Sedona, AZ: At Sedona’s Lanning Gallery Michael Grant’s exquisite jewelry always captures attention. Now, as Grant unveils this year’s holiday selections he also shares his excitement over a rediscovered mining area producing some of the most gorgeous blue turquoise he’s ever seen. On “1st Friday,” December 5, from 5-8 p.m., visitors can share the excitement at an artist’s reception that opens Grant’s month-long December show. The artist will also be at the gallery Saturdays, December 6 and 13, from 2-5 p.m.
Arizona’s Kingman mine has been generating turquoise for quite some time, most all of it needing to be stabilized rather than left natural. But during the last year or two the other side of the mountain – where the original mine was located – has been re-accessed with the advantage of modern machinery. The result, after literally creating a mountain’s worth of tailings, is, as Grant describes it, “a couple buckets worth of the very highest quality all-natural turquoise.”
Grant works only with all-natural stones and only with the highest-quality domestic turquoise, in addition to lapis, sugalite, coral and more. He remains one of only a handful of full-time stone bead cutters in the U.S. today; every bead Grant uses is cut and polished by his own hand. Part of his excitement is over the dramatic size of many of these high-quality stones now being mined at Kingman; he is able to create designs for pendants and even bolo ties, which he rarely produces, at an exciting new scale.
Most turquoise used today has not been recently mined, but these new stones Grant is working with were all mined in 2008. Two types of turquoise are coming from this area of Kingman: The “Bird’s-eye turquoise” is sky-blue with a dark-blue spider-web matrix and the “Spider-web turquoise” has a black or rusty-brown color matrix on a blue/green turquoise. “Lately, a lot of attention has been paid to the green turquoises,” Grant notes, “and they’re beautiful but,” he adds, “when most people think of turquoise, they think of blue and this is classic blue turquoise.”
Grant will also be unveiling his latest necklace, earring and cuff designs. An SGA “Art of Gold” event. Open daily: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday.
For more information contact Lanning Gallery: 928.282.6865, mail@lanninggallery.com, or www.lanninggallery.com.
Article courtesy of Liz Boykin.
Posted November 25,2008.
