Wanda's - Shut Up and Like It or Get Out Cafe

My friend (Little Lori) sent me a link to this amazing work by Washington artist Nicole Dinardo. This is so commercial and so fun and so technically breathtaking. I realize it could never be considered "high art". You are never going to see this in a gallery, or at least not a traditional gallery.

In a story that appears in the King5.com webpage (Snohomish, Washington), we learn the following information about the artist:

In her Snohomish paint shop, Nicole Dinardo took her hobby of airbrush painting, applied it to one of the hottest selling appliances, and turned it into gold.
They are custom-painted KitchenAid mixers, selling from $450 to $1,400 a piece.
"You're paying for an original piece of art on a really functional item," said Dinardo.
First she made them for family, then for friends.

"This one here I did for a dear friend of mine Mariah," she said, as she showed off a pistachio green mixer painted with birch tree branches, birds and Swarovski crystals. "I know the birch trees signify something that goes back into her family, and the birds, everything on here is personal and emotional to her."
She made a gift for a grandma, with handprints and drawings from her grandchildren. Another one was for a soldier in Afghanistan, who had an animal print mixer made for his sister.
Now Dinardo makes them for celebrities. She showed us a pink on pink one for Katy Perry, a cream colored mixer with flowers she made for Britney Spears, and a yellow patterned mixer with "T's" all over it for Tori Spelling.
A gold and black pattern she was working on is for Beyonce.
"Beyonce's will actually be 22 karat gold (leaf), versus this one that is painted to look like gold," said Dinardo.
And now she's custom-painting 30 mixers for the swag bag at the Oscars. What an endorsement for a single mom, who seven years ago asked to be an apprentice at an auto design company.

"I get lots of networking opportunities that allow me to do work for those people, which is really wonderful."
Dinardo is swamped with orders. She says waiting time for a custom mixer is probably three months away. But she is offering gift certificates for Christmas.

Visit her website, Un Amore. and her Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/customkitchencouture?ref=ts&sk=wall#!/unamorecustomdesigns.

Like I said earlier, this is not "high art", but it is so flawless, it would make Jeff Koons envious. I like the variety of styles and looks that she achieves, but I also like the personalization she is willing to do for people. In her website she does have a few mixers that are listed for sale the were spec pieces for her, but it appears she has a mile long list waiting for her to complete custom orders. I really like the fact that she is combining her clear love for authentic automobile detailing with kitchen appliances. I have seen painted refrigerators and stoves before, but I have not seen customized small appliances before.

You must go to her website and see more than mixers. It is filled with other items she has painted - lots of skateboard decks - some were pink with skulls and bows, an old black tram with blue flames that has been re-chromed, and other appliances. She also has a few pieces of what appear to be wall-art, I mean like canvases (or whatever substrate she uses), flat pieces hung on the wall, like a regular painting. When you look at those pictures (I couldn't copy and paste any of those pics), notice the background of the photos. Some are obviously taken right in or near the shop she paints in, but most are taken in what appears to be a boutiquey gift shop. I wonder if it is her shop, or if she just places her items in other people's shops for consignment. I am guessing the latter because she seems to have a long list of waiting customers.

The last mixer I had was a "vintage piece", similar to the one shown at left. After my friends' mom passed away, I was helping them with the estate yard sale. The mixer was one of the things left at the end of the day so I got it for $2 (they didn't want to take my money, but I insisted). It was black and chrome and reminded me of my mom's kitchen (although we were never rich enough to have a mixer on a stand, she had a smaller hand-held unit. But it was a design of that era, so it was nostalgic for me to use it. It had a bad cord right where it connected to the actual plug end, so I had to make sure it was positioned just right when using it to ensure that electricity would actually run through it. Sometimes I was actually stupid enough to hold the cord, pushing towards the outlet, to make it run. I thought a number of times I needed to replace the cord on that thing, but I kept using it. Until one Thanksgiving Day when I was mixing the mashed potatoes with my awesome, vintage mixer, holding the cord just right, and got the hell shocked out of me. I saw stars. Without any hesitation, and without saying a thing, I picked the entire stand up, with the mixer bowl full of Thanksgiving mashed potatoes, and dropped the entire thing in the trash.

I have always wanted one of these KitchenAid models, and my dreams came true a few years ago. My friends Diane & Ralph were having the grand opening for the spectacular showroom at Ador Kitchens & Baths (http://adoronline.com/Culinary.html). Part of the night's festivities was a drawing for a number of kitchen goodies provided by the Culinary Institute of America. I won the mixer! Unbelievable! I don't win things in drawings or raffles. I don't win lotteries, even small ones. I was very excited, since I had been mixer-less since the Thanksgiving fiasco. My model is a nice gun-metal gray, and is top-of-the line (shown at right). One of my daughters said it was nicer than the one they had at the bakery she worked at. I will probably never be able to afford all of the accessories that can be had, but it came with a few attachments and one of them was a dough hook, so I was very excited. I am still excited about my KitchenAid mixer.

My future, perfect kitchen will be finished diner-style and I will have a large sign in neon running the length of the long wall above the counter that will proclaim, "Wanda's - Shut Up and Like It or Get Out Cafe". Wanda's will be a big, swirly pink script. Most of the other text will be seafoam green in smaller block letters. "Get Out" will be in either white or ruby red, and it will be set on a flasher. I suppose if I had the money to swing the whole diner thing complete with a neon sign, I could afford one of these mixers. I will order it to have the neon sign painted as a distorted reflection on the top of the mixer. In reverse. I should probably just budget for that, since I may be able to afford that LONG before the whole diner thing happens. I like that idea, working on the vision, keeping the image in front of me every day.

Nicole Dinardo is able to utilize her artistic talents in many ways, and the customized mixer thing has taken off for her. Like I said earlier, this is not "high art", but it is amazing and marketable. She is in demand for what she does. It will never be in a museum, but it will earn her a very comfortable and respectable living. So I have to ask myself, is my goal to be a successful, commercial artist, like Miss Dinardo? Or is my goal to produce masterpieces? In my typical over-achieving manner, I intend on doing both. I would like to have fun with my art, creating with humor and talent and thought along the way. In this path of creating, I sincerely hope that I am able to come up with something that has a little bit more of an impact than painted mixers. I would dearly love to create a masterpiece of my own generation, something that speaks on several levels to not just my peers, but to the generations of my children and grandchildren.