox. From Benson Cobb’s website, “My work reflects a feeling created within a color palette with an emphasis on the way colors touch, layer and affect one another.  My vision is to create a mood within the art, adding a hint of a landscape or focal point, usually evoking a feeling of fluidity and emotion.”

If you’d like to meet the artist and preview her work, visit her open house this Friday from 10am – 6 pm at her studio in The Cotton Mill in McKinney (610 Elm Street).

Female painters specializing in dreamy, organic, nature-inspired works are making quite the splash in our fair city this fall.

Fine artist, textile designer, and former D Home blog “Thursday Tastemaker,” Megan Adams Brooks’ earthy abstractions will be on display at Blue Print at a show this Thursday the 25th.

In addition to the requisite bites and bubbles, the Dallas native (she holds a Bachelor of Fine Art in painting and drawing from SMU and a Masters of Fine Art from UNT) will be on hand from 6-8 to talk about her work, and a percentage of proceeds from her sales will benefit Father’s Heart Program through Family Legacy.

Meanwhile down in the design district, Smink is exhibiting New Mexico modernist painter Dara Mark’s abstract watercolors. Per Smink:

“Guiding the water with her brush, Mark delineates shapes that the water moves through, allowing the pigment to be drawn along until it settles. In her newer work, the shapes are more akin to topography; like lozenges bent and compressed over time, shaped by wind and water.”

Both shows seem the perfect antidote to this muggy fall weather we’re firmly in the midst of…

Tomorrow, from 6-8 p.m., Wisteria Dallas is hosting an opening reception celebrating an exhibit of  works by interior and still-life photographer Casey Sills.

Sills’ food, decor, and still-life imagery appears regularly in national shelter and lifestyle magazines, but for this show, which runs through November 18, he’s curated a collection of photographs focused on man made structures presented in vast natural settings that, “define space between earth and sky.”