Vue de Paris

"The sweetness and generosity and politeness and gentleness and humanity of the French had shown me how lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly... Oh, how I adored sweet and natural France, with its human warmth, wonderful smells, graciousness, coziness and freedom of spirit." [Julia Child, My Life in France]

Francophiles unite! The success of the movie Julie & Julia has sparked a newfound interest in everything French. Why not? It's easy to romanticize France? Everything sounds better in France. It is a romance language after all. "Even their songs are swoon-worthy." [From Joanna Goddard's Marie Claire Blog] And of course, there is the food.

"This is the kind of food that I have fallen in love with: not trendy souped-up fantasies, just something very good to eat. It was classic French cooking, where the ingredients have been carefully selected and beautifully and knowingly prepared. Or, in the words of the famous gastronome Curnonsky, 'Food that tastes of what it is.' " [Julia Child]

I saw the movie and loved it, but since I don't cook (at least not well), I thought it would be appropriate to pay homage to Julia's "sweet and natural France" by taking a look at my Vue de Paris collection.

I did my first craft show in 2004 in Durham, North Carolina. I affectionately refer to this first show experience as "a river runs through it" because it was cold and rainy, and there I was on the street with a river of water literally running through my booth. But on that cold and rainy day, I sold my first bracelet, The Vue de Paris tile bracelet. The success of that first sale sent me back to the studio to create a Vue de Paris collection.

Much of the Vue de Paris collection is inspired by the 1890’s Belle Epoque and Art Nouveau movements, an attempt to eradicate the dividing line between art and audience. Everything could and should be art. Burne-Jones designed wallpaper, Hector Guimard designed metro stations, and Alphonse Mucha designed advertisements and stage sets. The 1890’s were also the golden age of the lithographic poster. Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Toulouse-Lautrec all produced highly original masterpieces which elevated the poster into an art form.

The centerpiece of the Vue de Paris collection is my Much Ado About Mucha necklace. Although Alphonse Mucha wasn't born in France (he was born in what is known today as the Czech Republic), he moved to Paris in 1887 and seven years later designed his first poster for Sarah Bernhardt's Gismonda. For this necklace, Art Nouveau poster images are transferred to clay and hand-formed into the beads. But what I am most proud of about this necklace is the clasp. On a visit to Miami a few years ago , a gallery owner told me that he wouldn't buy jewelry from any artist who didn't make their own clasps. Upon returning to my studio in Raleigh, I set forth on a quest to create a clasp design that would not only cinch the necklace but be the focal point of the piece. The end result was this clasp, in which two Alphonse Mucha poster images for Sarah Bernhardt are impressed into fine silver. This necklace appeared in the 2006 in Ornament Magazine.

Pieces from my Vue de Paris collection can be found in my studio at Artspace, at galleries, and online. The collection consists of bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. And of course, I am always thinking about new French inspired designs to cook up and add to it.

The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us

“Even if our mothers are gone, they are never gone from us. If we search our internal landscapes, we find them—sometimes etched as delicately as a watermark, sometimes as deep as an engraving.” Patti Davis, The Lives Our Mother’s Leave Us

Over the last few years, I have had the pleasure of meeting a number of fabulous artists. The one common thread amongst them all is that they all credit their mothers for inspiring their creativity. So, on this week when we honor our mothers, I felt it was only appropriate to dedicate this week’s post to my mother.

If you read last week’s post, you know that I credit my grandmother for my love of ephemera. The creative gene, however, comes solely from my mother. As a kid, she empowered me to try, while giving me the permission to fail, always reminding me that she would be proud of me either way. When I wanted to host my own teenage talk show at the age of 16, she told me to go for it. As a junior in college, when I wanted to go to New York to intern for a network television show, she encouraged me to apply. So, it should have come as no surprise that when I became an artist, she was right there cheering me on. She was there for my first art show five years ago, braving the freezing rain under a flooded tent as we celebrated selling my first bracelet. Two years later she accompanied me to my biggest show to date, the American Craft Council Show in Baltimore. As a kid, she never missed a recital. As an adult, she never misses an opening. Even if she can’t be there in person due to the miles between us, she always lets me know she is there in spirit with a bouquet of flowers and a perfectly penned note to calm my nerves.

I remember as a child, my mother’s paintings hanging on the walls of our house. When I was a little older, she converted our garage into a studio and dabbled in stained glass and photography. When I was a teenager, she started her own party planning business and designed custom invitations using the finest papers, ribbons, fabrics, die cuts, and foils. She designed her own line embossed papers long before the scrapbooking world made embossing trendy.

My mother always told me that when I win my first Academy Award I should remember to say that I owe it all to her. The fact is, I do owe it all to her. She not only inspired my creativity and my entrepreneurial spirit, but more importantly, she taught me how to be the mother that I am today. So, Happy Mother’s Day to a great mom! I love you.

“We form inside our mother’s womb, far from her arms but right beneath her heart.” Patti Davis, The Lives Our Mother’s Leave Us