KINVARA COMMUNICATIONS |
Click here to see a rewritten press release. This is a story that begins on the back of a motorcycle. Italian Giorgio Miani prefers to scour the Tuscan countryside this way. His wife, Ilaria, says he “has a mania of riding bikes.” Camera in tow, Giorgio drives the winding back roads, looking for abandoned dwellings left in ruin. This is how the Mianis found Casellacce, a twice-deserted farmhouse and stable vacant since the late 1950s. Today, it has been transformed into a two-story Contemporary Italian villa. Towering above Norway’s picturesque landscape stands the Jotunheimen mountain range, a formation laden with glaciers, clear blue lakes and rocky terrain that was carved over millions of years as ice slowly crept across the land. It was here, as a college exchange student, that ceramist Patricia Sannit says she had the first of several awe-inspiring moments that have affected her artwork, which consists mostly of sculpture, vessels and tiles. “When you’re on one of those mountains, it’s a life-changing event.” She describes as especially inspirational finding spots where orange lichen grew on granite: “It must be the contrast of colors and textures, fragility and mass. It is amazingly beautiful, and I have always considered that image of visual contrast some sort of touchstone, a vibrating image that I regularly see in my mind’s eye.” In ancient times, Roman baths were a popular aspect of daily life. Bodies were cleansed and beautified through an assortment of activities—from massages and cold soaks to sessions in saunalike rooms. The appeal of self-pampering still is present today. A growing number of homeowners are outfitting traditional bathroom spaces with floor-to-ceiling tilework, large custom tubs, and steam showers with chromatherapy—all of which are housed in open, easy-care wet rooms that help relieve the stresses of everyday life in the comfort of one’s home. To find out more about these “haute” spots, we talked with industry experts Jay Benscoter, president of Flair Plumbing Supply Co.; Lew Gallo, a Phoenix-area designer and co-owner of haus modern living; and Ken Tims, co-owner of Facings of America. Jeff Zischke has two passions: art and nature. The Scottsdale artist often melds the two in his work, where he explores such mediums as painting, photography and design. Zischke’s latest endeavor continues this tradition and brings his creations outdoors in the form of metal sculpture. “I’m really influenced by plants and botanicals—they’re so curvaceous,” the artisan notes. These shapes can be seen throughout a series of works in which large sheets of cut and welded steel, standing about 8 feet tall, are designed to throw geometric shadows across a landscape in such abstract forms as bulbous barrel cacti, thorny saguaros and an assortment of other desert vegetation.
Isla de Providencia or Old Providence is a mountainous island in the San Andrés y Providencia archipelago. In 1629, it was the site of a Puritan colony established by the Providence Island Company. The islands of Providencia and Santa Catalina are located in the Caribbean Sea, just off the coasts of Central America and Columbia.
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