{"id":970,"date":"2010-03-23T10:57:16","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T15:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=970"},"modified":"2024-12-28T15:22:49","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T20:22:49","slug":"san-miguel-2-an-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=970","title":{"rendered":"San Miguel 2 – An Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

On one of the mornings I was free to do my own thing in San Miguel de Allende, I wandered around to\u00a0El Nigromante cultural centre, which includes an art school, where in addition to various classes in progress,\u00a0I found\u00a0several exhibitions, including a lovely little one, in every sense,\u00a0titled “Petit Four”\u00a0<\/em>,<\/span> set up in just one medium sized room. <\/span>\u00a0 <\/em><\/span>As we all know, petits fours are exquisite little bite sized sweet cakes served with coffee; \u00a0something similar but often\u00a0less exquisite is available here in uruguay – masas finas come in many shapes and degrees of decoration.\u00a0 I googled the artist, Pat Lasch<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> found she was on Facebook, and have had some correspondence with her, in which she was very forthcoming about her art.\u00a0\u00a0 As a young child she began helping her pastrychef father ice cakes when she was\u00a0about 8 or 9 \u00a0and did this with him\u00a0for some years.\u00a0 Later in life they collaborated in a book together with his recipes and her artworks –\u00a0this time\u00a0 cake sculptures rather than actual cakes. \u00a0I hope to see this book some time, as from what I\u00a0saw of this artist’s work, it will be enchanting, too.\u00a0\u00a0It wasn’t very surprising to hear from her that back in the ’70’s she too worked in fabric and thread – I haven’t seen any images of that work, yet anyway.<\/p>\n

Look at the photos below.\u00a0 These are not edible – they are miniature sculptures of acrylic and wood.\u00a0\u00a0 Each piece on the plate for example is within 2″x2″x2″. \u00a0\u00a0 From a technical point of view, just as the pastrychef needs to get the ingredients just right\u00a0so that icing for example sits correctly at just the right consistency and holds its shape when moulded, so too\u00a0I think a huge amount of experimentation must have taken place over time to get the ‘fondant’ looking just right, and the lovely glaze on some of the pieces is another technique altogether.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And then, the artful arrangement of these pieces, some on a large elegant platter with lace doiley, others individually presented in miniature cake boxes arranged on a lovely\u00a0lace tablecloth.\u00a0 It was just beautiful.<\/p>\n

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But art is not mere technical expertise; there needs to be some rationale that connects the artist to the viewer via the work on show.\u00a0\u00a0 On the walls were two quotations important to Pat and used by the curator to help set the mood, create context for this work.\u00a0 Pat’s father told her “If you make a mistake, put a rose on it”.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span> <\/em>(A famous embroiderer teacher once told a class I was in,\u00a0not to unpick anything but to just\u00a0sew more stitches over the top… interesting)\u00a0 The other quotation “There are three branches of the fine arts: painting, sculpture and pastry making, of which architecture is a branch”<\/em><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0 Pierre Simon Fournier, 1712-1768 (a\u00a0time in which wit was a prized social\/intellectual faculty)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Just as Iwas getting my mind into gear to write this post,\u00a0somewhere I came across a link to another artist, Michael Paul Smith<\/span><\/a> a designer and photographer who uses his miniature car collection and his occupational skills in modelling for designers and architects to pursue miniature art via photography; and in addition to this link there are others with more examples of very realistic looking photos featuring cars – but his hand made sets are totally to scale and not at all real – just ‘atmosphere’ of the place in which he grew up.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally this same week, on a quilters’ list there was a call for miniature fibre works that must be less than 30cm, or something pretty small for fabric and fibre – anyway, again miniaturisation came up, and it all set me thinking about why people work this way, and how it appeals to the viewer, well\u00a0to some of us anyway.\u00a0 As Michael Paul Smith commented “What started out as an exercise in model building and photography, ended up as a dream-like reconstruction of the town I grew up in. It’s not an exact recreation, but it does capture the mood of my memories.” \u00a0 <\/em>and this would have to be true for Pat Lasch, too.\u00a0 I haven’t taken to the world of the miniature to the point of wanting to work there, but it is very interesting to see good examples.\u00a0 People often say to me when they see my work,\u00a0 “I don’t know how you have the patience to do that”.\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0 just say ” Well, I enjoy doing it”\u00a0 and smile.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t think I can\u00a0expect such a person to understand\u00a0that it’s not a matter of patience alone -the artist must have persistence too, but far more important, there must be passion for what you are doing.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0 In these\u00a0cases, two people are looking back and exploring something that has had profound influence on them,\u00a0and presenting\/exploring that in miniature form.\u00a0 I am really glad I wandered into the fine arts centre that day.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On one of the mornings I was free to do my own thing in San Miguel de Allende, I wandered around to\u00a0El Nigromante cultural centre, which includes an art school, where in addition to various classes in progress,\u00a0I found\u00a0several exhibitions, including a lovely little one, in every sense,\u00a0titled “Petit Four”\u00a0, set up in just one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-fE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9120,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions\/9120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}