A few months ago -- March 30, for those who prefer to be exact about these things -- I posted about our delightful afternoon in New Madrid, NM. I wrote:
At a small gallery just a few paces away, Color & Light, I fall in love with these amazing enamel/metallic/tile pieces by a Santa Fe artist named Zingaro. Yes, he goes by the one name. I like his stuff anyway. I’m still not clear on the process, but the result are these mosaic-slash-montages of coppery enamel tiles, some with silk-screen imprints of flowers rendered in powdered metal. They’re like rich, deep quilts of tremendous hues. The piece I like best is the largest one featuring lots of burnt orange, yellow and red. It costs $3,200. And for one, brief moment, I seriously consider the credit line on my Visa and the freelance projects looming on the horizon. At that moment, $3,200 seems a perfectly reasonable amount to spend on a piece of art that was, after all, so clearly made for me.
Fast forward to Wednesday afternoon, when Chris presents me with a large box. In the past few months, both of us have celebrated certain milestones -- the kind that aren't of much interest to others, but that mean a great deal to us. We'd agreed not to buy presents for each other. This, Chris said, was a present for both of us.
Under layers of bubble wrap and foam board was...a Zingaro. Not the giant Mama from New Madrid, but one of his sunflower series nonetheless. An 11x17 piece of magic.
It's our first "real" piece of art and the surprise nearly rendered me speechless. For a very brief period, of course. I think this was one of those times when only a Scottish word will aptly describe my reaction: I was gobsmacked.
The work is a little hard to describe, so I'll quote the materials that came with the piece:
"The vitreous enamel piece begins as a series of thin waves of metal, usually copper or brass, over which silk-screened images are dusted in finely ground glass. As the wafer-thin layers encounter their first kiln firing, they begin to take on a glimpse of shimmering radiance, an inner light that sustains the almost three-dimensional imagery to come.
Layer upon layer of powdered glass is then delicately introduced and fired to the metal tile, each one bonding and blending its own rhythm and vybrancy to the one before. Like a fingerprint, each tile takes on a unique gradiation in its deep and textured refraction of light."
Like I said, a super-cool light-y tile blanket. Another detail shot, although it's hard to capture the luminosity:
Is my husband a rock star or what?