Shopping for Folk Art in San Miguel de Allende
Last week, I stopped by my favorite folk art shop in San Miguel de Allende, La Calaca Arte Popular. Owner Evita Avery reports that after 28 years, she’s on the brink of closing shop because business is so bad. This would be a heartbreaking turn of events. Evita has deep knowledge of Latin American folk and decorative arts and her shop is full of antique treasures you can’t find anywhere else. Please check out her fabulous website (she ships internationally) or visit her at Calle Mesones 93 if you’re in town.
Frida Kahlo with Swine Flu Mask Backpack
I found this wonderful gallows humor-filled creation at Akitch, one of my favorite shops in San Miguel de Allende. In trying to find a link (which doesn’t seem to exist) for the shop just now, I discovered that the maker of the backpack has an Etsy shop…he seems to be a savvy expat. I still love the backpack even if it’s not an authentic Mexican Mexican artifact. I’m also a fan of these gringa-designed Virgin of Guadalupe aprons and shower curtains. Ironically, most of the Mexican-themed fabrics she uses for the aprons are manufactured in Japan. My own Day of the Dead Box was once cited by an NYU grad student as an example of the worst of globalization: a book about a Mexican holiday written by a gringa, photographed by a Japanese person (actually, also a gringa), and printed by a U.S. publisher in China. What I can say? It’s a big, big world.
New Year, New Glasses
First things first: Here’s a photo of me in my new glasses. They were designed by Frenchman Cyril Dray of I See GB in Great Barrington and manufactured by Zip+Homme in Japan. I’ve been wearing them for a couple of weeks now and like them very much, even if they’re not magic like my much-lamented former green pair.
My family didn’t warm to them until we toured the Sol LeWitt wall drawing retrospective at MASS MoCA. We were taking in LeWitt’s middle period work, the drawings with the softer geometry and vibrant, not yet screaming color, and Annalena turned to me and said, “You know Mom, your glasses are starting to grow on me.” Dave looked around the gallery, “Yes, they make sense here.”
They seem to be preaching to the choir of good glasses lovers glasses rather than ones that promote world peace by uniting all of humanity with their mystical rightness. So be it. I’m grateful that I can see and that my little New England town is home to such an excellent eyewear shop.
I’m in professional limbo at the moment, having recently drafted a proposal for a new publishing project and waiting to hear what my agent thinks of it. I hate waiting, but love being at a beginning again.
I want to keep the sense of uncharted territory and freshness going with this blog as it enters year two. The more people read my blog (8859 visitors in ’08), the harder it becomes to stay loose with it, but that’s the key.
And since this is my blog where nobody’s the boss of me except me and, as many editors have noticed, I don’t care much about formal transitions…
Dave and I met on January 3, 1989 at New Langton Arts in San Francisco and moved in together three weeks later. I remember telling a friend at the time that our blazing romance was “not trivial.” Here we are 20 years down the road. It’s a miracle and a mystery.
Mexican Wrestler Christmas Ornament
Dos Mujeres Mexican Folk Art carries a slew of wonderful Mexican tin ornaments including this one.
R.I.P. Lucky Green Glasses
My glasses frames sprouted an irreparable crack over the weekend. I called Dave from the Petco parking lot in Pittsfield to report the sad news. He tried to comfort me with “honey, you are more than your glasses,” but I wasn’t so sure. These weren’t just any glasses. They were the best glasses in the history of glasses, or at least the history of my face and glasses.
I found them at Next Eyewear on College Avenue in Oakland six or seven years ago. As I recall, I didn’t really need new glasses at the time and I was broke as usual, but when I tried them on, there was something so extraordinarily right about them, so me only better best self about them, that I whipped out my credit card with the justification: no one will deny me if I’m wearing these glasses…which actually more or less proved true, plus they generated an incredible amount of good will and conversation.
Literally hundreds of strangers, from all walks of life and of all races, thought enough of my glasses to stop me on the street or on the bus or in the spa locker room to compliment me about them. Society matrons. Homeless men. Hip baristas from coast to coast. These glasses helped me learn to graciously accept a compliment. I’d smile like I’d never heard it before, look the person in the eye, and offer a sincere thank you in return.
It’s hard to say what exactly made these glasses compelling to such a wide range of people. All I know about their origin is that they were French and one of a kind. There’s no label on the frames. I just sent the above photo to Next Eyewear hoping that someone there will recognize the designer.
The glasses were subtly spectacular. They did a slow burn. When they caught people’s attention, the design somehow made them look closer. The liquid green pattern, the not quite cat’s eye shape, and the flirty black rhinestones combined with the feng shui of my face in a mysterious way that compelled people to talk to me.
I’m not a particularly fashionable or put-together person and sometimes the compliments felt like compassion…like the people thought: damn that geeky girl got something right, let’s prop her up and celebrate.
These glasses let me walk into any room and know that even though I might not be the smartest or the prettiest or the best writer or the most patient mother, odds were I’d have the best glasses. I will miss that power.
R.I.P. Lucky Green Sweater
Looking through a folder of old digital photos this evening, I stumbled on this shot of Susan, Anne, and me celebrating the almost-sale of Searching for Mary Poppins and S’s and my 40th birthdays at Tabla in New York. I’m wearing the fabled lucky green sweater, which will soon be transformed into a keepsake felted something thanks to Kari of Chixon.
Saskia Larraz Trunk Show at Allium Tonight
I’ve started hand-washing (or rather, machine-washing on the gentle cycle) my dry clean-only sweaters as a cost-savings measure…which is mostly working fine, except that doing so somehow ruined (shriveled up and shrank) my beloved lucky green Eileen Fisher sweater. I bought that sweater to sell the proposal for Searching for Mary Poppins (which linking the title just now, I see is currently selling used on Amazon for a penny…nice) and wore it in the Berkshires to all meetings at which there seemed to be anything important at stake. Now it’s gone and I need a new lucky talisman.
That’s my ever so reasonable and rational business justification for attending Saskia Larraz’s trunk show at Allium tonight in Great Barrington. Don’t you agree that this bracelet is the key to my professional future?
Aaron Neville Kicks Off Holiday Tour at Mahaiwe
Annalena and I went to the mall yesterday in search of a homecoming dance dress (alas, I’m not finding the winning Forever 21 strapless, black and gray-striped, silk bubble dress online to show you…14 year olds are the only creatures with any business wearing such a confection and junior rocks it). Anyway, it’s already Christmas at the mall. Normally, I abstain from holiday music until December 1st, but given the economy, I don’t begrudge the merchants for trying to stir up some early cheer.
I’m also making an exception to the no Christmas music before December 1st rule for Aaron Neville, who kicks off his Creole-spiced solo holiday tour on Friday, November 28st, 8pm at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington. Backed by a quintet that features his brother Charles Neville on sax, Aaron’s show will focus on classics from his albums, Christmas Prayer and Soulful Christmas, alongside hits from throughout his five decades-long career. Click here for tickets.
I’m especially looking forward to hearing him sing songs from his recent album, Bring It on Home…The Soul Classics. Aaron says on his website, “These classic songs have been pumping blood to my heart from the first second I heard them. They’ve been a part of my life. Singing them, especially in the aftermath of Katrina, was a deeply spiritual experience. They helped me get through. They gave me hope. And for me, music has always been about hope.”
Picnic Plates
We poked around Rhinebeck, New York today and saw these great Deruta ceramics-inspired melamine plates at Hammertown. I don’t need them, so I didn’t buy them…but I want them.
Rae Dunn Mug
I’ve been almost-buying Rae Dunn’s “BEGIN.” mug for a year or two from the Paper Source catalog. When I spotted it this afternoon at a shop in Lenox, I didn’t hesitate. It is time to begin. Paper Source doesn’t carry the mug anymore, but you can find it here.
