Patina Gallery - Contemporary Jewelry in Santa Fe

The first visit I made after dodging dirt devils on the approach into the Santa Fe airport was to Patina Gallery, the best place to see contemporary jewelry in the area. The current exhibit was titled Overlay, featuring the paintings and jewelry of Ford/Forlano.  The back area of the shop was organized as a smaller gallery, with paintings on the wall and jewelry in pedestal cases on the floor. The paintings are really linoleum prints with mixed media, with both artists working sequentially on the art as they do on the jewelry. The paintings are very reminiscent of their jewelry, with complex visual textures, subtle color combinations, and mixtures of simple geometric shapes.

Ford/Forlano
Hydro Pin
polymer, sterling silver

There were several of their Hydro Top Pins, combining silver with polymer, on display.

Ford/Folano
Tube Necklace
polymer, sterling silver

I also admired several Tube Necklaces, with cleverly layered tubes of polymer cut away to reveal subtle shadings and color contrasts.

Ford/Forlano
Calder Flower Pin
polymer, sterling silver

Ford/Folano
O'Keefe Pin
polymer, sterling silver

It was also interesting to see the artists' clear denotation of influences, such as in their Calder Flower or O'Keefe Pins. As I ponder how to incorporate inspiration into my own work, it's revealing to analyze how others do it.   See the Ford/Forlano collection available at Patina.

Many other incredible artists were represented in the works filling the rest of the gallery. Two really stick out in my memory. One was a wall display of work by Sandra Enterline, whose mesmerizing sieve-like perforated silver always captivates me. I have mental images of her sitting there at the drill press, rhythmically and meditatively filling an area with holes. I'm always drawn to pods, so it's no surprise that I loved her versions.

The delicacy of the chains that she fabricates to suspend the perforated pods also made me want to rush out to the studio and begin fusing links madly. This is the piece that begged to go home with me, but I resisted mightily. The $1225 price tag helped in that battle, not that I don't think it worth every penny. See the Sandra Enterline collection available at Patina.

Hobblestones

If you're interested in following along on my trip to Prague, Vienna and Budapest, I've set up a dedicated blog called Hobblestones.

My Top Ten Paris Sights

1. Eiffel Tower -- at night when it's covered in lights and twinkling


2. St. Chapelle -- the most incredible stained glass ever! Click on the link for an amazing surround view.



3. Musee de l'Orangerie -- Monet's waterlies, which I already blogged about


4. Versaille -- gardens, state rooms (especially the Hall of Mirrors) and the Hamlet




5. Cruise on the Seine River -- for great views of all the classic sights


6. Musee de Louvre -- especially the crowd around the Mona Lisa


7. Musee d'Orsay -- don't miss Le Restaurant or the Impressionist gallery on the 5th floor




8. Rue de Seine -- galleries!! Where Un-Roen and I fell in love with bronzes by Christine Remy


9. Les Arts Decoratifs -- museum of jewelry, fashion, ceramics, toys, advertising, photography, furnishings, etc., where I had to sketch because no photography was allowed


10. food!!! Especially, sweets of any sort -- croissants, macarons and this raspberry napoleon with pistachio cream

Monet in Paris

Paris was just stunning! One of my favorite stops was Musee de l'Orangerie, with its two huge oval rooms filled with Monet's water lillies. I've seen some of the water lilies before, but not these. Imagine two huge oval rooms, each with four immense paintings, assembled from four huge paintings each, curved to fit the wall. Painted expressly for this installation near the end of Monet's life, they were simply breathtaking!!


Go here for a virtual visit! Click on the right for Salle 1 and Salle 2 and just twirl yourself around in Giverny. I know I took photos of all eight, but this is even better. Next time I'm going to see the garden in person!


More Monet paintings were on view at other locations, such as these classics from the Musee d'Orsay, but none captured my heart as much as the water lilies.

Punting on the Cam

Ken Poole, one of Keenan's professional colleagues, is a doctor/professor/researcher at Cambridge University and kindly offered to entertain us for a day there. We admired the incredible architecture of the many Cambridge colleges from the Cam River, in the classic "punting" experience. This involves standing on the back deck of the boat, pushing a long wooden pole into the muddy river bottom to propel and torquing the pole in the water at the rear of the boat to steer. Then hand over hand, the pole is lifted skyward and dropped again to repeat the process.


This photo is of Isaac Newton's bridge, designed to stay up just by force of gravity, without hard connections (evidently tested without success).


Here are my two geniuses in deep University inspired thought.


Lefty Joren was a natural, taking control for perhaps a total of half of our time on the river, gracefully ducking low under one of the bridges, releasing the punt when it stuck in mud rather than holding on while the boat surged ahead (a paddle got us back to the pole standing upright in the river), and even skillfully gliding us back to the dock as if he did this every day. Ah, the muscles of a strong fifteen year old!

Me? I just kept repeating to myself that if I can balance on one leg in yoga, surely I could stay on the back of that boat (wet and slippery, though!). The real issue was one of arm strength. I just couldn't lift that pole over and over repeatedly. Luckily, I had a 15 year old handy.

We nibbled fresh local strawberries with cream and sipped apple juice from local orchards while admiring the lush gardens and buildings. Perhaps Joren has new appreciation for his mowing and edging equipment after watching a gardener edging the lawn along the river with long-handled hand clippers!

Afterward, we joined Ken's lovely wife Tamsin and baby Grace for a tasty Scottish fish lunch and a tour of the Darwin exhibit at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Later on our own, we wandered through shops and bookstores (Cambridge University Press, anyone?) and ate a collection of small plates in the Vaults (well, my meat lover son had to add the ostrich burger to his compendium of critters consumed).

Cambridge was just so gorgeous and fun that I'm trying to persuade Keenan that he should instigate a corporate sabbatical program so that we can live over there for a year.

London Without Electronics

So you noticed the lack of blog posts? That's what happens when all the electronics go on the blitz at the beginning of the vacation.

Loading my iPhone with travel podcasts and games for the long plane ride, I hit some download that demanded a software update. Bad move -- the download somehow became corrupted, totally freezing the iPhone, with no time to make a mall pilgimage. Even back home today, I was unable to restore it in multiple attempts and resorted to taking it into the Apple store for a reboot.

The tiny notebook computer made the trip, hooked into the free WiFi at the first hotel, but never worked again -- just the white screen of death. It's packed and awaiting shipment for warranty repair since it's less than a year old.

Luckily, the camera continued to work, although the lens cover is sticking open a lot. Keenan proactively bought a new point-and-shoot for the trip, one that met his qualifications for high zoom, high macro, low light shots so that he can use it for air shows and birding. It takes amazing pictures and I am officially camera jealous. I can't wait to try it for jewelry and beads. Perhaps it will be a nice option in my photography tutorial.

So I had a peaceful, media free trip: London 4 nights, Paris 6 nights, London again 4 nights -- a Paris sandwich as the passport control guy said.

The initial stay in London was HOT -- pushing 90° with little air conditioning available anywhere. Our hotel was toasty, the underground was an oven, and even our jaunt out to the British Museum (close to our hotel) late in the first afternoon offered no relief. I was grateful that I had packed a couple pair of shorts!



We did all sorts of normal touristy London things: visiting the Tower of London to see a castle, the Crown Jewels, ravens and Henry VIII's armor; walking alongside Parliament with views of Big Ben and Westminster Cathedral; perusing the Winston Churchill Museum and War Cabinet Rooms, left as they were at the end of WWII; riding in red double-decker tour buses to rest weary feet; sailing down the Thames River to Greenwich to stand astraddle the Prime Meridian, the arbitrary line from which global longitude is measured; eating fish and chips; and checking out the King's Cross/St. Pancras underground station to see the locations used in filming Harry Potter.

By the time we headed for Paris, the loss of electronics was taken for granted.

Fellow Students

With such a tiny group of students in Italy, I felt I got to know everyone better than usually happens in a larger group. Too, we were together longer and had activities outside the studio.

Here's a photo of the workroom, with my fellow students studiously working. Left to right are Rebecca, Debbie, Carol, and Un-Roen.


I have a memento from Rebecca Galvan that will hopefully become an artistic element soon. It's a big, black scorpion that terrorized Rebecca, the most critter sensitive of us all, in her room one night. Sprayed with hairspray and Lysol and threatened with face cream, it was eventually secured under an upturned glass and finally removed by Gordon to the great outdoors cold. I don't know which of those things killed it, but I thought it would look great electroformed. It did suffer a little in its container on the way home, so I'll have to see if I can rescue it.

My fondest memory of Debbie Bateman is a long car ride with an Italian teen at the wheel. Since our tiny four-seater couldn't take all eight of us to dinner, we called around to the few open restaurants to find one that would send a car and driver to collect us. Not once, but twice. On a ride home from the restaurant, we laughed and laughed as Debbie in the front seat conversed with Guido. She spoke some Spanish, close enough to Italian to puzzle out, and he spoke enough English to understand when we guessed correctly about what he was trying to say. We heard stories about his girlfriend (an older woman at 21) and her Lamborghini endowed family. Debbie struck up conversations everywhere we went, leading us to most of the fun interactions with locals.

Carol Douglas and I ventured off the beaten path in Rome, so we spent a lot of fun time together. Overall, she made more pieces at the workshop than anyone else, partly because she stayed at home during the walled cities tour and worked, firing two loads of bronze clay as well. Motivated by an upcoming exhibit, she focused on constructing fairies and sprites, delicate hidden faces. She lives in the tourist-attracting New Forest in the south of England, where hopefully I'll get to visit some day. The prize of our outings is the collection of porcupine quills collected along the winding roadside between the Villa and the miniscule willage of Villastrada, where we walked for coffee on the final, only sunny day of the workshop. We needed Debbie to chatter more with the little old Italian lady who stopped to pantomime the demise of the critter, scurrying hunched-over back and forth across the road, then holding up one hand to represent the beast and smashing it with the speeding car of the other hand. "Animale morte" we could figure out.

Finally, Un-Roen Manarata outdid us all with her lightning work. Born in Thailand, living for many years in Belgium, she owns three bead shops. Obviously a business woman, she had no tolerance for inactivity or inefficiency. She whipped out gorgeous pieces every moment in the minimum time possible and freely demonstrated shortcuts. She brought her two published books to share, along with beads and findings and Belgian chocolates. Fairies were also a passion of hers, and she sculpted a tiny, delicate face from bronze to compare techniques with Carol and show Louise, who wanted to learn from them both. Even in off moments, she was attaching pearls and metal clay leaves to peyote beaded rings. Warm and funny, she charmed every other member of the group. She's teaching and taking workshops at the Bead and Button Show, so I'll see her in Milwaukee in May/June. I'm told that watching her shop for wares to fill her stores is a site to behold. I'm looking forward to it.

The Rome Finale

Alas, the time of making things came to an end. Luckily, we had a few days to see the sites in Rome.

I particularly enjoyed the fact that I had just been there two years ago, so I felt no need to see the standard sites of Colosseum, Roman Forum, Sistine Chapel and Vatican, etc. I was free to go for the secondary sites!




Our hotel was perfectly situated, literally minutes by foot from the Colosseum and Roman Forum in one direction and the Trevi fountain in the other, so we did a walk around the first evening after the travel from the villa. We went around sunset, with a full moon rising, so there were some incredible views.





The next day, while the others were doing the standard outings, Carol and I ventured onto the Metro and out to Ostia Antica, the ancient ruins of Rome's port city at the mouth of the Tiber River, some 30km west of Rome. It's somewhat like going to Pompeii. It was a gorgeous spring day, there were people but not huge crowds, and we walked until our feet were sore from all those huge stone cobbles.







On the last day, Carol and I signed up for the English tour at the Galleria Borghese, the incredible early museum of the Borghese collections. Since we were the only two, we got a private tour with a lovely Italian guide who was incredibly passionate about the artwork there. We even got to use the 100 year old elevator that would only hold 3 people, reserved usually for employees and disabled. The sculpture was just magnificent, but again no photographs allowed.

After more wanderings around the city, more gelato (always important), and a few gifts purchased, the trip was done.

Now I can catch up with what's happening at home!

Florence

Our two excursion days wound up back-to-back because of the rain all week. After the long day in a van with driver, on Saturday we rose early to make the train to Florence, about an 1.5 hour trip.




We visited the cathedral of course, where I took a huge number of photos of the elaborately carved doors and interior icons.


My bird fetish especially enjoyed all the critters I snapped.


I declined to climb the 414 steps up Giotto's Campanile to see the view, as I figured my feet would be needed to walk all over the city later in the day.



We stopped for a pasta lunch, unfortunately omitting the mouthwatering desserts at the restaurant.



We meandered toward the river, passing shops, cars, and markets. Finally we arrived at the famed Ponte Vecchio, a medieval bridge lined with jewelers' shops.


Street artists were everywhere, and I stopped to buy a watercolor of the Ponte Vecchio. The artist, Vittoria Scaffidi, makes her work unique by extending the painting with more color or pen and ink onto the mat.


When we caught up with our instructors at the Palazzo Pitti, they were working extremely hard, preparing for our final day of class.


Here we had to decide whether to look at the decorative arts there or return to the Uffizi to see the fine arts. That was a hard call for me. If I had it to do over, I'd do the Uffizi early, grab something quick to eat, and then go to the Palazzo Pitti.

The Uffizi is hands-down the most recommended site in Florence. Luckily it was the off season; even so it required a wait in line to get tickets, then many hours to do even a quick pass through all the famous paintings. We had to backtrack to see "The Birth of Venus" because it was in an inner room that we missed. No photos were allowed, of course, and I declined to lug a heavy catalog home. I did buy a book about sketching through Tuscany because it reminded me so much of our experience.

After the art wore us down, I finally got my first gelato of the trip. We wandered back around to the bridge, to find the rest of our group enjoying wine and cappucino there. After a brief rest, we moseyed on, with a few quick shop entrances, to a square with performing jugglers. We had an early dinner of pasta again, before returning to the train station for the ride home.