Remembering Richard Enzer — Final Part

Posted by susanna

Remem­ber­ing Richard Enz­er – Part 3 — Final

by Susan­na Starr

Read Part 1 Read Part 2

The fol­low­ing year, our work sched­ule togeth­er with Richard con­tin­ued and now he was liv­ing in anoth­er house with much more room, while we con­tin­ued liv­ing in the house that would be our Oax­a­ca home for many more years. There were still par­ties and art open­ings and din­ners out at places like El Sol y La Luna which was a restau­rant that fea­tured local musi­cians as well as art exhibits on the adobe walls. Food was served in the indoor cov­ered patio and being with Richard meant being with lots of peo­ple. He always seemed to have the aura of a rock star” and the years we spent togeth­er always seemed filled with ongo­ing adven­ture. Com­plete­ly devot­ed to the work of the Line of the Spir­it, being in the city was anoth­er thing and the cir­cle of friends that we were con­stant­ly involved with was always a col­or­ful one.

Richard Enzer & Susanna Starr in Starr Interior's Courtyard, Taos, New Mexico
Richard Enz­er & Susan­na Starr in Starr Inte­ri­or’s Court­yard, Taos, New Mexico

It was dur­ing these years that we formed the last­ing friend­ship with Mitzi Linn who was Richard’s “spir­i­tu­al advis­er.” It was also then that we were intro­duced to Domeni­co and his friend, both of them fair­ly recent­ly arrived from Italy. They cooked fab­u­lous pas­ta din­ners at Richard’s house, a pre­lude to the restau­rants that Domeni­co would own and oper­ate after he mar­ried a local Oax­a­ca girl, as beau­ti­ful as he was hand­some. Domeni­co is now the own­er of Piz­za Rus­ti­ca, a won­der­ful and well known restau­rant housed in one of the old con­vert­ed Oax­a­ca mansions.
It via­gra with­out rx http://www.devensec.com/sustain/Welcome_to_Devens.pdf all depends on you and your part­ner. Oth­er treat­ment option is radio­ther­a­py which will be pre­cise­ly tar­get­ed on the pelvic area, whilst oth­er doc­tors are fight­ing prostate can­cer by using the body’s own mech­a­nism to stop via­gra gener­ic noc­tur­nal emis­sions. Anoth­er major rea­son as to why the issue is been rose and which is why a per­son faces erec­tile dys­func­tion lev­i­t­ra buy gener­ic is stress. These med­ica­tions are gen­er­al­ly rec­og­nized as gener­ic or brand­ed ED med­i­cines lev­i­t­ra 40 mg con­tain­ing dif­fer­ent key ingre­di­ent with a sole pur­pose of reliev­ing impotence. 
Miri­am got mar­ried to an archi­tect that she met through the Line of the Spir­it and left to raise a fam­i­ly. Abi took her place and I work with her still. She is my very close friend. Although Ser­gio moved on, we now have anoth­er art direc­tor who was just a child when we began work­ing togeth­er with Richard. Jace is Alta Gracia’s son, which makes it very con­ve­nient since he’s work­ing direct­ly with his moth­er, our extra­or­di­nary dye-mak­er. He and his fam­i­ly are all still very involved in pro­duc­ing spe­cial pieces for the Line of the Spir­it and Alta’s gar­dens are as mag­nif­i­cent as the col­ors she pro­duces for the yarns that hang out to dry in the strong Mex­i­can sunlight.

About five years ago we decid­ed to change the name of our gallery from La Uni­ca Cosa which we had for about thir­ty years, to our new name of Starr Inte­ri­ors. We had a par­ty to cel­e­brate and much to my sur­prise and great plea­sure Richard came. I cried, stirred by an emo­tion I didn’t know I had. He had been sick, I knew, and had sur­vived a kid­ney trans­plant. He looked old­er, but so did I. I flashed back to one of the first open­ings we had for the Line of the Spir­it short­ly after we formed our part­ner­ship. Richard bought me a very spe­cial huip­il from one of the sev­en regions of Oax­a­ca which I wore to that open­ing. It had been a num­ber of years since we had seen each oth­er, with Richard mov­ing onto the Roman­ian project after our part­ner­ship end­ed, and my con­tin­u­ing with the Oax­a­ca project. It was emo­tion­al for both of us and his smile was a reminder of many times we had work­ing togeth­er in those ear­ly years of the nine­teen nineties.

I think, too, of the time when the tele­phone rang one evening and it was Richard. I knew imme­di­ate­ly from his voice that some­thing had hap­pened but wasn’t pre­pared for the news that his son, Michael, had just been killed in a motor­cy­cle acci­dent. Michael was spend­ing time with his Dad in Oax­a­ca and it was Richard’s hope that his involve­ment would con­tin­ue. But that was not to be. It was a dev­as­ta­tion that only a par­ent could know. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I knew from first­hand expe­ri­ence, hav­ing lost my own son, when he was younger than Michael, a num­ber of years earlier.

Now Richard, too, is gone, hav­ing passed away last year. Hard liv­ing took a toll, I’m sure, but it was the kind of life he chose and I think he enjoyed it “to the max.” There were dif­fi­cult moments but they always passed and what­ev­er hap­pened that appeared dis­rup­tive was always resolved. But his genius lives on in the con­tin­u­a­tion and flour­ish­ing of the Line of the Spir­it™. Short­ly after we became part­ners, I rec­og­nized the need for a trade­mark which remains the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion for this stun­ning body of work. Although I have gone on to intro­duce some designs and col­ors of my own, the col­lec­tion still retains his ini­tial vision.

Alta con­tin­ues to do her mag­ic with mak­ing the col­ors. Abi con­tin­ues to keep every­thing togeth­er in Oax­a­ca, Jace con­tin­ues to vis­it each weaver on the project and sup­ply them with the mate­r­i­al they need to com­plete their indi­vid­ual pieces and the fine staff at Starr Inte­ri­ors con­tin­ues to present the Line of the Spir­it col­lec­tion in the three rooms that house the col­lec­tion. We con­tin­ue to use the hand-card­ed, hand- spun wools pre­pared on a drop spin­dle at a remote Zapotec Indi­an vil­lage high up in the moun­tains. How can I men­tion that vil­lage with­out men­tion­ing their oth­er claim to fame, the mak­ing of mescal in home-made stills. Which brings up the mem­o­ries of going there with Richard to buy wool and sam­pling each of the offer­ings of spe­cial mescal from the var­i­ous hous­es in that lit­tle vil­lage. What an adven­ture! That, too, is part of remem­ber­ing Richard.

Remembering Richard Enzer

Posted by susanna

Remem­ber­ing Richard Enz­er — Part 1

by Susan­na Starr

Richard Enzer in Zapotec Weaving Village
Richard Enz­er in Zapotec Weav­ing Village

Every­one has moments in their lives that seem incon­se­quen­tial at the time but, in ret­ro­spect, we can rec­og­nize the impact of that chance meet­ing or conversation.

It was an out­door par­ty held at Ellie’s house, just down the road from where I lived in the small val­ley of Valdez, just out­side of Taos, New Mex­i­co, that Richard Enz­er rode into my life. I had been stum­bling around in the woods, try­ing to get back to where most of the peo­ple were gath­ered in the open area around the house, unable to find my way through the dense veg­e­ta­tion. I was begin­ning to feel panicky.

At the moment I start­ed to emerge into the warm sun­light, Richard got down from the horse he had been rid­ing and, see­ing my face, strode over and opened his arms to hold me. There were no words exchanged, just the com­fort and secu­ri­ty offered in that reas­sur­ing embrace, one per­son to anoth­er. For me, it was a defin­ing moment and despite the var­i­ous expe­ri­ences we shared in the ensu­ing years, that ges­ture of kind­ness and recog­ni­tion remained.

We each wan­dered off in dif­fer­ent direc­tions then at the par­ty and dur­ing the fol­low­ing years. Liv­ing in a small town, I heard about him from time to time but it wasn’t until a num­ber of years lat­er that he reap­peared in my life.
High cialis from cana­da blood pres­sure and poor vas­cu­lar health are rea­sons to erec­tile dys­func­tion. At the point when via­gra store usa cgmp is wrecked the veins come back to their ordi­nary size, suc­cess­ful­ly fin­ish­ing the erec­tion. In the US alone, online via­gra in aus­tralia there are more than 30 mil­lion Amer­i­cans expe­ri­ence intense or chron­ic headaches. Some like­wise report­ed lev­i­t­ra price bought that nasal con­ges­tion being a problem. 
My part­ner and I had spent more than a dozen years build­ing a busi­ness that involved our active par­tic­i­pa­tion in a small Zapotec Indi­an weav­ing vil­lage locat­ed in the moun­tains just out­side of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co. As the years passed, our busi­ness grew as did that of the peo­ple we worked with. We worked sev­en days a week and spent sev­er­al months in Mex­i­co every win­ter work­ing with the weavers and build­ing what devel­oped into a small eco resort and retreat cen­ter in anoth­er part of the coun­try, the Yucatan Penin­su­la of Mexico.

Dur­ing the years of the 1980’s, we were buy­ing large quan­ti­ties of beau­ti­ful hand-loomed rugs and wall hang­ings, care­ful­ly select­ing each piece. We were receiv­ing ship­ments reg­u­lar­ly and had our own “bode­ga” or stor­age area. Here our extra inven­to­ry was care­ful­ly stacked and laid out. Ship­ments that were received at the shop were tak­en there to be unpacked, exam­ined and admired again before putting them in their prop­er places.

It was on one of these occa­sions that we were unpack­ing a ship­ment, that we real­ized the rugs were not famil­iar to us. They were stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful in deep rich tones of com­plex designs. It didn’t take us long to real­ize that they were Richard’s rugs that had been sent to us by mistake.

Although we hadn’t been in touch with him, we knew that Richard had been work­ing in the same weav­ing vil­lage that we were, after a long absence from Taos, and design­ing his own rugs there. With the help of not­ed weaver and col­orist, Rachel Brown of Taos, New Mex­i­co, he devel­oped a palette of deep, rich col­ors more rem­i­nis­cent of fine ori­en­tal rugs than the col­ors and designs being used in the small Zapotec Indi­an village.

His expe­ri­ence work­ing with the New York rug gallery, the Gor­dian Knot, expand­ed his design hori­zons with ori­en­tal design ele­ments includ­ed in his own col­lec­tion of South­west­ern designs, which he called the Line of the Spir­it. We hadn’t ever seen any of his col­lec­tion but it was clear as we unfold­ed the pieces that day in our bode­ga, that Richard had gone far beyond any­thing being pro­duced in the vil­lage and, with good rea­son, we were very impressed.

Track­ing him down wasn’t dif­fi­cult and we sent the ship­ment on to him. Not long after, he sug­gest­ed that we look once again at some of his pieces with the idea of our pur­chas­ing them. We did and found it a per­fect addi­tion to our own fine col­lec­tion at what was then known as La Uni­ca Cosa (the only thing), now Starr Inte­ri­ors. We loved the rugs and our cus­tomers respond­ed to our enthu­si­asm and were soon buy­ing from Richard on a reg­u­lar basis.

It wasn’t very long after­ward that Richard showed up at the shop one day with his art direc­tor from the vil­lage to lay out a propo­si­tion. What came of that dis­cus­sion was the begin­ning of my long involve­ment with the Line of the Spir­it, which con­tin­ues to this day.