I’d hate to choose just one trip, but I think that my first trip would be to Roma. I first fell in love with Rome some twenty years ago when I read a novel, When in Rome, by Ngaio Marsh. It wasn’t one of her best efforts, this book, except for the intricate and completely captivating description of the fictional Basilica di San Tommaso:

“The four arches that lead into the porch of San Tommaso in Pallaria are of modest proportions and their pillars, which in classic times adorned some pagan temple, are slender and worn. The convolvulus tendrils that their carver twined about them have broken in many places, but the work is so delicate that the stone seems to tremble.”

“The stone seems to tremble.” I love that phrase; it sends little chills down the back of my neck when I read it.

“[The basilica] glowed sumptuously as if it generated its own light. It was alive with color: Mediterranean red, clear pinks, blues and greens; ivory and crimson marble; tingling gold mosaic. And dominant in this concourse of colour the great vermilion that cries out in the backgrounds of Rome and Pompeii.”"[Sophie] was caught up in wonder at the great golden bowl-shaped mosaic of the apse. Acanthus and vine twined tenderly together to enclose little groups of everyday persons going about their medieval business. The Cross, dominant though it was, seemed to have grown out of some pre-Christian tree.”

Click on image for large version (202KB; opens in new window).

There were equally enchanting descriptions of a lower, 4th century church below the basilica and a first-century private house containing a chapel to Mithras below that. Each successive layer had been built on the bones of the earlier one, like tiers of a wedding cake.

“Rome has risen, hereabouts, sixty feet since those times,” he ended. “Does that surprise you? It does me, every time I think of it.”

I read this book long before the Internet made research so effortless, but even in those dark ages we had libraries and bookstores full of books about Rome. I hit them with the passionate intensity of the Truly Insatiably Curious, and found to my delight that the church existed exactly as Marsh had described.

It is the Basilica di San Clemente on Via San Giovanni, less than a quarter-mile from the Coliseum. And thanks to the modern miracle of the Internet, an imaginary trip to see its marvels is as easy as clicking on a link.

I’ve also looked for some books on San Clemente, but everything I’ve found so far seems to be out of print and very limited availability. I’ll keep searching and post an update later if I find anything worthwhile.

So… where in the world would you go, if you had the time and money?

Now you must understand that mosquitoes will home in on me from a radius of approximately 17.2 miles, and that I am uncomfortably allergic to quite a few species of them. This evening I look like I have the mumps — both sides of my face swelled from the welts.

I’m also either allergic to or can’t stand the smell of every insect repellant on the market, so that’s not a solution I can live with either. Those of you who live in cold climates and are housebound for seven or eight months because of the snow? Cold weather is the only time of year I can go outside here. I’m housebound for that same seven or eight months, only in the summer, because of the heat, humidity, and insects.

We’ve already decided that when my husband retires we are moving to New Mexico. In all the time I’ve spent there, I’ve been bit by mosquitoes two times, both near an acequia, and neither one was a species that caused an allergic reaction. I love the desert and I can breathe at high altitude (no allergies!) and I do not mind the heat as long as the humidity is low.

Besides, I can’t get really good chiles rellenos anywhere in this part of the country — no Hatch chiles.

Of course, as I told him a couple years back, we can’t go back to the national parks for about a thousand years, until they build some more ruins. He’s already seen them all.

My son and I were in New Mexico. I’d been there on business. When my stuff was done he flew out to meet me in Albuquerque and we spent another week together before driving home to Alabama. The original plan was for my husband to come too, but he’d got stuck with a project at work and wasn’t able to get away.

On this brilliant summer day in the desert, we were driving from Albuquerque to Alamogordo, heading east across US 380. The road was empty; no other cars in sight.

We passed a historic marker, and then another. At the third one, a car was pulled off the road and a man was standing near the marker. As we drove by on the highway and the car no longer screened him, we both noticed that the gentleman in question was — um — relieving himself on the base of the post. We looked at each other, surprised, and laughed, but said nothing.

Until we approached the fourth historic marker along the road, and my son said dryly: “Ah, yes, another place of historic interest. I wonder who took a whiz here.”

While I was mulling over those issues and opinions, I received a package that is leading to some new work. I hope to have some pictures in a day or so.

Meanwhile, for your reading pleasure, a post from last September about a recent stroll down Canyon Road in Santa Fe.

Saturday, September 11, 2004
Santa Fe

I was on my way to Taos to teach a week-long class in surface design. Because of the high altitude, I always try to arrive a day or two early in order to acclimate a bit. This year I decided to take my couple of days in Santa Fe, a city that I love and come back to as often as I can.

I spent the morning doing some basic shopping and about 2:30 pm I went downtown. I stopped at the visitors� center to pick up my yearly supply of tourist literature. (They give away a fantastic assortment of art-related magazines and catalogs — great inspirational material!) Parked on Alameda and walked over to Canyon Road to take some pictures, then ended up walking all the way up to Thirteen Moons before coming back.

As I walked up the road, I was captivated by the display on the front of Canyon Road Contemporary Art. When a picture calls from across the street, it�s time to go look.

Two artists caught my eye: Rudi Klimpert and Carol Redmond.

The color in the Klimpert picture does not do the original justice. The colors were saturated, lively, completely engrossing. The tiny details � the dangly things hanging on the door � I could spend an hour finding new things to look at.

Redmond�s work looks simple but is amazingly complex. She uses panels of handwritten words that are then glazed over so that they become essentially illegible (upper middle panel in photo), leaving a ghostly sense of words not quite heard. Almost all of her pieces are nine-patches like this one � they actually look like nine small canvases mounted on a single background.

Prices: Klimpert piece about $2100, Redmond maybe $1300.

Thirteen Moons had a reception going for Jon Eric Riis� new work. There was one piece, a triptych, that caught my eye � three panels, each about 11″ x 14″, showing gold masks. It looked as though he had embroidered and beaded onto a heavy gold fabric background (something like damask � Riis is a weaver, I think), then stretched the background fabric over a canvas support (stretched and wrapped so that all sides are covered). Price: $13,000.

(I could do that.)

Coming back down Canyon Road, I stopped to visit the Johnson house, called El Zaguán (“the corridor”). Owned by the Santa Fe Historical Society, it�s an adobe villa and garden dating to the mid-1800s. Part of the house is open to the public, but part is divided into private apartments (a legacy from the last private owner, who left the house to the Society with the proviso that the rentals be continued). The main corridor, running parallel to Canyon Road, is beautiful, and the long portal on the south side of the house is deeply shaded, cool, and inviting.

This is the main corridor of the house. Yes, it does run downhill, paralleling the grade drop of the street outside. The door on the right side of the corridor (detail below) is painted in a pattern of flowers, with holes drilled in the centers of the flowers: An early screen door for ventilation during the high desert summer.

Other details along the way:

A riot of flowers against an adobe wall:

Colorful sun face detail, high on a wall:

And an inviting café:

I love Santa Fe.

Well, after unearthing the World’s Most Hideous UFO yesterday, I challenged myself to figure out if there was anything – anything at all – that I could do to rescue or recycle it.

The red thread on black vaguely reminded me of lava, so I took the theme from there. The cracks are fine, but I’m not terribly pleased with the face:

The original drawing looked much more like an old woman with wrinkles. It lost something when I drew it on the organza.

On the bright side, I now know how to singe the edges of silk to seal them without letting the fire get away from me, so all in all, this little piece must be counted at least a minor success.

The Florentine Building (1927)
Click image for larger view (66 KB)

This is the Florentine Building in downtown Birmingham. It was built in 1927 as a private club, with the dining and meeting rooms on the first floor and a huge ballroom taking up the whole of the second floor. The original owner had lavish plans for expansion – the foundations were built to support ten stories.

Unfortunately, the Great Depression interfered with his plans and the additional floors were never built.

Second floor ornamentation
Click image for larger view (41 KB)

Here’s a better view of the terra cotta ornamentation on the second floor. Henry Upson Sims wanted it to look like the lavish palaces of Fiorenza and spared no expense in its exuberance. I can’t readily find the original cost, but one of my reference books states that it was the most expensive building per square foot built in Birmingham up to that time.

Every time I pass the Florentine Building, I am reminded of a line from Paul Simon’s song Call Me Al, the one about “angels in the architecture.” The cherubim are still there, looking down on the streets, a lovely terra cotta treat for those who lift up their eyes from the city sidewalks.

I found this painted on the side of a warehouse near downtown. Notice how the artist extended the tail of the ghost from the metal siding onto the concrete footing of the building?

I haven’t often seen graffiti showing that much attention to detail.

Downtown Birmingham, Alabama. It’s the narrowest little place in the world, tucked into a space that was once a shared staircase between the two buildings that flank it:  Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs.

You open the door, which takes up almost the entire front of the building, and you go inside. There’s the grill and the counter on the right, the wall on the left, and just enough room for an average-size person in the middle. Behind the counter are Gus and Kathy, dispensing hot dogs and soft drinks in bottles.

My daughter knows them, and she can’t believe I’ve lived all my life here without ever having a Pete’s Famous.

We’ve just had lunch, but she can’t leave without getting a Special: hot dog on bun with onions, kraut, mustard and Special Sauce. The Sauce looks like chili, but she says it isn’t. Oh, and an IBC root beer — in a bottle — with it.

The door swings open and a middle-aged couple come in, unzipping in the steamy warmth that’s welcome after the unusual windy cold whipping through the streets this Sunday afternoon.

“Hey,” Gus greets them, knowing exactly who they are but probably never having known their names. “One Special, light kraut? And one Special, no onions?� Whaddya want to drink with that?”

They opt for Diet Cokes, which come in glass bottles. The tiny space is quiet again as my daughter and the two newcomers eat their dogs. I look around at the pictures on the walls: There’s one of the nose of a cargo jet, lettered in Cyrillic. Twelve or fourteen laughing men in uniform stand in front of it, holding up a huge hand-lettered plywood sign: “6,923 miles to Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs!”  The bulletin board is littered with business cards — “Chief of Police, University of Kentucky” catches my eye. Looks like everybody does come to Pete’s.

The door opens and closes once more. This newcomer is a huge guy. Linebacker size. He’s bundled in layers, taking off gloves and telling Gus how he was hunting this weekend but it’s too damn cold out there and ain’t no way he’s going home to Mama without something for dinner, so fix me up a sack of Specials to go.

My daughter is finished with her dog, so we say goodbye to Kathy and Gus (busy now grilling up more dogs for Hunting Man’s sack of Specials), squeeze past Hunting Man who takes up the whole space almost by himself, and head out to find more architectural treasures on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in the empty city.

And since I spent much of the day giving a program to a local guild and haven’t had a chance to work on much that was new, here is a mural on the wall of a business in El Prado, a village just north of Taos, taken early one morning in September.

Back with something textile-related tomorrow.  :)

So here for the moment is a travel tale from New Mexico.

Saturday, September 11, 2004
Santa Fe

I was on my way to Taos to teach a week-long class in surface design. Because of the high altitude, I always try to arrive a day or two early in order to acclimate a bit. This year I decided to take my couple of days in Santa Fe, a city that I love and come back to as often as I can.

I spent the morning doing some basic shopping and about 2:30 pm I went downtown. I stopped at the visitors’ center to pick up my yearly supply of tourist literature. (They give away a fantastic assortment of art-related magazines and catalogs – great inspirational material!) Parked on Alameda and walked over to Canyon Road to take some pictures, then ended up walking all the way up to Thirteen Moons before coming back.

As I walked up the road, I was captivated by the display on the front of Canyon Road Contemporary Art. When a picture calls from across the street, it’s time to go look.

Two artists caught my eye: Rudi Klimpert and Carol Redmond.

The color in the Klimpert picture does not do the original justice. The colors were saturated, lively, completely engrossing. The tiny details – the dangly things hanging on the door – I could spend an hour finding new things to look at.

Redmond’s work looks simple but is amazingly complex. She uses panels of handwritten words that are then glazed over so that they become essentially illegible (upper middle panel in photo), leaving a ghostly sense of words not quite heard.  Almost all of her pieces are nine-patches like this one – they actually look like nine small canvases mounted on a single background.

Prices: Klimpert piece about $2100, Redmond maybe $1300.

Thirteen Moons had a reception going for Jon Eric Riis’ new work. There was one piece, a triptych, that caught my eye – three panels, each about 11″ x 14″, showing gold masks. It looked as though he had embroidered and beaded onto a heavy gold fabric background (something like damask – Riis is a weaver, I think), then stretched the background fabric over a canvas support (stretched and wrapped so that all sides are covered). Price: $13,000.

(I could do that.)

Coming back down Canyon Road, I stopped to visit the Johnson house, called El Zaguán (“the corridor”). Owned by the Santa Fe Historical Society, it’s an adobe villa and garden dating to the mid-1800s.  Part of the house is open to the public, but part is divided into private apartments (a legacy from the last private owner, who left the house to the Society with the proviso that the rentals be continued). The main corridor, running parallel to Canyon Road, is beautiful, and the long portal on the south side of the house is deeply shaded, cool, and inviting.

This is the main corridor of the house. Yes, it does run downhill, paralleling the grade drop of the street outside. The door on the right side of the corridor (detail below) is painted in a pattern of flowers, with holes drilled in the centers of the flowers: An early screen door for ventilation during the high desert summer.

Other details along the way:

A riot of flowers against an adobe wall:

Colorful sun face detail, high on a wall:

And an inviting café:

I love Santa Fe.