Angela Cabán: The Golden Girl

Getting stuck in traffic for four hours just because she wanted to go to Brooklyn was the last straw. Remember the wonderful city down South while on the road for the Society of Gilders? Charleston sure sounded good to her on that stuck-in-traffic, stuck-in-survival-mode day of soul searching. She decided to make the change that her heart was demanding.

New York had been good to her and she still gives love where love is due, but yeah, okay, four hours? We get it. We’re rather fond of the rarefied pace here in the Holy City ourselves.

Speaking of ‘fond of,’ let’s talk about Angela Cabán. She’s a dancer (performed in Cats – 8 shows a week for 8 years) who turned to painting in her off-duty hours to decompress. That love of painting led her to study restoration and the art of gilding academically. Put her inside your favorite history building and she’ll set to work with the microscope, making sure the colors and textures of the walls match right down to the finest scale, and then she’ll put up the scaffolding and turn dream into reality.

We love the long-ago feel that permeates her work. This decorative arts specialist understands the science and the art of restoration. That’s a nice balance.

She has a knack for finding the right tool for the job, for making sure that the work not only is beautiful in and of itself, but that it meshes seamlessly with its surroundings.

We’re already big fans of the work she did at Barsa, our new favorite classic Spanish tapas lounge. Many a private residence in town is enjoying the distinguished touch she developed while studying restoration academically and through real world projects in world cities like New York and historic St. Petersburg, Russia. She stayed through the fabled White Nights, the season of the midnight sun, when it’s never really dark. Some travelers have trouble sleeping during this season, but she says that she was too exhausted by the end of the day to notice. That’s a work ethic you’ve got to respect.

In New York, she’s worked on nationally registered historic properties such as The Hudson Theatre and Old Westbury Gardens.

With Charleston’s countless historic properties, we expect that this golden girl of gilding will have commissions aplenty.

Not only is she welcomed with open arms to our little corner of paradise, she finally has her very own parking space, all her own. For a former big city gilder, that’s worth its weight in gold.

StudioCaban.com

Story by: Jason A. Zwiker
Photos courtesy of: Angela Cabán