Festa, Family & Food

Before I started Stevie's Artisans Urban Fok Art, I curated for and managed the gift shop at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. And before that, I spent 9 months in Italy as a Fulbright Scholar researching a project about folk art, cultural traditions, music and food.

Of course, I have tons of photos and lots to say about my project so I have begun doing presentations. My project, Festa, Family and Food, is a study of continuity, change and identity manifested in three saints' feasts celebrated both in Italy and in Italian-American communities in the US. The key themes of all three feasts are sacrifice and redemption, suffering, survival and communal rejoicing and celebration. The feasts honor three heroic and charasmatic figures (saints) who rescued their communities from destruction and ruin.

Women and their daughters make bread, crafted in myriad shapes and forms, as the principle element used to decorate the altars and banquet tables created to celebrate the feast of St.Joseph in Sicily and New Orleans. Papier-mache is the art form used to create ornately sculpted facades for the 85-foot towers - the giglio - carried on the shoulders of men through the streets of Nola and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The towers dance to music, all in honor of St Paulinus, who in the fifth century, rescued Nola's men from slavery at the hands of the Saracens. The Ceri is a race through the streets of Gubbio and Jessup, Pennsylvania of three Baroque wooden towers born on the shoulders of a nine-man team, to honor St Ubaldo who saved his town in the eleventh century from sack and ruin by the Vandals.

This past November 17, I gave a presentation - commentary and power point photo presentation at the Italian American Museum in New York's Little Italy. I'm going to be presenting at the Brooklyn Historical Society on March 29, 2012. That presentation will focus on the giglio celebration in Brooklyn with background information of the celebration in Nola, Italy. Danny Vecchiano, leader of the Vecchiano Festival Band and archivist of American tradtional giglio music will join me. I wrote an article about Danny - Born to Giglio - for "Voices" the New York Folklore Society magazine. I am hoping Danny - a superb trumpeter - plays giglio music for us.

Born to Giglio, a celebration of a Brooklyn Neighborhood, will be Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 7:00 PM at the Brooklyn Historical Society on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights.

Naemeh's New Jewelry at Lily

Naemeh Shirazi's newest lace jewelry is now at Lily on Court Street in Brooklyn. Lily is a wonderful boutique on Court Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The owner, Jennifer, sells beautiful dresses by Karina ( I own two and I love them both) and gorgeous leather bags, hip jewelry, stylish sportswear and super, warm socks. It is a fabulous shop and I am so happy Jennifer wants to try out Naemeh's new "Roses" earrings and necklaces.

Last summer Lily carried some silk screened skirts and a tunic by Ivette Urbaez. Jennifer thinks the skirts will go well again so maybe two of Stevie's Artisans will be available at Lily on Court Street.

Naemeh will do the earrings,necklaces and maybe some bracelets in spring colors, as well as her graphic red and black. Look for pink, kelly green, blue and yellow. And white!

Christmas Gifts from Stevie's Artisans

My good friend Martha, who lives in England, bought some earrings from Stevie's Artisans Urban Folk Art for two friends who live in California. Bonnie received the silvery gray "Fleur de Lis" style and black "Double Asia."

Meg received "Big Red Rose" and green "Cut out Leaves" earrings.

All arrived in time for Christmas and all are sculpted from lace

by Naemeh Shirazi of Stevie's Artisans Urban Folk Art.

Lace Roses in Sarasota, Florida

Last week I took a little break and visited some friends in Sarasota, Florida. Julie and her husband Vinnie are artists and designers who create museum installations through their company, Ciulla Designs. Julie makes gorgeous gold jewelry based on archaeological designs and Vinnie creates fantasy collages - bathing beauties riding manatees, water skiers pulled by NYC taxis under the Brooklyn Bridge, etc. Julie bought a couple of pairs of Naemeh Shirazi's lace earrings and suggested I visit and show some of the Stevie's Artisans' work at some Sarasota shops.

We get together whenever they are in NYC - usually dinner at Al di La Restaurant in Park Slope - but I have been longing to visit them and see the mid-century modernist home they live in. They bought and have been restoring Paul Rudolph's masterpiece, the Umbrella House. The house has an elegant glass jalousies facade with lots of built in cabinetry features inside. The "umbrella" is a trellised canopy system that shades and cools the house - remember, houses weren't as extensively air-conditioned in the 1950's and 1960's when this house was built.

I met with Liby (Elizabeth Rice) at her home furnishings gallery/shop - she loved Naemeh's silver vine leaves earrings & pendants and also really liked the Ivette Urbaez silk screened dress I was wearing (red tulip dress) I met with the manager of her apparel/accessories shop - Terra Nova and Cheryl Ralya seemed to like the lace jewelry more and agreed Ivette's tulip dress, fire escape tunic, and teal roses & thorns skirt would go well in the shop. How exciting for Naemeh and Ivette! I left jewelry samples with Julie to show to the buyer at the Ringling Museum gift shop. I think Naemeh's rose pendant and earrings would really compliment Mabel Ringling's "roses"

artwork/accessories collection.

So, what else did I do in Sarasota because I didn't go for all work and no play. Julie and Vinnie have a lovely pool in their back yard and we also swam in the Gulf - warm and a really cool green color - unlike the aqua blue of the Mediterranean or the Caribbean. Julie and I went looking for alligators at the Myakka River State Park - no gator sighting but lots of hero and oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. I sat in at a rehearsal of the Key Chorale, the community chorus Julie sings with. (For years, Julie and I sang togther and served on the board of the Brooklyn Philharmonia Chorus.) The Key Chorale are fabulous and they are performing terrific music - Britten's "Saint Nicholas Cantata."

The day before I left I had lunch with Julie and friends from either the chorus and/or her rowing group - all terrifically interesting ladies in business, the arts, and some retired. Cheryl rows with Julie & Vinnie and Mary Chadsey creates amazing majolica pottery in her studio Mariooch. We are talking about her joining Stevie's Artisans Urban Folk Art.

Fashion on the Street

A Chance Encounter

A couple of Sundays ago two friends (Sharon Fahlstrom & Vigdis Eriksen) and I were on our way to see an exhibition at the New Museum on the Bowery when I had one of those great chance moments. You might even call it a New York moment. I was half way down the stairs to the Borough Hall subway station when I saw a flash of one of Ivette Urbaez's silk screen designs going by. "She's wearing one of Ivette's dresses. I need a picture," I shouted to my friends.

Vigdis whipped out her camera while I ran down the street to stop the girl and beg her to pose for a photo. After I caught up with her, I blathered on about Stevie's Artisans - my company - I represent the artist who designed the dress she was wearing, etc.

Her look was very cool. She was wearing Ivette's racer back tunic/dress: gray cotton with a black abstract silk screen print of fire escapes. She had accessorized with a cotton scarf and she was wearing sneakers with electric green laces.

She was totally happy to let me take a few photos because she said she absolutely loved the dress, loved how well it fit and was amazed because she always had such a hard time buying dresses. She told me she also loves the shop where she made her purchase - Lily on Court Street in Brooklyn.

She was so gracious and I forgot to ask her name. So I thanked the mystery Ivette fan and then we all went on our ways. A very serendipitous chance encounter!

Sardines, Bacalau & Fado

I recently vacationed in Portugal - Lisbon, Porto and the Douro wine region. My husband, Tony and I were joined by long time friends who live in England. Martha was my college roommate and I've known her husband as long as she's known him - since 1970. We like vacationing together.

We shared a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment in the Baixia neighborhood of Lisbon on a pedestrian street lined with restaurants and stores, very near to lots of public transportation (Metro, buses, trolley, trams) and the harbor. We also had access to the very affordable taxis.

Lisbon is fantastically hilly with meandering streets in the older districts. Luckily our neighborhood was flat and the streets were on a grid - a result of the area being totally destroyed by earthquake and fire in the mid 1700's. Unlike Italy where the building and houses are stuccoed in gorgeous colors - sienna, ochre, umber, pink, blue, etc, the facades of Lisbon's buildings are covered in ceramic tiles. Each house is different so the effect is a crazy quilt of different patterns, colors and textures - wonderfully riotous. Although Portugal faces the Atlantic, the red-tiled rooftops present a rather Mediterranean look.

I ate lots of fish, especially sardines and cod - which makes sense for a nation with so much ocean coastline. The sardines were just coming into season as signs in all the restaurants informed us. I mostly ate them grilled and doused with Portugal's splendid olive oil, however the best I ate - lightly floured and sauteed in olive oil were at a roadside dive on our way to the wine country. Usually the sardines were served with boiled potatoes that were salted and bathed in olive oil. Simple but incredibly delicious.

The cod was pretty much always baccalau - salted cod, but unlike what I usually find here it was thick cuts of cod that had been salted, then reconstituted with rinsing. I love fresh cod, but the baccalau had a smokey flavor and a much meatier texture than fresh cod. Sometimes I had it grilled but the best was baked in olive oil with a crunchy corn bread topping. It was luscious with interesting textures. The bakeries served lovely croissants and rolls and a really wonderful dessert called tart do Belem (a puff pastry shell filled with a creamy custard with a burnt sugar topping. A little like a creme brulee but not so egg custardy.)

We went to Portugal for Fado - a bluesy vocal music that began in the dockside bars of Lisbon a hundred of so years ago. The musical accompaniment is guitar and a Portuguese 12 string guitar that looks a bit like a viola da gamba (a medieval guitar.) The singers, mostly women, usually sing torchy, bluesy songs about love, loss, Lisboa or simply fate (fado) and there is often some improvisation with the lyrics. The best Fado clubs are in the Alfama section of Lisbon - the oldest neighborhood that still has vestiges (especially the tile work) of the long Muslim rule in Portugal. Everyone recommended Club do Fado - a venue for mostly younger, up and coming Fado singers. The next night we went to a Parreinha Cafe, a restaurant/club owned by a retired Fadista Argentina Santos. We listened to older, more established singers - a good contrast from the performers of the previous evening. The food was exceptional and I tasted a suggested aperitif: white port. The flavor was somewhat reminiscent of a dry sherry and made a terrific pre-dinner cocktail.

I loved riding the tram on a roller coaster like ride up and down Lisbon's steep hills. On one early morning run I found myself in a little courtyard festooned with laundry hung overhead. One line had all lacy panties, another brassieres and the third was socks. Oh, I wish I had carried my camera, but I usually run as unencumbered as possible. One evening after dinner I decided to check out the Red Line on the Lisbon Metro. It's the newest line and each of the six stations is decorated by different artists in different motifs. The terminus is a three tier construction with soaring steel trusses designed by the noted Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava.

Most of the artwork in the stations was painted tile installations: cartoon images or amoeba swirls or a fabulous crazy quilt design that also incorporated a 3 dimensional quality in the way it was installed in recesses and pop-outs. There were also terrific iron-work railings and metal sculptures. My friend Sharon had a similar experience exploring the art filled stations of the Moscow Metro. Then it was on to Porto for more art and Fado and wine. Lots of good wine.

Time Passes

A friend told me she is putting together her summer reading for her two week vacation in Maine in August and she just ordered my husband, Tony Scaduto's biography of Bob Dylan on Kindle. Tony published that book just before we started living together back in the early 70's. It was the first biography of Dylan and many still consider it the best. Full disclosure: I like Dylan, but have never been a huge fan and I've never been one to read non-fiction, least of all biographies. However, I loved Tony's book because it fully captured the music, the politics, and the feelings of the 60's era. For me, his book really evoked the emotional upheaval we all had just lived through and experienced - a fantastic accomplishment for a writer.





One of the iconic figures of that time, Suze Rotolo, died recently. She is remembered as the girlfriend on Bob Dylan's arm on the album cover of "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" and although Tony was never able to talk to Suze when he was writing his book, many years later we became friends. Suze was a great beauty, a very principled person and a wonderful artist. She and her husband Enzo were warm and generous hosts - and we shared many delicious meals, good wine and stimulating conversations. As she requested, her memorial, held a couple of weeks ago, was a wonderful party with music, her favorite foods prepared by her son Luca and a gorgeous slide show of images put together by Enzo - a beautiful celebration.

On May 5 we went to a reading and book launch for Heywood Gould - author and screenwriter of Cocktail, Double Bang, Fort Apache the Bronx, etc. I haven't read his new book yet - The Serial Killer's Daughter - but I really loved the last one - Leading Lady. Lots of old friends - from Woody's NY Post days, his bar tending days and his TV and movie days - reminisced at the dinner afterward. They regaled each other with drinking stories and journalism tales: big stories covered and how they ended up at the NY Post in the first place. They had all started as copy boys and then worked their way through the ranks as police reporter and then feature writers. Invariably there was mention of friends & colleagues who have passed away: Vic Ziegel and a then last week, Leonard Katz.

Lenny Katz had been in rehab recovering from a fall that resulted in a broken hip. He and Tony talked weekly and Lenny was always upbeat and optimistic - a real fighter. What a shock that he succumbed to what turned out to be lots of complications. Tony and I saw him last October when we were in Florida for a family wedding. We had a rather forgettable lunch at a Chinese restaurant in a West Palm Beach mall but Lenny was funny and sharp and extended his usual gracious invitation for us to visit with him and his lovely wife, Marilyn. He and Tony sat on a bench outside the restaurant, smoking their cigarettes and chatting before we headed back to our hotel. Two tough old guys having their moment. It was sweet and now, a touching last memory of Leonard Katz, author of a biography of Frank Costello, journalist and terrific police reporter.