PSMSFE - 2017

James and Bianca

I got back from Palm Springs last night. I was exhibiting at the Palm Springs Modernism Show - Fall edition. Did okay, nothing special, nothing like the earlier and much better attended Spring show.

But I put a few sales together, ground it out and that is really all that you can do. I threw the i ching on my phone the other day, who has time to bother with coins, and got a hexagram that mentioned remaining resolute.

Keep on a slogging. Not like I have much of a choice.

My business has been predicated on the knowledgeable collector market. Nowadays things are much more visceral and purely decorative in nature.

Not a lot of scholarship, more like flavor of the week. Gets a little trickier for my sales model. As I have mentioned many times before, I am sort of a reluctant modernist. Like what I like but consider much of the stuff being peddled nowadays as rather dreadful.

In the old days the modernism shows were about anything twentieth century. People brought deco, nouveau, jugendstil, arts and crafts as well as the latest twisted geometry. All dead as a doornail now. Old days are gone.

There were many things I genuinely liked, loved the thirties and sixties, regionalism, revolution. Appears fifties and even sixties are now also passé, the hotter decades are the seventies and eighties, which were and are truly depressing. Although Jimmy across the way had some neat stuff from those very decades, so I suppose I shouldn't be so pedantic.

The Palm Springs Architectural Booth was touting the saving from the wrecking ball of a pretty uninspired building from 1974 and I asked if egads, it had really come to that? What was next, the mansard roof appreciation society? They told me not to mention that in front of one fellow, his specialty was hollywood regency and he had a strong affection for that sort of stucco monstrosity, many of which I was responsible for when I was building and developing in that particularly uninspired decade.

Have to change with the times. They surely won't change for me. Not even smart enough to turn on a television in a hotel room.

A couple of friends and very long time Palm Springs residents let Steve and I stay gratis in their 1927 adobe, which Steve tells me was once the subject of a lovely wood engraving by Paul Landacre. 

Unbelievably nice. They even stocked it with provisions for us and gave us access to a very nice liquor cabinet. Didn't get past the herradura reposado but it did the trick perfectly.

Hot in the desert, I felt like I had weights tied to my feet all week. Amused myself by taking a few pictures of guests and exhibitors.

I asked this affable programmer from Scottsdale if his mom ever told him not to mix fish with plaid but he evidently never got the memo.

Skipped the low hanging fruit, like the Barones, who always dress over the top but are people that I have already chronicled before.

Did get some very interesting color and fabric choices and met some very nice and fun people.

Put a few of my own photos on the wall this time. Appreciated but not sold.

Like this lady, Bianca Juarez. Bianca is a San Diego ceramist who is now exhibiting at Flow Modern. Obviously a multi talented renaissance woman, she has also had a poem recently published on the best poetry 2017 website.

Had a nice thai duck dinner at Chada, good mole poblano at El Mirasol, didn't starve. German pancake at Elmer's, the usual at Rick's. Way too expensive sushi one night.

And checked out the people.

Lots of very strong and interesting characters in my biz, on both sides of the cash register.

Honey, you're not in Fallbrook anymore!

Have a few people still considering paintings and stuff, hoping to get a call or two but we will see.

And now a few more pictures of my fellow exhibitors. Next week, San Francisco.