VIE May / June 2013

NORTHWEST FLORIDA – COLA 2 COLA®

May/June 2013

THE ARTIST ISSUE A N E X P R ES S I O N O F L I FE

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In this issue:

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122

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30 Feature Snap! Crackle! Pop!: Art That Makes Noise 30 The Brush of Life Beauty in the Brushstroke 67 Art with a Message 90 Taking the Long Way Home 98 Artist of the Horizon 106 The Philosophy of a Creator 114 The Art of Music A Nashville Songbird Takes Flight 42 Song Ain’t Dead 166

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20 Perspectives Give Him a Hand 49 Poetic Montages 122 Open Up Your Eyes: Enlightenment Comes from Within 130 me + vie = dg 2013 141 Focus, baby! Focus! 160 Bricks and Mortar Maison de VIE 20

Material World Iron Will: A Journey inside the Unique World of Cast Iron Artistry 57 Annie Parker Jewelry 74 Sculpted: Bringing Paint to Life 82 Fusion Art Glass Gallery 150

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e are thrilled you have picked up a copy of VIE and hope you enjoy reading about the people and places of our coveted region,

COLA 2 COLA®—Pensacola to Apalachicola. We live in a great place where life is good! We have a passion for our area and the people and businesses found here, and we hope that you will share in our excitement.

VIE can be found locally at Tourist Development Council centers, Chamber of Commerce locations, Sundog Books in Seaside, Florida, boutiques, restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts, and special events. VIE’s distribution has branched out to the following airports: Baltimore/Washington International, Houston Hobby, Memphis

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VIE is a registered trademark. All contents herein are Copyright © 2008–2013 Cornerstone Marketing and Advertising, Incorporated (The Publisher). All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without written permission from The Publisher. VIE is a lifestyle magazine and is published at least five times annually on a bimonthly schedule. The opinions herein are not necessarily those of The Publisher. The Publisher and its advertisers will not be held responsible for any errors found in this publication. The Publisher is not liable for the accuracy of statements made by its advertisers. Ads that appear in this publication are not intended as offers where prohibited by state law. The Publisher is not responsible for photography or artwork submitted by freelance or outside contributors. The Publisher reserves the right to publish any letter addressed to the editor or The Publisher. VIE is a paid publication. Subscription rates: Digital magazine (iPad only) – One-year $11.99; Two-year $17.99 / Printed magazine – One-year $23.95; Two-year $34.95 (U.S. Only – price includes free access to digital magazine versions for iPad). Subscriptions can be purchased online at www.VIEZINE.com.

On the Cover:

VIE Creative Team: Lisa Burwell Publisher lisa@viezine.com

Gerald Burwell Editor-in-Chief gerald@viezine.com

Bob Brown VP of Creative Services bob@viezine.com

Mary Jane Kirby Account Executive maryjane@viezine.com

Jordan Staggs Assistant Editor jordan@viezine.com

James Ryan Account Executive jim@viezine.com

Tracey Thomas Graphic Designer tracey@viezine.com

Scott Sajowitz Account Executive scott@viezine.com

Troy Ruprecht Graphic Designer troy@viezine.com

Margaret Stevenson Copy Editor

Bill Weckel Web/Project Manager bill@viezine.com

This bright and beautiful painting is part of featured artist Sarah Ashley Longshore’s Audrey series, which was inspired by the 1964 Cecil Beaton photo of Audrey Hepburn wearing a velvet Givenchy hat with tassels. Longshore has taken the iconic image and put her pop art spin on it, creating interpretations in which the hat is replaced

Benjamin Rosenau Video Producer ben@viezine.com

Shannon Quinlan Distribution Coordinator Shannon Stock Contributing Designer

Tim Dutrow Videographer tim@viezine.com

by butterflies, a snow globe, peacock feathers, a fishbowl, an astronaut’s helmet, a gumball machine, designer luggage, and various other items. Longshore says Hepburn evokes the vision of the perfect modern woman and the series represents “the many hats a woman wears.” See and read more in the feature article “Snap! Crackle! Pop!: Art That Makes Noise.”

VIE Contributors: Contributing Writers: Sallie W. Boyles Melanie A. Cissone Laurie Crowley Colleen E. Hinely Tori Phelps L. Jordan Swanson

Published by:

Contributing Photographers: Andrew Alwert Amy Brown Melanie A. Cissone Colleen E. Hinely J. Dane MacKendrick Romona Robbins Shelly Swanger

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V IE Z INE .C OM | 13

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O PEN SUMMER 2013

OUR COLLE CT ION OF A P PAR EL , J EW EL RY, H O M E AC C ES S O R I ES, AN D G I FTS

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Publisher’s Note:

THE TAPESTRY OF LIFE Weaving together a collection of so many varied and talented artists, all employing different mediums and expressing different messages, has been an exhilarating experience. I love each new issue that we work on, but this may be one of my favorites. Materials, mediums, thoughts, concepts, and, of course, the artwork and artists themselves are intricately brought together in our first issue dedicated to showcasing the artist!

This issue is teeming with the creation of beautiful things: the daunting challenge of creating cast iron art; sculpted paint by Justin Gaffrey; encaustic art by Melissa Davis; art with a message by Justin Lyons; the architecture of Maison de VIE; the lyrical art of talented musicians at the 30A Songwriters Festival; the stunning photography, engaging words, and creative design that capture the essence of our featured artists, and much more—so dig in!

During VIE’s coverage of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Fall 2013, I saw the Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof starring Scarlett Johansson. I was mesmerized by the stellar performances bringing Tennessee Williams’s brilliant play to life. This production became part of a personal awakening, encouraging me to celebrate life, to enjoy all the goodness it has to 16 | M AY/J U NE 2 013

offer, and to embrace everything and every new experience with zest. I believe creativity is on the upswing with fresh work and a renewed appreciation for it.

To imagine. That is art. Before art can inspire or enchant their captor (the buyer), the artist must first create what he or she has imagined. Many people let their musings and inspired thoughts get trampled by life, duty, pressure, and even laziness, but not artists. The need and desire to create pushes them on until their imaginings become a reality. Many artists would likely continue working in their craft even if they were not making a living from it, but when it comes right down to it, artwork is work, and artists need to be––and should be––supported.

The delightful, eye-catching artwork on the cover— Audrey Hepburn’s iconic profile surrounded by butterflies, courtesy of featured artist Sarah Ashley Longshore—is a breath of fresh air. I met Ashley at her gallery in New Orleans this past November while our creative team interviewed, photographed, and filmed her for The Artist Issue (watch video producer Benjamin Rosenau’s storytelling exposé on viezine. com!). We are honored that she will be the celebrity guest at our me + vie = dg: Meet Me at the Red Carpet

pre-party on Saturday, June 8, during Digital Graffiti in Alys Beach, Florida.

When I marveled at Ashley’s success in a profession in which many others are not faring well, I asked her how it is that she is thriving. “After years of working at something you love day in and day out, perfecting your craft—isn’t that what is supposed to happen?” she boldly replied. Her words were sharp and simple yet so true. Success is not just happenstance or an overnight occurrence. In order to achieve perfection, you must keep doing it every day.

Our mission at VIE is to tell stories with heart and soul, and with each issue, we send a love letter to our community of readers. The artists featured in this issue amaze and inspire me, and I believe their prolific and varied work has collectively become VIE’s very first artistic tapestry. With deep respect and admiration, I thank these artists for sharing their lives and their work with us.

Now, dear readers, go out and support the world of art!

Life is beautiful!

––Lisa

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Above: Maison de VIE owners Scott and Katie Kurfirst at a Maison de VIE cocktail party hosted by Q Tile at Uptown Grayton in March Top: Summer House Lifestyle owner Melissa Skowlund with her husband, Christopher

Unfortunately, only a few of the participating Maison de VIE vendors could be highlighted in this sneak peak of what is yet to come. VIE is currently working on a short documentary, which will record the construction of Maison de VIE to its completion, and a resource room brochure featuring the entire list of participating vendors; both are due out early summer. An in-depth article on Maison de VIE, complete with dramatic photos, will also be featured in the 2013 Home & Garden issue (September/October).

Please take special note of those ads with the Maison de VIE seal throughout this issue; the seal signifies participating advertisers and sponsors.

Coming this summer The Great Gatsby, the literary classic written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the early twentieth century, celebrates life with a reckless abandon and an insatiable avarice for revelry and opulence. In honor of the debut of Baz Luhrmann’s film interpretation of the novel, VIE is taking inspiration from the era to throw an intimate dinner gala soiree, which will take place in Maison de VIE this summer. It is my hope to channel a moment in time where happiness and fun collide, and only goodness abounds!

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Snap!

Crackle!

Pop! Art That Makes Noise

By Melanie A. Cissone Photography by Andrew Alwert

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PHOTO COURTESY OF SARAH ASHLEY LONGSHORE

Sarah Ashley Longshore wakes up early every day, even if shes been out until two the night before.

She greets each morning with that high-energy, pumped-up-volume, balls-to-thewall, full-on, bringin’-it attitude that makes her so deliciously likeable. She’s on “go” from the moment her eyes open. She says she sleeps well: “I’m out as soon as I hit the pillow. I get tired of me.”

I see God in all these creatures.” She continues, “I’m such an urban hippy. I love evolution. If I see a dead snake on the road, I’ll stop and take a photo of it.”

A native of Montgomery, Alabama, Longshore has made a name for herself not only along New Orleans’s artsy, funky, “antiquey” Magazine Street but also among serious personal and corporate art collectors, Hollywood types, fashionistas, and society folk from New York to Miami.

Another important character—a mother figure of sorts—in Longshore’s paintings is actress Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn, arguably one of the most beautiful, elegant, and talented actresses who ever lived, has so dominated Longshore’s thoughts that she created an entire series called Audrey.

Longshore graduated from Brenau Academy, formerly an all-girls boarding school in northeastern Georgia. About leaving home in her teens, Longshore says, “I loved boarding school. My parents were getting divorced at the time. It felt wonderful to be so independent.”

Longshore then pursued a BA in English literature at the University of Montana. She says of choosing Montana, “I wanted to do something different. I wasn’t the sorority girl or the popular girl, even though those were all things I thought about growing up. I have a zany interpretation of the world.”

Self-taught, Longshore began painting when she was in college and describes her canvases then to have been as equally vibrant and colorful as the work she produces now. Despite her college degree, she never really considered a related career. “With imagery and few words, I express myself better,” she says.

Animals feature strongly in her artwork. Longshore says, “I love animals. I’m not religious but I am very spiritual, and

The inspiration that Longshore derives from Audrey Hepburn—often painted in profile, eyes closed, much like the 1964 Cecil Beaton photo where she wears a velvet Asian-inspired Givenchy hat with tassels—harks back to Longshore’s upbringing. “Audrey is in lieu of the maternal in my life. She is the mother— iconic, philanthropic, and so flawlessly beautiful,” Longshore says.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SARAH ASHLEY LONGSHORE

"Eyes closed, Audrey, for me, radiates goodness. What a perfect template for the perfect woman.

Her image is very comforting. She's like my 'woobie.'"

She philosophizes, “Eyes closed, Audrey, for me, radiates goodness. What a perfect template for the perfect woman. Her image is very comforting. She’s like my “woobie.” The imagery is also about the many hats a woman wears. It’s amazing to be a woman in the United States today.”

Curiously, the Cecil Beaton photo was part of a photographic essay for Vogue titled “Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy Hats: My Fair Lady to the Life.” Longshore’s Audrey series includes images of Audrey Hepburn wearing as a hat a Mona Lisa snow globe, a jeweled hummingbird, a Darth Vader helmet, a koala bear, butterflies, peacock feathers, and so much more.

Estranged from her mother, Longshore describes her as having been very good at all the traditional Southern formalities of child rearing. As a young girl who preferred to be out in the backyard where she had a nickname for every V IE Z INE .C OM | 33

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If Longshore’s designs have a ring of familiarity, it’s likely because Anthropologie, a retail chain that describes its mission as creating an “unimagined experience” for customers, carries some of her creations. A subsidiary of the $2.5 billion Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie is known for working with artists to develop, among other things, unique home goods. Currently, it offers Longshore’s lampshade creations as well as the Giverny handembroidered rug, which UK newspaper The Independent included in its recent list of the ten best rugs.

Longshore loves the collaboration with Anthropologie. She says, “I maintain my artistic integrity in the development process, they buy the original artwork, and they fly me to their happenings when they launch a new product from my designs.”

If painting, furniture, and home goods design for billion-dollar companies weren’t keeping Longshore busy enough, she also loves to create art films and live performance art. Her muse in this realm is her friend Nissa Teissier, whom she met a few years ago when a mutual friend suggested Teissier visit Longshore’s studio to ask for a painting donationfor a post–BP-oil-spill fund-raiser for Gulf fishermen. Ever since, the two speak several times a day and Teissier has posed for, among others, the painting She Said It Needed Salt. With New York City as a backdrop, Teissier wears geisha makeup and a kimono while eating a one hundred dollar bill. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” says the mother of three young children, ages eight, six, and twenty months, the youngest of whom is Longshore’s godson.

The avant-garde films the two make together offer a creative outlet for Teissier and provide, through the relationship, a sense of family for Longshore. Shown at this year’s New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center SweetArts Bash, Longshore directed Teissier in a multimedia installation called Muse, in which Teissier is seen in a large glass box blowing up balloons until they pop or piercing them with a sharp screw to make them pop. Teissier says the motivation was to symbolize the nurturing of something that, despite the best intentions, can still explode.

Longshore says of Teissier, “She is a flow of positive female energy that makes me brave.” She thinks

aloud, “I’m seeing what an incredible mother is really like. She’s like watching a radiant light walk into a room. I’m really amused by her ability to handle that in a graceful, beautiful way.”

Longshore has famous people among her collectors. Among them are actresses Blake Lively, Salma Hayek, and Penélope Cruz; actor Steve Zahn; New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning; New Orleans media mogul Bill Metcalf; race car driver and entrepreneur Chapman Ducote; his wife, Kristin, who is, among other things, a lawyer and an author; and most recently, Fran Hauser, president of digital content for Time Inc.’s Style & Entertainment and Lifestyle groups.

"I can't just stick to canvas! What's next? Jet skins, yacht skins, to be the next artist on a line of Louis Vuitton specialized bags."

Hauser is one of Ad Age’s “Women to Watch” and oversees digital operations for all the women’s brands at Time, Inc. In addition, Longshore’s paintings appeared in the honeymoon scenes of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1, and last year during Art Basel week in Miami, Longshore was one of sixty artists selected by luxury fashion house Chloé for a sixtieth anniversary celebratory show titled Chloé Attitudes Inspired at the überhip Soho Beach House.

Longshore gets as charged up about the owners of her paintings and furniture designs as she does about being a full-time working artist. She still has Salma Hayek’s check and remembers how the two met. Longshore was at a birthday party for cinematographer J. Michael “Jimmy” Muro’s daughter when she met Hayek, a new mother then, who was in town filming.

She remembers being asked by Hayek to teach her how to paint, which she did, and thinking, “Yo, you played Frida Kahlo!”

Revisiting the mothers and mothering undercurrent, Longshore delights in mentioning that Blake Lively and Salma Hayek both brought their mothers to her studio-gallery. Other patrons include collector Bill Metcalf, who has multiple Longshore paintings in his Shawn O’Brien–decorated New Orleans home.

“When I saw the painting Money Shot,” Metcalf says, “I had to have it.” It hangs in his kitchen. It’s an image of a woman spread eagle, slathering dollar bills over her naked, high-heeled self.

Longshore ponders what the future holds for her.

She says, “I can’t just stick to canvas! What’s next?

Jet skins, yacht skins, to be the next artist on a line of Louis Vuitton specialized bags, and to develop a new art film where an older trophy wife is …” Longshore details her interpretation of how, on film, she would portray the training of a younger trophy wife.

When she imagines having billions, the wish list includes everything from the purchase of an Ashley Longshore-customized private jet to buying land with a barn and chickens in the yard. Her jet would be sparkly red, of course, the same ruby red as Dorothy’s slippers in The Wizard of Oz, and the plane’s tail would be that of a cat. The name of the jet: Thunder Pussy.

Longshore loves an audience, whether it’s a real audience of friends, family, or clients, or an imagined audience, and she loves mugging for the camera. She is in her element when she’s on, which is always. She laughs uproariously as she imagines aloud her arrival at the airport to an uncontrollable awaiting crowd: “Oh my God, Thunder Pussy’s here!

Thunder Pussy’s here!”

At thirty-seven, Longshore says, “As I have more experiences in life, I have more faith in the universe.”

The more she balances that patience for what inevitably comes her way, that desire for instant gratification, and that passion to create, there’s no telling what lies ahead. She has a loving man in her life, photographer Michael Smith, whom she adores. Despite all the bravado, she gives in a bit to her feminine side and says, “I haven’t opened a door or driven a car in I don’t know how long, and I love it.” Longshore relishes how attentive her fiancé is.

“Everything good in my career and in my life truly started when Michael came into it. When you find true love, there is a certain peace and strength that V IE Z INE .C OM | 39

happens. Michael’s love makes me brave and, most of all, happy. He is the color in my life!”

She stands up and recites a list of those things she’s felt a sense of responsibility to oversee. “I have a great fiancé who’s a terrific dad to his kids. Done!

Dad’s happily remarried. Done! Little sister’s off to live in New York and working in high fashion where she belongs. Done!”

Never having had a desire for children of her own, she sits back and laughs at her own maternal instincts toward those closest to her and says, “It’s like the kids are at school now and I can finally get some work done around here.”

She smiles and suddenly remembers that she was talking about herself. She ticks off how good life is.

She says, “I paint … I love what I do and get paid for it. Done! Celebrities buy my artwork. Done!

I design for a large brand-name company. Done!”

And she can add being featured internationally to the list, as Longshore’s art has recently made its way into galleries in Antwerp and Zurich, Switzerland.

Other projects in the offing include new art film ideas, creative development of a big branding event in the Hamptons this summer, attendance as the celebrity guest at VIE’s Meet Me at the Red Carpet on June 8 during Digital Graffiti at Alys Beach, and a return to one of the fairs during Art Basel week in Miami.

One thing is certain: if she doesn’t already own it herself, there will be a private jet somewhere in the world that gets the Thunder Pussy skin-and-tail design, and Sarah Ashley Longshore will likely cop a ride on it to some tropical island destination for an “inspiration” trip.

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A Nashville Songbird TAKES FLIGHT

BY JORDAN STAGGS

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF ABIGAIL ROSE MUSIC

In the music industry, where tabloid rumors and superstardom tend to cloud what actually comes over the airwaves, there is a light that shines through from artists who are genuine and honest. People gravitate toward that light and toward things that make them smile. It is this purity that first attracts listeners to Abigail Rose, the BMI country singer-songwriter who has been making waves in the Nashville music scene over the past year. With a voice as sweet as Southern honey and a growing repertoire of musical talent, this young songbird is certainly one to watch out for.

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“PLAYING CMA FEST MEANS SOMETHING TO EVERYONE IN NASHVILLE, IT WAS SUCH AN HONOR AND AN AMAZING EXPERIENCE.” Since her childhood, Abigail has loved singing, and when she received her first guitar for her eleventh birthday, she was hooked. “Songwriting came very naturally to me,” the Nashville native says. “I always loved to talk and to entertain and make people laugh. It grew into the dream I wanted my whole life.” Since then, she has taken the music industry head-on by connecting with other songwriters, perfecting her guitar skills, performing at events around the country, and learning to play new instruments such as the piano and the mandolin.

In the last year, Abigail has opened for several country music headliners including Josh Kelley; Whiskey Myers; ACM New Artist of the Year, Florida Georgia Line; and Sara Evans. She played at Farm Fest in North Carolina, Georgia Throwdown, Panama City Beach Seafood and Music Festival, and 30A Songwriters Festival; she also joined the prestigious lineup at the 2012 CMA Music Festival. “Playing CMA Fest means something to everyone in Nashville,” she says.

“It was such an honor and an amazing experience.”

Growing up in the country music capital has been a huge advantage for Abigail, allowing her to meet and work with some of Nashville’s best. She loves sharing experiences while writing music with others. “Being a songwriter, you have to be observant,” she says. “I’m inspired by all kinds of things for my music: relationships, love, my friends, my family and their stories, and what’s going on in our lives.”

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Despite having no musical inclinations of their own, the rest of the family rallied to support her from the beginning. Abigail began being homeschooled in the eighth grade so that she could better focus on her music career, and her parents, brother, and sister became the first members of her quickly growing fan base.

“It has been amazing to watch my baby sister start out as an aspiring thirteen-yearold country pop singer and develop into this mature, well-versed songwriter with such a powerful and unique voice,” says Abigail’s brother, Chase Gilbert.

With the help of her family and her manager, Ruth Franklin, Abigail will continue to inspire her fans and make new ones in the coming years. “It’s so great meeting people from all over the country who are such great fans and support Abigail so much,” Franklin says. Abigail has several events lined up for 2013, and she is excited about the opportunity to work with more amazing country artists in Nashville. “I’m still growing and writing with more people, building on what I did in 2012,” Abigail says. “I try to be like a little sponge, soaking everything up and learning as much as I can.”

Abigail’s family has continued to inspire her throughout the years, becoming the muse for many of her songs, such as “Hard to Follow.” The song is based on living up to the expectations of older siblings, navigating a world of professional musicians, and finally, moving on after a difficult relationship. “And that last part hasn’t actually happened yet,” Abigail says. “But that’s where the imagination comes into songwriting.”

To learn more about Abigail Rose, visit www. abigailrosemusic.com, follow her on Facebook and Twitter (@theabigailrose), and find her performances on YouTube (AbigailRoseMusic).

Her favorite part, Abigail says, is inspiring other people with her music, the way she is inspired by artists such as Jack Johnson, Sheryl Crow, and Grace Potter.

“I just want to make people smile and enjoy good music,” she says with a grin.

“When you have a person tell you that a song meant something to them, it’s the best feeling in the world. I remember opening for Sara Evans in Chicago, and afterwards I went to the booth to sign autographs. There was this sea of people out there, and I thought they must’ve been there for her. I was already on cloud nine, and then I realized all these people were standing in line for my autograph. It was surreal.”

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IT’S A PROJECT THAT STARTED WITH A SIMPLE HANDSHAKE BUT HAS TAKEN ON A LIFE OF ITS OWN, INSPIRING CONFIDENCE IN THE TIMID AND EVEN COMFORTING THE BEREAVED.

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T

he art of photographing the human body is as old as the camera itself. Art books and advertisements overflow with images of mouths curved up in half smiles, graceful silhouettes of bare backs, and powerful dancers’ legs in motion.

But Stefan Daiberl has found his muse in the humble, often-overlooked hand. For the past year, he’s been consumed with photographing hands: old, young, wrinkled, smooth, scarred—he finds a story in each of them. It’s a project that started with a simple handshake but has taken on a life of its own, inspiring confidence in the timid and even comforting the bereaved.

Although he was on the hunt for artistic inspiration, Daiberl was surprised to find it in Sid, a maintenance worker at WaterColor Resort and Inn in Northwest Florida. When the two shook hands, Daiberl was overwhelmed by the sheer size and power of the man’s grip and immediately began wondering about the physical labor that had shaped it. “I realized it was a recording of this guy’s life up to now,” he says.

Sid was a bit taken aback when Daiberl asked to photograph his hand, but he agreed to be an artistic muse. That led to pictures of other WaterColor workers’ hands, and soon Daiberl was asking strangers if he could snap a quick photo—not always an easy sell. “People get freaked out when you want to photograph their hands,” Daiberl says.

“They think I’m either a pervert or from the FBI.” He’s neither, of course. He’s an artist, and perhaps an unexpected one at that. German-born Daiberl, who earned an MBA after moving to the United States in his twenties, was on the fast track to success as a management consultant in Manhattan. Then came 9/11. He decided to trade the chaos of the city for the more laid-back lifestyle of Florida, first opening a successful interior design firm and then opting to concentrate on his growing love of art.

His urge to create manifested when his life seemed to be falling apart. Soon to be divorced, Daiberl was out for a walk and stumbled upon a copse of burnt trees. He was gripped by a desire to make something out of the blackened wood, in a very real way putting his own world back together by salvaging something left for dead. His materials were admittedly dark in the beginning—ammunition and syringes, for example—but he eventually moved

into beautiful sculptural work, including the illuminated spheres for which he’s best known.

Until the Hands and Lives project, that is.

The connection between his passions for sculpture and hands isn’t obvious until Daiberl calls hands “abstract mini sculptures.” He uses a homemade light box, a sixfoot-tall device that bears a striking resemblance to a time machine, to take the same photo every time. Capturing an identical pose magnifies each hand’s unique qualities while also highlighting shared characteristics—say, the way a parent’s and child’s hands have nail beds of the same shape. Both the similarities and the differences help Daiberl illustrate that no matter where we’re from, the color of our skin, or how many years we’ve walked the planet, we’re all connected. “I get a definite sense of belonging when I look at the collection,” he confides. “I see so much art in my line of work, but this is the one thing that makes me feel good every time I look at it.”

At forty-three, Daiberl has started thinking about his own life—where it’s going, where it’s been—which inspires similar questions about the people he meets. He wants to know their stories, which, for him, starts with their hands. And boy, has he heard some stories. There was the woman who wore a ring made from the melted gold of both her deceased parents’ wedding rings. There was the man who, due to an accident on a riding lawn mower at age seventeen, was missing three fingers on one hand. Once so ashamed that he bandaged his hand before going out in public, he bravely allowed Daiberl to photograph that hand, which Daiberl described as “beautiful, like a flower.”

And then there was the handsome, vital nineteenyear-old who died in a car accident four months after Daiberl photographed his hand. As Daiberl made prints of those photos for the young man’s grieving mother, he realized Hands and Lives offered another, unexpected dimension. “I have these records,” he says with awe, “and while the subjects will all be gone one day, the pictures will still be here.”

He hopes the collection ultimately will include famous people he admires—mostly musicians such as Robert Smith, Tom Waits, and Icelandic singer Jónsi. He stresses,

V IE Z INE .C OM | 51

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however, that you don’t have to be famous to make it into the Hands and Lives project. All you have to be is willing.

Daiberl feels indebted to the people who’ve already lent him their hands—many of whom become emotional when revealing stories about the jewelry they’re wearing or what their hands have been through. “It’s a very personal thing,” he explains. “Imagine all the things people do with their hands: pat their kids’ heads, eat with them, make love with them. It’s an honor to capture that with a picture.”

He’s made the collection public at HandsandLives.com and will give art lovers a chance to view five-by-four-foot versions of the photos at a gallery show this fall in either New Orleans or New York City. He also intends to create a book featuring some of the photos and the accompanying stories about the people behind the hands. Daiberl is in no rush to complete the book, however, saying he wants it to be done right rather than done quickly.

Besides, he has more pictures to take.

“Someone once said it takes ten thousand hours to master a skill,” Daiberl says. “Maybe it will take me ten thousand hands to capture the full story of humanity and, with that, to understand life.”

For more information about Hands and Lives or to become part of the project, visit HandsAndLives.com.

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“You’ve gotta be a little crazy to want to get into it.”

“Physically, it’s really hard work.”

“Many times, pieces end up big and heavy; people who buy art usually don’t want big and heavy.”

Cast iron artists readily admit that their medium is grueling, doesn’t have a huge market, and requires a touch of, well, craziness. While most people would consider these good reasons to avoid dedicating one’s life to something, this group isn’t deterred by the so-called drawbacks. If anything, the medium’s challenges only fuel their passion and encourage a deeper devotion to a relatively new art movement rooted in centuries-old craftsmanship.

The next time you visit an art museum, you probably won’t find a wing dedicated to cast iron art.

Its ancestry, however, is visible everywhere, from the railing outside of the building to the bathtub 58 | M AY/J U NE 2 013

portrayed in an eighteenth-century painting.

Ironworking is nothing new, but what was once utilitarian has become something purely aesthetic. “This is artwork that’s contemporary but also has a historical link to it,” explains Ira Hill, a professional cast iron and cast stone artist based in Tallahassee.

In an age when many artists are employing new technologies, cast iron artists are using technology that was state-of-the-art circa the sixteenth century, says Hill. That’s because the nature of iron hasn’t changed since the beginning of time, adds Jeremy Colbert, a cast iron artist and the sculpture and ceramics facilities specialist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. “It still has the same set of problems and the same variables. In some ways, it’s a very technical process, but it’s also as primitive as ever.”

You have to be good—really good—to work with a material that’s heated to over two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. And that’s why cast iron artists get by with a little help from their friends. Unlike other art forms, cast iron isn’t typically produced in a secluded environment. From the purely physical (needing help lifting pieces weighing hundreds of pounds) to the more philosophical (sharing advice on how to unmold rock-hard yet surprisingly brittle iron), it’s generally a group effort.

Hill and Colbert’s cast iron group includes fellow artists Scott Marini and Amy Brown; all attended the Florida State University MFA program and studied with cast iron trailblazer Charles Hook.

They’re separated by geography, so between gettogethers they research new ways of doing things, build molds capable of shaping molten iron into art, and create the tools of their trade with

“IT’S EXTREMELY GRUELING. THE WORK THAT GOES INTO AN IRON POUR WILL BLOW YOUR MIND, FROM THE MOLD-MAKING PROCESS TO BREAKING UP OLD IRON BATHTUBS AND RADIATORS WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER.”

MacGyver-like ingenuity. “Equipment is expensive,” notes Marini, an associate professor of fine arts at Albany State University. “I was taught that you use what you have, fix and reappropriate tools, and go to scrap yards to make old things new.” Case in point: Marini turned an old charcoal smoker into a cupola, which is the furnace used by casters to melt iron.

This resourcefulness is something cast iron artists have in common, along with a willingness to get dirty and an exceptional work ethic. “If you’re not up for hard work, you won’t make it in cast iron,” says Colbert. “It’s extremely grueling. The work that goes into an iron pour will blow your mind, from the mold-making process to breaking up old iron bathtubs and radiators with a sledgehammer.

And that doesn’t include the cleanup process, breaking your piece out of the mold, the patina finish … it never ends.”

But this devotion to a seemingly never-ending process results in Renaissance men and women who know a little bit about a whole lot of things.

If the world’s technologies were to come crashing down tomorrow, you’d better hope you know a cast iron artist who can help you survive. As Hill puts it, they just “know how to do stuff.” Welding, mixing high-fire clay for the furnace, building the furnace itself, having an understanding of concrete, fabrication, kilns—the list of “stuff ” they know is similarly never ending.

Above: Molten iron being poured from the ladle into a mold Opposite page (Clockwise): Sloss Foundry in Birmingham, Alabama; Molten iron being poured into a mold; Scott Marini in full leathers and gear; Molten iron coming out of the cupola; Heating up the ladle; Heating up the cupola;

Cast iron is a convergence point where science, knowledge, and creativity meet, which may help explain why nearly all of these artists describe it as a ridiculously difficult medium to master. Yet something about the hard, dirty, backbreaking nature of iron continues to call to them. Marini says the allure it holds for him is the ability to visually tell a story V IE Z INE .C OM | 59

The VIE logo cast in solid iron

by Bob Brown PHOTO BY TROY RUPRECHT

BREAKING MAKING THE MOLD

After inspiration strikes, a mold is the first step toward creating cast iron art. The good news: you can use almost any semisolid material—from turtle shells to balloons—to create a one-of-a-kind mold.

Our very own guinea pig, VIE’s vice president of creative services, Bob Brown, recently received a crash course in mold-making from his sister, cast iron artist Amy Brown. Here’s how Bob turned an idea (the VIE logo!) into a finished mold using an inexpensive, two-part sand mold.

PART I Foam core was used to create the VIE logo’s threedimensional shape, and then a scrap plywood frame was constructed around the foam core, leaving about three inches of space at the edges. (Yes, the frame was as imprecise as it looks.) The frame’s volume was calculated to determine how much sand would be needed—about fifty pounds of coarse sand in this case—and then the sand was put in a cement mixer and heated with a blow torch to allow the resin used in the next step to coat the sand more evenly. A resin mixture, which includes a two-part catalyst that acts as a hardener, then joined the sand in the mixer. After rotating the mixture for several minutes, the resincoated sand was poured onto the wooden mold using buckets and then compressed with wooden blocks to ensure that it completely filled the spaces. Within thirty to forty-five minutes, the sand mixture hardened, and the wooden frame was deconstructed.

PART II The completed part of the mold was flipped over, and indentations were drilled to form keys that were later used to fit both sections of the mold together. Next, the wooden frame was rebuilt around the piece, and a new batch of sand-resin was mixed and poured into the frame. Once the second mold hardened, the two pieces were separated and the original pattern was removed, leaving two hardened blocks of sand around a three-dimensional shape. This empty space, of course, will eventually be filled with molten iron. First, however, the piece was coated with a carbon substance to help prevent the molten iron from melting the sand and distorting the shape. The alcohol from the carbon substance was burned off, hardening the carbon on the surface, and then holes were drilled into the mold to allow air to escape when iron filled the cavity. Finally, compressed air was used to clean each side of the mold, the two pieces were fitted together, and the holes were covered with tape to prevent contamination. Strapped together for transport, this VIE logo mold was ready for the trip to Birmingham—and a date with molten iron.

V IE Z INE .C OM | 61

with the objects he chooses to cast. “With casting, an everyday object becomes something monumental, something timeless.”

Colbert finds the material itself poetic. Produced only during a nebula—when a star is born—iron is what runs through our veins, in a very literal way contributing to who we are. “Humans have always had a profound attraction to this mysterious metal,” he says. “Plus, most iron is recycled from something else, so you’re tapping into the energy of what it used to be, and that sometimes comes out in the work.”

Detail of an iron casting by Amy Brown

Brown, who considers herself the novice of the group, says she’s constantly amazed by the level of detail she can achieve with cast iron—a result that makes the hard work well worth it. And this observation comes from a painter who can produce intricately detailed work on canvas for roughly onemillionth the physical effort it takes to produce cast iron. But some things—like the sea life and animals of her native North Florida—simply deserve the 3-D effect that is possible with iron.

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Colbert doesn’t specialize in any particular subject matter, focusing instead on communication between the artwork and the spectator. He’s learned the hard way that not everything translates well.

“Once people get hooked on iron, they want to cast everything in it,” he says. “But this material says something unique, and it can lose its magic when used too much. It’s kind of like profanity: if you’re cussing all the time, those words lose their power.”

Marini concentrates primarily on superstitions and folklore, using animals and animal hides to tell those stories. His latest piece, honoring the legendary view of quails as close-to-the-earth, family-oriented birds, was completed just in time for display at April’s National Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art and Practices at Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama. This biennial event holds a special place in the team members’ hearts. “It’s an opportunity to get together with the cast iron family,” says Marini, “and it really is a family.”

The Birmingham conference is where many artists are first introduced to the larger cast iron

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community—people who, like themselves, consider smashing up and melting old cast iron sinks a good time. The conference combines panel discussions, exhibits, competitions, demonstrations, and nittygritty iron pours. Sloss runs its own furnaces and invites guest furnaces as well, including the one Colbert runs for their group and anyone else who wants to use it.

of that has to do with the venue. Beginning in the 1880s, Sloss Furnaces produced iron for almost a century, birthing an industry that gave rise to the city of Birmingham. Sloss is now a National Historic Landmark and museum, dedicated to preserving the culture of cast iron. For many cast iron artists, coming to Sloss is like making a pilgrimage to the motherland.

Even people who have their own furnaces will bring molds and participate in the iron pours, because at its heart, casting iron is a communal experience. “If I wanted to pour a piece or two by myself at home, it can be done,” Colbert says. “But you’re wasting a lot of fuel by doing that, and it seems really selfish not to share your resources. It’s like firing up a jet just to fly around town.”

Mostly, though, the conference is about connecting with old friends, making new ones, and the thrill of displaying work to an appreciative audience. “What I love best about cast iron is the moment when your piece is all cleaned up, reads the way you want it to read, and people are lit up by it,” shares Colbert.

There’s no proprietary feeling about processes or in-progress pieces for cast iron artists; they want to pass on what they’ve learned, especially to the next generation of artists. And there will be plenty of these young artists at the Sloss conference, which just keeps getting bigger and better. Part

All of them echo the same reality: The physicality of cast iron work is an ever-present challenge. It’s not unusual for people to injure themselves with all the heavy lifting required—sometimes even seriously.

And the technical side isn’t any easier. Castings go wrong all the time, Marini shrugs, noting that

The worst? “Everything before that point,” he laughs.

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disappointments are just part of the process. But when disappointments happen, this tenacious crowd comes back for more. “I’ve got one mold I’ve tried to cast five times without success,” Colbert says, “but damned if I don’t have that mold waiting for a sixth try.”

Considering the amount of work that goes into a finished piece, it’s easy to understand why the artists bristle at the word “hobby.” Though not a profession for most, nearly all consider cast iron to be a lifestyle and a very meaningful part of who they are. It’s my art, they repeat, accepting that within those three words are frequent pain and frustration—things most of us run from, but which they willingly run toward. “The truth is that you sweat for it, you bleed for it, you cry over it, and you take copious amounts of Aleve because your body hurts,” Colbert says. “It’s a huge challenge. But if it came easy, you wouldn’t appreciate it as much.”

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or Allison Wickey, painting is like yoga—therapeutic and liberating for the body, mind, and soul.

Luckily for this artist, finding inspiration is as easy as breathing. In fact, it’s as easy as commuting to work. The scenic drive to her new gallery in Seacrest Beach, Florida, consists of blue waters, green trees, and white sands—a veritable artist’s palette that constantly sparks ideas for her work.

Wickey, who has practiced this technique for six years, stresses that the first step in the process is simply observing. “If someone wants a painting that represents Seacrest Beach, I go down to the beach and look at how high the dunes are, the vegetation and how it grows, and the curve of the beach, and then I paint that,” Wickey explains.

Although Wickey is known for her landscape paintings, she also enjoys the challenge of abstracts. She achieves both through a style that’s actually a type of fresco: Venetian plaster mixed with acrylic paint on wood. “It’s a thirteen-step process that entails a lot of texture and impressionism,” she says. It also entails a lot of patience. The intricate layering and drying process means that each piece takes about four days to complete.

No matter the subject, Wickey’s paintings are noteworthy for what they don’t have: anything man-made, which she removes from the scene—at least in her mind’s eye—so that she can produce a landscape that’s akin to what settlers in Florida would have seen five hundred years ago. And it’s a good bet that she’ll find something in that scaled-back picture that’s crying out for a dab of her favorite color, a dusty blue-green she likens to the sea on a cloudy day.

Left to her own devices, Wickey frequently chooses to paint herons. She’s so drawn to them that she even gives her lifelike creations names that fit the personalities she envisions for each one.

That shade and what it represents are a long way from Wickey’s Midwestern roots.

The Illinois native earned a degree from Columbia College Chicago before moving V IE Z INE .C OM | 67

1

2

Above: Allison in front of painting entitled .22 (48” x 96”) Left: 1. Genuine Panama hats by Haute Handcrafted Accessories, hand woven in Ecuador 2. Allison Wickey poses with Haute creator, Gaëlle Le Goff, at A.Wickey at the Pavilion in Seacrest Beach, Florida. Dress and skirt by Nicole Paloma 3. Hand-dyed açaí seed wrap bracelets by Haute Handcrafted Accessories Facing page: 4. The tools of Allison Wickey’s trade

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5. Dyed tagua nut rings by Haute Handcrafted Accessories

4

to St. Louis, where a job as a muralist and faux finish painter introduced her to plasterwork and glaze making—materials and techniques she still uses today.

But without the freedom to paint her own pieces, Wickey wasn’t fulfilled. Listening as always to her intuition and being unafraid to take risks, she decided to kick-start her career as an independent artist by relocating to Blue Mountain Beach in 2006.

Wickey immediately fell in love with everything about her new home—except the art. Finding much of it too bright for her tastes, she pulled out the plaster and began experimenting, eventually hitting on the kinds of things she wanted to hang in her own house: pieces that looked charmingly aged. These pieces spoke to others as well, and she began getting rave reviews. In 2011, Wickey was named Artist of the Year for Walton County, and in 2012, the gallery she had opened a few years earlier was honored

by Emerald Coast Magazine as Best Gallery on the Emerald Coast.

The A.Wickey Studio-Gallery, which recently moved from Rosemary Beach to a 4,000-square-foot space in

5

Seacrest Beach, showcases not only Wickey’s paintings but also the work of fellow artists. The gallery currently represents sixteen local artists—including Nicole Paloma, Wendy Mignot, Gaëlle LeGoff, Christon Anderson, Juan Francisco Adaro, Justin Lyons, Mary Hong, and Steve Wagner—whose bigger pieces can be found in the gallery and whose smaller pieces can be found in the kiosk.

No doubt Wickey has a lot on her plate, which is why she depends on her righthand man, artist and musician Cody Copeland, to help things run smoothly at the gallery. Calling him her perfect counterbalance, she credits him with keeping her grounded and lending some much-needed practicality.

Wickey’s success as a gallery owner and especially as an artist is no surprise to friend and client Diane Carroll, who says that Wickey manages to depict the Gulf Coast’s fairy-tale quality in her paintings. Carroll, whose family splits its time between Inlet Beach and Texas, found herself desperately missing the Florida scenery when she was away. But thanks to her husband, who surprised her with a Wickey painting for their home in Texas, all she has to do is glance at the tall trees, dunes, and waters of Grayton Beach’s Western Lake, and she’s right back on the Gulf. “It captures a feeling you get when you’re here,” says Carroll. “It really evokes the beauty and the vibe of being at the beach.”

Wickey’s landscapes of Western Lake seem to be in high demand. She recently created an eighteen-by-twelve-foot fresco of the same subject for the Pearl, a luxury hotel in Rosemary Beach. And fortunately for the public, the fresco is V IE Z INE .C OM | 69

1

2 Above: Allison at A.Wickey Studio-Gallery Left: 1. Sliced tagua nut necklaces with adjustable leather ties by Haute Handcrafted Accessories 2. Interior of A.Wickey at the Pavilion kiosk in Seacrest Beach 3. Natural tagua nut bracelets by Haute Handcrafted Accessories

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earmarked for display in the street-level private dining room, so passersby can enjoy the piece as well. Up next for the busy artist is a juried art show, ArtsQuest, in WaterColor, Florida.

continue to provide talented new artists with a place to sell their work, effectively supporting the dreams of others as she’s living her own. It’s an integral part of a simple life plan that goes something like this: “Work less, make more money, and be happy,” she laughs.

Always at the top of Wickey’s to-do list, however, is spending time with her two children, ages nine and six. And thanks to their mom, the kids have a readymade place to express their own creative sides. Wickey makes a point of helping her children appreciate the beauty around them, and whether it’s nature or nurture, they’ve taken those lessons to heart. “They’re both pretty good little artists themselves,” she says.

A.Wickey Studio-Gallery and A.Wickey at the Pavilion kiosk are located at 10343 East County Highway 30-A in Seacrest Beach, Florida. The gallery is number 130, situated in the building behind La Cocina on the first floor, and the kiosk is number 7. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; the kiosk is open from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday. To contact Wickey, call (850) 588-2551 or visit www.AllisonWickey.com.

Wickey’s interest in nurturing artistic gifts isn’t limited to her offspring. Wickey’s goal is to

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JEWELRY 3Ĺ‹ &&# Ĺ‹ Ä„Ĺ‹ )3& -Ĺ‹Ĺ‹ÄŠĹ‹Ĺ‹ ").)!, *"3Ĺ‹ )/,. -3Ĺ‹) Ĺ‹ ((# Ĺ‹ ,% , Inspired by horses, country music, and religion, Annie Parker designs and hand makes cuff bracelets that are not only turning heads, but also taking off with a wide range of buyers. “My cuffs are unisex,â€? says Parker. “I really wanted to create jewelry that men could wear also.â€? In fact, fans who watch the popular new Nashville television series on ABC might have spotted one of her originals on the arm of handsome Charles Esten, who plays the character Deacon. From the outside looking in, Parker’s life seems much like a dream come true and, from her perspective as well, she couldn’t hope for more—at least not much more.

For a time, fine art was something she would do in her spare time. “I painted for a while,� says Parker, “but I just wanted to get back to jewelry making.� While tossing around different ideas of what to create, Parker considered what she would like to wear herself. She decided on a casual country theme. “I loved the look of leather and pearls,� adds Parker, who appreciates rustic beauty. Opting for something a little more casual, she chose bronze and sterling silver for her media, and then began buying hammers and cutters, soldering materials, and metal clay to form her new designs.

Regarding her jewelry, Parker says, “I’ve always been an artist at heart.� When her twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Amanda, was small, Parker put her talent to work in cake decorating. While living in Atlanta, she also started taking design classes at the Atlanta Decorative Arts Center. From studying design, she moved to acrylic classes and then on to jewelry. At this time, Parker was also active in the world of tennis, so she began making tennis earrings, which she sold in pro shops in Atlanta and in Miramar Beach, Florida. Upon moving to the Gulf Coast, Parker became involved in her horse farm, Gulfside Trail Rides and Stables, with her partners. The farm is located in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.

Her personal favorite, also the first one Parker sold, is a horse head. “That piece got me started,� she says, adding that all the designs symbolize things she loves. “I’m obsessed with the city of Nashville,� she reveals. “I can’t sing or play guitar, but I love the music.� And musicians love Parker. In addition to actor-musician Esten, an assortment of music celebrities wear her cuffs, namely musician and songwriter Tim Jackson, singer Geoff McBride from The Voice, and Northwest Florida’s Forrest Williams of the Forrest Williams Band. On another note, 2013 Miss Rodeo Florida, Jenna Smeenk, also has an Annie Parker cuff.

In addition to offering horseback riding lessons, trail rides, and boarding, the ranch serves as a venue for all kinds of private events, from children’s birthday parties to a sixtieth birthday bash for a Grammy Award–winning musician, as well as VIE’s recent Sea + Farm + Table harvest dinner. Corporate affairs and weddings are also held at Gulfside, and planning such events presents yet another creative outlet for Parker.

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Aside from the country and music themes, also popular are faith-based creations.

Crosses are a popular design, as are angel wings, which Parker first made for Stacy and Bryan Pritchett, the owners Mercantile boutique in Seaside, Florida, to mirror the store’s logo. “The angel wings became one of my best sellers,� Parker says, having recently made an angel wings cuff for a girlfriend of hers who is getting married. A number of customers order the design to wear in memory of a loved one and ask Parker to add the initials of the person who has passed away.

“My cuffs are unisex. I really wanted to create jewelry that men could wear also.”

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Annie Parker with her buddy, Ho Ho, at Gulfside Trail Rides and Stables

If they have something special in mind, customers are invited to custom order designs. Annie Parker cuffs come in a range of sizes to fit all women and men. Prices range from $98 for bronze to $195 for sterling silver.

Parker is currently in the process of building her retail distribution, and plans to add necklaces, earrings, belt buckles, and other pieces to her collection.

Without a doubt, each piece is lovingly made. “The part of the process with my hands on it takes about two hours,” Parker says, explaining that the firing takes several hours.

Making and selling jewelry, living on the Gulf of Mexico, and owning a viable horse farm just minutes from the beach—what more could Annie Parker desire? “My daughter Amanda, who lives in North Carolina, is also an artist, and it’s our dream to have a business together,” she confides, hinting that Nashville is a place they might both want to live or perhaps have a second home in the future. “I’m just a country girl at heart.”

To order, retailers and clients can contact Parker through her website at www.annieparkerjewelry.com. Cuffs are also available for purchase in these retail locations: ¾ Boca Boutique & Galeri – Destin, Florida ¾ Burlap Ranch – Tomball, Texas ¾ Gammy Designs – Ontario, Canada ¾ Gulfside Trail Rides and Stables – Santa Rosa Beach, Florida ¾ Mercantile – Seaside, Florida ¾ Two Old Hippies – Nashville, Tennessee, and Aspen, Colorado Gulfside Trail Rides and Stables can be reached through Facebook.

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JUSTIN GAFFREY BRINGS PAINT TO LIFE

BY Jordan Staggs PHOTOGRAPHY BY Romona Robbins

E

verything in the little Blue Mountain Beach studio is covered with paint—wet paint, paint that has long since dried, layers of paint in every color, all built up on top of even more drops and splatters. The floor, the tables, and the shelves on one side of the room look like there was an explosion of acrylic that no one could prevent.

Locals who frequent Justin Gaffrey Studio and Gallery in Blue Mountain Beach or Seaside, Florida, know better than to touch anything, or even to wear something they would prefer not to get paint on. It is, of course, frowned upon to make a finger mark on a fresh painting, and that’s why those are stored safely in the drying room of the studio, but visitors are actually encouraged to feel the flexible-yet-sturdy make of a dry painting. Because that’s the thing about Justin’s work—the rich colors, the shiny petals

of roses, daisies, or poppies, a nest full of hatched eggs, or bright blue waves rolling onto shore beneath fluffy white clouds—all make you want to just reach out and touch.

Which is exactly how Justin crafts his new sculpture series of paintings featuring wildlife such as butterflies, owls, herons, and eagles that seem as though they might fly right off the panel at any moment.

“If I had an owl and someone just wanted me to paint it, I think I would be bored,” says Justin. “I always try to push the boundaries.”

Extending up to eight or nine inches off the plywood panels that are specially built to withstand the weight of all the paint it takes to make them, these sculpted paintings are created in pieces first. Justin

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molds parts of feathers or butterfly wings by hand and lays them out in rows. There, they dry partially until he is ready to put all the pieces together on the panel background. “It’s like deconstructing an animal, and then reconstructing it,” he says. “No one would ever guess this pile of bones is going to be an owl, and I just like the challenge of seeing what I can do with paint.”

Sculpting paint by hand is a process Justin says he just has to feel, rather than following a specific technique. Just as a chef somehow knows the art of cooking great meals without ever following a recipe—which, by the way, Justin also does—his painting style is more about just letting go and creating whatever vision he has that day. “I just try to keep evolving and always making them better,” he says.

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“I just try to keep evolving and always making them better. You learn who you are and what you enjoy doing that way.”

“You learn who you are and what you enjoy doing that way.”

The method behind the madness, or perhaps vice versa, does not end with his paintings or the culinary arts. Justin is a carpenter, a mason, a businessman, and a visionary. He’s always coming up with new ideas for how to display his work or how he can repurpose leftover paint that has dried in funky shapes and textures. “He’s like a little bird in here,

building up new things with the scraps,” says Christy Milliken, the director of Justin’s galleries and studio.

She is just one member of the team that keeps things running behind the scenes while Justin works.

“Everything that goes into it is art, really, from the panels being built, to taking the photos of each painting, and displaying works in the galleries a certain way. It all goes into the visual aspect,” Christy says.

Seaside gallery associate Katie Hudson has filmed the process of the paintings, creating a projected display of his work that plays after dark on the gallery walls for the benefit of people walking by outside. Katie is also collaborating with Justin on what he calls an IMAX-type video that will take

viewers even closer to the creation process. Seaside gallery art consultant Mandy Mills is assisting with graphic design projects and promotional materials.

The entire team, which also includes artist assistant Brian Wood and gallery assistant Kyle Paxton, is responsible for creating work that will give viewers a different kind of gallery experience. Something to talk about and remember—and, hopefully, take home with them.

Justin Gaffrey’s work is in homes across the country, and with recent tours and painting exhibitions in cities such as Nashville and Birmingham, Alabama, the word is spreading all the more quickly. He will be a featured artist at the 2013 Digital Graffiti art show at Alys Beach, Florida, and will also create a piece for the new Lexus dealership in Nashville and unveil it there.

Visitors to the Highway 30-A area are always encouraged to stop by the studio and gallery in Blue Mountain Beach to see Justin paint and to learn more about his process firsthand. For gallery information and hours, please visit www.justingaffrey.com or Like Justin Gaffrey Studio and Gallery on Facebook.

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Taking The Long Way Home BY: Tori Phelps PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy of Margaret Biggs

F

ormer model Margaret Biggs knows a thing or two about gorgeous pictures, though, these days, she’s more interested in painting them than posing for them. A Pensacola native who left for New York City as a teenager, she spent three decades away from the place she loves most. When she finally returned home, she found a new career, a new perspective, and an old calling.

Biggs has always felt that Pensacola is a bone-deep part of who she is. Perhaps that’s because her ties to the area go back to the sixteenth century, when an ancestor on her mother’s side was deeded land by a Spanish king. Her parents helped to cement her bond to the Gulf Coast by making Mother Nature a part of the family. Dinner was something from the land, and weekends were spent exploring past where the road ended on Santa Rosa Island. Unfortunately, today’s kids cannot do the same. “That area is now much more developed,” she mourns.

Along with their reverence for nature, her parents also passed along an art gene that took root in Biggs at an early age. Relatives’ paintings dotted the walls of the family home, and it seemed that her own would soon join them. However, a year into her art studies at LSU, the modeling world came calling.

At a friend’s suggestion, Biggs dropped some snapshots of herself into the mail for local photographer Michael Belk, who was working on major campaigns for national and international brands. He liked what he saw and began using Biggs as, she says, “the girl on the arm of the handsome man” in menswear catalogs. Those photos ended up in the hands of agency owner and model-maker extraordinaire V IE Z INE .C OM | 99

Eileen Ford, who phoned Biggs’s mother and requested that her daughter relocate to New York. Biggs immediately started packing—not because she was dying to work the catwalk, but because she wanted to travel. “I had very little interest in modeling, but I knew it would be my ticket to travel to Europe,” she explains.

“And I had a burning desire to see Europe.”

The reason her paintings caught on like wildfire, Biggs believes, is because every piece, whether it depicts a flower or Fort Pickens, strives to capture the essence—the very soul—of its subject.

This photo of Margaret Biggs contemplating the beach just before a poetry reading at Sundog Books in Seaside, Florida, is a beautiful tribute to Biggs’s art by photographer Romona Robbins.

So, the nineteen-year-old girl who had been out of the Deep South only once decided to leap headfirst into life in New York City, a choice that spoke as much about her naïveté as it did her sense of adventure, she now realizes. Fortunately, her jaw-dropping escapades—fighting a bull in Spain, roaming the streets of East Berlin before the Wall came down, rubbing elbows with Mick Jagger at Studio 54—left her unscathed and with her integrity intact. She did plenty of wild things, Biggs admits, but she believes the almost childlike sense of wonder with which she approached these experiences helped protect her. “(Hurting me) would have been like kicking a puppy,” she says.

After her modeling career drew to a close, a thirtyish Biggs picked up where she left off with her education, settling in at the University of Illinois at Chicago to study art. However, it would be decades before her passion became a full-fledged career. A series of painful events in 2009, including a surprise divorce and a bankruptcy that left her penniless, nudged Biggs to do something she’d put off for too long: go home and do something with her art.

She drove a thousand miles from Chicago to Pensacola with no one but her dog for company, officially becoming a Pensacola resident again for the first time in thirty years. Alone, broke, and living in a shoddy little townhouse, she found herself—thrilled. “Someone said I was forced to move home, but I didn’t think of it that way because I was elated to be here,” she says. “I had palmettos in my backyard again!”

Her days were soon filled with old favorites like swimming and picnicking on the beach. And painting. Lots of painting. She began churning out stylized interpretations of the natural wonders she grew up with on the Gulf Coast, and

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people took notice. Her work was snapped up for public and private collections, and clients from as far away as California requested commissioned pieces.

The reason her paintings caught on like wildfire, Biggs believes, is because every piece, whether it depicts a flower or Fort Pickens, strives to capture the essence— the very soul—of its subject. “If you want an exact replica of what you see, go buy a photo,” she advises. “An artist’s mission is to reveal the unseen.”

That includes the big unseen: God. A self-described “spiritual” person, Biggs incorporates her belief that we, and everything around us, are manifestations of God, with nature serving as His canvas. In her quest to bring that to life, she relies heavily on her twenty-five-year meditation practice of stilling her mind. “That’s when my art flows the easiest; it’s when I can hear God,” she explains.

“Peaceful” and “calm” are the words she hears most frequently when people view her paintings, and Biggs insists it’s because she paints within a peaceful, calm mind-set. The effect, however, is anything but tepid. She’s known for strong

images, a dichotomy she easily explains by asking, “Have you ever noticed that we’re strongest when we’re most peaceful? There’s great strength in inner peace.”

This combination of right place and right mind-set has produced more than sought-after paintings; it has made her a poet. Biggs says that, following her return to Pensacola, poems just started appearing in her head, almost as if she were the conduit rather than the writer. This “effortless” flow of words led to a book of poetry, first produced as a gift for a dear friend’s birthday and then as a gift for, well, everyone. Though unintentional, she can see now that the order in which she arranged the work chronicles her journey through darkness and back V IE Z INE .C OM | 101

“I was given the gift of art, as I believe everyone is given a gift. And through those gifts, we make the world a better place" into light. “I give my book to people going through a hard time,” she explains, “because it shows my struggle and my triumph. More often than not, it’s people who’ve known great loss at some level who really get it.”

One of those losses for her, shared by millions across several states, was the BP oil spill. A lifelong environmental champion, she was devastated by the disaster, which occurred within a year of her return to Pensacola. Terrified and anxious—yet unable to shut off the news coverage—she turned fear into action through her efforts of organizing the Pensacola area portion of Hands Across the Sand events in 2010 and 2011, part of an international movement to raise awareness of environmental dangers caused by practices such as offshore drilling.

Hands Across the Sand is just one of the many charities with which she’s involved.

Biggs is an advocate for Big Brothers Big Sisters; she participates in Art for Heart as a tribute to her parents, both of whom have heart conditions; and she donates to Smile Train, which provides cleft palate surgery for children around the world. “Just $250 will fix a child’s cleft palate; I think that’s a really great use of $250,” she comments.

Painter, author, activist: Margaret Biggs has more on her plate than most, but she seems to be adding rather than subtracting. Next up for her is an inspirational book that uses seashells as a narrative device for a woman’s life—her tribute to Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s iconic A Gift from the Sea. She’s also considering publishing a collection of her short stories and another book of poetry. But first on the agenda is more visual art: prints on wood, a wallet-friendly way to get art into more people’s hands. “I want to make art for everybody, but even at the price range I’m making it, it’s fairly inaccessible to some people,” she says.

Whether she’s making prints on wood or writing about seashells, she hopes what audiences take away from her work is the beauty of slowing down, both physically and mentally, to appreciate the touch of the wind or a wave curling toward shore.

Spreading that message, she believes, is her calling. “I was given the gift of art, as I believe everyone is given a gift. And through those gifts, we make the world a better place,” she says. “In my own small way, I want to share a little of this magic, this unseen. There’s magic everywhere if we slow down long enough to see it.”

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oday’s artists continue to attribute their growth and success to patrons.

Melissa Davis, who has been a resident of the Emerald Coast for over thirty years, claims she would not be the painter she is today without the support of her husband, Larry, owner of Davis Properties of Northwest Florida.

Melissa grew up around art in her hometown of Newport Beach, California.

Her mother and grandmother painted, and her aunt, Mildred Brown, was a professional portrait artist. Melissa took art classes throughout high school.

Nevertheless, she studied business in college and upon moving to the Florida Panhandle, Melissa went to work for Daryl Davis, her sister-in-law, as a buyer for stores in Seaside (Robert Davis, Melissa’s brother-in-law, founded Seaside).

The turning point came sixteen years ago, when Melissa and Larry’s son Hunter was twelve and daughter Chandler was born two months prematurely. With Melissa reluctant to continue working in a job that required travel, Larry provided for the family so she could assume the full-time role of caring for the household. Eventually, she returned to her art. Melissa says that as soon as she started taking classes with Northwest Florida’s renowned landscape artist, Susan Lucas, “It was like coming home.”

Without question, living on the water has inspired Melissa. “When I was preparing for my first show, I realized that my paintings of water, flowers, abstracts, and fruit didn’t hang well together,” she recalls. “The voice in my head said, ‘Do a series,’ so for the last several years, all I’ve painted is horizon, water, and sky––or horizon, water, and land. I love how we can see nature change every day, minute by minute, by time and weather. Almost every color in the paint box will develop.”

A number of elements have influenced Melissa’s contemporary style and serene quality. “I used to say, ‘I want to paint like Wolf Kahn,’” she remarks, referring to the contemporary master of oil and pastel landscapes who gained prominence during the mid-twentieth-century Color Field movement. “But I realized I don’t paint like Wolf Kahn. I paint like Melissa. My brushstrokes are like my handwriting. I’ve come into my own.”

Even so, she is a proponent of studying and learning from others. “I believe you can have the natural ability, but if you don’t take the time to do the work, it is lost,” Melissa explains. “I have heard that going to art school is the kiss of death, but I think that depends on the school. You have to acquire the fundamentals to do the work, but you can’t always have someone holding your hand. At some point, you have to jump off, but I think there has to be continual self-study, as in doing a workshop.”

“I love how we can see nature change every day, minute by minute.”

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In addition to refining her oil and pastel techniques through classes and immersion workshops, Melissa has learned to work in encaustic, a method of painting with pigmented beeswax. Little blocks of wax are heated in individual tins on hot plates and then applied to mediums such as wood or prepared canvas using special brushes and tools. To keep the surface from drying too quickly, artists also use heat guns or blowtorches—or both. “I fell in love with encaustic, the oldest form of painting, when I saw it about ten years ago in Seattle,” Melissa says, describing the process as “difficult, amazing, and fun.”

Another difficult yet rewarding influence in Melissa’s life is yoga. She began practicing vinyasa yoga around the same time she took up painting. Also known as flow yoga, the style entails working through a series of asanas, or poses, in continual movements while incorporating guidelines for living with enlightenment. These guidelines are referred to as the “eight limbs,” which include physical and spiritual aspirations—from breathing control and posture to morality and meditation.

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“Yoga has taught me to sit and meditate each day,” says Melissa, who has immersed herself in the practice and is now in her third year of training new yoga instructors. “With yoga, at a point, all of the attention is drawn to the task at hand, and I’ll have little blips when I’m not sure how much time has passed.”

She describes a similar sense of engagement when she is painting. “I believe this occurs with activities that are divinely inspired.” As a practicing Christian, Melissa adds, “Everything I endeavor to do in my life is from that place.”

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Yoga has further enabled Melissa to focus on painting by allowing her to achieve the right frame of mind and by helping her to develop a sense of rhythm as she moves through a piece. “When I enter the studio,” she explains, “I start by preparing for it, turning on some music. I’ll lay out my palette, pray a little, and begin with some brushstrokes.” She reveals that her brushstrokes often follow the pace of the music. The family sheltie, Bono, keeps her company. “He’s always my companion when I paint.”

Although, from her perspective, her yoga and painting are intricately connected, many of Melissa’s yoga students at Balance Health Studio in Seagrove and Rosemary Beach Fitness Center have no idea she’s an artist. She is not a self-promoter; however, despite her silence, Melissa’s talent is no secret. Galleries throughout Northwest Florida exhibit her work and a number of pieces are currently on display at Gordie Hinds Contemporary Art in Seaside. Additionally, friends, including interior designers, commission and collect her paintings. “I’m fortunate that my work is in several fine homes and businesses along 30-A,” she says.

While grateful for her patrons (most of all, husband Larry) for affording her the opportunity to grow as an artist, Melissa is not content to maintain the status quo. “I want to paint more,” she says. “I’m going into that phase. I want to be more serious.” Even so,

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Open Tues day – Saturday 10– 5 850.231.2036 she asks, “Will I ever have a desire to do the local or regional art show with people walking by and making comments about my work? I would rather be naked!”

Since Melissa’s work is extremely personal to her, she often inscribes a thoughtful message to the eventual recipient on the back of each painting. “May this painting be a joy to you,” she might write, conveying her hope that the pleasure she experienced as she created it will live on in the new owner and all others who look at it.

For information about existing pieces or commissioned work, Melissa can be reached through Gordie Hinds Contemporary Art in Seaside, Florida, by calling (850) 231-1041, or by e-mail at melspad@aol.com.

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The Philosophy of a Creator

BY J O R DA N S TAG G S

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P H OTO G R A P H Y BY T R OY R U P R E C H T

“Picasso once said, ‘Light is everything.’ And that’s true.”

French artist Patrice Brunet nodded as he sipped his drink, squinting in the bright rays of sun that were beginning to peek through on what had thus far been a drizzly morning in Seaside, Florida. He continued, “A painting is different in different times of the day. I try to paint in the morning, but I never know how long it will be, and I never know what the day will be like.”

Monsieur Brunet loves to paint, and that’s all that really matters. He received his first paint set as a gift on his eighth birthday, and he knew from that point on that he was destined to make art his career. Although he took a break to serve in the French military and to work as an antiques dealer, a riverboat guide, and a few other things, Brunet’s love of creation never faded. While he enjoyed his work with antiques, he said that ultimately “It’s a lot more fun to sell something you made with your own hands.” And that’s what he now does every day.

He might work on as many as fifteen paintings at a time, starting new ones as he goes and then returning to put the finishing touches on others. His work can be found in galleries around the world, including An Apartment in Paris—the charming gallery and furniture boutique located in the shops at Ruskin Place in Seaside, Florida.

Just as the length of time he may paint on any given day can fluctuate, Brunet’s subject matter can also vary depending on his mood. “If I want to paint rocks, I paint rocks, or fish, or sunlight, or a cityscape. I try to paint what is in my mind.”

Other times, his work might be influenced according to where it will be displayed, or based upon who is buying it. Brunet likes keeping his work versatile, using styles and subjects as diverse as abstract buildings, seascapes, and detailed renditions of Parisian cathédrales. When it came to Sylvia Forbes, owner of An Apartment in Paris, he said, “I decided to paint something special for her shop.”

This included creating abstract scenes reminiscent of the sidewalks in a small town like Seaside—or even a quaint district of Paris—and nautical scenes in calming ocean and sunset pastel hues. Calling forth the Impressionist movement, his works can transport the viewer to a dream world, where what you see is not necessarily what is there, but instead is what you want to see.

“Patrice contacted me because he felt like his work would fit in here,” Forbes said. Her store, which lives up to its name, feels more like a friend’s apartment than a gallery, with knickknacks, candles, jewelry, and artwork placed about in strategic disarray. “Everything goes together in the shop even though it’s all different. I select artists based on how I feel; I like to feel good about the work I put in my store.”

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“It’s fun. That’s what is most important.

Everything you do in life, you should have fun.”

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Similar to the way Forbes selects the work she will display in her store, Brunet likes to take everything in during the process of deciding what to paint. While inspiration for his painting style often comes from Impressionism, he is very open to new ideas and ways of putting a new spin on the classics. “I say to everyone that they should visit a museum and try to open the mind. Don’t just stay with ‘I only like landscapes.’ Inspiration comes from everywhere,” he said. “You don’t create the same thing in every place, and even if you already know an artist’s work, you can still be amazed by looking at them again.”

“Art is very personal,” he went on, “especially with abstract. But it doesn’t have to be complicated. Either you like it, or you don’t. It’s a personal taste.”

Brunet began selling his works in the Southeast after moving to Birmingham, Alabama, to live part-time with his family while continuing to run his antiques dealership in Paris. He now spends his time between France and the U.S., traveling to other places in between.

Forbes said she was thrilled when Brunet contacted her about putting his work in her shop. “I think artists are very particular about where they display their work,” she said. “I love that the diversity in Seaside’s art district allows us to bring artists from many different places here, especially with events such as ArtWalk going on year-round.” Visual artists and musicians, both from the area and abroad, share their works during the event, which is held from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. on the first Friday of each month.

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For many artists, Brunet included, the joy of their careers is not about making a profit. Instead, it lies more in creating something they love and sharing their passion with others. Brunet often does pieces for charity auctions, and he enjoyed hosting watercolor classes for the patients at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

“It’s fun,” Brunet said. “That’s what is most important. Everything you do in life, you should have fun.

It’s a real pleasure when you go somewhere and you see your painting on the wall. It’s very touching.

And an artist is not just a person who puts paint on canvas. Artists are everywhere.”

Photo of Patrice Brunet by J. Dane MacKendrick Patrice Brunet’s art may be viewed or purchased at An Apartment in Paris, 210 Ruskin Place, Seaside, Florida; (850) 534-0038; www.anapartmentinparis.net. For more information about Patrice Brunet’s art, please visit his website at www.patricebrunet.net.

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Young Adult Series “This series of solitary young women in various bucolic settings began as an unrelated sequence of commercial assignments for fiction book covers, many of them historical. More recently, they have taken on a life of their own, evolving into an ongoing project.”

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Dear Prudence, see the sunny skies.

Prudence, her husband, Albert, and a production crew set out to capture the massive event in January 2013. They flew to India and then traveled, squeezed into trucks and rickshaws, to the site of the Mela at Allahabad, or Prayag, where the Ganges (Ganga) River meets the Yamuna and the Sarasvati. During the Mela, it is said that the planets are aligned so that the river is blessed, and those who bathe in the Ganges during that time will be cleansed of their past hardships and blessed for the future.

They all agree that attending such a monumental event was an unforgettable spiritual experience.

“The Indian people are wonderful, and they will jump right into your business and try to help you right away,” Jenifer says, laughing as she recounts a tale of some Indian “helpers” trying to guide her and Arix through a sea of people crossing a bridge to get to the main site of the Mela.

Albert recalls bathing in the Ganges and the great encouragement of the people around them, watching Westerners partake in the traditional dip into the water.

“People were cheering us on and telling us what to do,” Albert says with a grin.

“They were so proud of us for making the journey.”

The wind is low, the birds will sing that you are part of everything.

Albert and Prudence Bruns bathe in the sacred Ganges River during the 2013 Kumbh Mela.

Of course, when that many people are together in one place, even for a good cause, there are always going to be unfortunate mishaps. People get lost and are never found, crowds press in so tightly that it becomes hard to breathe, and sickness from exposure and exhaustion can spread quickly. That doesn’t stop people from coming, or from bringing their children and elderly to be blessed by Mother Ganga.

“When I asked Albert why he was going to India,” Shannon says, “he told me, ‘Prudence said she was going to do this and I don’t want her to die alone.’”

Luckily, the whole team made it back safely—and with many stories of adventures (and misadventures) from the voyage. The twenty-square-mile Kumbh Mela site, a part of the riverbed that is submerged most of the year, was covered in a sea of bodies and tents, with people from around the world performing religious traditions, cooking, singing, and doing just about everything else imaginable.

Production of the Kumbh Mela documentary will continue throughout the year and will include a large fund-raiser in New York City this fall. Prudence and Shannon are excited to see what comes of it. Joining the production crew are film editor Toby Shimin of the popular feature documentary BUCK, which was short-listed for the 2012 Academy Awards, and music producer J. Ralph, whose song, “Before My Time,” performed by Scarlett Johanssen in the film Chasing Ice, was nominated for an Academy Award this year.

“We hope it turns out to be a film that unites people, helps them think more deeply, and teaches them to question things,” Shannon says. The film and the foundation are about helping people get past the “disillusionment of today’s society” caused by the mass consumerism of the past several decades.

“It’s important that people know this is happening,” Prudence adds. “It’s a much more enlightened world now, and it’s been very heartening to me that what many of our generation collectively started in the ’60s had an effect on the new generations.

Instead of taking and taking, people are nurturing and giving back to this earth, and the film shows the possibilities of what can happen if people from different backgrounds and nationalities come together for good. It’s like John Lennon said: Imagine all the people sharing all the world.”

“It was almost like a carnival of the senses,” Prudence says with a laugh. “People were coming and going for a whole month. There’s so much going on, you could easily freak out—but it wouldn’t do you any good. Still, the purity of everyone’s intentions was there. The peace and joy of people finally making it to the Mela is an amazing feeling.”

The team from the Dear Prudence Foundation consisted of Prudence and Albert; Shannon’s husband, director and cameraman Pato Cohn; production manager Jenifer Kuntz, who is also the owner of Raw & Juicy, an organic juice bar in Seaside, Florida; cameraman and Northwest Florida artist Arix Zalace; cameraperson Erin Smith; and sound technician Manish Pingle. Shannon was unable to go due to last-minute complications.

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Photo by AJP / Shutterstock.com

The Kumbh Mela is the world’s largest gathering, taking place at the intersection of the Ganges, Yamuna, and Sarasvati Rivers when the planets are aligned. Those who bathe during the Mela will be cleansed and blessed for the future.

Photo by Radiokafka / Shutterstock.com V IE Z INE .C OM | 133

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“People were cheering us on and telling us what to do. They were so proud of us for making the journey.”

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Photo by Radiokafka / Shutterstock.com

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Photo by Radiokafka / Shutterstock.com

Clockwise from top left: 1. Women pray during the ritual bathing ceremony in the Ganges River. 2. Over one hundred million people attended the 2013 Kumbh Mela. 3. Pato Cohn, Erin Smith, and Arix Zalace share close quarters in a truck on the way to the Mela site. 4. The campsites surrounding the river were a carnival for the senses with colors, sounds, and smells. 5. Prudence is blessed by a sadhu, a nomadic monk dedicated to achieving spiritual liberation through meditation. 6. The Ganges River is said to be the “mother” of India because its water brings life to the entire country. 7.

Sadhus inside a colorful tent at the Kumbh Mela campgrounds

To learn more about the Dear Prudence Foundation and the benefits of yoga and Transcendental Meditation, visit www.dearprudencefoundation.org and www.dearprudenceyogaliving.com, which is coming online in Fall 2013.

V IE Z INE .C OM | 135

Sea the World from a New Perspective The team from the Dear Prudence Foundation has many collective adventures under its belt, and film producers Shannon and Pato Cohn certainly have some exciting tales to tell about their Caribbean voyage while filming the documentary series Sea Nation.

“We kept thinking there was nothing on TV that we really liked or wanted our kids to see,” says Shannon. “So, we thought we would just make it ourselves.”

So, the New York City–based couple, along with their two-year-old daughter, Sofia, friend and Globe Trekker travel series host Megan McCormick, and her family, prepared to set sail on a journey. The Cohns sold their car and many of their belongings, boarded a boat, and let the waves determine the rest.

“It’s a show for people who aren’t happy living inside the box,” says Shannon, who was a lawyer for two years before the idea for Sea Nation came to be. “Since we lived that lifestyle before, we really resonated with the idea of breaking free.”

Four weeks into the trip to the Caribbean, the team’s boat suffered mast damage and they wrestled with the decision of whether to try to find another way to move on or to go home defeated. “We decided to just keep going, and that’s when things got interesting,” Shannon says with a grin.

Totally dependent on the will of Mother Nature and the schedules of the locals, they found rides from the locals on just about every different type of boat, met people from all walks of life, and learned how to navigate the Caribbean social network. “And I mean a real social network of people, the kind that’s not online at all,” Shannon adds. The Sea Nation crew stayed with Sir Emile Gumbs, former chief minister of Anguilla, and his wife, Lady Josephine. Gumbs is currently the only person from the island to be knighted by the British monarchy. They also toured Sir Richard Branson’s private island and spent the day with him on and off camera.Other highlights included seeing how the rich and famous live on St. Barths and befriending many local fishermen and others along the way.

The series has aired on Discovery and National Geographic channels in over sixty countries around the world. Ironically, the United States isn’t one of them.

Despite that, the team is pleased with the support from fans around the globe, and has made the series available online and on DVD so anyone can watch.

“The show is all about what might happen if you give in to the possibilities,” Shannon says. “We want to share that with everyone. One thing about life is, if you open yourself up and are positive about things, doors will open.”

Full episodes of Sea Nation are available online at www.seanationtv.com.

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Interestingly, Gilbert buys approximately 90 percent of his merchandise up front, a practice, he says, ensures access to the finest pieces. Therefore, while the volume on hand fluctuates according to seasonal needs, the inventory remains fresh and well balanced with price points and types of work. The gallery also facilitates commissioned projects.

Prices range from just under twenty dollars for certain jewelry items to thousands of dollars for significant pieces. “It can be expensive,” says Gilbert, “but this is American craftwork; it’s not highfalutin’.”

Similarly, Gilbert, who is repelled by gallery personnel who look down their noses at people, refuses to run a stuffy operation. He and his staff welcome visitors to come as they are, in T-shirts and flip-flops if they desire, and freely browse and ask questions. “I’ll spend an hour talking with a group of teens about glassblowing,” he says. “I know they aren’t going to buy anything, but maybe I’ll teach them to appreciate the art.”

The days of reserving the sheer beauty of glass for the privileged few are long over.

“If customers can walk in and buy a nightlight for twenty-five dollars and that will make them smile,” concludes Gilbert, “that’s the way it should be.”

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Wynwood Art District Fairs A few of my favorite fairs could be found off the beach in Miami’s Wynwood Art District, just south of the Design District. At Art Miami were the Arthur Roger Gallery and Jackson Fine Art, hailing from New Orleans and Atlanta, respectively. Arthur Roger, who has been at the forefront of contemporary art in New Orleans for decades, is a fount of information about many artists. He is particularly knowledgeable about Louisiana and other Southern artists, including photographers George Dureau and Deborah Luster, as well as painter and sculptor Ida Kohlmeyer. The Arthur Roger Gallery played host to a special event at historic Villa Vecchia. Invited guests arrived by complimentary yacht and viewed a live pour by artist Holton Rower, whose hypnotic and psychedelic works are created by pouring layer after layer of color, almost like spin art, onto enormous pieces of plywood.

Jackson Fine Art, which specializes in contemporary, twentieth-century, and vintage photographic works, names among its Southern-born or Southern-based (subject matter included) photographers Angela West, Mark Steinmetz, Jack Spencer, Jody Fausett, and Birney Imes.

Stallings of the performance art troupe Glo could be seen striking dance-style poses while slithering among visitors who move from hotel room to hotel room to see art from the mostly new or emerging galleries occupying each one. Southern galleries at Aqua included Get This! Gallery and the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design, both from Atlanta, and, sharing a room, Ghostprint Gallery of Richmond and the j fergeson gallery of Farmville, Virginia.

INK Miami Art Fair At the Suites of Dorchester, another South Beach hotel, INK Miami Art Fair is devoted to contemporary works on paper, as the name suggests, and is sponsored by the International Fine Print Dealers Association. Patrick Albano of Aaron Galleries in the Chicago area displayed bins filled with prints and original works; he knew a lot about the works the gallery sells and the artists who have Southern connections.

My husband was on the search for a large-scale art photo by renowned photographer Matthew Pillsbury, and we found just what we were looking for at Jackson Fine Art. As we are transplants to Northwest Florida from New York City, the Pillsbury image was reminiscent of our insider’s life there and how we would go at midnight on the eve of Thanksgiving to Central Park West to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons being inflated.

Across the street from Art Miami was Red Dot Art Fair, where Highway 30-A photographer and owner of Studio b. Colleen Duffley exhibited the personally curated photographic installation called Light Impressions. It was a collection of the work of forty iPhoneographers who used only a camera phone and its apps to shoot and edit photos that Duffley displayed, thirteen images each in rotation, on forty iPads mounted to a tin roof torn off during Hurricane Opal.

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Story and Photography by Colleen E. Hinely

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COURTESY OF RUSSELL CARTER ARTIST MANAGEMENT

PHOTO BY BEN ROSENAU

COURTESY OF RUSSELL CARTER ARTIST MANAGEMENT

PHOTO BY BEN ROSENAU

VH-1 features the program Storytellers, while MTV has Unplugged. Each of these megahit music series features popular singer-songwriters playing before a small-scale, live studio audience. A more intimate forum than a traditional concert house, Storytellers, Unplugged, and various analogous spinoff programs provide an arena for musicians to share anecdotes and musings that inspired their hit songs. Since 2010, the organizers and promoters of the annual 30A Songwriters Festival have emulated this confessional music forum, transposing the cable network soundstages for the dozens of quirky and mellow niches along the shimmering shores of Scenic Highway 30-A. Each Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend, over a hundred internationally acclaimed singer-songwriters assemble within cozy wine bar courtyards, glamorous poolside retreats, topside bars, and meeting halls of Scenic Highway 30-A. Each venue allows for a congregation of adoring fans, eager for immersion deep into the self-penned lyrical prophecies of these musicians.

The musical luminaries of past 30A Songwriters Festivals have included Grammy Award–winning duo the Indigo Girls (Best Contemporary Folk Album, 1990); chart-topping Shawn Mullins (“Lullaby,” 1999, and “Beautiful Wreck,” 2006); Nashville songwriting pioneer Chuck Cannon ( John Michael Montgomery’s “I Love the Way You Love Me,” 1993, and Toby Keith’s “American Soldier,” 2003); and critically acclaimed songwriter and guitar goddess Michelle Malone (Creative Loafing and Atlanta magazine awards including Album of the Year, four-time Best Female Vocalist, and two-time Best Acoustic Guitarist).

The 2012 Songwriters Festival marked the return of John Oates of the legendary duo Hall and Oates, one of the most prodigious and successful duos in the history of rock and roll (twenty Top 40 hits, various number-one records, and over 80 million units sold). “I was intrigued by the little villages dotted along the road,” Oates says. “Going from place to place, there was music everywhere, in all the different venues. I really enjoyed the whole experience.”

Hailed as “raucous and jubilant” by Rolling Stone, two-time 30A Songwriters Festival performer Michelle Malone has crisscrossed the nation during her doubledecade tenure in the music industry. She enjoys the familial style engendered by the festival, which brings together friends and musical colleagues. “For me, it’s a

COURTESY OF RUSSELL CARTER ARTIST MANAGEMENT

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chance to catch up with a lot of friends,” states Malone. “I love performing there.

I love it on every level. It is fun and it’s fascinating to me. There is so much music to hear and so many talented songwriters.”

The intimate ambience cultivated by 30A Songwriters Festival venues allows for an unmatched closeness between festival guests and musical storytellers. Each musician courts his or her revelers by sharing lyrical journeys of personal love, loss, hope, and recovery. According to veteran songwriter Chuck Cannon, “The 30A festival affords me, as a singer-songwriter, an eager audience who give me the lifestyle to really concentrate on writing songs. I don’t know if you could even calculate the value in that for songwriters—it is our lifeblood.”

For many of the artists, the 30A Songwriters Festival also serves as a creative escape. Musicians with accommodating schedules often extend their sojourn in order to scribe a new song or two, inspired by the cleansing atmosphere of the 30-A landscape. “There’s just something about that area,” marvels Shawn Mullins.

“Acres of pine trees running up and meeting that beautiful, clear water; the air is fresh and with it comes inspiration.”

The formula for establishing the champion 30A Songwriters Festival, bringing distinguished singers-songwriters to the world’s most beautiful beaches, began with a cup of coffee and a collective vision. Jennifer Steele, executive director of the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, brought together community leaders, local musicians, and representatives of the area’s resorts, all of whom shared a passion for music and a collective desire to spearhead the three-day music festival. The subsequent infusion of Grayton Beach homeowner and artist manager Russell Carter and his A-list clientele, including Shawn Mullins and the Indigo Girls, launched the ambitious concept of the 30A Songwriters Festival into a uniquely superior musical destination for fans and artists alike. “I just volunteered to book the music and the first year we booked the Indigo Girls, Shawn (Mullins), Rodney Crowell, Chely Wright ...,” states Mr. Carter. “We put a bunch of nationally known artists on the bill and it just elevated the whole concept quickly.”

Adding to the precious formula are the hundreds of volunteers, corporate sponsors, housing partners, and stage sponsors who join together annually to produce the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County’s largest fund-raiser.

The festival’s significant net proceeds have gone toward the alliance’s efforts in supporting the arts through leadership, advocacy, funding, programs, and education.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend is a time to reflect upon a man and his passion for tolerance and change. These common notions are manifested in the words of lyrical artisans showcased during the festival. In the words of past headliners, the Indigo Girls: “Then you see turning out a light switch Is their only power When we stand like spotlights In a mighty tower All for one and one for all Then we sing the common call” The 30A Songwriters Festival is a platform for spreading the melodic messages of change: a renaissance of song and musical fellowship. Song is not dead. In fact, according to Shawn Mullins, along the shores of 30-A, the gift of song “is alive and kicking ass!”

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