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.