Paint your wagon

Red. It's always red, at least when you are painting your wagon. I must admit that I have not only been on my wagon since the last post, but it has definitely been red. It's been a very red month in every regard. At present I am siting in the lobby of my hotel in Capri at 2 o'clock in the morning trying to take advantage of the stillness and clarity born of jet lag. This has really been the first time in the last month that I have felt like putting it down on what, in a different time, would have been paper. To recount, I celebrated my 40th birthday party at the farm in Millbrook about a month ago with my wonderful friends and since that time have done shows in Jackson Hole, Aspen, Carmel, New York and now Capri. There is a consistency and evenness that one tends to notice from waking up in the morning slightly unsure of what state or country they are in. I tend to see similarities in the differences. I imagine that it's a subconscious need to tie places together by nuance. The ribbon that has united my discord is the aforementioned color red. For some reason it is what I am seeing more then anything else. The fact that ruby is my birthstone and this has been a rather big year in that department only frames the allure that the color has held of late. The red-haired women I have come to visit here in Italy, the red bushes that catch ones eye biking in the Rockies, the highly polished red ferrari cars at the concourse elegance in Pebble Beach, and the chestnut horse that never wants to leave the farm, are like old, red friends, harmoniously living in my frenetic present. It has long been said that one should never paint a restraunt red because of the subconscious effect it has on people. The color apparently stimulates the eye so much that it creates a restlessness ill advised for the table. I have never really understood this theory. I used to love the Russian tea room as a child and have always equated the ruby with great passion and strength. I am not the only person by a far stretch to feel that way either. Rubys were often sewn into the skin of warriors before battle to inspire courage and purify the blood. Ok, perhaps not issues for the dinner table, but I still love red restraunts. In the gemstone world I adore the beautiful spinel, I find them more interesting then rubys on many occasions because of the abundance of secondary color they show. Spinel is never heat treated and the nuance of variations in unheated stone is significant. At the moment, and over the last number of years, they have become significantly more expensive due to heighted awareness and the Chinese paying anything to get the best stones from Burma (damn that bright red flag). Ancora! It interesting how many of my favorite places have strong associations with ceasars. Rome with Caligula, Constantine and Istanbul, Tiberius and Capri, and little Caesar in West Palm Beach. I did spend one of the most romantic weekends of my life here during a cold March years ago. I have never forgotten it, and never will. I think I'm getting a little bit loopy and will end my musings to spare the reader. However, I would like to thank the many friends who are spread all over the would for making life so interesting. I have been very lucky to have seen many joys of my life as a result of their largess and I appreciate it very much. I am giving myself the gift of 3 days in Riva del Garda windsurfing early next week. It's not a fancy place, but it is a place I found when I was 15 and find myself drawn to again and again because of many separate events in my life that kept bringing me back. I was where Mussolini hid out before the unfortunate end, and the home of the "mistrale", a consistent wind that makes it a windy paradise. The deep red glass of wine from the neighboring town of Vallpocella awaits. I guess that means I'm off the wagon.

Root of all

This past weekend was the beginning of the polo matches at Mashomac Club near my farm in upstate New York. It was an interesting time catching up with many of the people I grew up with as a child. Most of them know me as extension of my parents as opposed to a contemporary, so the conversation often turned to them at some point. Friends of my parents like to assume that it was my mothers jewelry that got me interested in designing as a metier. Perhaps so. My father as long spoken about the first room someone remembers in their life as the cornerstone of their taste. The premise being that if it was a happy room with good memories they try recreating that space, conversely their taste will sometimes run counter to the style of that first room if other feelings prevailed. I buy the theory. Yet the weekend punctuated me looking at the theory as it related to the jewelry I make. I had never done that before, never. Full disclosure, my mother has dementia and my brother and I had a conversation regarding her jewelry just two days prior. Should we sell it, should we keep it for our own wives ( one day ), etc. The combination of all the comments and my own feelings dealing with the possibility of selling any of her pieces was very interesting.

  I have never really felt that my mothers jewelry would impress jewelry women. There is a distinct lack of major stones, with one exception of a cabochon sapphire ring my father purchased for her in Gstaad years ago. It is not an important stone, but it is well balanced and a beautiful setting. The rest of the pieces are pleasant but far from great . There are really very few signed period pieces, and the collection tends to the larger semi precious variety. I really don't use the term semi precious however for the sake of this blog It gets the point across. What my mother does have is a beautiful collection of peridot. Beautiful peridot.....and I stress beautiful. These are larger stones out of settings for the most part. She also has a very interesting collection of  Marguerite Stix and some Rene Boivin. The Stix and Boivin pieces are mostly shell rings and delicate examples of their work. Her collection is really very thoughtful and applicable to the time they were acquired and perfect  for her. What she lacks in artillery she made up for in the art of jewelry making. Nothing is commercial. I have never thought that her pieces affected my personal esthetic in jewelry making, but it does. I use alot of important stones however the tenor is geared less to the austere and more to the sensual. I use shell and moonstone like Stix and Boivin, and I will always reference that. They are some of my most admired designers. Going further, peridot is one of my favorite stones, along with coral (another of my mothers collectibles). It is an admission to myself that her tastes in jewelry have influenced me profoundly.  I am working on a piece of jewelry using the most beautiful peridot that has ever been. The piece when finished will be named after her. It is a very dark time in her life at the moment and it is said that one of the benefits given to the wearer of peridot it that it helps you see in the darkness, the  same way aquamarine keeps you from falling off horses, or rubys promote bravery. Stones have meaning. I trust in these truths, and believe that the stones that have come to represent her in my own esthetic will show her some light in darkness.

To blessed to be stressed

Forgive me Father for its been several weeks since my last confession. Actually it has been alot longer then that ,but my hope is that the hour I spent at the gospel tent at jazz fest will assuage the need to cleanse any more then a I already have. I am not really too geared up about it, but been being in good graces never hurt. There was a time in history when the clergy had some of the best jewelry around. Pope innocent X was strong in the bling department. Perhaps thats why Velazquez and later Bacon did some painting of the guy. I dont think he was beatified, a la John Paul. I am delighted JP is getting some votes. Anyway, at the moment I am feeling a little like Noah, fleeing the floods with the animals. I am not so sure that I am that holy, however there are a lot of animals in my car and the Mississippi is in the rear view mirror. I hate leaving, here is something so right about the tenor of New Orleans to me. I was recently told that I was too blessed to be stressed by a 300lb woman in a Childs medium white terrycloth sweat suit, as she eyed my burrito. I think she was right. There is so much good Juju out there and I am thankful for every bit of it.

Jazz fest was really not as good as I feel it has been in the past, but the gospel tent was AMAZING. The truth is that I have not been making alot of jewelry for the line. Most of the recent work has been for custom pieces. I am delighted that some clients have given me the opportunity to create some fab pieces for them.  For some reason turquoise has been the stone I am working with alot of late. There is a mine in Arizona called sleeping beauty, and it produces the cleanest most beautiful rough this side of Persian Turquoise. Its is a little more porous, and now it is gone. The mine will be closed for environmental reasons, so go out and buy all the rough you can get. I am going to make some turquoise and Ceylon blue sapphire pieces this week, accenting a bit of yellow gold. Perhaps a three tiered drop, and some cufflinks for myself. Why not? I am a jewelry collector too folks. I buy coral most of the time, but it feels like a blue week. In honor of the floods in Louisiana and the Delta. I hope we all realize that the Blues was born in the Delta. Vicksburg and Tunica, Indianola, Clarksdale all mean alot to the world as a nursery of the only American artform. Blue it is. Ok turquoise, but that is a shade of blue. Did miles Davis do an album called Shade of Blue? Included in this confession, otherwise called a blog, I include a recently finished piece of turquoise and ruby. I am very Happy with it, and more importantly so is the person I made it for. Everything I make for someone I make as well as I can, yet the client is the final arbiter. I am a people pleaser. I hope y'all like the image. Hallelujah.

Cherry Walk

Yesterday I spent several hours walking around Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum. It is a short trip to New York, but the first one I have taken in nearly a month and it seems so different now than it did the last time I was here. I've enjoyed walking amongst the fallen leaves of the cherry trees that are in bloom everywhere. It is so similar to snow. The cherry leaves along the sides of the paths are undisturbed and piled high still fragile and lush with life. Yet, the ones in the middle of the paths, like snow that has been walked through, have broken down and are wet. It shares great similarity with winter snow and how people passing through it define themselves in a physical way in the landscape.

We, as people, impose ourselves in so many different ways that range from subtle to bold, yet there are times of the year that frame our perceptions and our acknowledgement more than others. This week I had noted a sensitivity to sculpture that never existed during the winter. Nobody seems to see the sculptures in the parks until spring. Why is that? Is it because the bronze shows up against green leaves better than it does against grey skies? Or is it because in the winter, psychologically, we are less attuned to paying attention to things outside. I think about this stuff all the time as it relates to jewelry. Why is turquoise a summer color and not a Fall color? I certainly understand that aqua blue is not a shade of a leaf in Fall, but why is it such an attractive color in springtime? Leaves don't turn aqua blue then either. I think it is because we associate the color with the tropics and the beautiful water of the Caribbean, or to take it a step further, water in general. Note, however, that aqua is most commonly found in Arizona in Indian jewelry, far from the water's edge. I'm making a lot of pieces out of turquoise right now, including a beautiful piece for a young woman, in aqua and rubies. Historically, turquoise has been used with coral to expand on the aquatic theme, most notably in the Van Cleef jewelry in the 1960s, as well as silver in Indian jewelry and in some Art Deco pieces, alongside onyx and white diamonds. The last example being the work of Cartier for the opening of the Suez Canal. Most of those pieces involved scarabs and Egyptian themes. I personally consider the Van Cleef and Cartier pieces aforementioned as some of the most important and beautiful pieces of jewelry ever created. Books of both jewelers are full of unique examples of these genres. However, having said that, I believe turquoise has been so under-utilized as an opaque stone. The pieces I have been making have been combinations of turquoise and transparent gem stones rarely seen together. I love turquoise and orange fire opal. The combination of turquoise and rubelite is extraordinary. Ruby and turquoise is electric, both hot and cold colors working alongside one another. It is especially important to know that we will not see turquoise quite the same way in the future. The Sleeping Beauty mine in Arizona, which is America's equivalent to Persian turquoise, is no longer going to be mined. No longer will we be able to see new turquoise material without matrix. Hopefully, we shall find another mine that gives us that extraordinary color in a form of a gem stone I'm so excited for this weekend. The plan is to bicycle the Natchez Trace from Jackson to Natchez in Mississippi. It is a one hundred mile bike ride that finishes at a Tamale restaurant overlooking the Mississippi. The ride gives me the opportunity to think for six hours unimpeded by the telephone or other parts of modern life. I've done the ride before and all I think about are the many colors of springtime and the possibilities of creating pieces of jewelry that I hope become little sculptures that make their presence known more pointedly at one part of the year as opposed to another. The colors will dictate when we see them more, when we see them less, and what statements they make. I had a conversation with a young woman this morning at an Art Gallery. We were looking at Kenneth Nolan paintings at Mitchell-Innes and Nash. Kenneth was a friend and a very sweet man. We used to drink wine together in Maine in the winters and I had some of the most interesting talks with him that I have ever had regarding art. He taught me so much and I was so sad that he passed away this year, but I was fortunate enough to buy one of his paintings before he died. He was my introduction to color field and perhaps the best voice of the importance of color. Color has such fabulous energy. Without form, color can still tell wonderful stories because of our associations. It holds power. It holds passion. It holds the emotion the artist wants to convey, but the seasons and the light and our mood define the delivery. I remember writing about watermelon last year at this time and what a fabulous color it is. I think if I go back and look at my blogs that came after the ride, watermelon was a major theme. I saw a painting yesterday at Gagosian uptown by an artist named Malevich that was the most beautiful watermelon color. It took me a full year to find a physical example of a color that I spent a lot of time thinking about during my last year's bike ride. I'm very excited for Saturday and the daydreams about specific hues of color that I know have no option but to come to mind. It always plays such an important role in the creative process. I apologize for free association in this blog, but it is a passionate time of the year and I'm feeling especially keen. One of the most fortunate things I have been privy to is experiencing Spring twice. Once in NOLA and once again in the North East. I'm planning a big birthday this year and a number of trips with great excitement and the jewelry I expect will follow suit.