Strawberry Fields
Upon my return to New York City, from Blackberry Farm, I did what anyone who grew up in the city might do on a hot summer evening. I met a friend for dinner in Central Park. In order to continue the theme of going places named after berries and to the reverse the tenor of solitude, we chose the Imagine mosaic in Strawberry Fields. I arrived early, and had the great pleasure of sitting and watching all of humanity walk by and pose with the circular design that is embedded in the pavement. Some of the worlds biggest freaks came by to examine the scene; coming down from their high, smile with their girlfriends, or fall in love. I can't think of anything that would seem out of bounds at this little intersection just off 72nd Street and Central Park West. Strawberry Fields has long been a pilgrimage for Beatles fans eager to visit the place Lennon used to go in the mornings to write his music. He was later shot in front of his apartment building, The Dakota, across the street. That evening, however, one particular person caught my attention. It was a boy of about eleven-years-old. He looked like any eleven-year-old might, yet he and his family made quite a show of photographing him with the mosaic; the boy making dance gestures, holding his rocket pop and grinning ear to ear. It was very impressive to see this little showman run off all the freaks and tourists.Yet, there is a history and relevance to this place that belongs to a generation that this kid was not part of, and to some extent neither am I. (I do remember driving by The Dakota on the way to school and seeing all the photographers on the morning Lennon was shot, but was really unsure of who the man was) The boy has not yet had the life opportunity to hear the music and make his tribute something that comes from him. Hopefully, he will come to understand the relevance of his family trip, and how it relates to the role Central Park plays with artists and how it is an oasis of creativity in the middle of a city consumed with business. John Lennon phrased that message so well.
The whole scene got me thinking about imitation, personal aesthetic and taste. So often, personal expression is an evolution that starts with imitation. My clients insist that I don't reproduce things I make for them for other clients, and I get it. It's about the individuality of the person rather than the amount of money that can be made on on particular design. Ladies first! And I'm a big believer in that. The one thing that does confuse me a bit is that in order to create a piece of jewelry that is considered iconic, the designer has to make a number of them. Seems like a catch-22. I guess on some level I start to like the Lennon songs after I've heard them a few times. I digress. What struck me during my evening stroll was how active my brain is in the park, there is so much stimulus to work through ones head. So many of the incongruities that help make art can be found there. I can look at the rollerskaters at the half shell and see the artists from the imitators. It's not about skill or practice, it's about personal expression. I try very hard to make jewelry for people uninterested in what their friends have and more interested in what they like. I admit it helps when their friends do support the look. Yet, it remains one piece for one woman. That's not changing.
The challenge I have posed for myself in the coming months is how to bridge that chasm between the insecurity of imitation and strong personal pieces. I am really working hard on that. How do I create something that is comfortable enough for someone new to jewelry to buy, and that also leads them to appreciate the best workmanship though singular statement pieces? I don't expect it to be easy.
Fall Reigns
I have always enjoyed the fall season more then any other. I grew up in New York and the month of October there is the prettiest place on earth. I could feel Autumn sneaking into the air this past Tuesday, and I really did not have that melancholy feeling that once attached itself to going back to school. Quite the opposite as an adult.
I was fortunate enough to spend some time with high school friends in Watch Hill, Rhode Island earlier in the week. It was a rainy affair that I enjoyed very much. Going back to Rhode Island, and spending time on the beach, so close to Newport, where I attended high school with these friends, was a soft glimpse into my history that touched on the sentimental. I walked the beach and took one of the most exceptional bike rides in the rain. The trees were so lush and the varieties extensive, as it is a garden community. However, what struck me the most as I recall the time spent, was a short conversation with a young woman just starting to make jewelry. On some level being in that place, around old friends and discussing jewelry ideas with someone not entirely sure of who she is artistically, has made me look back to who I was, and how I felt about my medium at the nascent stages of my career. The conservation was a very familiar one to many I've had with myself. The tenor being to trust your instincts and lay-off the heavy gold. She had some really good ideas with materials and scale, yet was adamant about using tons of gold as the vehicle of her expression. That was my mantra for the first number of years in business and still to this day must force myself not to go big gold when I don't have to. Gold is at all time highs and again I still have the urge to sink any woman who falls into the pool with one of my bracelets on. Perhaps it's that my first job was at David Webb. But I rather feel the reason has been that I chose to treat jewelry as sculpture form the start. I just had to learn that nobody wants to wear something that weighs as much as a Henry Moore from their earlobe. As I am writing this I am reminding myself to re-read it as often as possible to reinforce the message personally. Yet as I look back at the issue that caused me some self doubt on the functional side of making and very importantly selling jewelry, I do feel that the best things that I have ever made are derivatives of the very first collection. A collection that had no stones and a host of problems. It was the most honest collection I have ever done. Anytime I have strayed from the tenor of those initial pieces I have failed. There was a period of time that I hated looking at the images of those pieces. Now, they serve to tell me who I am artistically.
At the moment I am at Blackberry Farm in Tennessee, celebrating the wedding of one of my favorite people, on the most glorious day. Yet that short period of porous weather in Rhode Island, and a bit of tomato picking at the farm in Millbrook was a flash forward to fall. I have always been challenged by the changing of the leaves, and tried to achieve that melange of colors we all know as the palate of the season in many pieces of jewelry. I have posted a photograph of the tomato salad prepared Wednesday evening and picked from the garden moments before. It has elements of the colors to come but a distinctive flavor all its own. It is still the summer in the salad. I will enjoy our Indian Summer as I enjoyed the Indian paintbrush before.
Beautiful land on...
My bags have been unpacked for five days now and it seems more like five minutes. Everything is happening quickly and slowly at the same time. I am sitting looking out the window at the blackness that surrounds the farm with a hot cup of tea, after a bath, and thinking of the many times over the last year that I dreamed of hot summer evenings with the dogs around. The TV is non existent and music set perfectly for the hard of hearing. It is playing " New Orleans suite", a Duke Ellington masterpiece I first heard at the Jazz Fest 2 years ago. Wynton Marsallis played it in the blues tent with full orchestra, and it stuck with me.
There is so much romance in the air here. Perhaps its the overwhelmingly pungent smell of black krim, brandy wine, green zebras, mortgage lifters, prudens purple, sungold, and striped German tomatoes fighting it out in the bowl over who gets to mount the burrata first. Such is young love, and the beginning of the harvest season. I admit to a slightly early season stop at Wallse in the Village that turned out very well indeed. I am so happy to be in Stanfordville after a wonderful trip. Time and space are the greatest luxuries, and at the moment I have both under a thin veneer of dog hair.
One of the things that gets impressed on me often by clients is their need to be able to wear jewelry in more everyday situations. The huge diamond must be in place, but the important pieces of jewelry are the ones people live in. What I mean is that there are pieces of jewelry that are entirely our own, ones that speak softly in a voice only the wearer can hear. Those pieces make no promises of never ending love, or misguided consequence, or the riches of halcyon days. They are the pieces we wear for the comfortable feeling on the tips of our fingers that make us feel good when we are alone. These pieces don't have to be precious in a tangible sense, they just happen to be better if they are, to me at least. I have a pair of cuff links that are made of wood, gold and pink tourmaline that are shaped like a chestnut. I found the chestnut in the tuilleries in my late twenties, and the cufflinks are the progeny of that genetic promise stranded on those little pebbles, so perfect for a casual match of petanque. The cuff links are right on every level. The designers that can harness these kind of pieces will be the ones people talk about in the future. I do believe diamonds are exceptional, but it takes courage to design jewelry in simple materials or restricted to just gold perhaps. The designer uses none of the material tricks that seem to please everyone. On some level I think that gold earclips are the hardest piece to design as one is forced to bring cold metal to life without the help of facets and refracted light. I plan to focus on these kind of pieces in a more serious way during the coming months, but for the moment I plan on feeding all five of the mouths around me some milk bones.
Posted by varney on 08/21/2010 in |
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Everything Must Go
I have just finished walking around the Concours d'Elegance car show in Carmel By The Sea. Full disclose dictates that I reveal myself as knowing nothing about cars and having very little zeal for learning about them. However this really is a surreal experience. Everybody is selling everything with wheels, there are more Ferrari, Maserati and other glossy cars then your average overexposed Yankee has ever seen. Getting stuck in traffic coming back into town made me yearn for my bike, but the show is really special. I have reestablished my belief in the ability of humans to make rolling metal look like art. Some of the lines of the post war sports cars were inspired. I love the surprises.
Posted by varney on 08/13/2010 in |
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Westerner
Apologies for borrowing the name of a European champion horse for the title of the blog. However Westerner was a Gold Cup winner at Ascot and a superb stayer for a small horse. I did breed a mare to him this year, that my brother gave me, so there is bit of bias name-wise as I travel west. Today was by far the most beautiful drive I have ever done. It started in Aspen and ended in Nevada, en route to Tahoe. I could not stop thinking about how tough the early settlers were for taking their families through and over the rugged canyons on horses and wooden wheeled wagons. They were the ultimate stayers and had the good fortune to cross the most beautiful country on earth however difficult it was. The light was extraordinary and regardless of my immersion in the desolate country was able to catch up with friends from my past. I think that the cell phone can be considered a miracle if looked at the right way. There is a lot of romance in the texture of the canyon country. It's hard not to think so when the dirt your standing on is 50 million years old. Did you know that it is iron oxide that makes the soil and cliffs red? The same mineral is responsible for the unique and exquisite color of tourmaline from Mozambique - perhaps my most favorite new color coming out of the ground in gem material. It's the soft purple that comes through as a secondary color that gives it its depth. Lots of neon here in Nevada. Kind of like it. The honkey tonk never disappoints. Great day! I will go back to Moab with a bit more time, and a bike.
Indian Paintbrush
This has really been a wonderful week. I have spent time with a number of my friends and by extension gotten some really good ideas for new pieces. The most exciting of them is an Indian Paintbrush ear clip which I promise to include in this blog once finished. There are so many different places to go hiking in Colorado that vary in topography, yet there is one constant during the last days of July and the beginning of August. That is the afore mentioned flower that I have photographed for the uninitiated. The color of the flower is suprisingly diverse, going from the firey orange you see to a magenta, red, and purple vermillion. The Tabor Lake hike, which I LOVE, will boast this flower in all of these colors sometimes mixed togeather. I consider it one of the most spectacular natural collages I have ever seen. Sometimes it looks like the grasses are on fire. I do apologize that I did not include pictures of the other colors, however I did not want to hike up to higher altitudes this morning to take the pictures, it seems like the orange ones occur at lower altitude, yet not in the towns. In any case, I have been facinated by these colors and shapes in the petals for quite some time and just recently realized how perfect they would look with the Mississippi River pearls I have long championed.
There are many times in the life of a jewelry designer where you find a particularly interesting stone or pearl that seemingly realtes to nothing and is in a shape that makes it nearly impossible to use. Yet the color or lustre is so singular and so spectacular that to pass it up is a painfull prospect. I nearly always buy these stones and often wind up sitting with them for years unsure of how to use them in an expressive and personally important way. My Mississippi River pearls (in small sizes) are such a collection, until now. They will serve as the nacent blooms of the Indian Paintbrush and will be paired with green gold in a very random way, as above. They will be incredible, that I am sure. Those who read this blog often will notice my infatuation with orange, but these earring will err towords the soft purple-pink and use pink diamonds in pave. The past 2 weeks were less of a sales trip and more of getting into my own head in nature. I did lots of bike rides and numbers of hikes up Ajax and other mountains. That physical tenor of things really has been exciting on the creative front and I am very pleased with the results. A little suprise involving renderings is in the works editorially and I consider it a big coup to be able to take readers through the process of designing jewelry in two dimention through to a finished piece. This paintbrush concidently will be just the piece to frame the nacent idea and guache painting to completion in noble metal. Lightness is the key, as always. The coming days will take me through Moab, Reno, Carson City, Tahoe and ultimately Carmel before returning to NYC. I promise to be more active bloging during this short yet exciting drive. It's a new one for me.
Posted by varney on 08/09/2010 in |
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It's Like Riding a Bike
I just finished biking up Independence Pass towards Leadville, CO. Half-way up the mountain a storm rolled in and changed the tenor of things. Hot and grinding became windy and cold in a matter of moments. I can't remember having more fun. Everything went cool and reminded me of how much being outside changes ones impression of everything. I did manage to work on some design ideas on the way up but down was totally involved with avoiding a huge wipeout on the way down. Don't really think I've used to word wipeout in a while. Anyway, getting back on a bike consistently has really been great, even when your soaked, tired, freezing from wind, and alone. I biked a bit in New Orleans and think I understand the place better as a result. Go see the levy, the trees, and whatever else there is to see. Entertain your senses, they give back.
Fine Tune
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Last evening I went to the music tent at the Aspen Music Festival and saw Deborah Voight sing some of Mahlers later compositions. It was music that I am not familiar with, but I loved it. I probably loved it more because I really had no expectation of how it should be played, or can be played at its best. Perhaps the music was extraordinary. It was a true "ignorance is bliss" situation. Dumb and happy was I but, more importantly, inspired.
I really find that music and paintings do more to cultivate creativity than anything. Listen to something foreign and beautiful and you are traveling. I might as well have been in Vienna. It makes me want to make beautiful things. At those moments the life-goal becomes leaving jewelry behind that charms for generations. The pursit of money is lost, fame, transient and what remains is a desire to make beautiful things. I get a strange high when a piece of jewelry is finished correctly. I am very rarely impressed by modern jewelry for a multitude of reasons. The same can be said about my feelings for opera. I have seen more operas and listened to more soundtracks of great recordings then is good for me. I anticipate moments in specific pieces of music and judge the piece based on my former feelings and knowlege of it. When the delivery is great it makes magic. Truly great moments at the opera are never forgotten.
I will never forget one preformance of Eugene Onegin sung by Neil Shicoff and Dimityri Horotovsky. The nuance and delicacy in the fabric make an ephemeral yet indelible impression. Is that possible? I can't really decide if having raised the bar is good, but I will assume it is because I can always go listen to unfamiliar music and be charmed. Jewelry is not the same. There are hallmarks of great jewelry that are too obvious to ignore. Long has there been a differentiation between Gems and Jewelery. Gems are for the most part extraordinary stones, or singular pearls, those that define a mistake in nature that manifested itself in a unique way. For example, a 45-carat D-flawless diamond or a Burmese pidgeon blood ruby or a Kashmir sapphire in royal blue shimmering silk. These are the obvious ones. They are also rarely set in anything but classic settings that garner no attention. Why distract from something so beautiful? Jewelery is what we see in the stores, average stones, often pretty settings in different ways that designers find attractive and saleable. For the record, neither of these categories are close in beauty, significance or rarity compaired to a gem being put in a singular extraordinay setting. A gem in a wonderful piece of jewelry is Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma in his prime, with Puccini in the audience. Today we rarely see trained hands, born of the apprentice system, phrase the great stones into masterpieces. I wish it happened more often.
I try at every opportunity to turn a piece of jewelry over and explain the importance of an ajoure (a window cut behind stones set in pave), and how it allows light to play within a stone. I also always include grill work on pieces that can afford the extra weight. (I will include images of fine repierce above). Workmanship is the rarity in jewelry, as well as its integrity; with or without gems included. I may see fifty diamonds over ten-carats on women's fingers to every truly beautifully made piece of jewelry. I get so geared up when I hear or see beautiful things, it's the most important thing to me. I think pretty is the most underrated part of being alive today. Art class was the blow-off class to most, to me it was the most important. Making things truly beautiful requires considertion of the finest details and putting your heart before your head. I like it that way.
High Country Light
I have just paid fourteen dollars for a watermelon, and am trying to spin the expense as a personal victory. It's not going well, but I do feel that I have made a strong statement about the value I put on watermelon.
There is no doubt it is an extraordinary sum to charge for a seedless, organic melon (can something be organic if it is genetically altered?) However it is far from the only extraordinary thing about this town. There is a poster I have just seen walking around the square in Jackson Hole, WY that punctuates the essence of the area. It is titled "Teton Light" and really gets to the heart of the matter. The light here is very special indeed. It is nearly impossible not to notice the very distinctive shades of purple that creep into the shade of the evening hours as far different from the light yellows of the morning light on the mountains. I have always been very sensitive to the tenor of light in the places I travel to and how the subtlety can greatly effect ones perception of the place.
Jewelry also depends on light, and more specifically singular light to be great. A special piece of jewelry must look like no other, and that means creating a complicit relationship with light to express its beauty. There are some stones like Kashmir sapphires that capture light. The Kashmir stone has microscopic inclusions called rutile needles that diffuse entering light and make the stone look like it glows from within, as opposed to reflecting the sun. Yet, there are many other stones that do not have this special silk to change ones perception of a stones color and beauty. It is the jewelry designers' job to phrase stones in a way as to create a deeper appreciation of its beauty. There is a ring that has received quite a bit of attention this trip,. It is called the pool ring and from the day I made it has been a favorite of the jewelry freaks I call my friends. I will include an image of it above. The ring is a green beryl stone that has been faceted in a very random manner and had the facet junctions polished off so that the edges of the facets are soft. What this does is take that hard angle and reflection out of the stone. What I wanted was blurry light that resembles the light on the bottom of the pool on a sunny day. Soft and blurry but with great movement. It worked. And as I grow with the ring I like it better all the time. It's not so austere, and a special kind of feminine, to me.
I often think of the place I was when the ring was designed; in the pool, of course. I have spent time each of the last few days photographing an area called Swan Valley in the early morning as well as evening, endeavoring to document the nature of the light there. The Snake River flows slowly through the foot of the mountain range and creates an atmosphere I consider extraordinary. Somehow, somewhere I will find a stone or pearl that echoes something about this special light and place. Getting a permanent document of the tenor of the place in a piece of jewelry is the challenge for me, me real-life treasure hunt. Therefore, selling the piece is often bitter sweet. The hope remains that the person who one day owns the piece thinks of the piece as extension of where they bought it, who they bought it with and the feelings they had buying it. Memories are the one thing they cannot take away.
Yankee Bricks
One of the things I like to do in Nantucket is the tree walk. The trees on this island are some of the most spectacular in our country because they have not been exposed to the Dutch Elm virus, in the case of the American Elm, or many of the other diseases that have killed our native trees. The American Chestnut being a terrible loss. Being an island, they avoided much of the natural spread of disease. In the case of the American Elm, it is the most well-preserved stand of trees outside of Central Park. My first jewelry collection was based on the fissured bark of these trees. They are so organic and knarled, and as a very near-sighted youth it was the only part of the tree I could see; nose pressed close to the bark. There was no way I could see the entireity of the tree. I give great credit to my fascination with texture in jewelry to my nearsightedness. Recently, I have gone back over some of the pieces I did in the first collection. Though it is not what I want to do now, with gold at all-time highs (much of the collection was big, heavy gold) I believe the pieces to be really strong. They remain the core of what interests me. I think this evening I will take a walk with my camera and photograph some of the textures that abound on this island. The tentative plan is to use some of the fissure shapes with purple pimple back Mississippi River pearls, as well as do some sea weed dangle drops. This is a wonderful walking island, always something new to find.
As a side note, there is a foundation for the American Elm. Google "liberty elm" and it will pop up. The trees are resistant to the virus and grow very quickly. Several I planted at the farm are nearly 40 feet tall in seven years. Looking at them gives a glimpse into the past. Elms were very much our avenue tree, much like the Sycamore in Europe. The photographer Robert Hausser photographed the pruned sycamores along the boulevards in Berlin so beautifully, and Ansel Adams captured the vase shape of the Elm like no other.