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SPANISH COLONIAL ARTISTS Take on the history police
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Theodore Waddell
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Santa Fe A rt Colony • L igh t , F o rm, Re ve rie : Th o mas Aquin as Daly, Elizabe t h Wadle igh Le ary, Wa lt e r Mat i a ,
Th o m a s Qu i nn, a n d J ohn T. Sharp b y Le o n Lo u g hr i d g e G. Ru sse l l Ca se
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L ands cape of M emo ry: C aro l An t h o n y an d Jo h n F e lsin g
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3Pe rspe ct ive s: Wo o dblo ck P r i n t s a n d P a st e ls
Rom antic Contours , M odern Terrain : To n y An ge ll, Art uro C h ave z, S t e ve Ke st re l, Jame s Mo rgan , an d J e r i N i c h ols Qu i n n
E x ploitation and Celebration of the Ame rican Lan dscape
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July 1 - July 30, 2011 TO VIEW MORE WORKS IN THIS EXHIBITION P L E A S E V I S I T W W W . G P G A L L E R Y. C O M Red Rock Buffalo #6, 2011, oil, encaustic on canvas, 30 x 36 inches. © 2011 Theodore Waddell, courtesy Gerald Peters Gallery
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Visit the new Railyard Arts District where nine galleries plus SITE Santa Fe boast the best in international contemporary art. Housed in spacious warehouse-style buildings within walking distance of each other, the galleries are open year - round and feature an Artwalk from 5 - 7pm the last Friday of ever y month. WILLIAM SIEGAL GALLERY
BOX GALLERY Emerging & Established Contemporary Art 1611A Paseo de Peralta 505-989-4897 www.boxgallerysf.com
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CHARLOTTE JACKSON FINE ART American & European Contemporary Art 554 S. Guadalupe Street 505-989-8688 www.charlottejackson.com
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435 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501 505 982-8111 www.zanebennettgallery.com Mon–Sat 10 am – 5 pm, Sun 12 noon – 4 pm or by appointment Railyard Arts District Walk last Friday of every month
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Southern California Painting, the 1970s: Painting PER SE curated by Peter Frank and David Eichholtz July 1 – 31, 2011 | Opening reception Friday, July 8, 5:00 - 8:00 PM
Featuring: Karl Benjamin Jerrold Burchman Hans Burkhardt Karen Carson Judy Chicago Ron Davis Tony DeLap Charles Garabedian Marvin Harden Maxwell Hendler Matsumi Kanemitsu Craig Kauffman Helen Lundeberg Ed Moses Peter Plagens Tom Wudl Norman Zammitt and others Jerrold Burchman, Spectrum, 1970, Acrylic/Rhoplex on paper , 114 x 108 inches
David richard Contemporary 130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite D, Santa Fe, NM 87501 | p (505) 983-9555 | f (505) 983-1284 www.DavidRichardContemporary.com | info@DavidRichardContemporary.com
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Come experience the exciting energy of the GALA Arts District, just off the historic Santa Fe plaza on Lincoln Avenue between Palace Avenue + Marcy Street. Every 1st Friday of the month, the GALA Arts District invites the public to join in the celebration of new and cutting-edge exhibitions. Discover the artwork of more than 500 contemporary artists in nine distinctive venues while strolling along SURPLQHQW /LQFROQ $YHQXH ZKHUH \RX ZLOO ¿ QG UHQRZQHG PXVHXPV RI DUW DQG KLVWRU\ H[FHSWLRQDO shopping, innovative cuisine by award winning restaurants and nightlife all in a stimulating + welcoming atmosphere. Enjoy exploring Santa Fe’s most vibrant art community, the GALA Arts District!
S DISTRICT Allan Houser Blue Rain Gallery David Richard Contemporary Evoke Contemporary Legends Santa Fe Niman Fine Art One Artist Road Fine Art
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CONTENTS Spring/Summer 2011
Features
52 Serious Fun
Eclectic yet thoughtful, the artwork collected by SITE Santa Fe trustee Bill Miller testifies to heartfelt convictions. By Keiko Ohnuma | Photos by Kate Russell
70 Sandstone Sanctuary
A stunning work of contemporary architecture blends right into Utah canyon country.
84 Santeros in a Time of Few Saints Tradition confronts modernity at the Spanish Colonial Arts Society. By Keiko Ohnuma | Photos by Peter Ogilvie
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FROM TOP: KATE RUSSELL; PETER OGILVIE (2)
Photos by Peter Ogilvie | Text by Susan Bell
DA N N A M I N G H A
MASK ASSEMBLAGE #4
acrylic on canvas
30” x 40”
Dan Namingha © 2011
,INCOLN !VENUE s 3UITE s 3ANTA &E .- s -ONDAYn3ATURDAY AMn PM s FAX s NIMANlNEART NAMINGHA COM s NAMINGHA COM
Departments 20 FROM THE EDITOR 22 CONTRIBUTORS 26 FLASH
Robby Romero debuts at U.N.; Native contemporary dance; art that breaks social boundaries; classic theater for contemporary stages
32 TUNES
136
Donald Rubinstein talks about music, film, art, teaching, and love. BY RIC LUM PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL
A museum veteran faces unique challenges at the Georgia O’Keeffe. BY KATHRYN M DAVIS PHOTO BY PETER OGILVIE
44 WORD
The hottest scene in spoken word finds a home in Albuquerque. BY BILL NEVINS PHOTOS BY GINA MARSELLE
Corrales home answers the needs of a couple who are polar opposites. BY STEVEN KOTLER PHOTOS BY CHAS MCGRATH
126 ART MATTERS
Famous at battling inner demons, artists don’t teach us what most people assume. BY KATHRYN M DAVIS
134 ARTIST STUDIO
Multimedia artist Carlos Carulo; assemblage maker Andrea Senutovitch; ceramic sculptor James Marshall; metalworker Sandy Brown BY WESLEY PULKKA PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL
148 NATURAL BY DESIGN
Returning otters to New Mexico’s rivers proves beneficial to both. BY ELIZABETH HARBALL
154
POINT/COUNTERPOINT Four Zuni artists look at the contradictions in being labeled contemporary or traditional. BY TOM R. KENNEDY PORTRAIT BY KERRY SHERCK ON THE COVER: Framed by the view from the Millers’ living room, Manuel Neri’s M.J. Series V 3/4 in painted bronze (2001) kneels before one of two rugs conceived and designed by Jenny Holzer, Fear and Yow (2009 –2010). PHOTO BY KATE RUSSELL.
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176
159 GALLERY PERSPECTIVES
An inside look at the people and collections that make Santa Fe an art capital. PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL
176 WINE & DINE
Three Santa Fe chefs meet the sustainability challenge. PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM
188 ART & SCIENCE
Helmut Lohr remembered Correction: A photo on the last page of the Fall/Winter 2010 issue misidentified the man pictured with Janis Joplin. He is Tommy Masters.
192 END QUOTE
KATE RUSSELL; DOUGLAS MERRIAM
39 Q&A
96 CONSCIOUS BUILDING
FROM THE EDITOR
Art in Hard Times
Eric Swanson
Tabletop Store 316 S Guadalupe St. Santa Fe NM 87501 505.992.1960
20 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
KERRY SHERCK
A
lot of tragedy accompanied the making of this issue, by chance—deaths and personal endings too fresh to enumerate. The country where I was born suffered a triple disaster—the third in the last year to imperil a source of energy on which we desperately depend. As publisher Cynthia Canyon said when we started planning this issue, these are hard times; people worldwide are struggling to navigate what feels like The End, even though it’s really a new beginning. It seemed more important than ever, in our annual art issue, to look at what relevance art has in this contemporary (postcontemporary?) landscape, what artists are doing that matters. Not all art is beautiful, as Theaterwork founder David Olson notes (p. 30), but we turn to it nonetheless to offer solace, depth, respite from the verbal world that berates us within and without. That may be because, as Wes Pulkka discovered while talking with four very different artists (p.134), artists share a commitment to venturing past received knowledge, conventional wisdom, even common sense to uncover a truth that—paradoxically, for being original—touches on the universally human. Artists do not really advance knowledge; instead they devote all their energy to investigating what most of us work hard to ignore: What are we here for? We sent art writer Kathryn Davis on a nebulous mission to discover what artists have to teach us about how to live (p.126). Rejecting the fantastic Modernist cliché about the “inspired” artist, Davis suffered a case of writer’s block that proved to be inspiration itself: What artists teach us, she found, is that the work isn’t about waiting for a gift to arrive, but resolving to hear an inner voice even when it goes silent—because hearing it has become what matters. If you have ever suffered terribly, you know how human it is to latch on to that barely audible voice, or else lose all hope. There is in us that eject button that, when the material world falls apart, intuitively reaches for something beyond. Artists feed the possibility not only of glimpsing it, but of getting there by way of the material world itself. The “inspired” artist may be a marketing gimmick, but inspiration undoubtedly completes the work of art in the viewer—as we were thrilled to find when treated to an art collection (p. 52) that demonstrates how appreciating art can itself be a creative statement about what matters. Whether architects, artists, chefs, even scientists, the work of creativity is really the only way out of the material mess we’re in. It also turns out to be the reason for our annual art issue: to trumpet more than the latest breakthrough in manipulating Stuff. Pay attention to what moves you in the realm of beauty, and together we can, at the least, apply the balm of hope on universal suffering. Keiko Ohnuma Editor
CONTRIBUTORS
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Raised in Southern California, Peter Ogilvie studied art and architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. After graduation, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he turned to documentary films, which led to still photography, both fine art and commercial. Pursuing a career in advertising, fashion, and fine art photography, Ogilvie lived in San Francisco, Milan, Paris, and New York before Santa Fe. He has traveled the world on assignments and won numerous advertising and graphic design awards. The journey continues. His passion endures. He still loves creating and looking at images.
Kate Russell is a nationally recognized photographer based in Santa Fe. Known for her ability to create evocative images and elevate simplicity, Russell’s sensitivity to light and the moment can be seen in her photos. Her work has appeared in numerous local and national publications, including The New York Times, Western Interiors, Santa Fean Magazine, and the books Old World Interiors by David Naylor and Designers Here and There by Michele Keith. Kate’s work with a traveling circus and the arts brought her to the world of photography, and they continue to provide inspiration for projects both near and far.
Arts writer, critic, and sculptor Wesley Pulkka, PhD., moved from Boulder to Albuquerque’s East Mountains in 1992 to restore an old cabin. Since 1993 he’s written columns, features, profiles, and reviews for the Albuquerque Journal, Architectural Digest, Altitude Magazine, Ministry and Liturgy, The Collector’s Guide, and other publications. His art has been shown at the UNM Art Museum, Albuquerque Museum, Baltimore Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery, Harwood Art Center, Harwood Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, and other arts institutions.
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Tom Kennedy continues to find his work at Zuni Pueblo something of a surprise, despite having lived or worked in places as diverse as Nigeria, Texas, Guatemala, Indianapolis, and St. Lucia. His background in anthropology, museums, and folk arts has served him well in his 16 years at Zuni, first as director of the tribal museum and currently as director of tourism. Photography, arts, music, and collecting exotic plants remain core passions. He and his wife, Sheri, own and operate a B&B in the Zuni Mountains. R 22 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
TOP LEFT: SOPHIE RAUBIET; TOP RIGHT: KATE RUSSELL; BOTTOM LEFT: LISA RODRIQUEZ
Elizabeth Harball graduated from St. John’s College, Santa Fe, in 2009 with a degree in liberal arts. She then taught English in southern Japan for a year before returning to Santa Fe to work as editorial assistant at THE magazine. Elizabeth has decided that she loves working in magazines and is planning on attending journalism school in the fall.
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n e w s , g o s s i p , a n d i n n u e n d o f r om a r t / d e s i g n / a r c h i t e ct u r e
“People sometimes think of Dennis Hopper’s years in New Mexico after Easy Rider as the lost years, but those were among the most important years of my young life,” says Santa Fe-based Native recording artist and filmmaker Robby Romero of the time in the mid-1970s when he would visit the late film star in Taos. “Dennis was my father, my brother, and my friend,” says Romero, who performed his “Prayer Song” at Hopper’s funeral ceremony last year. “Dennis took me out to Los Angeles in 1975 and introduced me to Bob Dylan. I was just a kid then, and I met Dylan’s whole cast of his Rolling Thunder Revue—and then I got a recording contract and made a record with Johnny Rivers . . . a lot to absorb for an indigenous boy from New Mexico!” Romero spoke with Trend as he was doing final sound mixing for his new documentary film, Who’s Gonna Save You, which was set to debut at the United Nations on Earth Day, April 22, 2011—which was declared International Mother Earth Day in 2009 by indigenous Bolivian President Evo Morales. The date has additional significance for the filmmaker because it is the birthday of Stacey Thunder, mother of his five children.
From left, Dennis Hopper, Rita Rogers, Johnny Rivers, and Robby Romero in Hollywood in 1975. Right: Robby Romero performs at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues cultural event.
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“I was performing at the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change in Anchorage, Alaska,” Romero recalls. “Indigenous leaders, organizations, and the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues encouraged me to create a music picture with my song ‘Who’s Gonna Save You,’ so I did.” Shot in New Orleans, the picture combines music video and film into “a poetic call to consciousness for the restoration of life in balance,” Romero explains. “It’s about a teenage Apache peace warrior who journeys on his skateboard through the Ninth Ward and the French Quarter five years after Hurricane Katrina. We chose the Crescent City because this musically historic treasure is an epicenter, symbolic of the natural and manmade disasters to come—and because the aftermath of corporate greed, corruption, discrimination, relocation, and poverty that followed is a profound warning and should be of great concern to us all.” The film features all of Romero’s children—“Dakota, Lorren, and Savanna singing with me at One-Eyed Jacks, and Stacey with baby Cheyenne, and River in a cameo appearance in the French Quarter”—as well as a number of well-known street artists: the Los Angeles tagger Jules Muck, skateboard painter Douglas Miles of San Carlos Apache reservation, and British street artist Banksy. “Art, in all its forms, is like a mirror and has the ability to cross boundaries, provoke thought, and shift paradigms,” Romero says. “Street art to me can be even more expressive and inspirational when it comes to the human condition.” Romero, no stranger to the filmmaking medium, remembers making his Hollywood debut with his mother, Rita Rogers, at the legendary Troubadour club.“I remember her bringing Jon Voight and Dean Stockwell backstage. They were loaded with inspiration, and full of good vibes and praise.” But he never thought of his work in terms of a career, he says. “I’m just playing to the beat of our mother, the earth, with all my relations.” For more information on Robby Romero’s projects, visit eaglethunder.com —Bill Nevins
LEFT: SHUSEI YAMADA; RIGHT: MARTIN
Musician Robby Romero Makes Planet Earth Debut
PAULO T. PHOTOGRAPHY
Native Dance Troupe Puts “Bone and Blood Memory in Motion” “I’ve never heard of another Native contemporary dance company in the USA,” says Rulan Tangen, founder of Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations. Many Native Americans who come to their shows had never before seen dance theater, she notes, much less considered performing it. “I love to attract people to this art and show them the possibilities. I think our overall theme is diversity—different body types, ages, origins, and attitudes.” Before joining her company, many of her dancers had performed only at powwows or on the street, never dreaming that it could be a professional career. The company was founded in 2004 as a fusion of indigenous dance traditions and experimental movement, resulting in what Tangen calls “an elemental language of bone and blood memory in motion.” Dance is a primal force, she says, “that can illuminate issues of cultural, historical, philosophical, environmental, mythic, and spiritual relevance.” Through movement ritual, the company aims to embody “the unique essence of indigenous identity and perspective.” The company performs in Santa Fe in August, headlining the Living Heritage Festival at the James A. Little Theater the weekend of August 20–21. “We have invited the amazing Santa Fe Indian School slam poetry team as our opening act,” Tangen notes, for an evening that is sure to get heart and mind pumping. —Bill Nevins Dancing Earth performs Of Bodies Of Elements at Gammage Hall in Phoenix, Arizona.
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onely little Cuba, New Mexico, at the base of the Nacimiento Mountains might not be the first place you’d look for cutting-edge social art. With a host of social and economic problems made worse by the recent recession, artmaking was not at the forefront of too many minds there—until Littleglobe showed up. The Santa Fe-based collaborative arts group, which works to connect people with art and with each other, had been looking for a new community project. Residents of Cuba and neighboring Torreon and Ojo Encino asked the group to bring its unique form of artistic collaboration to their area after seeing a presentation nearby. Six months later, following a series of weekly workshops where people from diverse backgrounds discovered talents for singing, filmmaking, photography, spoken word, dancing, and other art forms, the TOC ensemble (for the communities’ initials) gave the area its first formal public art performance. “That type of production has never come to our local communities,” says Kialo Winters, a Navajo in Torreon who helped facilitate the project and played guitar during the performance. “Just bringing it here to a tiny speckle of an area, and just pulling out creatively all the awesome skills and talents here and merging it into that kind of Residents of Torreon, Ojo Encino, and Cuba, New Mexico, rehearse at a fold-out stage on the rodeo grounds in Cuba.
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performance, was just awe-inspiring.” The process of creating together made the community stronger, he adds. “A lot of personal healing occurred, and a lot of community healing.” Winters says the area struggles with racism, poverty, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, “your typical type of concerns within a low-employment region, and a lot of individuals see themselves as having no hope in producing something positive.” The Littleglobe workshops allowed people “to just put aside all the barriers and see truly who we all were . . . All the strength we saw in each other and the talent we saw in each other created a close-knit support network.” The community has formed the “I-You Council” to keep supporting local artistic expression. The TOC project exemplifies what the 10-year-old Littleglobe (little globe.org) is all about, says Valerie Martinez, executive director of the nonprofit organization. Through collaborative artmaking, Littleglobe’s artists and facilitators foster life-affirming connections that break down boundaries that often divide people of different backgrounds. “What we’ve seen is, after you’ve had this time together, there’s this great fellowship and this great sense of capacity, not just with the ensemble members but also the [ facilitating] artist, to create something very meaningful.” Rather than provide a readymade piece to perform, Littleglobe’s artists let com-
JASON JAACKS/COURTESY OF LITTLEGLOBE
Art in Unlikely Places
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photos: Eric Swanson/Santa Fe Catalogue
munity participants—who are paid— explore different forms of creative expression and decide for themselves what kind of project they want to do. “What we do is sort of creative play,” says Martinez, an established poet. “You might sing even though you’ve never sung before; you might move your body in a way that’s new. And the group decides what they want to make together. It could be a mural or a performance or anything.” Littleglobe got its start in New York City when artist Molly Sturges, who co-founded the group with composer Chris Jonas, facilitated a project with women who had cancer. Through creative exercises involving movement, vocalization, and writing, each woman discovered her creative niche. The result was a beautiful performance called Crossings, Martinez says, that helped the women gain physical and emotional strength. A decade later, Littleglobe has a long list of innovative projects to its credit. Lines and Circles brought together 11 Santa Fe families to create unique intergenerational works of family-focused art and poetry. Open Books had foster kids tell their stories through poetry, writing, art, and collage. Music was at the heart of Memorylines, a community-based opera about Santa Fe’s diverse cultures, and Lifesongs, which brought musicians into nursing homes and hospice care to help residents create original works. Participants have ranged from elementary school kids to octogenarians. Littleglobe’s current projects include Coal: A Musical Fable, a folk tale about a boy who finds a magical rock that contains both creation and destruction, and Crosstown #4, an interactive opera involving Santa Fe residents that will premiere on active bus lines. A performance of Lifesongs will be held Sunday, May 8, at the Lensic starting at 4 p.m. Littleglobe also supports smaller projects with individual artists, such as Chris Jonas’ collaboration with the Del Sol Quartet in San Francisco, and Garden, a series of music-driven performances that use transparent screens and projected video to evoke the last night on Earth after humans have destroyed the planet. >
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“We really feel that the projects should be meaningful,” Martinez says. “We believe in social justice, and our projects might be involved in healing or helping confront and grapple with some of the toughest issues of our time.” Martinez is hoping to secure enough
funding this year to start paying Littleglobe staffers, who are all volunteers except for the administrative coordinator. But she says the projects enrich them in other ways: “We feel really honored to be able to do the work.” —April Reese
Re-visioning Classic Drama
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PETR JERABEK
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avid Olson chuckles as he recalls his first theatrical venue. “My parents were the first people on our block to have an automated garage door,” he says, which at age seven he turned into a theater “where I produced long, drawnout epics in which my poor sister Diana often played the star.” Gemma Harris, left, Larry Lee, and Angela Janda The founder and artistic director of perform in Antigone Santa Fe’s Theaterwork happened upon his next dramatic venue just as fortuitously. As a cultural anthropology student, he was invited to work in Bogota, Colombia, where he found himself assisting with story-gathering projects among the indigenous and marginalized. After meeting some naturally gifted storytellers in a youth lock-up, he realized “there was a way to tell their important stories through theater.” The resulting Teatro Laboratorio de Bogota was the first incarnation of the 41-year-old theater company Olson founded with his wife, Paula. Their current production, Jean Anouilh’s Antigone (April 7–16), will be Theaterwork’s 100th in New Mexico, where they have been based for the last 15 years. Naturally, the company has its solid local fan base—yet Olson says he is always thinking of “the strangers . . . new audiences who don’t know us and are just now giving us a try.” Ingenious staging and apropos selections strive to reach those Theaterwork virgins. For example, Antigone, a French 20th century masterpiece based on the classic drama by Sophocles, just happened to coincide with the recent uprisings in Cairo and Tripoli. And because Anouilh envisioned “a theater of all means,” the production will be staged in a dry swimming pool (Santa Fe’s Tino Griego Pool) rather than their usual James A. Little Theater. “The audience will be seated in the shallow end, and the actors will be at the deep end,” Olson explains. A “chorus” of young Santa Fe poets will support the lead character with original verse, to be recited in a special additional program as well as being painted on the floor of the set. “They’ve become a flow of words on the floor. I think there’s a natural affinity between the traditions of poetry and the theater,” Olson notes. “It is all a very ancient way of communicating, to make people laugh and scream, even to stun them into silence.” Theaterwork’s summer production will be the contemporary fantasy-drama Inventing Van Gogh by PEN USA Award-winning playwright Steven Dietz (June 17–26). The story of a present-day art forger confronted by the ghost of the enraged Van Gogh, the play is to Olson “about who really owns art.” In Olson’s own case, that question is answered by a lifetime of producing socially conscious theater. “I am proud to be in the beauty business,” he declares, “although the beautiful is not always pretty. There is also the terror of beauty.” But people need beauty, he concludes, “even if they are a bit scared by it.” —Bill Nevins R
TONY MALMED JEWELRY ART Handmade in Santa Fe Since 1982 108 Don Gaspar Avenue • Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-988-9558 • info@spiritoftheearth.com
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BY RIC LUM | PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL
Cosmic Troubadour
Multimedia minstrel Donald Rubinstein steps out of his hermitage Donald Rubinstein: Composer, troubadour, minstrel of love, cosmic poet, a man on a journey to orbit the outer edges of the atmosphere and dive right to the heart of the human condition. His music and art defy categorization—complex scores of moving sound poetry, folk tunes that bop and rock, storytelling with a deep funky soul. He is a man who creates in a hermitage of thought and feelings filled with crystalline structure and form, buried treasures, ancient memories—ultimately an incredible archeology and encyclopedia of musical forms that invite us into his own Emerald City. Rubinstein made his musical debut at age 25, composing the score to George A. Romero’s cult classic film Martin. Since then he has released 22 CDs, scored several feature films, and performed and recorded with world-renowned jazz and folk/country artists. Fingers, his duet with Bill Frisell, was included on JAZZIZ Magazine’s limitededition CD Celebration of the Modern Era. Rubinstein’s multimedia and visual works have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art in collaboration with Kiki Smith. Currently in progress are Pilgrim, a film based on his life, and the experimental film Fugue For Motorcycle, both by director Miguel Grunstein. 32
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RL: One of the things I know from my upbringing is that I was fortunate to be around magnificently creative people, and it has affected the way that I see and produce work. What were your earliest influences in music? DR: Probably my brother, who I shared a room with, because he was heavy into music. He was five years older, and he was into both jazz and folk. I began to play music late in life relative to many, but I stored up so much interest and inspiration from my brother’s playing music from Bob Dylan to Thelonious Monk—two of my main influences as a kid. By the time I got into high school I had expanded that and was listening to contemporary classical music as well. I have a photo of me at 16 holding a Thelonious Monk record with a Bob Dylan poster behind me and Karlheinz Stockhausen tapes spread around my feet. That’s really what comprised my entire life is the love of all of those expres-
sions. So when I exploded into music, it was pretty definitive for me once I knew that is what I wanted to do forever. I really regarded music as the highest pursuit one could have—it spoke to all my dreams and aspirations—so when I finally realized I could do it, I went into it full bolt. I think my brother was my first influence in everything I listened to as a kid. RL: What came next? Was there some person or a musician that you got to work with? DR: I was a pretty private person, and I think I stored up just a deep love of music. I gravitated towards figures like Thelonious Monk, Bob Dylan, Muhammed Ali. They represented to me an aspiration that I held dear inside of myself, and they were my greatest influence because they represented the far reaches. Also Jackson Pollock was a big influence. All these people represented a breaking-out-of and a moving-towards-an edge of things, and I wanted to go there. I’d say, more than people, this private life I had that was inhabited by music, art, and books [was] the [thing] that formed my life. RL: Were you drawing and painting then as well? DR: No, I wasn’t. I started to draw and paint after I went to college in Boston. I was 21 and my girlfriend was in Brandeis. [My friends and I] all played music together, and they were that quintessential MO of artists who also played music, and we had a great little creative scene. I was practicing eight or ten hours a day and drawing the rest of the time. I had never drawn before, but I had absorbed a lot, so I maintained it as a practice all these years. It has maybe expanded into a full-blown expression, but it was always for fun, a relief from music. RL: When I saw your work, it hit me, pow—all the people around Pollock, art from that era until about the early ’80s, and then it’s over. There’s not so much progress anymore. Figures like Barnett Newman live trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 33
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Donald Rubinstein and Trend interviewer and artist/chef Ric Lum talk at Rubinstein’s studio south of Santa Fe.
large in my mind. When I first saw one, wow! DR: Rothko was like that for me. RL: Yeah, Rothko. When I was a kid I would look at Clyfford Still—there’s a trip, a road trip to Denver when they open that museum. He’s rough. For years I’d just get angry sitting in front of his pictures, I didn’t understand it. But I was having this reaction inside, and now it’s coming out. So that is a way of learning. DR: I’m a similar type of personality. I went to the Guggenheim, and I walked in the door and there was Picasso there. I was so overwhelmed, I had to leave the museum. I had to walk around the block two or three times, I was that blown away. RL: As that comes through your music, how do you pass that on? Are there younger people that are now listening to your work, do you work with any kids? DR: I don’t work with any kids. I am pretty solitary in that regard, and fairly guarded— guarding my work and even opportunities for greater exposure. I have been reluctant in the past to move in that direction, just 34
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sensitive, perhaps, and a little overwhelmed by the attention. I’ve been lucky enough from my early film scores with George Romero to receive letters from people who are influenced by it. I respond to people who are like me, to be frank, who are just out of their minds over music. That I could even be that for someone is pretty exciting for me. So when I have had an opportunity to “pass something on,” I would take it. I hope that the work and the way I live my life is something that will influence somebody in a positive way, though in time I may lighten up a little bit and be a little more outgoing. RL: Here we are—this is going to be out there! DR: Yeah, man! This is great, I’m enjoying it. I want to really share my work. It is such a pleasure. I was really almost shocked by people who responded to the work when I was younger, because I was so internal and I was so lost in it, it was hard for me to respond. Now I’ve matured, I guess, and I relish the opportunity to share the work. I really kept a small circle around me— Bill Frisell, Terry Allen, Ed Harris, Kiki Smith—people that I could relate to, and I often had maybe one person who I was
really intimate with in relation to sharing the work, and that interaction I would gain a lot from. George Romero, of course, and others. Now I am really enjoying the opportunities to share. RL: I think for creative young people it’s important to hear how other people create, how they came to it. And it’s not necessarily that you need to sit in a classroom. It’s about being curious and grabbing on to the things that really move you, not “Now what’s cool, now what’s hip?” DR: There’s a funny story about where I met Bill Frisell, who I’ve collaborated with on a number of things. We were both in Berklee College of Music—I only lasted two semesters there—but I was young and I had done an arrangement of some piece, and for some reason the teacher put it on the board and spent most of the class talking about how it is everything you did not want to do when you made an arrangement. I was not that affected by it. I thought he was an idiot, frankly. Anyways, he just kept going on and on. And then this guy shuffles up to me after the class and goes, “Excuse me, I just want to tell you I really liked your arrangement.” That was Bill Frisell, you know! And we’re both wearing the same Converse sneakers, and I think smoking Camel cigarettes, and bonded there. So luckily even though I carried, to be frank, a great deal of insecurity in my life, I was always brave in terms of the work, and I was oblivious to opinions in terms of the work. And that helped me a lot. I guess part of the reason I stayed a little bit cordoned off from some opportunities for larger success was I needed to protect the work. I also had a teacher back then I would like to mention: Madame Margaret Chaloff. She was fabulous, and after I left Berklee I studied with her. For those that don’t know, she was a legendary piano teacher who taught Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Leonard Bernstein, an array of people. The first thing she said to me when she opened the door at her place, she looked at me and said, “You’re too stubborn, I can’t teach trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 35
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Sky Shudder, Variation 1, by Donald Rubinstein, mixed media on paper (2011).
you.” So I said, OK, lady, whatever. But then she said come in, and I ended up studying with her twice a week until she passed away about eight months later. It was an incredible privilege, and I would be remiss if I didn’t say as a mentor she really held up that light of following that goal that originally inspired me, coupled with a spiritual intensity and spiritual aspiration, which was a really good thing for me to see. Also she 36 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
gave me focus, because for a guy like me who was a little funky, part jazz, part folk, part classical, she afforded me this high level of learning, which was a great gift. So if I could pay that back to somebody, I’d sure like to, because it was a tremendous opportunity. RL: So now the grown-up Donald, what’s really moving you now? Is there music that
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SANTA FE’S DESIGNER HOTEL 105 EAST MARCY STREET 505 988 5899 LUXXHOTEL.COM
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UPCOMING FROM DONALD RUBINSTEIN: Two-person show at La Tienda Exhibit Space, opening July 23 Solo show at Fisher Press Gallery, opening next February Selections Over Time, a double CD “best of ” collection on Bare Bones Records A CD of instrumental keyboard works on Bare Bones Records Score for the Audrey Nadia Jajich film Divisions of a Year Pilgrim, a feature film by Miguel Grunstein based on Rubinstein’s work and life For more information: donaldrubinstein.com Hair for One, archival pigment print (2008).
you are listening to, or visual arts, things in the world in general, thinking about how the planet is moving along or how humanity is dealing with its neuroses?
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DR: I try not to think about it, to be honest. Not the most magnanimous point of view. That said, I have great concerns for our planet, and I am still probably however internally driven to a fair degree. I am trying to develop, for lack of a better term, a unified field theory of art and music. I work in a lot of mediums, and I’m really interested in—and have been from the start—reaching a pinnacle from that early confluence of influences. That inspires me, almost like a scientist tries to unlock keys to the universe. I’m inspired by people that are jumping off the bridge. I’m still inspired by that. I’m inspired by people who want to push the limit of things, who really want to soar. And in my maturity I recognize and respect the whole spectrum of effort in this regard. But what probably excites me the most is people on the edge of things, in music, art, and in the world. I’m not that interested in other people’s work, even though I’m always thrilled to be inspired by it. Love is a great inspiration for me. The aspiration of love and the ability to love, to treat people well, to combine all these elements—to be gracious enough to embrace 38 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
people—all these things are part of that milieu that makes up my everyday effort. More down to earth, I am working on a set of keyboard solos, a score, and I have two shows coming up, and also working on an installation piece called Spoke which tries to address all of those issues. I think the aspiration of discovery drives me in a big way. I still want to discover something. I feel there is something to unlock in the smallest place that has a great deal of energy, and that’s the focus and the depth in which I try to go. RL: You’re also going to get married to a creative person [dancer Audrey Nadia Jajich]. That seems like a beautiful future. DR: Yes it is, man. I’m thrilled. It is a great opportunity to be reborn, really. The great opportunity is to love—you know, like many of us, I have not always been good at it. I have a lot of love in my heart, but the ability to engage everyone in my intimate relationships with consistent love is a challenge. And in my relationship and marriage to come, I have an opportunity to love somebody to the best of my abilities, and the possibilities that might ensue from that—to love her wildly to the best of my abilities. That’s my plan! RL: Beautiful plan! Thanks, Donald. R
Q&A
BY KATHRYN M DAVIS | PHOTO BY PETER OGILVIE
Beyond Success Managing growth is the enviable task of new Georgia O’Keeffe director
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he previous, first director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, George King, had a patrician air and the wardrobe to match. By contrast, the current director, Robert A. Kret, is fraternal—someone you might have gone to grade school with, the Metropolitan Museum’s current director, the “I am who I am” Thomas P. Campbell as distinct from his “grand persona” predecessor, Philippe de Montebello. One couldn’t imagine King making a misstep in his fine Italian shoes, whereas Kret is clearly a hands-on, hardworking guy—just what the O’Keeffe needs now in its second decade. The museum has moved into the nutsand-bolts stage, having passed the hurdle of credibility with flying colors. The Georgia O’Keeffe executorial foundation dissolved itself and turned all its assets over to
the museum in 2006, and visitor numbers have far surpassed anything that might have been hoped for in its early days. Its expanded collection and name recognition would cause most of Kret’s colleagues in the American Association of Museums to turn green with envy. Two questions now remain: How will the facility grow, as it surely must, to maintain its prestige; and how can it engage the community internationally and locally? These are the kinds of prospects that Kret is adept at handling with gusto. In his previous position as director of the Hunter Museum of American Art, he metaphorically allowed its antebellum-style premises, on a bluff overlooking the Tennessee River in Chattanooga, to move “off the hill” (via a glass bridge) and become part of the 21st Century Waterfront Project with its fellow anchor
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum director Robert A. Kret has a track record of innovation and inclusion at his last post, as director of the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
institutions, the Tennessee Aquarium and the Creative Discovery Museum for kids. Kret moved to Santa Fe more than a year ago, and he was joined last summer by his wife, Teddy, and their two teenage boys: Sam, 19, a student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Lukas, 14. Daughter Abby, 22, is a graduate student at Columbia. Kret says he was not looking for a new position, but when this opportunity knocked he responded because of “the iconic nature of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the perceived cachet of Santa Fe as an arts destination.” He had been trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 39
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director of the Hunter for 10 years, during which time Chattanooga had been striving to build its brand as an arts destination “more like Santa Fe.” Trend sat down with Kret one cold spring morning to discuss his shift from Eastern to Mountain Time. KD: Tell us about what you did in Chattanooga, and what drew you to the O’Keeffe Museum. RK: As with most professions, there are times when an individual reaches a certain amount of success. Being in Chattanooga for just about 10 years gave me the opportunity to do that . . . . The Waterfront Project raised $120 million to revitalize the area, and also allowed for additions to the various institutions. That project was the high-water mark in my career there, along with delivering the Hunter’s new 28,000-square-foot wing for contemporary art on time and on budget. At that point in a museum director’s career, one of three things usually happens. Oftentimes it’s exhausting enough that directors want to go elsewhere; sometimes things don’t go well, and boards ask directors to go; then there’s my particular decision, where I pledged to stay to see that the whole project [ functioned as envisioned]. The Hunter renovation was a $22 million project that pulled together several aspects we had been working on. [Before that time] there were frequent comments that people could see the Hunter but they couldn’t figure out how to get to it. We also created an outdoor sculpture plaza, completely renovated the 1905 mansion, and reinstalled the museum’s permanent collection. I was very proud to tell the board before I left that we had reached a goal: Our walkin demographics were mirroring the community—not the board’s make-up! We received national recognition for some of our accomplishments, including working with the county to develop the Normal Park Museum Magnet School [the nation’s top magnet school in 2005]. We trained teachers to use the [museum] collection to complement their curricula. It was really exciting to see the teachers with their students at the museum. 40
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KD: I would imagine that your personal goals haven’t changed much: You’re interested in community and how a museum functions within that community. And the O’Keeffe is so clearly a destination museum; I know you don’t have a problem attracting visitors. The question really is, why focus on the community when you already have phenomenal numbers coming from around the world? RK: At the Hunter, 75 percent of the visitors were from within the community. Here at the O’Keeffe, we have about 170,000 visitors per year. The statistic that absolutely jumps off the page for me is that 80 to 85 percent of those visitors are coming from out of the state. We’re a huge economic driver for Santa Fe, with transportation to the museum, hotels, food—all those aspects of tourism. So we do make a big contribution to the community. Yet, like all cultural institutions, we have a responsibility to the people who live here. And there were significant programs already in place prior to my arrival, thanks to [Director of Education] Jackie M and her department. I like to joke that our tag line should be, “The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum—I had no idea!” What Jackie does with public programming deserves more visibility. Our Art and Leadership programs for girls and boys are stellar summer programs. But we also have staff involved right in the schools working with the kids, and at the Boys and Girls Club in Abiquiu. Jackie’s also going to Albuquerque—for example, she’s working with the University of New Mexico so that the medical students there learn to hone their skills in visual observation. We’ve been able to rely so much on our out-of-state numbers, but there is an implicit responsibility to be an active and engaged member of our community . . . and this is a complicated community. I’m not rushing into making any assumptions or judgments. So public programming is the first step. The second is to work together with my colleagues. A number of us are new directors here: Irene Hoffmann at SITE Santa Fe, Mary Kershaw [at the New Mexico Museum of Art], Craig Anderson at the
Center for Contemporary Arts. We are working to meet regularly; we’ve incorporated into our meetings individuals who are involved with SAR [the School for Advanced Research], SWAIA [which runs Indian Market], the Folk Art Market. It’s important that we have a unified voice in terms of our legislators. Cultural tourism is a huge industry here in New Mexico. Elected officials come and go; one of my hopes for the directors’ group is that we develop strategies for the national, state, and city levels. We have to be able to quantify how our cultural institutions add to the quality of life here. KD: What’s next for the O’Keeffe, in its second decade? RK: I see my responsibility at the O’Keeffe Museum to grow the audience in three ways: internationally, nationally, and statewide. One of my goals is to build upon the success of the first 13 years, and to work together with the board, staff, and volunteers to take the organization to another level. The scope and depth of the organization are not always apparent to the public. I’m hard-pressed to think of another institution that has the constellation of assets that the O’Keeffe Museum holds, including the fine arts collection that has grown from 187 when the museum opened to somewhere around 1,150 O’Keeffe pieces alone. We have the library, an archive, the Research Center, historic homes, public programs, extensive art conservation—and, finally, changing art exhibitions! All of these things occur in the dynamic setting of northern New Mexico. KD: I find it fascinating that O’Keeffe, through her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, was part of an incredibly vibrant group of artists who were actively seeking to define an American art, distinct from European art, in the early 20th century, when Modernism was in its heyday. And most, if not all, of the artists in the so-called Stieglitz group came here, which means that the place of New Mexico is paramount to our understanding of American Modernism.
RK: Our mission obviously focuses on the art and life of Georgia O’Keeffe, with a broader commitment to furthering the study of American Modernism. Our programs and exhibitions have expanded well beyond the focus of a single-artist museum. Curator Barbara Buhler Lynes is coordinating traveling exhibitions that will be touring Rome, Munich, Helsinki, and Tokyo beginning in 2012. At the O’Keeffe, we have the name recognition that sets us apart from some of the other institutions; I’m always thinking about how we can leverage this to benefit the state of New Mexico, perhaps in partnership with the tourism department. KD: I know you’re probably not looking at enlarging the building right now, but how are you thinking about the facility? RK: One of the watershed events for this institution, thanks to George, was the disbanding of the O’Keeffe Foundation and the transfer of its assets to the museum. We received over 800 works by O’Keeffe, the house at Abiquiu, and all of her tangible property—her shells, her collection of bones, her clothes, everything. That happened in 2006, per the Foundation’s mission to disband after 20 years. This was one of the museum’s greatest accomplishments, and it also represents one of our challenges: How do we physically manage our success? We’ve grown beyond everyone’s imagination. It’s one of those issues that every director has to look at. With our relatively modest 4,000 square feet of exhibition space, we’re low in terms of space. Our assets have grown tremendously since we opened. Now we have to close the galleries to change exhibitions—last year, for example, we were closed to the public for 39 days. That’s significant. The institution needs to take a look at what the facility’s needs are and how we can spread out over our campus. We have no loading dock; everything comes in through the front door. But this is a quality problem for us to have: We’ve got to have a facility that is on a par with who we’ve become. R trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 41
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Storywheels™
Jewelry s Gifts s Accessories s Home RIPPEL AND COMPANY www.johnrippel.com
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BY BILL NEVINS | PHOTOS BY GINA MARSELLE
I
n Lord Tennyson’s time, poets may have been a shy, sheltered lot, holding forth in libraries and college auditoriums. Not anymore. A revival of the spoken word that has been gaining momentum for two decades has put poetry back in packed bars and coffee houses across North America, especially— though it has gained little official notice—in Albuquerque. The slam poetry phenomenon got its start in Chicago in 1986, when construction worker and poet Marc Kelly Smith began hosting competitive poetry events at the Green Mill, a Chicago jazz club, as a way to share the joy of his art form with his beer buddies. Smith, who has written several books about the international movement that he fathered, is now affectionately known by players as “Slampapi,” in a medium that marries the inspirational aspects of live performance with the raucous celebration of competitive sport. The Slam, as it has come to be known, is a surprising, sexy, entertaining evening of audience excitement mixed with moments of sheer awakening. The basic rules of the game are that performers (or teams) must write and perform their own original work, usually not longer than three minutes. Each poem is judged on a scale of 1 to 10 by three to five volunteer judges randomly
selected from the audience. A score of 1 belongs to “a poem that should never have been written,” while a 10 “causes simultaneous orgasms among everyone in a hundred-mile radius,” according to The Rules, which are ceremonially read aloud before each slam. Audiences cheer and jeer without restraint after the readings, solemn listening being discouraged, while tipping of
servers and applause for every performer is part of the slam code. Poets who rack up enough points progress to city, regional, intercollegiate, and national competitions, overseen since the mid-1990s by the group Poetry Slam Inc. Albuquerque hosted the National Slam Finals in 2005—still the most wellattended Slam National ever, organized by Don McIver, Susan McAllister, Eric Bodwell, and their team of hypercaffeinated overachievers. That glorious moment continues to inspire the Burque spoken-word community, deflecting claims that slam is a passing fad. In fact, slam—which has shared origins with hiphop—has been celebrated in films like Slam, Slam Nation, and the parody The Humberville Poetry Slam; two longrunning HBO series, Def Poetry Jam and Brave New Voices; and a Def Poetry Jam Broadway play. The medium has its national superstars, such as Sapphire, Patricia Smith, Taylor Mali, and Saul Williams, as well as Albuquerque’s Danny Solis, now the city’s reigning Slam Poet Laureate. Famously inclusive of outsider groups, slam counts among its heroes the late Nuyorican Poets Cafe bard Miguel Pinero and proud gay slammers like Buddy Wakefield and ex-Albuquerque star The Outsider.
Top row: Sarah Roman and Tracey Pontani, Damien Flores and Hakim Bellamy, Christian Drake, Bob Warren. Second row: Danny Solis, Marc Kelly Smith, Lisa Gill, Manuel Gonzalez. Third row: Don McIver, Jessica Helen Lopez; Priscilla Candeleria, Tracey Pontani. Fourth row: Faustino Villa, Carlos Contreras, Idris Goodwin. Fifth row: Bill Nevins, Hakim Bellamy, Buddy Wakefield, Kenn Rodgriguez.
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PHOTO OF BOB WARREN/COURTESY OF BOB WARREN
Poetry Slams Find Fertile Soil in Albuquerque
Barbara Felix Architecture + Design
Burque by Manuel Gonzalez (performed by the author in the feature film Committing Poetry in Times of War) With watermelon mountains Melting misconceptions In marijuana dreams And contemplative confessions I see cholos chasing chicas Living mi vida loca Like the ancient mexica With kicked back khakis To camouflage clown faces We smile now But we cry later Breakdancing b-boys Battling the cross fader My name is Albuquerque But my friends call me Burque
Politicians like balloons Both floating on hot air As I stare at the sunset Sending Yellows Oranges Reds Pinks Purple Blues And that blue black color of the magic hour Where the mystical existence of spirits Is evident for those with eyes to see My name is Albuquerque But my friends call me Burque
Woven Architecture ™
Listening to Saturday morning traditions Played by musicians The founding fathers of my self image Singing rancheras And cumbias And those boleros sung with a teardrop on the vocal cords My name is Albuquerque But my friends call me Burque I’m looking at Atrisco and I’m thinking of land grants Wondering if the chavalitos even have a chance As the day turns to night and they begin to dance You know I was named after a duke who never left Spain And being junior without knowing your father can bring a lot of pain My name Is Albuquerque But my friends call me Burque
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k a t e r u s s e l l p h o t o g r a p hy. c o m
With the Rio Grande pumping life Through the heart of Aztlan Pumping life Through the words of storytellers
The sacred sands of the Santuario Silently sends the sound for my soul And the patience and perserverance of the penitents Plant the seeds that will one day take me home And the legions of Mary Who pray the rosary for humanity Who doesn’t have enough time to bend their own knees My name is Albuquerque But my friends call me Burque
505 820 1555 + 505 820 1527 F bjfelix.com 511 AGUA FRIA STREET SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO 87501
Mi Madre makes masa With flour and manteca Rolling out her tortillas And scraping her spices in a molcajete Like the ancient Aztecz As the Tolteca knowledge Comes from the Grandfathers And Mi Madre lights a candle To la Virgen De Guadalupe My name is Albuquerque But my friends call me Burque
The blood of warriors The tears of mothers The passion of lovers That river who knew my grandmother Who named my son And protects my daughter Gave inspiration to my father To sing songs of our people My name is Albuquerque But my friends call me Burque
WORD
Albuquerque’s Poetry Venues Albuquerque has a wealth of poetry venues, and new ones are popping up all the time. Some of the favorites: Poetry and Beer, first Wednesday of every month. Open mike and slam now held at the Blackbird Buvette restaurant on Central Avenue downtown. The oldest and pre-eminent over-21 slam gathering— crowded, raucous, and joyful, featuring poets from across the nation and world.
OUTspoken, New Mexico’s first all-ages LGBT poetry slam and queer-friendly open-mike, features guest poets such as author/radio host Mary Oishi. Slam Aztlan is a new under-21 youth slam held the second Saturday at Warehouse 508.
Fixed and Free, fourth Thursday at The Source yoga studio, for slammers and other poets of all kinds.
Firestorm, a women’s slam held quarterly for women of all ages.
MAS Poetry, third Wednesday, Winnings Coffee House near UNM. Also, Final Friday on the last Friday at Winnings. Both are all-ages events.
Mountainair Poets and Writers Picnic, held annually in its namesake town, gathers poets statewide, this year on August 27 at Shaffer Hotel garden. (poetsand writerspicnic.blogspot.com).
Christian Drake, Damien Flores, Joseph Andres Romero, and Jessica Helen Lopez performing Out to Play
Inherently iconoclastic and fond of courting controversy, slammers have been known to declaim mock haiku in ninja headbands. A favorite boozy audience chant is “Fuck the rules!” Such antics led literary critic Harold Bloom to characterize the movement in the Spring 2000 Paris Review as “rant and nonsense . . . the death of art.” 46
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Though often rude and crude, speaking the language of the streets rather than the technical niceties of la poesie, slam fans do relish and cherish their rhymes and rhymesters, even where no formal meter is involved. Slam poets do do their homework, and many revere the printed-page classics. Solis proudly acknowledges his debt to Tennyson, Whitman, and Dickin-
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son over pints of oatmeal stout at Albuquerque’s Marble Brew Pub. “Yeah, all poets need to read the work that came before us,” he says. “It’s what nurtures us; it’s where we learn our difficult art.” University of New Mexico professor V. B. Price writes in his afterword to A Bigger Boat: “Slam poetry competitions have brought poetry back full circle to its performance origins, when poetry not only created mythology and commented on the human condition, but was also a major form of collective entertainment.” Levi Romero, Price’s colleague at UNM and recently appointed New Mexico Centennial Poet, has zestfully indulged in slam himself and can often be seen cheering on his slamming students. In fact, a pilgrimage to this city on the Rio Grande has become de rigueur for American slam poets, many of whom have stayed to launch careers. Poets have a reputation for being cliquey, but Albuquerque has earned a reputation as a welcoming haven for both veteran and novice writerperformers. “I think that in the east, the boxes that artists put themselves in are much more rigid than out here,” says Hakim Bellamy, a hip-hop-inspired Philadelphia transplant and Albuquerque slam champ. “Albuquerque is a safe, supportive place to grow as an artist and even try some things outside of one’s comfort zone. It’s been a blessing to me.” Carlos Contreras, who along with Bellamy performs the slam-derived stage production Urban Verbs, notes that the egalitarian character of Albuquerque slam “is one of the most accepting scenes of any kind that I have ever played witness to . . . . It has meant everything to me. It gave me a place as a young Latino to find a home.” Successful Latino and black poets, including Jessica Helen Lopez, Damien Flores, and Manuel Gonzalez, among others, have served as inspirational role models to aspiring poets. There is now a Duke City Youth Poetry Collective, and a team of young 48
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Albuquerque slammers coached by veteran poet Kenn Rodriguez competed last year in Hollywood on Brave New Voices. Reed Adair, a junior at Albuquerque’s Native American Community Academy high school, credits summer classes at the National Hispanic Cultural Center’s Voces program, ongoing classes at Warehouse 508, and the example set by older poets for his achievements, including a professionally produced CD of his performance, due out soon. “Albuquerque is the most generationally diverse, friendly slam poetry scene in the country,” says Adair—a comment echoed by many young poets around the city. Albuquerque’s rising place in the world of poetry performance was recently enhanced by the selection of Slam Poet Laureate Solis, along with two other master slam poets, for a visit to Kathmandu, Nepal, in December 2010. The State Department-sponsored exchange schooled aspiring Nepalese poets in the subtleties of composition and public performance. State Department spokesperson Marjorie Ames said the Cultural Envoy program would send another delegation to Nepal this April, including New York-based slam guru Bob Holman. Back at home, the slam scene has helped reinvigorate more traditional poetry circles, especially at events like the annual Verse/Converse weekend in Taos. “Print” poets are welcome at slams, and slam stars often show up at more sedate gatherings. Age, it seems, is not even a dividing line— the slam scene includes such veteran poets as Carol Lewis (in her 70s), Los Lunas bard Bob “Coot Vicious” Warren, and this grizzled geezer of a reporter. It probably comes as no surprise that in Albuquerque, a city where both film and visual arts have achieved high honors, the fiercely populist, egalitarian art of slam poetry should also find rich ground to evolve. At The Slam, the motto echoes the theme of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “Here comes everybody!” R
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Viola Frey, Urban Man and Untitled (Standing Man), ceramic, each about 10 feet tall (1989). Though she may have objected to the placement of her monumental figures on his property, the late ceramic artist would probably sympathize with Miller’s intention in placing the two suits to signal that “it’s not all that serious.” Miller said he was taken by Frey’s colorful surface decoration, for which she is known as an heir to California’s Funk ceramic tradition. Right: Peter Sarkisian, Extruded Video Engine Medium Shape I, Version I, video (2007). Miller had a viewing room built right off the kitchen to house this piece, part of a series by Sarkisian that gives the medium shape and sound. Sarkisian, who often toys with the idea of the image frame, photographed bearings at Los Alamos National Laboratory and projected them onto a piece of plastic extruded to match the projection. Miller says he enjoys seeing people walk by and try to make sense of the odd sounds, scrolling text, and whirring movement coming from a device that seems to float in the darkness.
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Serious Fun Eclectic collection expresses the strong personal vision of a SITE Santa Fe trustee
BY KEIKO OHNUMA | PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL
B
ill Miller is not “a collector’s collector.” He doesn’t chase after the rare piece to complete his trophy case of such-and-such an artist or genre or movement or medium. He doesn’t chase after art at all, really, having walked into his 300-plus pieces of museum-quality artwork seemingly by connection, chance, and fancy. Miller and his wife, novelist Alicia Miller, bought their first piece of art in 1964 for $300—a fortune at the time, “all the disposable income we had,” laughs Bill. (It was a lithograph by Adja Yunkers, which they still own.) They did not buy another piece until the ’70s, and started collecting in earnest only a decade later, when they discovered Santa Fe. Instead, there was, in the beginning, the house. “It was always about the house,” recalls their daughter, Mayo, the middle of three children. “We always felt different,” she says, because of the house designed by award-winning architect Stephen Bucchieri in Chagrin Falls, near Cleveland. Back then the Millers’ quest was for “a space we could find some comfort in,” Bill says with typical understatement. But no sooner had they completed that modernist haven than they found themselves shopping for real estate in New Mexico, where Bill fell unexpectedly in love with the landscape. He was, at that point, ready for a change. An entrepreneur who consulted to other entrepreneurs, he had reached the top of his game and was ready to leave behind the “suits and all that.” Technology let him participate at a distance; yet it took the Millers another decade and three more houses to attain the near-perfection of their 10,000-squarefoot aerie on a slope near the Santa Fe Opera (“A Place for Reflection,” Summer/Fall 2005). This stunning gallery of glass, steel, and stone, also by Bucchieri, is flooded with light and ringed by views that still protect their artwork from the sun, which slants through the rooms at well-calculated angles. The Millers also had discovered that they liked buying art. There was a bit of that in Santa Fe, too. “We didn’t set out to collect any particular kind,” says Bill, noting that their collection includes modern, contemporary American and Latin American, video, minimal and figurative sculpture, antique textiles, monumental outdoor pieces, and an extensive collection of indigenous artifacts. Rather, it was about being “in the moment moved.” Or buying something that was New Mexican. Or buying a piece to support charity. As a trustee of SITE Santa Fe since 1997, a volunteer position for which he received the Governor’s Award for trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 53
Excellence in the Arts in 2009, Bill Miller had a few opportunities to find pieces to buy. “There are a lot of stories that go with collecting artists. We cultivated those stories, and ended up with a lot of art,” he says easily. Some of the works they ended up with include a 2007 video by Peter Sarkisian, another by James Drake from the Venice Biennale, two figurative sculptures by Manuel Neri, one of Bernar Venet’s rolled steel arcs in the inner courtyard, and two paintings by the hard-edged abstractionist Frederick Hammersley. When the latter died in 2009, his sister Susie Stone of Santa Fe brought the Millers a still life that the artist painted in 1947 that charmingly discloses nothing of his future direction. That’s what they mean about collecting stories—the house is full of them. Here’s a paradoxical pair of numbers carved by Hopi artist Gregory Lomayesva, which turns out to be his response to learning the Millers had never received his invoice. Here’s a wall of intriguing little collages that turn out to be Christmas cards sent by Mexican-born painter Roberto Marquez, an artist they took to who is “one of the brightest guys I know,” says Bill. Out in a meadow leading up to the house are two larger-than-life ceramic men by Viola Frey, who was discomfited to learn, Alicia confides, that the Millers liked the “whimsy” in her work. “She said, ‘It’s not whimsical—it’s about power,’” Alicia recalls, adding that Frey insisted that the men make eye contact with the third figure, a naked woman who now sits elsewhere on the property. For the Millers, though, the colorful clay sentinels serve to alert visitors to what the family is about—that it’s basically “not all that serious,” as Bill says. They like to have fun with their art. The selection and placement is tongue in cheek. And for guests who may have missed that point, here’s a photo of Georgia O’Keeffe, seated and direct-
Roberto Marquez, Angel Vampiro, mixed media (1995), left, and Tom Joyce, Berg, IV, forged iron (2005). The Millers own several dozen pieces by the enigmatic Roberto Marquez (who now lives on the East Coast), including this “difficult” piece that Bill just loves and Alicia cannot bring herself to love. The Millers own three pieces by New Mexico sculptor Tom Joyce, a MacArthur Fellow who helped reinvent the craft of blacksmithing. The patina-surfaced piece was actually made in a forge.
Peruvian Highlands Mantle (1400–1532). By the front entrance, what Miller calls (with a wink) his “test piece” is actually an antique Incan textile that looks to many, upon first glance, like a canvas by Irish-American abstractionist Shawn Scully. Upon closer inspection, one finds a fetching embroidery under the third set of bars, a darning in a checkerboard pattern.
ing her penetrating gaze at you above a commode. The Millers’ gallery thus contains a few jokes-on-you, good fun for the art aficionados who come to tour the collection. At the front door, for example, among various examples of minimalist sculpture and painting, a paneled tapestry usually gets pegged by art connoisseurs as a Shawn Scully. In fact it’s an ancient Peruvian textile, the most intriguing area of which is a checkerboard darning right in the center that seems to cry out for interpretation. “It’s a test,” quips Bill. Likewise the subtle geometric piece in the dining room that he calls his “early Agnes Martin”—it, too, is a Peruvian textile from the 15th or 16th century. This is not only a joke, though. It’s another sign of what the Millers are all about. Bill did turn his energies at one point toward serious collecting, choosing the unlikely medium of parfleche—large rawhide containers made by Native Americans. Though he was motivated by an interest in Native culture, it was also a personal statement about the aesthetic debt owed by contemporary to ancient art. The wabi-sabi of patination is dear to both the Millers, and evident throughout the design of their house. They so love the effects of nature on the manmade that Bill is inclined to “let the pigeons shit on the sculpture,” as he says with a mischievous grin. “We’ve always thought of artifacts as works of art,” he adds, noting that he differs from most collectors of parfleche in preferring the ones that show signs of wear—the visual and tactile stories that connect the human to the material world. Alicia, for her part, is more contained, her tastes running decidedly toward minimalism. “If you want to know the ones I picked out, they all look like nothing,” she says, deadpan. But even in a vibrant red canvas by the minimalist Joseph Marioni from 2002, Bill finds a personal, empathic connection—a sense of wonder, beauty, or peace that seems to derive from nature. In his profession, Miller’s genius consisted of “finding bright, interesting people and helping them to create their dream,” a process he finds most fun in the early stages. Indeed, entrepreneurs share this quality with real estate developers and artists: a knack for seeing creative potential overlooked by everyone else. It is the quality that seems to cut through Bill’s eclectic taste in art—the surprise of coming across that potential in a piece again and again. Which explains, maybe, why art collecting is a natural fit for the wunderkind entrepreneur, even if he doesn’t take it all that seriously. When you’re Bill Miller, you’ve got nothing to prove. Collecting can just happen. > trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 55
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Two Jicarilla Apache parfleche: painted rawhide (circa 1880), left, and painted buffalo hide (1850s). Miller displays these parfleche envelopes together to demonstrate a point. The one at right has seen the kind of use these items normally would weather; at left, a pristine envelope auctioned by Sotheby’s at a fine-art price. The motif on both, notes Miller, is actually the same—a demonstration of how aging imbues objects with the subtlety and poignancy of fine art. Opposite: James Drake, Birds of Paquime, mixed media (2007), left, and Kutenai case of painted rawhide (circa 1860). New Mexico artist James Drake made a collage of his drawings over a 30- or 40-year span, incorporated into a contemporary drawing. The Kutenai case is an example of a well-preserved, little-used parfleche.
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James Drake, Tongue-cut Sparrows (Inside Outside), two-channel video, edition 4/8 (2006–2007). Alicia says she finds this piece, from the Venice Biennale, terribly moving and beautiful. It documents the sign language created by prisoners in El Paso, Texas, to communicate secretly with their girlfriends and wives on the street below. Whenever police left off patrolling the area, Alicia notes, women would jump out of the bushes and resume their signing. Drake incorporated quotes referencing loss and distance from the likes of William Shakespeare, Jorge Luis Borges, and Cormac McCarthy. Opposite: Frederick Hammersley, Love Me, Love My Dog, #5, oil on linen (1972). This is one of the pieces that Miller never moves when he rotates his collection. It needs to be in this space. Hammersley was a “hard-edged” abstractionist—contemporary with, but presenting an alternative to, the reigning Abstract Expressionists. Despite the iciness implied by the genre, Hammersley’s work exudes a warmth that belies its geometric minimalism and that bridges the tastes of both Millers.
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Bill, Mayo, and Alicia Miller, along with their Westie Buster and black Lab Jessie, surround Doble Circulo Amarillo, an enameled steel sculpture by Carlos Evangelista (2003).
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Bernar Venet, 217.5 Arc x 4, rolled steel, (2002). French artist Bernar Venet established himself in the field of Conceptual Art in the 1960s and ’70s, and has since focused on study of the line in all its mathematical variations. His monumental sculptures have been installed in cities around the world, including Hermann Park, Houston, in 2010. This piece is from his Arc series, many of which are massive arcs impossibly balanced, leaning, standing, or rolling in parks and public places.
Roberto Marquez, El Viudo (PAINGNIT), oil on canvas (1995), left, and Manuel Neri Untitled III, painted bronze (1990), in distance. The erudite Marquez includes in most paintings allusions to poetry, myth, scripture, and classical literature, along with text. Marquez is among the artists introduced to the Millers by Santa Fe gallerist Riva Yares.
Roberto Marquez, Spem in Alium II, oil on canvas (1997). Touched with gold and silver leaf, this piece seems to recede into the wall of the dining room while drawing the viewer in. The title translates as “Hope in any other,” and refers to a sacred text and motet by 16th century composer Thomas Tallis, one of the painter’s favorites. The perspective is of an oncoming antique subway car.
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Miller’s collection of more than 100 parfleche is among the world’s most significant, much of it focused on the tribes of the Rio Grande Valley. The collection is rotated on display in a downstairs gallery that Miller often uses as his office. The effects of patination are clearly visible on closer inspection of these favorite objects.
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Three parfleche, including one from Acoma Pueblo at center, show the effects of patination. Miller says he was drawn to the ethnographic aspects of parfleche, which were usually made by women. The designs are characteristic of the tribe and often reflect what is to be contained—dried meat, medicine, tobacco, ceremonial gear, or craft supplies. Roberto Marquez, mixed-media shadow boxes (1993). The assemblages in the Relics series each bear titles such as Max Ernst’s Veil, Objects Found in the Sea Cemetery, and Matches Burnt by Susana San Juan When She Lost Her Lover, alluding to a literary or biblical narrative. On the table is a clay sculpture by Santa Clara Pueblo artist Roxanne Swentzell, Let’s Make Art (2008). R
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Simple. Easy. Fun. Imagine
a state-of-the-art surround-sound home entertainment system with all the top-quality components for hours of audio and video pleasure, minus one essential ingredient: an easy way to use it. Electronics can be ridiculously complex these days—who hasn’t been frustrated shuffling through multiple remotes just to turn on the TV? By having the right people design, install, and provide service for your system, the complicated work is taken care of. All that’s left for you to do is enjoy. Simple. Easy. Fun. That’s the ultimate goal when it comes to the customer’s experience, notes Jason Suttle, who established Constellation Home Electronics in 2000. With
a lifelong interest in electronics, Suttle has worked in the field since 1990, and in Santa Fe since 1994. Last year his company doubled its installation and service staff and moved its design and production department to a significantly larger facility across from its North Guadalupe Street retail space. Now Constellation can provide even faster, more comprehensive service. One popular way of cutting through the complexity of a home entertainment system is to use a single universal remote, custom-programmed by Constellation technicians. The company’s experienced staff can help customers choose home automation, lighting control, security and
alarm systems, home networking, home theater and satellite systems, and a range of other home electronics products—as well as provide all design, engineering, and installation services for both new and retrofit construction. “In the modern world, where so many kinds of electronics are completely affordable, the only thing standing between the average consumer and really enjoying these products is the professional service factor to make it all work for you,” Suttle says.
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Sandstone Sanctuary At Amangiri Resort, harmony in landscape and form
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PHOTOS BY PETER OGILVIE | TEXT BY SUSAN BELL Long black shadows slice across winter grasses in the late afternoon light. Ten miles west of Lake Powell, we speed past an utterly discrete sign pointing the way to Amangiri. We double back and take a winding road that rises and dips around the bases of enormous sandstone buttes. A dead end at a simple unmarked gate announces our arrival. We press the key pad, which is answered by a female voice in a soft foreign accent. We have arrived at the Amangiri Resort at Canyon Point, Utah. The resort was a an 11-year collaboration between three internationally known Arizona architects—Rick Joy, Wendell Burnette, and Marwan Al-Sayed—who formed I-10 Studio, named for the interstate where they spent so much time while working on this project. The owners brought in Adrian Zecha, founder of the ultraluxe Aman resorts (now 23 strong worldwide), to manage the property. The architects are well-known for their inventive use of the desert vernacular; the building site, selected from 600 wild surrounding acres, reveals their profound sensitivity to this unique landscape. The result is a testament to more than 10 years of careful observation of how light, weather, and the seasons play upon the environment. Just outside the enormous doors to the reception area are four thoughtfully positioned granite blocks. Inscribed on top, at table height, are the four stanzas of a poem by Octavio Paz, Wind and Water and Stone. >
The water hollowed the stone, the wind dispersed the water, the stone stopped the wind. Water and wind and stone.
The wind sculpted the stone, the stone is a cup of water, the water runs off and is wind. Stone and wind and water.
The wind sings in its turnings, the water murmurs as it goes, the motionless stone is quiet. Wind and water and stone.
One is the other and is neither: among their empty names they pass and disappear, water and stone and wind.
Silent in slanting dusk light, sandstone cliffs loom behind the thin stripe of buildings tucked at their base and forming a rhythmical row of concrete verticals, windows, and doors.
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The soft foot of a monumental Entrada Sandstone cliff reaches out to the middle of the swimming pool, the sculptural focus for the living room, dining room, and library. Left: Cushions along one of the spa’s many pools invite repose and frame another restful view. Spaces soar. The mind wanders out and becomes quiet.
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In an outdoor lounge, dark Navajo-red shade cloth accents the tall concrete walls, made from sand gathered at the base of the eroding, subtly pigmented cliffs. The play of light across the perfectly framed view invites contemplation. Left: In the shadow of the cliffs, two open-air massage studios are accessed across a reflecting pool. Their slatted walls inscribe their spaces with shafts of light.
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No paths cut in front of the private views from each of the 34 suites. Privacy is complete. Exterior beds and fireplaces allow guests to enjoy the luxurious appointments of each suite as well as the unique view. The desert begins at the edge of the bed, just beyond the outdoor fireplace. Opposite: Transitions are seamless between interior and the exterior landscapes. Within the compound, concrete walls are softened by fruit trees and small vistas across reflecting pools. Sand sage, salt bush, and cliff rose spill naturally down the cliffs to the path edges. At sundown, lanterns placed artfully along the walkways guide guests with soft candlelight. The exercise pavilion’s lit stairway becomes cubist sculpture. R
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Santeros In a Time of Few Saints Spanish Colonial arts reaches a crossroads
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BY KEIKO OHNUMA PHOTOS BY PETER OGILVIE
RIGHT: PHOTOS BY PAUL SMUTKO/COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART. LEFT: GIFT OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF NEW MEXICO. A5.1959.12. RIGHT: GIFT OF BILL CUNNINGHAM AND WILSON COMPANY AND MARION C. MARTINEZ. A2001.27.1
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Modern impulses are banging down the doors at Spanish Market, and for the first time in its 60-year history, the guardians of New Mexico’s traditional Hispanic art forms are allowing the purity to crack open—a little. A new category is being introduced this year by the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, which sets the rules for what can and cannot sell at market: They’re calling it “Innovation Within Tradition.” Established artists may now count on seeing some nontraditional work get past the jurors. Many observers scoff that this is no more than very late recognition of what has already been happening since the 1800s, when homegrown arts such as the painting and sculpting of saints (santos) reached its height. How can anyone, in fact, be called a “colonial” artist in 2011? The label is fraught with contradictions, referring sometimes (as in the case of tinwork) to media that emerged only after the colonial era. Is it any wonder if some of the several hundred artists who show at Santa Fe’s two annual Spanish Markets would want to break out of the mold—show a saint in a modern setting, for a change, or use pigments out of a tube? The 82-year-old Spanish Colonial Arts Society (SCAS) still requires market artists to be at least a quarter Hispanic and to have family roots in the region. Within its 20-plus selling categories (the best known being colcha embroidery, straw appliqué, tinwork, furniture, and santos both two- and three-dimensional), exacting requirements have earned its standards committee the nickname “art Gestapo” among sellers. Typical orthodox imagery is how most saint-makers (santeros) learn their craft, but nearly all the top artists have since moved on, using new techniques and subject matter for off-market sales. “How many Saint Anthonys can you do?” exclaims Marie Romero Cash, one of the first women to break into the field in the 1970s. “If I was to still be doing the same things, I’d be taking Xanax.”>
Santo Niño de Atocha, polychrome bulto, artist and date unknown. A traditional bulto from the 1700s contrasts with, at right, the same saint in mixed media including circuit boards, compact disc, and wire, by Marion C. Martinez (2001–2002). Opposite: Luis Tapia carves a bulto.
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Charlie Carrillo at work on one of his unconventional santos: San Isidro Labrador driving a 1954 Ford tractor. Carillo’s saints-as-truck-drivers are considered perfect examples of “Innovation Within Tradition” by the Spanish Colonial Arts Society. Right: Hey Zeus (2009), an unconventional bulto by Arthur López that probably would not make it into Spanish Market.
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His contemporary Luis Tapia is perhaps the best-known example of that divergence. One of the few santeros to cross over into contemporary art museums, Tapia broke ground early on, painting his santos in bright colors and using them to address such contemporary dilemmas as illegal immigration and sexual abuse. Before long, he was asked to leave Spanish Market. Tapia says his work still deals with religious themes, so he remains grounded in the santero tradition—though he calls himself a sculptor now. He believes it’s natural for culture to evolve: “Stagnant water is not healthy,” he says. The SCAS may have had the noble goal of preserving culture, but “from my point of view they were destroying it— suppressing feelings, suppressing life. How can you ask someone to
RIGHT: MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART/PHOTO BY PAUL SMUTKO; IFAF COLLECTION, T.2010.451
Even a traditionalist like Charlie Carrillo, who was widely criticized for helping to tighten the rules for santeros in the 1980s because of his insistence on using hand-ground pigments, now advocates for contemporary iconography. His series of saints driving pickup trucks has proved popular enough that market director Maggie Magalnick points to them as a perfect example of what is meant by “Innovation Within Tradition.” For Carrillo, an academic as well as a santero, the key lies in telling a saint’s story accurately. He believes that variations in setting, style, and technique are acceptable interpretations; it’s when santeros start using the aesthetic language to comment on social issues that tradition gets left behind.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Marie Romero Cash at work on one of her bultos. Right: Her Four Horsemen from 2004.
express life as it was 200 years ago?” Their motivation, he suspects, is economic: Many santeros have made good money churning out traditional saints—the most successful of them selling out within minutes—and they don’t want to change. “And those same artists,” Tapia notes, “are now going in the direction that I took.” Pressure to allow more innovation may itself be driven by market forces, Cash suggests. She says she increasingly overhears buyers at market complain about sameness, putting pressure on artists to demand change. The paradoxical position at which the SCAS finds itself—advocating both innovation and tradition—lays bare the contradictions inherent in its mission to preserve and commodify tradition.
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opular legends notwithstanding, New Mexico’s santeros of the 1700s and 1800s hardly sprung up in the cultural vacuum that their admirers like to claim. Studies have found strong evidence of Native design motifs, as well as borrowings from a range of imagery, techniques, and art supplies introduced by trade. Moreover, what is now considered “traditional” Spanish Colonial is often a more recent hybrid. Nicolasa Chavez, curator of Spanish Colonial and contemporary Hispano/Latino collections at Santa Fe’s Museum of International Folk Art, notes that straw appliqué, for instance, was never used for religious subjects before the master revivalist Eliseo Rodriguez in the 1930s—after which everyone trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 87
n started doing it. The same is true for retablos in tin frames, as the two media appeared in different time periods. Yet such 20th century innovations are regularly seen at Spanish Market. In fact, folk art itself is a history of innovation, Chavez says, with the most famous “masters” being typically the ones who pushed their medium to a new level. Tey Marianna Nunn, a scholar of Hispanic/Latino art, offers the additional caveat that categories such as “traditional” and “folk art” tend to reflect the cultural biases of the Anglo art intelligentsia. The Hispanic community itself, she says, often has a very different relationship to its “art” objects. Santos, for example, started being made by local craftsmen in the 1700s to fill the huge demand for religious objects needed by Franciscan missionaries in their goal of converting the Native population. Production peaked in the late 1800s, then died down 88
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quickly with the arrival of imports by railroad. Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy (1814–1888) also contributed by ordering churches to destroy the homegrown saints, which he found grotesque and barbaric, and replace them with prints and plaster imports— though many remained safeguarded by the Penitente Brotherhood, an influential lay confraternity also suppressed by Lamy. With the influx of Anglo artists and intellectuals in the 20th century, the santos took on a new meaning. Fascinated with folk arts as a hedge against the dawning “machine age,” influential newcomers such as Frank Applegate and Mary Austin seized on the village crafts they found in New Mexico in the 1920s as symbols of an endangered past. It was in this same period that Indian Market was created—a parallel effort to turn cultural objects into collectible art, thus “rescuing” culture by commodifying it. The term “Spanish Colonial art” was born, along with programs (such as
LEFT AND OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF OWINGS DEWEY GALLERY
Fiesta at the Border by Luis Tapia, right, in his studio. Opposite: Luis Tapia, Man Without Heart.
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n Felix Lopez stands with San Isidro, a piece from 1984. Right: Santo Niño de Atocha (2008), carved for the chapel of the same name in Chimayo.
those created by the federal Works Progress Administration in the 1930s) to promote a renaissance of village arts that would generate both producers and collectors. In 1929 a group of influential Anglos founded the SCAS, borrowing use of the label “Spanish” to describe New Mexico’s poor, brown population—a rhetorical strategy applied since the drive for statehood to distinguish them from the mistrusted “Mexicans.” As Charles Montgomery quips in his 2002 critical history The Spanish Redemption: “The cachet of ‘Spanish colonial arts’ could attract a following . . . in numbers that ‘Mexican crafts’ could not have matched.” Like other labels re-appropriated from the dominant social group, this one ironically became over time a badge of identity and cultural pride for New Mexican Hispanos. To call oneself a Spanish colonial artist in the postmodern era is “a very political and deliberate way of communicating power, place, and identity,” says Nunn, who is 90
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now visual arts director at Albuquerque’s National Hispanic Cultural Center. It reflects “clever positioning” by contemporary santeros, she says, originating from the time when many of them took up carving—during the civil rights era.
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arrillo, Tapia, and Cash all started making santos in the 1970s, and all of them are self-taught. When they discovered the anemic Spanish Market under the portal at the Palace of Governors, it consisted of a couple dozen souls who eked out extra income selling unpainted wood carvings for around $35. All three artists say they were drawn by a desire to investigate and validate their little-understood Hispanic heritage. Refused by Santa Fe’s fine arts museum to exhibit their work, a group of these artists started mounting their own shows, says Nunn, which sparked collector interest. The revitalization of Spanish Market
BOTTOM: MUSEUM INFO TO BE ENTERED IF THE IMAGE STAYS IN LAYOUT
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in the 1960s and ’70s after It used to be that all sandecades of dormancy was thus teros aspired to holy lives, the driven by artists themselves. better to carve powerful sanAnd these artists have always tos. These sculptures were strived to “stretch,” says Nunn, treated as members of the as artists do by nature— family and community, spothough not necessarily in the ken to and dressed according easily recognized, boundless to the seasons. For Lopez, way of contemporary art. this is the crux of tradition: For example, both Carrillo reconnecting to a time when and Felix Lopez, another community and religious life highly respected santero, were one. The choice to creresearched the use of pigate santos traditionally—as ments, gessos, and varnishes sacred objects—thus reprefrom natural sources; both sents a quiet but powerful speak of it as a conscious form of cultural resistance. It refusal of things modern to overturns the Modernist defresurrect a past that had been inition of art as a practice in nearly lost. Growing up in the and for itself that upholds 1950s, says Lopez, “we were individual expression above not taught the history of this all else. That his highly area”—meaning the upper refined sculptures continue Rio Grande Valley, where he to fly under the radar of the still lives. “No one taught us art-loving public appears to anything about the history of be just fine with Lopez. New Mexico. They were tryBut what does it say about ing to teach us American histhe place of art in contempotory, about Washington and rary society? Banished to the Lincoln.” ghettoized category of “folk Lopez resented the call to art,” Hispanics who do creSan Francisco de Asis con Hermana Muerte (2007), set aside his culture, and in ative work within their tradia piece Lopez made with his son Joseph. a spirit of protest he earned a tion, like many others master’s degree and chose to around the world, suffer teach Spanish language at Española Valley High School for 21 years. from the same type of stereotyping as in society at large, says Nunn. With the death of his father in 1975, he changed direction and began Their art is immediately perceived as being not quite important to carve saints. enough to be studied or shown. “Eighty percent of artists repreIt was not a calling to art per se, nor to the medium of wood, but sented in Santa Fe galleries are not residents of this state,” Nunn rather a mission that arose out of his strong Catholic faith, to honor says heatedly. “I think it has a lot to do with the perception of Hishis cultural traditions and do something deeply meaningful with his panic art and the people and the community it comes from. It gets life. Unlike most santeros, Lopez will not sell to anyone he has not condensed down to what museums and galleries think, as opposed met, or without a compelling reason. Mostly he takes commissions to the artists’ dreams of what they could do.” for church sculpture and restoration of antique santos. Indeed, those two impulses are now poised to meet in the fight A soft-spoken, thoughtful man, he has been at work for three for the soul of Spanish Market—which is “taking us out of our comyears on a life-size Christ effigy in an open monument for the Sanfort zone,” admits the market’s Magalnick. Who or what does Spantuario de Chimayó. He credits his parents for strong grounding in ish Market serve today? Is it the demands of Santa Fe’s tourism the faith that used to hold together family and community in northeconomy, individual artists’ need for recognition, or the preservaern New Mexico against widespread, relentless poverty. Money still tion of an endangered culture? does not interest him, he says. He would prefer to be, as in his childSays Carrillo: “‘Innovation Within Tradition’ has opened the floodhood, “rich in other ways.” gates.”R trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 91
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CONSCIOUS BUILDING
BY STEVEN KOTLER | PHOTOS BY CHAS MCGRATH
Reconciling Opposites Bold and beastly yet soft and tranquil, this home also had to romance its site
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I
t could have been a schizophrenic disaster. When architect Efthimios Maniatis, 55, set out to build a house for Roger and Mary Downey in Corrales, north of Albuquerque, the main challenge was one of integration. The house had three clients: Roger wanted one kind of house, Mary wanted a second variation, and the monster cottonwood tree that dominated the lot demanded a third. Maniatis set out to make them all happy. “It wasn’t easy,” he says. “Mary is quiet, shy, and sensitive. Roger is loud, opinionated, and big—bigger than life, yet extremely focused and minimal. He only wears the same three pairs of pants, three shirts, three pairs of shoes. And I had to build a house that worked for both of them.” Not only did the house have to suit the owners’ wishes, it also had to respect the tree’s. “The tree was my third client,” says Maniatis, “but not just the tree. The tree was emblematic of the land and the neighborhood. This house isn’t being built in New York or Wisconsin or Atlanta. It’s a New Mexico house, and it was very important it felt native.” Roger Downey agrees. “I’m a huge Frank Lloyd Wright fan,” he says. “This house satisfies his core concerns: It’s natural to the site; it makes the building belong to the ground.” The result is a stunning synthesis: a bold, modern house (for Roger) blended with softer, Santa Fe-style architectural themes (for Mary) that are fused together in a way that—quite literally—worships the tree. The Downeys’ house is actually a collection of four square boxes totaling 3,400 square feet and arranged in a slightly curved line. The boxes
Encircling an old cottonwood tree that seemed to dictate the design of the house are, from left, the meditation room, bridge, master bedroom, living room, guest room, and garage. The rooflines communicate movement with the branches of the tree, while the colors of the house complement both earth and tree. Left: A rammed-earth wall bends along one side of the living room to draw attention to the rusted steel roof over the breezeway leading to the guest house. The combination of rustic and contemporary elements in the home is meant to elicit both calm and excitement.
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CONSCIOUS BUILDING
Roger Downey agrees. “I’m a huge Frank Lloyd Wright fan,” he says. “This house satisfies his core concerns: It’s natural to the site; it makes the building belong to the ground.”
Roger and Mary Downey Left: The bridge connecting the main hallway to a meditation room provides a transition from solidity to lightness. At the far end of the bridge, the Rio Grande can be seen through a frameless window. Top: An open floor plan unites the living room, dining area, and kitchen, separated from the hallway by a rammed-earth wall that contrasts with the softness of the plaster surfaces. The garage/barn is visible through the windows at left.
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In the bedroom, rammed-earth walls and wood floors offer rustic counterpoint to contemporary materials such as marble dust plaster and glass, which lighten the effect. Openings in unexpected places are designed to create a sense of magical movement from inside to out.
echo New Mexico’s predilection for family compounds, but they’re linked by a massive hallway, and that hallway is all Roger. “Roger likes to pace,” says Maniatis, “but he paces like a buffalo. I built a hallway for that.” His buffalo hallway is 120 feet long and almost 10 feet high, with two-foot-thick walls of rammed earth on both sides and polished concrete floors. It’s a beast. But it ends at Mary’s room. Actually it ends with a transition into Mary’s room. The hallway tapers into “the bridge,” a smaller hallway, quiet and calm. The exterior is clad in rusted steel, while the interior is lit Japanese style, with thin horizontal windows at ankle height. “Think of it this way,” says Maniatis. “Roger’s energy is very high. I wanted to create a space—the bridge—that calmed him down before he reached Mary’s room.” Mary’s room is also known as the meditation room. The interior structures are copied from a church in Truchas; the ceiling is a giant skylight. Of course, the couple also shares a few spaces, so Maniatis designed for that as well. The living room, for example, is a place
of mutual coexistence. While the back wall is more Roger—three feet thick, of rammed earth—the rest of the space is Mary: wood floors, white plaster around a fireplace, and a classic Santa Fe-style beamed ceiling. And the tree? Well, capping the house is a series of cantilevered slabs of steel. The area beneath the steel and above the rammed-earth walls is all windows. “We built it,” says Maniatis, “so you couldn’t ignore the tree. The house faces the tree, the roof lines converge on the tree, the windows that line the living room reveal the tree.” The tree is also front and center when one crosses another distinctive feature. On the other side of the line from Mary’s room is the guest house, which connects to the main compound via an outdoor walkway. Its roof is a floating plank of rusted steel, but the sides are open, and the tree, of course, is visible. “I think if Wright were alive to see it,” says Roger, “he would like this house. It’s open, simple, and different. Most importantly, as he stressed, it brings the outside in.” R trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 99
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the walk. the art. the vibe. the mingle.
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CHARLOTTE FOUST Hunter Kirkland Contemporary 200 – B Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501 phone 505.984.2111 fax 505.984.8111 www.hunterkirklandcontemporary.com Image: Undefined Element, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 48” × 60”
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Summer Art Shows 203 FINE ART July 8 – Aug. 6: Tom Dixon and Shaun Richel, Abstract – Taos, reception July 9 Aug. 12 – Sept. 10: Fritz Scholder, Paintings & Lithographs, reception Aug. 13 Sept. 16 – Oct. 15: Jack Smith, Recent Works, reception Sept.17
CHARLOTTE JACKSON FINE ART April 29 – May 31: Michael Roulliard, Framed Light 2005-2011 July 29 – Sept. 3: Constance DeJong: Sculpture and Drawing
DARNELL FINE ART April 26 – May 17: Gin Pollock, The Symmetry of Spring,reception April 29 May 24 – June 13: Susan Morosky, Undercurrents, reception May 27 June 21 – July 11: Jeri Ledbetter and Trina Badarak, Connections, reception June 24 July 19 – Aug. 8: Rebecca Crowell and Bill Gingles, reception July 22 Aug. 9 – Aug. 29: Claire McArdle and Rachel Darnell, Mysterium, reception Aug.12
July 29 – Sept. 24: Tony Angell, Arturo Chavez, Steve Kestrel, James Morgan, and Jeri Nichols Quinn, Romantic Contours, Modern Terrain, reception July 29
May 16 in Dallas: Wet, featuring paintings by Eric Zener and Conrad Kern, sculpture by Gino Mies
Aug. 5 – Sept. 17: G. Russell Case, reception Aug. 5
May 20 – June 15: Ashley Collins, reception May 20
Aug. 12 – Sept. 30: Exploitation and Celebration of the American Landscape, reception Aug. 12
July 3 – July 31: Rex Ray, New Work, reception July 15
Aug. 19 – Sept. 30: Darren Vigil Gray: Creative Process, reception Aug. 19
Aug. 1 – Sept. 4: Hung Liu, New Work, reception Aug. 5
HULSE/WARMAN GALLERY
VENTANA FINE ART
May 22: David Zimmerman photographs, Desert Landscapes
April 29: All Artists, Spring into Summer
HUNTER KIRKLAND CONTEMPORARY
June 17: Debra Corbett and Gregory Smith
May 27 – June 12: Jennifer J.L Jones, Serenata, reception May 27
May 13: Tamar Kander, Mystery of Interval July 1: John Axton
June 24 – July 10: Rick Stevens, Potentiality, reception June 24
July 15: Jean Richardson, Grace in Motion
July 22 – Aug. 7: Ted Gall and Michael Madzo, reception July 22
Aug. 19: John Axton, John Nieto, Rebecca Tobey, Indian Market
Aug. 12 – Aug. 25: Eric Boyer and Charlotte Foust, reception Aug. 12
JANE SAUER GALLERY May 20 – June 14: Cindy Hickok, Smiling with the Masters
EVOKE CONTEMPORARY
June 17 – July 12: Geoffrey Gorman, Animal Instincts
May: Lee Price, Full, reception May 6
July 15 – Aug. 9: Irina Zaytceva, Magical Worlds
June: Francis Di Fronzo, The Earth’s Sharp Edge, Part 2, and David Simon, New Works in Bronze, reception June 3
Aug. 12 – Sept. 9: Michael Bergt, About Face
July: Decadence, group show curated by John O’Hern, reception July 1
June: New line of William Spratling furniture
August: Louisa McElwain, Annual Solo Show, reception Aug. 5
TURNER CARROLL GALLERY
MARC NAVARRO GALLERY Aug. 11 – 13: Marc Navarro Gallery will be in Booth no. 1 at the Whitehawk Ethnographic Art Show at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center
July 29: Doug Dawson, Town and Country
WAXLANDER GALLERY AND SCULPTURE GARDEN May 24 – June 6: Phyllis Kapp: 80th Birthday Celebration, reception May 27 June 7 – 20: Michael Ethridge and Paul Cunningham, Coalescence, reception June 10 June 28 – July 11: Marshall Noice, The Transcendent Landscape, reception July 1 July 19 – Aug. 1: Andree Hudson, Color in Motion, reception July 22 Aug. 2 – 15: Suzanne Donazetti, Catching Light, reception Aug. 5 Aug. 16 – 29: Bruce King, Journey of My People, reception Aug. 19
GEBERT CONTEMPORARY
NEW CONCEPT GALLERY
Canyon Road location: May 27 – June 25: John Randall Nelson, Alternative Signs: New Paintings and Sculptures
May 6 – 30: Catalyst Arts: An Invitational Exhibition
July 8 – Aug. 8: Bim Koehler, Paintings
July 8 – Aug. 1: Jane Abrams, Ann Hosfeld, Reg Loving, Three Visions
June 1 – 30: Reid Richardson, Family Tree
Aug. 5 – 28: Aaron Karp, Lucy Maki, Tim Prythero, Maximalism
May 27 – June 21: Jane Cook + Carola Clift
Aug. 9: Francisco Castro-Lenero, New Paintings, reception Aug. 12 Sept. 2 – Oct. 1: Dirk De Bruycker, New Paintings South Guadalupe St. location: July 1 – Aug. 9: Jun Kaneko, Dangos, Glass, and Works on Paper
GERALD PETERS GALLERY April 29 – June 11: Albert Paley, reception April 29, Michael Glier, reception April 29
June 3 – July 4: Benefit for the Espanola Valley Humane Shelter
NÜART GALLERY May 6 – 22: Alberto Gálvez, En Tierra de Sueños Azules
WILLIAM AND JOSEPH GALLERY May 1– 31: paintings by Sally Crain-Jager, vessels by Bradley Bowers, Dialogue, A Show of Words, reception May 6
WILLIAM SIEGAL GALLERY June 24 – July 26: Paula Castillo + Indonesian Lawon textiles
May 27 – June 12: Randall Reid, Evidence of a Society
July 29 – Aug. 23: Judy Tuwaletstiwa + African Kuba cloth
May 27 – June 12: Erin Cone, Denouement
Aug. 26 – Sept. 27: Woody Shepherd
June 24 – July 10: Francisco Benítez, Ut Pictura Poesis
May 13 – June 4: Naturalism New Works
July 15 – 31: Hyunmee Lee
June 20 – July 30: Santa Fe Art Colony
Aug. 5 – 21: Erik Gonzales
ZANE BENNETT CONTEMPORARY ART April 29 – May 20: Guy Dill and New Mexico Women in the Arts May 27 – June 17: Steve Joy and Jonathan Blaustein
July 1 – July 30: Ted Waddell, reception July 1
PEYTON WRIGHT GALLERY
June 17 – July 23: Light, Form, Reverie: Thomas Aquinas Daly, Elizabeth Wadleigh Leary, Walter Matia, Thomas Quinn, and John Sharp, reception June 17
May 1 – July 1: American Modernist Works from the Estates July 1 – Aug. 3: Oskar Fischinger, Visual Music
July 29 – Aug. 26: Donald Woodman and Mimmo Paladino
July 8 – Aug. 6: Carol Anthony and John Felsing, Landscape of Memory, reception July 8
Aug. 5 – Sept. 28: Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Modern Synchronism
Aug. 26 – Sept. 23: Gail Bird, Yazzie Johnson, and Olivier Mosset (Mosset through Sept. 30)
July 8 – Aug. 21: 3 Perspectives: Woodblock Prints and Pastels by Leon Loughridge, reception July 8
June 24 – July 22: Holly Roberts and Colette Hosmer
PIPPIN MEIKLE FINE ART May 1: Aleta Pippin is pleased to announce the opening of a second location, Pippin Contemporary, at 125 Lincoln Avenue.
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ART MATTERS
BY KATHRYN M DAVIS
Living Artfully What artists have to teach us about creative block
If you asked the man on the street in Anytown, USA, he’d probably tell you that artists are somehow different from the rest of us, that they live lives of inspiration in a state of perpetual mania—when they’re not busy being tortured by their muses. Certainly in the past we limited our perception of artists as human beings by our expectations that they were constantly in a state of active creation, with “creation” understood loosely as producing original objects. This Modernist myth of the artist as tortured genius, as borne by those archetypes of despair, Vincent Van Gogh and Jackson Pollock, taught us that artists were different, touched by the fevered madness unique to their tribe. Once Postmodernism arrived by the 1980s in all its baffling pluralism, we countered the old paradigm of the artist-asgenius with new notions of living artfully—something anyone anywhere could learn and commit to. Artists do not need to be epileptic, severely depressed, or untreated alcoholics to win us over to their unique abilities; madness is no longer required. In the daily news we look to regular people who make heroic choices—ordinary folks like your child’s teacher, a local legislator who stands up to heavily financed lobbyists for the good of the public, the ordinary people at the soup kitchen who show up every day to feed hungry families—who demonstrate how to live with inspiration, as humbly and courageously as possible. Each of us in our own way seeks to construct a meaningful life. We turn to others as role models, particularly when times get tough. Artists today offer particularly good examples of how to live an examined life. 126 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
The world lost “a bright and shining heart” in full pursuit of a thoroughly examined life when conceptual artist Helmut Löhr, a vibrantly handsome 55year-old, died this past Christmas Day. [See “Artist, Science,Visionary,” page 188.] As Cyndi Conn, co-owner of the gallery Launchprojects, penned in her blog of January 3, Lohr was an individual of “incredible intuition [who made] remarkable contributions to the art world. We have lost an elegant and pioneering voice in art, performance, music, energy work, and about how his art meshed with his way of life . . .. The entirety of his existence was artful and everyone who made the pilgrimage to see him [at his home and studio outside Santa Fe] came back restored, inspired, joyful.” Lohr was first a gentle man and second an artist whose
COLLECTION LANNAN FOUNDATION; LONG-TERM LOAN TO DIA ART FOUNDATION, NEW YORK/COURTESY SPERONE WESTWATER, NEW YORK/© 2009 BRUCE NAUMAN / ARTIST RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
Bruce Nauman, Mapping the Studio I: Fat Chance John Cage, six-hour multi-channel video installation (2001).
work motivated those who came into contact with him around the world, from his native Germany to his beloved adopted New Mexico. It was Lohr the artist who inspired us, but it was his integrity and generosity of spirit as a human being that were integral to our experience of him as “artful.” In pondering our loss, we can bring Lohr’s legacy into the dialogue as we seek to discover what it is exactly about art and artists that moves us. Works of art absolutely excite the phenomenon of inspiration, but artists as contemporaries also serve as models for an “artful” existence—living with a willingness to look deeply and honestly at what it means to be human in a world filled with billions of individuals who suffer and die. In the Western world, at least, it
seems that we expect our artists to take on the role of Christ or Buddha in the guise of Everyman. Artists offer us hope; not only does their art speak to a kind of fearless faith, so do their personal lives. Living artfully means facing our demons, and most of us would rather do anything but. As the internationally known artist Bruce Nauman said in a 1979 interview (see the wonderful book Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words, MIT Press, 2003), “An artist is put in the position of questioning one’s lifestyle more than most people.” A lifetime of making conceptual art that deals precisely with this question led Nauman to conclude (in the same interview) “that I was an artist and . . . whatever it was I was doing in the studio must be art.” What a relief, then, for a struggling human to discover the subtly powerful theme that drives the 2001 real-time, six-hour video installation Mapping the Studio I: Fat Chance John Cage: that making art includes those dreaded and dreadfully all-encompassing moments when nothing seems to be happening. We tend to suppose that creativity looks like a painter attacking the easel, jauntily laying down passages of pure color; the sculptor feverishly chipping away to free the figure trapped within the stone; the author typing in a storm of narration, driven by a brilliant flood of words. But that’s not how most artful types experience it. Committing to a life of vision is an act of intellect and will as much as it entails a certain talent—for masochism, perhaps. Consider the following from London’s Tate Museum website on Nauman’s Mapping the Studio: trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 127
Louise Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father, plaster, latex, wood, fabric, and red light (1974).
Confronted with “What to do?” in his studio soon after graduating, Nauman had the simple but profound realization that if he is an artist, everything he does in the studio is art. This early revelation is fundamental to understanding his creative output, and particularly relevant to an exploration of Mapping the Studio where the artist’s immediate environment—his studio—becomes the subject of the art. Nauman had placed a night-vision video camera in his studio in Galisteo, New Mexico, ostensibly to track cat-and-mouse activities. The results, Mapping the Studio (in two versions), reveal more than whether the cats were catching any of that spring’s unusually high population of field mice; it shows viewers just how bereft of fecundity the artist’s studio can be, and exposes long stretches of nominal goings-on that are necessary as a prelude—a stewing period, if you will—to the “making” part of art. Read how Michael Auping, chief curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas and a long-time follower of Nauman’s, put it in “A Thousand Words,” his March 2002 Artforum interview: Those of us who aren’t artists don’t know the anxiety of emptiness a studio can provoke. I imagine this piece gets us pretty close. It’s this sense of vacuousness— the long periods of inaction—that is the strength of the piece. Nauman is literally putting us in his place, watching and waiting for the next idea, which happens to be about watching and waiting for the next idea. 128 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman admitted to having been confounded by the work’s duration and dullness. Upon deeper contemplation, however, he found it “a grueling, weirdly beautiful meditation on nothingness and artist’s block.” Meditating on artist’s block? It takes courage to seek out and nurture the Kalian dark side of creation and the neardaily endurance test of being an artist. Widely held as one of the world’s best sculptors until her death at age 98 in 2010, Louise Bourgeois didn’t realize success until late in life; she embraced it gleefully after years of persistence and hard work. Born in 1911, she was finally given a retrospective exhibition in 1981 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The French-born artist lived in New York for
COURTESY CHEIM & READ, HAUSER & WIRTH AND GALERIE KARSTEN GREVE/PHOTO: RAFAEL LOBATO
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Louise Bourgeois, Maman, bronze (1999).
most of her adult life, raising three sons with her art-historian husband. Even as late as 1993, she was considered too unimportant to be included in the Royal Academy of Art’s roundup of American artists. Now British artists of such renown as Rachel Whiteread and Stella Vine cite Bourgeois as “one of the greatest artists ever.” Arguably, she is best known for three series of works, all autobiographical: Maman, monumental bronze spiders that stand in for the patient homemaker who was the artist’s mother; Cells, installation pieces about growing up with psychological uncertainty, even trauma; and Destruction of the Father, a series that deals with her relationship, on many levels, with a tyrant for a father. That her father had an ongoing tacit extramarital
tryst with his daughter’s English teacher and nanny helped drive Bourgeois’ determined investigation into the physicality of memory. Her work is nothing like Nauman’s, yet these two have made a life of looking under rocks for the slimy, wriggling bits that are integral to an honest autobiography. Bourgeois mined her own obsessively hoarded secrets—her hatred and fear of her father and his cruel dominance over his family— while Nauman focuses his work on the most direct question an artist can ask of himself: What does it mean to be an artist? This urge toward profound inquiry into the most personal and paradoxically universal problems artists face as human beings is not exclusive to the established and internationally known. Emerging artists know, perhaps better than most, the agony of constant self-examination; alongside financial instability, it is what causes so many to give up work and get a “real” job. As young Santa Fe artist Clayton Porter frames his experience with artist’s block: “You try to incorporate your life into your work. My life informs my work, so that even though I might feel guilty about not working, I’m always working. I don’t directly talk about my life situations in my work, but my art exposes them completely anyway.” In other words, living as an artist demands a certain element of fearless exploration into the darkness of those moments, however long they may persist, before the voila! of creation reveals itself. After all, concludes Porter, “[Making art is] about struggle, and we all deal with it—everybody. I think the best pieces of art are the ones that expose that struggle.” R trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 129
Cody Sanderson
LEFT AND RIGHT: GABRIELLA MARKS (2)
codysanderson.com | cody@codysanderson.com
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ody Sanderson creates spiky silver bracelets for feisty women (and men) who like that visually dangerous look. His playful, inventive pieces in sterling and fine (100 percent) silver and gold sometimes open on hinges, twist, or offer other surprises for those who crave a bit of childlike wonder. But mostly he designs for himself, for the pure pleasure of revving his nonstop imagination, honing traditional and innovative techniques, and watching to see what will emerge.
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Sanderson, of Diné (Navajo) heritage, has been creating jewelry fulltime since 2001. His work has earned numerous top awards, including Best of Show at the 2008 Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market, where he wowed the judges with his version of a sterling silver Rubik’s Cube. In bracelets, belt buckles, necklaces, pendants, and rings, abstract and geometric designs are joined by imagery inspired by spiders and crustaceans. All pieces are hand-fabricated using metalworking methods including casting, forging, bending, stamping, and repoussé.
CODY SANDERSON (3)
Another practice the artist enjoys is combining function and fun. The latest in his series of sterling silver flasks, for example, is a necklace/pendant in the shape of a fist-sized heart. Incorporating 22-carat gold, the anatomically correct human heart is inlaid with blood-colored coral. The top screws off so the wearer can carry libations inside. While continuing to create innovative jewelry, Sanderson hopes to offer his design skills for collaboration with design houses on such items as home furnishings and fashion hardware, as well as move into public art. “I’m not limiting myself to the jewelry realm,” he declares. “I feel like I’m just getting started.”
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Artist
STUDIO
BY WESLEY PULKKA PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL
Abstract Emotionalism No single medium or style can speak this idiosyncratic visual language
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anta Fe multimedia artist Carlos Carulo of Santiago, Chile, moved to the City Different in 1974 after several years of architecture and fine arts studies and travel around Chile, England, and Sweden. Following a brief return to Chile to reconnect with family, Carulo visited friends in Deming, New Mexico, who urged him to consider Santa Fe as a possible home. At first sight, “I fell in love, and I’ve lived here ever since,” Carulo says. For 10 years Carulo has lived and worked in a quiet neighborhood on Santa Fe’s west side. Despite high ceilings, uncluttered floors, and generous track lighting, the voluminous, well-appointed studio barely contains his creative imagination. The walls teem with muralscale paintings interspersed with sketches, beautifully executed abstract metal sculptures, and small maquettes. Several works in progress occupy one end of the studio opposite some comfortable chairs, a round table, and a small sofa. Carulo has manifested a living workspace that echoes his disarming, graceful personality. He is currently preparing for a spring exhibition with Riva Yares Gallery that will include some works from his Artifacts series that were included in his new book. “I’m trying to create whole worlds to contain the fragments of artifacts I’ve already been working with,” he notes with a sweep of his hand toward the easel end of the studio. Over the years, Carulo has explored a variety of subjects and styles, including his wildly successful Pueblo series. But he keeps returning to surrealism and abstraction. His complex compositions include figurative elements, mechanical references, Mesoamerican iconography, and his own visual grammar. “My work is always changing, and my newest paintings could be bracketed in Abstract Expressionism, but I call them Situationalism, something that [Jackson] Pollock was talking about during his lifetime. Pollock named what he was doing Situational art, but historians dropped that ball. I think of my paintings as responses to emotional situations as they come to you in an abstract way.” Carulo’s view of abstraction is shared by others, including the late Taos artist Agnes Martin, who referred to her pale-hued minimalist paintings as expressions of abstract emotions. His powerful canvases and works on paper automatically trigger visceral responses. The juicily foreboding dark lines, intense colors, and complicated forms are a far cry from the safely bland corporate office art or hackneyed nostalgia occupying many contemporary galleries. 134 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
Carlos Carulo sits in front of his Artifacto Grande, a 6 × 6 foot mural in his studio. Opposite top: Maoi #4, a painted aluminum sculpture, is part of a series inspired by the monumental heads on Easter Island. Opposite bottom: Several works in progress surround Carulo’s mural Reformation over Yellow on the studio wall.
Carulo is an able artist and excellent draftsman who brings skillful execution and a playful imagination to any medium or style. But his first love is abstraction. “In many ways I see realism as an enemy of contemporary art. Traditional realism becomes a habit that prevents many people from being able to see in new and different ways,” he says. “Our perception of reality is always changing; there are no fixed points of reference, so we have to keep our eyes and minds open to new possibilities.” Carulo’s expansive view of art is informed in part by his admiration for Chilean artist Roberto Matta, who also studied architecture before art, and by Pablo Picasso. He sees enormous value in both artists’ symbology and mastery of abstraction, and he occasionally emulates specific works, such as Picasso’s Guernica or Matta’s A Grave Situation. “I’ve always been amused by Picasso’s statement that master artists copy, while geniuses steal,” he says with a broad smile. Though Picasso and Matta were also sculptors, Carulo’s favorite is Eduardo Chillida, a Basque artist who quit professional soccer to
become a world-renowned monumental sculptor. More to the point, Carulo sees freedom of expression growing from his ability, like that of his artistic models, to move between two- and three-dimensional media. Sculpture has been a large part of his creative process, for which he credits his early architectural studies as well as the three-dimensional quality in many of his early paintings. But because sculpture is more time-consuming and labor intensive, for the past four years Carulo has accepted commissions only. He is also looking forward to teaching a painting class this spring. “We are going to study the philosophical basis for abstract painting while reviewing art history from the Renaissance to the present. But my goal is to empower the students not to paint what their eyes see, but to paint what they feel. I want them to express the emotion of really seeing something or experiencing something in a specific situation,” Carulo says. Now 61 years old, Carulo says he has to “reinvent” himself every few years “to pique my curiosity and to ask new questions in my work. The world is changing so fast, and new ideas flow so rapidly. There is no stopping or final destination. Every day is a new possibility.” R
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Artist
STUDIO
BY WESLEY PULKKA | PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL
Dream Weaver
Assemblage serves as a creative roadmap to a house—and life—strewn with memories
Andrea Senutovitch’s dog Misha guards Reliquary Ship and several untitled sculptures in the artist’s living room.
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he late Surrealist Salvador Dali would be jealous of assemblage artist Andrea Senutovitch’s total immersion in the world of dreams and memories. Her antiquities-adorned Santa Fe home and underground studio with entrance hidden behind a hinged bookcase are a Surrealist’s paradise. Both spaces are packed from floor to vigas with fragments of forgotten eras, including Victorian door moldings, African sculptures, a wheeled boat with X-ray film sails, and a tarnished silver C-melody saxophone. Visual cacophony does not begin to express the overwhelming effect of so many disparate objects occupying every available nook, cranny, and flat surface. Senutovitch floats through it all with familiar ease. This comfortably claustrophobic interior, which of course spills into the front and back yards, is her palette, sketchbook, easel, brush, and chisel. With them, she creates romantic dramas interlacing fact and fiction into seamless sagas of the human spirit. In the catalog for the 2008 exhibition Alchemy: Collage and Assemblage at 516 Arts in Albuquerque, Senutovitch wrote of her work: “I am a collector and caretaker of objects with soul. I work with assemblage and collage because I’m a storyteller by nature. These
objects are my pen, the rhythm of my ink . . .. They are maps, songs in D-minor, a soup of intentions, a mix of melancholy, laughter, loss, hope, and despair. They are made of dreams and moments of brief awakening.” Senutovitch’s comfort among an evergrowing collection of belongings belies her childhood spent in foster care while her father and mother burned through five marriages each. Born in Española and raised in Santa Fe and on the East Coast, Senutovitch came home to the City Different as an adult in search of her roots and a place to explore her restless imagination. She also wanted to establish a real home in which to finally grow unimpeded by the expectations of others. While living back east, Senutovitch was accepted into the Rhode Island School of Design. Armed with this validation of her artistic yearnings, she excitedly contacted her grandfather, renowned Santa Fe printmaker Willard Clark, who refused her request for financial aid because he lacked confidence in her talent. This came as a harsh blow to a fledgling artist. Along the way, Senutovitch married and divorced photographer Robert Stivers, who remains a good friend and doting father to their 20-year-old daughter. The former couple exhibits together and has an upcoming show in Los Angeles. Now in her forties, Senutovitch has returned to her art studies and is in her junior year at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design (formerly College of Santa Fe). She says she truly enjoys working in an environment filled with young people with fresh views of the world. “My real art career began after my grandfather passed away in 1992,” she says. “I had to start at the beginning and discover Tasha Ostrander’s butterfly, Joseph Cornell’s poetic boxes and eccentric personal life, Salvador Dali’s collages, Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, Kurt Schwitters’ collages, and works by many others. But my most heartfelt inspiration comes from primitive art and my grandfather’s collection of African art.” Her visit to a Cornell exhibit in San Francisco brought tears to her eyes. “I felt overwhelmed by his writings and seeing the pieces in person. I understood their chatter.
I would have liked to have met him.” Senutovitch is blessed with a resilient, ethereal, magical personality that stiffens with resolve when confronted with adversity. She is not cowering in a cluttered corner steeped in hand-wringing self-pity or regret, but celebrating her Russian-Armenian aristocratic ancestry as well as her soul connection with all the storied objects that she willingly shares with others who love content-laden narrative art. “There is a certain alchemy that happens, a type of magic, a secret language spoken when these objects are assembled in particular ways,” she says. “They retell the archaeology of their travels—the owners that touched them, the reasons they sing.” She writes about beetles, and collects bug boxes and toy soldiers. Though once attached to familial things, she is in the process of letting go. Now in midlife she is readying to take flight and begin life anew. In a year or so, she will take the love of her life and her small menagerie of animals, and move. Senutovitch looks forward, she says, to a time when she can settle in to write, make art when it calls out, and just be. R
An untitled sculpture adorns an antique table in the living room. Left: Senutovitch works on a new piece in the sculpture studio of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design.
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Artist
STUDIO
BY WESLEY PULKKA | PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL
Four-Dimensional Sculpture Clay objects strive to embody nature and beyond
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oets are able to imagine motion within stone walls or mountainsides. They understand liminal form—that which is on the verge of coming into being for the observer. Contemplative ceramic sculptor and educator James Marshall works at the edge of awareness to create elegant clay forms bathed in luscious monochrome glazes that speak to the viewer’s inner being. His long-running Liminal Objects series is the result of years of experience in the arts and, more importantly for Marshall, his time spent hiking, snowshoeing, and skiing. “The nature of the mountains is a real foundational part of my life. There’s a presence that mountains are—that quietness and solid stillness. That is a large part of my work.” His sculpture echoes wave forms, rock cliff edges, rolling foothills, and the things we see not quite in focus nor identifiable, amorphous shapes that might be ships at sea or trees along the shore or a mountain lion fashioned of logs and stone. Marshall’s home and workshop on the far west side of Santa Fe are located along an unpaved road that snakes out toward open country. Filled with pieces both finished and in progress, his cluttered studio is an honest production environment housing clay, powdered glazes, a large electric kiln, work tables, lots of shelves, and hand tools. Like Henri Matisse, Marshall first studied law before turning to art. Then he took a crafts class in his senior year as an undergraduate. “It wasn’t even a fine arts course, but I tried working with clay, and that was it,” he says. “It was like waking up from a dream. I’m not exaggerating—it was profound.” Glazed ceramic pieces in progress in Marshall’s studio.
PPHOTOS OF ARTWORK COURTESY OF JAMES MARSHALL
Top left: Orange #330, a glazed ceramic sculpture, explores the liminal edges of form. Bottom left: Blue #355, a contemplative sculpture of monumental size. Right: James Marshall takes a short break in his ceramics studio.
After that, Marshall went into the Peace Corps in Guatemala, where he wound up becoming a potter’s apprentice, throwing bowls for five months and working eight hours a day. He followed this experience with graduate school at the University of Michigan School of Art, where he earned a master of fine arts and began work as an independent artist. By the early 1990s, Marshall was showing at the Sena Galleries in Santa Fe, where he exhibited mythically inspired wood and mixedmedia sculptures. It all ground to a halt in 1993. “I was living a very one-dimensional life at that point,” he explains. “I spent every waking hour building sculpture, looking for places to show, and in general pushing myself to be successful. I finally went broke and quit the art scene.” For the next eight years he ran a successful design studio where he completed and sold more than 130 functional objects and pieces of furniture in wood, steel, and brass. “Once I let go, I finally was making a living, and for the first time in 20 years I took vacations, went skiing, walked in the woods, had money in the bank, and had girlfriends. It was great,” he says. In 1999 he was offered a job as lead instructor in the ceramics department at Santa Fe Community College, where he still teaches ceramics, drawing, studio practice, and three-dimensional design. “It was fun working with these high-energy students who also
loved clay—but I didn’t jump right back into making art again.” Two dreams inspired his return to the studio. “I was visiting a gallery full of really bland ceramic sculpture. As I turned to leave in disgust, I realized that I was holding a large ball of wet clay. In the second dream, I visited a show that turned out to be my work. In the center of the gallery was a four-foot-tall stylized vessel that looked like a plastic detergent bottle. It was covered with a bubblegum-pink glaze.” Until then, Marshall had never worked with bright colors nor taken interest in industrial shapes. “I decided to let those dreams guide me, and it has turned out to be a very good decision.” In his artist statement for the 2008 Liminal Objects solo show at Winterowd Fine Art in Santa Fe, Marshall writes: “My desire as an artist is to create beautiful objects that are a colorful presence. The essence of this work, then, is really color and light and how color and light of a form radiates into the life. What motivates me is the question: When does an ordinary object move into other dimensions? It is this ‘unidentified’ dimension of a form that intrigues me the most . . .. There is a deep beauty that resides inside of the indeterminate, the saturated Chroma, the light that radiates out into the life. A life where everything is what it is and nothing is what it seems. Where color, energy, light, and form merge into one. That is where I do my work.” R trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 139
Artist
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BY WESLEY PULKKA | PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL
Temple of Possibility The studio and everything in it are questioned by the sculptor’s hand
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culptor, percussionist (jazz drums and piano), and hands-on rugged individualist Alexander “Sandy” Brown built his art career, home, and studio from the ground up—literally— with a little help from his friends and mentors along the way. Built from age-old materials, his large adobe home and grandscale studio sit on five rural acres atop a winding driveway that climbs a steep hill southeast of Santa Fe. The property imparts a sense of antiquity, while showcasing a contemporary sculptor’s sensitivity to design, form, and the nature of built-to-last architecture. “I spent 20 years working in a one-car adobe garage in Santa Fe, so when I discovered an inexpensive way to refinance my house back in 2002, I set aside enough to build a real studio,” Brown says. The soaring structure is adorned with and supported by large buttresses that recall the St. Francis of Assisi Church in Ranchos de Taos. Though deeply devoted to his craft as a metalworker and stonemason, Brown stops short of identifying his studio as an art temple. Yet a persistent feeling of spirituality remains. Thanks to Brown’s “sweat equity,” careful materials management, and the generosity of several friends, the massive building was completed in five months on a shoestring budget. Under 20-foot ceilings, one finds a hammer mill for steel forming, a plasma cutter, welding equipment, air compressor, workstations 140 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
and benches, and enough hand and power tools to get the job done in whatever materials strike his fancy. Brown is well-read and has looked at a lot of art in the past 30 years. He readily acknowledges his work is a blend of Asian and Western aesthetics. He admires artists like Henry Moore, Larry Bell, David Smith, Tom Joyce, and Isamu Noguchi, who bridged Asian and Western art throughout his long career. Brown’s hungry eyes have led him to create works that are darkly medieval and seemingly touched with ancient wisdom yet able to articulate contemporary art values. In metal works such as Fabula Mundi, he uses the Chinese symbol of the universe, Pi (“bee”), as a basis for a stylized landscape including architectonic elements. Brown blends stone and steel in Concentric Nirvana, a forceful work perfectly executed in monumental scale that exudes agelessness. Several works in his home also offer mute testimony to Brown’s broad visual vocabulary and perfectionist’s hand skills. Current explorations include forms that allow light to pass through and experiments with pattern formations on vibrating surfaces. “It’s hard to know exactly where these models and trials will take my work, but I really need to clear my head by taking off on a different point of departure and just see where it leads,” Brown says. “I can always do what I already know how to do,
BOTTOM RIGHT: COURTESY OF ARTIST
when the need arises.” Though he is holding back on major projects until a recent wrist injury has time to heal, Brown did manage to manifest a large, roughly four-footdiameter, circular steel piece made of 1½-inch intersecting steel plates that must weigh at least a thousand pounds. The craft paper maquette, on the other hand, fits easily in the palm of his hand. “I enjoy building small maquettes, and visualize them at a monumental scale that you could drive or walk through,” Brown says. “But those largescale commissions are difficult to land.”
Conversation with Brown in his living room, with its huge Anasazi-style stone fireplace and cross-cultural artifacts, covers a myriad of topics, from art-making to art marketing, philosophy to politics, crop circles to mandalas, old cars to the latest technologies. He enthusiastically explains that the builder of an electric bicycle in this last category had included a small trailer to haul children or groceries. “I’d love to build one of those for running errands. It’s practical and fun at the same time.” A few minutes later, he is considering the ethical dilemmas of artists who are under enormous pressure to produce new, original images while being surrounded by works created by other artists. Who, he asks, owns the vocabulary? “Can an artist copyright a triangle or a square? I think we need to share the language and add our individual voices to the greater context. If you look at an architect like Antoine Predock, who immediately acknowledges all of his mentors and influences, you recognize that originality comes from experience—through the embrace of everything around you.” It is a model he clearly takes to heart. R
Axiom, of welded and forged steel, unites medieval European artifacts with contemporary art. Top: In the foreground is Constellation Dream Box, with an untitled piece on the wall and Four One on the table, from three series of works in forged steel. Left: An untitled steel sculpture lies in the doorway of Brown’s studio. Opposite: Alexander “Sandy” Brown designed and built his huge studio with a group of friends.
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144 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
PHOTO: GAB RI E LLA MARQU E Z
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Natural by Design
BY ELIZABETH HARBALL
Learning to Go With the Flow New Mexico’s rivers and otters both gain from reintroduction
I
LEFT: JAMES N. STUART; RIGHT: DAN J. WILLIAMS
t was a lucky break for 33 Washington state river otters. Their habitat in Puget Sound was beginning to conflict with housing developments and boat marinas, and residents saw them as a nuisance. After being trapped by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it was likely that the animals would be destroyed. Instead, thanks to a remarkable effort by a coalition of community groups, the otters recently found a new home in New Mexico. They are the first otters to live in New Mexico since the 1950s. More than a hundred years ago they thrived in the Gila, Rio Grande, Mora, San Juan, and Canadian rivers. But overhunting, habitat destruction, and deteriorating water quality led to their extinction here. The last Bravos, the Earth Friends river otter documented in Wild Species Fund, Center New Mexico was in 1953, for Biological Diversity, though their populations Defenders of Wildlife, Four showed extensive damage Corners Institute, New starting in the 1890s Mexico Wildlife Federabecause of heavy trapping. tion, Rio Grande Chapter A number of local conservaof the Sierra Club, Upper tion groups felt that returnGila Watershed Alliance, ing otters to the state’s and the U.S. Bureau of rivers would help restabilize Land Management. Taos ecosystems that had been Pueblo was also a major damaged by their disappearplayer, allowing the release ance. New Mexico Friends of river otters onto its land. of River Otters, formed in “It was a true collabora2001, began a long process tion,” says Melissa Savage of surveys and meetings to of Four Corners Institute. accomplish their goal of “Everyone pitched in—it reintroducing otters to New was a very good working Mexico. group.” The North American Savage is a retired geogriver otter is a playful mamraphy professor, and has mal highly adapted to aquatic life. Its tunnels and Otters were released into the upper Rio Grande in Taos County beginning in October 2008 been working to preserve dens are found on the through an agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services in natural resources all her shores of ponds, rivers, and Washington state. With the cooperation of Taos Pueblo, New Mexico Game and Fish life. Four Corners Institute Department, and a coalition known as Friends of the River Otter, animals that were considered lakes. Its webbed feet and a nuisance in Washington were released at Taos Pueblo. Left: Rio Grande Gorge in Taos County. was established to help water-repellent fur make it New Mexico communities states reintroduced river otters to areas a fantastic swimmer, with a streamlined protect their environments, with a focus where they were either dwindling or body and tail that propels it swiftly through on forest restoration. But Savage found her extinct. Three of New Mexico’s neighthe water. Highly social animals, otters are involvement in the otter restoration effort bors—Arizona, Colorado, and Utah—have often observed playing in groups. One of to be one of the most rewarding projects initiated otter reintroduction programs. their favorite pastimes is sliding down of her career. “With all my work in forest The New Mexico effort began in 2001. muddy or icy embankments into the water. policy, it is hard to know what the outcome Funded by nongovernmental organizaDifferent species of otters live in healthy will be,” she says. “Two hundred years tions, the reintroduction of river otters has rivers all over the world. from now, there will be otters in New Mexbeen a major accomplishment for the Otter reintroduction is not without ico, and to that I owe a lot of satisfaction many parties involved, including Amigos precedent. Beginning in the 1970s, 21 for the work.” > trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 149
Natural by Design
and that the introduction of otters from elsewhere could dilute and eliminate the subspecies. That’s why New Mexico lagged behind other states in its reintroduction efforts. But after a number of surveys of the state’s river systems, no otters of the subspecies were found. Other evaluations needed to be made as well. Before otters could be released, it was necessary to determine whether targeted areas provided good habitat and sufficient food sources. Assessments were made throughout the state that considered fish and crayfish populations, water quality,
Amigos Bravos Formed in 1988, Amigos Bravos is a Taos-based conservation group dedicated to protecting New Mexico’s rivers and the Rio Grande watershed. The organization has three main goals: to hold polluters accountable, to protect and restore watershed health (which includes reintroducing native species), and to create a movement to protect New Mexico’s rivers. Projects have included advocating for mining reform at the Molycorp mine in Questa, petitioning for safer dairy-lot regulations, and campaigning for an end to toxic dumping by Los Alamos National Laboratories. Amigos Bravos aims to ensure that the state’s waters remain healthy and safe for river otters and the people who enjoy them. For more information, go to amigosbravos.org
150 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
and consistency of water flow. Beaver populations were also a major consideration. Otters often convert beaver tunnels and lodges into their own homes, and beaver dams foster large fish populations that attract otters. The otters’ impact on their new environment was a concern, as that might not be apparent immediately as the animals dispersed. A number of endangered aquatic species live in New Mexico, including the Chiricahua leopard frog, the Gila trout, and several species of chub. Much care was taken to ensure that the otters were
WILDLIFE RESOURCES Center for Biological Diversity: biologicaldiversity.org New Mexico office: Silver City, 575-388-8799 Four Corners Institute: Santa Fe, 505-983-8515 New Mexico Wildlife Federation: nmwildlife.org Albuquerque, 505-299-5404 Upper Gila Watershed Alliance: ugwa.org Gila, 575-590-5698
LEFT AND CENTER: JAMES N. STUART (2)
Rachel Conn, a founding member of New Mexico Friends of River Otters, was also instrumental in the restoration effort. The otter reintroduction was one of her first projects with Amigos Bravos as they helped the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish compile a feasibility study and conduct public information meetings. One of Conn’s first tasks with New Mexico Friends of River Otters was to discover whether the otters had indeed disappeared from New Mexico’s rivers. There was some concern that a subspecies known as the Southwestern river otter might still exist,
RIGHT: DAN J. WILLIAMS/NEW MEXICO GAME AND FISH DEPARTMENT
An otter emerges from one of the pens. Far left: Biologist Darren Bruning gets help checking an empty fish pen that may have been raided by a recently released otter. Left: Otter holding pens, or “pods,” on the bank of Rio Pueblo de Taos. Otters were held in the pods for a few days after being moved, so they could be observed as they settled down and fed on fish from the pens behind, in the river. The pods were then opened so otters could leave and return at will.
not released into areas where they would further threaten these dwindling species. In deference to local anglers, otters were not introduced into the San Juan River. Similar concerns arose with the Gila river system, which is the last refuge for several endangered species, but New Mexico Friends of River Otters believes otters would not seriously threaten those species. They might turn out instead to be a natural method of river restoration. Reintroduced otters are expected to prey on damaging non-native species such as crayfish, which feed on the eggs and young of native fish. In other states where otters have been introduced, crayfish have become the bulk of the otters’ diet. Otters are also likely to target invasive fish species such as the white sucker, which are slower and more abundant than native species. Jon Klingle, a retired wildlife biologist and member of New Mexico Friends of River Otters, believes the risk is far greater in not pursuing solutions to the ecological problems faced by New Mexico’s rivers. “Otters,” he says, “offer a chance of helping to restore the system.” It is with these hopes that river otters have been welcomed back to New Mexico.
Evaluations were completed in 2006, and the New Mexico Friends of River Otters was allowed to release otters into the upper Rio Grande. The next issue was where to get the otters. Darren Bruning provided a solution. Formerly a biologist for Taos Pueblo, Bruning now works as a Wildlife Services biologist for the state of Washington, which was having problems with otters in Puget Sound. Bruning coordinated the effort in Washington, trapping the otters and making arrangements to release them on Taos Pueblo land. The first release took place October 14, 2008. Trapped otters were transported from Olympia, Washington, to Taos and moved into temporary holding pens where they were allowed to adjust to their surroundings. They were also fed three times a day in order to ensure optimal physical health. After several days, the pens were opened in groups of four to six at a time, in what is called a “soft” release—animals are allowed to leave their pens at will. “It worked out very well,” says Jim Stewart of New Mexico Game and Fish. “The animals came out of the pen calm and in good shape.” The otters are doing well in their new habitat so far. They have dispersed widely
and are swimming the Rio Grande as far north as the Colorado border and as far south as Cochiti Dam. No reproduction has been documented yet, but because they are naturally social animals, the otters seem to be improvising family groups. During one of the later releases, a group of four males was observed swimming upriver and playing together in front of the pens, as if to establish seniority over the newcomers. The river otters’ exuberant personalities have been greeted as a welcome addition to river life. People are enchanted by them. Those involved in the restoration effort describe the animals as charismatic and joyful to watch. Many otter sightings have been reported by people who live and work along the rivers. The animals also make an excellent educational tool for children learning about the importance of protecting New Mexico’s river systems. “Otters have brought a lot of positive energy to wildlife viewing along the Rio Grande,” notes Conn. All thanks to positive group effort that found the otters a safe new home, giving New Mexicans an opportunity to see and learn from these beautiful animals. R trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 151
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Opposite Page: Navajo Warrior. Navajo Artist Jimmy Abeita. Courtesy of a Private Collector. Top: Red Mesa Rug. 33 x 56. Navajo Weaver Dralinda Nez. Courtesy of Richardson Trading, Co.. Above: Zuni Channel Bracelet. Spiney Oyster Shell. Navajo Artist Paul Livingston. Courtesy of Joe Milo’s Whitewater Trading Co. Left: Evening Chant. 15 x 10 x 6. Utah Alabaster. Navajo sculptor Oreland Joe.
POINT/ COUNTERPOINT
BY TOM R. KENNEDY | PHOTO BY KERRY SHERCK
Zuni artists, from left: Les Namingha, Silvester Hustito, and Gomeo Bobelu gather at the Firegod Gallery of Native artwork in downtown Albuquerque.
Zuni Artists Speak Out –Softly A roundtable discussion about artistic identity If art can be defined simply as “the expression of human creative skill and imagination,” then that opens a universe of interpretations about its various styles, forms, and manifestations. Recently, three contemporary artists who also happen to be Native Americans from Zuni Pueblo sought to explore what contemporary art means to each of them as creative individuals striving to succeed in the mainstream art world. Silversmith Gomeo Bobelu, potter and painter Les Namingha, and painter/sculptor Silvester Hustito engaged in a free-flowing dialogue about being contemporary artists against the backdrop of their conservative pueblo upbringing. Although their situation is little-known to outsiders, Native American artists who reach beyond community cultural expectations face real, multilayered challenges. Zuni Pueblo is a picturesque art colony where as many as 80 percent of workers derive a significant portion of their income from artisanal production. It is also a community where age-old traditions drive a complex calendar of cultural obligations. That creates conditions that run counter to the individualistic freedom implied in the making of contemporary art. Succeeding in both arenas, traditional and mainstream, determines how well one will reach beyond the traditional confines of Native art venues. > 154 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
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POINT/ COUNTERPOINT
Gomeo: First of all, being here with these three individuals is a bit overwhelming— established artists with major galleries, a gallery owner. But right now I consider myself as an emerging artist, even though I’ve been doing jewelry for about 10 years now. I have avoided the limelight intentionally until my kids were grown up. Though I’m feeling at ease about it, this is all new, to be exposing myself to the public. My jewelry work is what I call a “hidden” art form that allows me to meditate, heal, and evolve. My art is deeply connected to my own spirituality. In fact, I came back to Zuni to reconnect myself spiritually so I can share that with the people out there. And I want to be known as a mentor, to give back to the community. So I am very proud of my cultural heritage and of the fact that my tribe’s esteemed art form of jewelry has been featured in fashion-world publications such as Vogue, W Magazine, and Architectural Digest. I have always believed that one day our Native art would receive such fame, without compromising our standards. Les: I like that you mention Architectural Digest. This and other publications are my sources to explore current trends. I’m glad that works from Zuni have been featured in them. My work as an artist started in 1989, when I began making pottery with my aunt Dextra Quotskuyva, a well-known TewaHopi potter. Because of her connections to 156 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
the art world, it was easy for me to get established as a potter. Our family was already known for pottery, and there were collectors and regular tour groups already visiting Dextra. However, my other interest was painting. During the same time I started in ceramics, I was studying design and art at [Brigham Young University]. That experience increased my passion for contemporary arts. Since then I have explored painting, albeit infrequently. But I would like to become more involved as a painter, so I feel like I am still emerging. Silvester: I grew up in Zuni, but went to Santa Fe Indian School early on, and that was my first time away from family. I loved living in Santa Fe, with all the art galleries
and museums so nearby. I used to skip campus after school to browse the galleries around the Plaza, especially on Canyon Road. I was a naïve kid from Zuni, but I’d still look for the big names like Doug Coffin or Miguel Martinez. I attended IAIA [the Institute of American Indian Arts] when I was 17, and hung out with a group of very inspiring and creative people—some who went on to become successful in the art world. I later traveled all over, to places like San Francisco, New York, Denver, D.C.—mostly to areas that had lots of art galleries. I came back because I really love the energy here in New Mexico, and started doing my artwork. My first showing was at the Wheelwright Museum at the Case Trading Post, and
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF SILVESTER HUSTITO; COURTESY OF GOMEO BOBELU; RIGHT: COURTESY OF LES NAMINGHA
Gomeo Bobelu's sculptural jewelry pendant depicts We’Wha, a famous Zuni berdache or Man/Woman from the late 1800s, who was an active member of the Zuni community and often interacted with outsiders. Left: Silvester Hustito, Eclipse, acrylic on wood. Below: Les Namingha, Smile, mixed media on clay.
BE THERE
ART SANTA FE .2011 J U LY
7-10,
2011
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ART SANTA FE 2011 AN INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR
SANTA FE CONVENTION CENTER WWW.ARTSANTAFE.COM 505.988.8883 ART SANTA FE PRESENTS: SATURDAY, JULY 9
trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 157
POINT/ COUNTERPOINT
I was surprised that most of the 12 pieces I brought sold during their Indian Market weekend. I dreamed of a larger space to show my work along with artists I admired, and so I opened The Firegod Gallery. It was an amazing space to show established and cutting-edge Native American artists from the contemporary art world. And now with my new gallery in Albuquerque, I am starting all over again. Les: I find that discussing contemporary art as it relates to “Native” art can be confusing. I consider myself contemporary because of my exploration of pure abstractions in my work. But in spite of this, some of my work is still labeled as Native pottery. Where I fit in as an artist, contemporary or Native, is still a question I ponder every day. Gomeo: I never really liked the label “contemporary.” I just view it as a period in time, because I envision my work as traditional. Silvester: Say 100 years ago, someone came up with a new design from their own imagination—and that would be modern or contemporary for that time. The commonality of all of us here is that we are all different, but secure in our styles compared to a traditionalist—I feel awkward with that word—and we don’t limit ourselves and are able to express ourselves with color, line, even in fashion. We are all different, from different backgrounds, but we’re also from Zuni. And, if possible, we can serve as role models for younger artists. Les: Our individual goals might be different, but our connection to Zuni definitely makes us unified in our existence. When we came into this Pueblo world, we were taught to be respectful and to do good things. Hopefully my work can be seen as being a benefit, and in some way, by extension, that our Zuni people can be seen in a positive light. However, I worry that my art does not help the Zuni community directly. So I try to focus on living my life as a positive example. 158 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
Silvester: Les, you have been helping people just by their seeing your work. This helped me. Les: But maybe not for most in Zuni, since my work is heavily influenced by mainstream contemporary art, which generally is not accepted because it is so foreign. Silvester: This is why I would like to create a contemporary art museum here in Zuni—maybe set below ground with some of the building sticking out. Perhaps it could expose Zunis to international artists, to open their eyes so they could see the world in a different way and ask questions. If one can impact even just one person, that would be great! Les: Yes, part of being involved with art is being able to explore other cultures and their art. What if this museum you mentioned, Silvester, hosted a Miro exhibit, or David Hockney, or even ceramist Ken Price? I would love to see that type of exposure and dialogue in Zuni. At the very least, our community could see the source of our influences. Gomeo: I did like visiting the [Pueblo of Pojoaque] Poeh Center north of Santa Fe, where you could see a who’s-who of Native arts and artists—examples from the past, like sort of a database that people could see and talk about. Right now I’m thinking of all of Les’ designs going through my head, and I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight! The vast majority of Zuni artists pursue a “traditional” path and don’t wish to confront such dilemmas. But for the few who answer to an alternative calling, their creative impulses take them in rewarding directions that nonetheless continue to collide with the realities of the home culture. Even this short conversation with Trend proved—for the artists involved and the writer, who works at Zuni Pueblo—to be fraught with concerns about custom, image, and propriety. R
GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Off Paseo de Peralta
Gerald Peters Gallery
Peyton Wright Gallery
World-renowned for its outstanding exhibitions in a wide variety of genres, Gerald Peters Gallery opened in Santa Fe in 1976. Gerald Peters’ second gallery is located on New York City’s Upper East Side. Both art spaces present the work of such icons as Georgia O’Keeffe, Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, Henri Matisse, Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and Wayne Thiebaud. The Santa Fe gallery, with 8,500 square feet of museum-quality exhibition space, offers extensive collections in classic Western art, the Taos Society of Artists, the Santa Fe Art Colony, American Modernism, Naturalism, and contemporary art.
Twice a year, Peyton Wright Gallery effects a striking transformation in which its main exhibition space alternates between two markedly different—yet both exceptional—realms of art. Between December and March the gallery is filled with the rich hues of Spanish Colonial painting, masterfully crafted silverwork, and other outstanding examples of the historic art of the Americas. Each year the show “gets bigger, broader, and more far reaching,” observes owner John Schaefer. “With hundreds of pieces, it is now the largest exhibition of its kind in a commercial space in the world, visited by thousands of people annually.”
Among highlights of the summer exhibition schedule at the Santa Fe gallery are shows by contemporary artists Albert Paley and Mike Glier, which continue into June, and two group shows in Naturalism in July. Contemporary Western artists Theodore Waddell and Russell Case are featured in July and August. On August 12, Exploitation and Celebration of the American Landscape opens, an invitational show of contemporary art exploring current depictions of the American landscape as informed by dramatic changes in both the environment and global economy.
Then, as spring brings renewal to historic downtown Santa Fe, color and drama infuse the gallery’s dozen high-ceilinged, lightwashed rooms in nine months of exhibitions featuring notable abstract and Modernist artists from the 1920s to 1970s. Peyton Wright Gallery represents the estates of important American Modernists Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), Clinton Adams (1918-2002), Raymond Jonson (1891-1982), William Thomas Lumpkins (19092000), Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967), and Stanton MacdonaldWright (1890-1973). All are shown within the adobe walls of a meticulously preserved 19th century National Register treasure designed by a French architect and incorporating fine European artisanal details.
11 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 505-954-5700 gpgallery.com
237 East Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 505-989-9888, 800-879-8898 peytonwright.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Tesuque
GALLERY PERSPECTIVES The Plaza
Shidoni Galleries
Houshang’s Gallery
The “oldest gallery in Santa Fe under one owner” has seen four decades in the same splendid location—eight acres of grassy parkland where visitors can stroll while experiencing outdoor sculpture in a broad range of materials, sizes, and styles. Indoors, the Bronze Gallery features traditional, figurative, and contemporary sculptural art. And the Arts Gallery presents two- and threedimensional fine crafts and artwork including works in glass and fiber, exquisite handcrafted wood furniture, stone sculpture, encaustics, and painted silks.
Houshang’s Gallery, on the Santa Fe Plaza, reflects the owner’s eclectic taste and lifelong involvement with art. Houshang, who is of Persian ancestry and whose name honors a legendary Persian king, grew up in the Dallas area, studied art, and became a painter and sculptor. He opened his first gallery at age 21. After 22 years operating a gallery in Dallas, he moved to Santa Fe, where he has represented a broad mix of painters and sculptors of national and international renown since 1990.
In 1971 Shidoni’s founder, artist Tommy Hicks, moved with his family from Texas to the village of Tesuque, five miles north of Santa Fe. He established a foundry in a former chicken coop and a sculpture garden in an apple orchard. Today the expansive sculpture gardens and two galleries represent the works of more than 150 artists from around the country. Scott Hicks is Shidoni’s second-generation president in a family that has had an active commitment to the community for 40 years. Visitors are welcome at the internationally renowned foundry every Saturday to watch the pouring of bronze. 1508 Bishop’s Lodge Road, Tesuque, NM 505-988-8001 shidoni.com
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Among them is Malcolm Furlow, whose vibrantly hued, awardwinning paintings of Native Americans and animals are in collections worldwide, including those at the American embassies in Morocco, Belgium, and Beijing, the White House and the Smithsonian Institution, and numerous private, corporate, and museum collections. Frederick Prescott creates large, playful kinetic sculptures in steel. Wanda Kippenbrock’s highly textural landscapes exude imagination and joy, while the paintings of Jan Guess create colorful, impressionistic worlds of gardens and ponds. Other artists of note at Houshang’s include abstract painter Jennifer Davenport, bronze sculptor Akiva Huber, and minimalist landscape painter Karen Moore. 50 E. San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, NM 505-988-3322 houshangart.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Galleries at Lincoln Avenue
Niman Fine Art
David Richard Contemporary
Three distinct visual voices; two generations of artists; one family, drawing on deep Native roots to form an important cultural bridge with the world of contemporary art. At Niman Fine Art, these elements come together in the work of internationally renowned painter and sculptor Dan Namingha and his sons, Arlo and Michael Namingha. The Lincoln Avenue gallery was established in 1990 to present the work of Dan Namingha, whose striking abstracted style distills the essence of Tewa/Hopi symbolism and culture. His sons joined the family-owned gallery as they matured into their own artistic vision.
With an aesthetic informed by contemporary art of the 1960s and ’70s—geometric, op-art, hard-edged, minimalist, and conceptual—David Eichholtz and Richard Barger established David Richard Contemporary as a showcase for the kinds of abstract and non-objective works that have intrigued them both for years. The Lincoln Avenue gallery, which opened in June 2010, focuses on mid-career to mature artists from New York and California, including several who now live around Santa Fe. Also represented are select emerging artists in the same aesthetic and art historical context. “The older artists help position, place, and conceptualize the work of the younger artists,” Eichholtz explains. “It’s nice to see the continuum.”
Arlo creates contemporary sculpture—in wood, clay, stone, and cast and fabricated bronze—suggestive of the inhabitants, landscape, and deities of the ancestral Tewa and Hopi world. Michael, the youngest son of Dan and Frances Namingha, is an installation and digital artist who graduated from the Parsons School of Design in New York. The works of all three are, as Dan puts it, informed by “an unwavering respect for the earth and the spirit of our ancestry.” 125 Lincoln Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 505-988-5091 namingha.com
While the gallery’s primary focus is painting, the elegantly simple, light-filled space also exhibits glass art, sculpture, and mixedmedia works. Roland Reiss, Robert Swain, Julian Stanczak, Beverly Fishman, and Peter Chinni are among the established artists, while emerging artists include Matthew Penkala and Peter Demos. In July, the first installment of a major multi-part traveling show will present Southern California paintings from the 1970s, curated by Los Angeles-based art critic and writer Peter Frank. 130 Lincoln Ave., Suite D, Santa Fe, NM 505-983-9555 davidrichardcontemporary.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Railyard Art District
Zane Bennett Contemporary Art
William Siegal Gallery
With its balconied, two-story, Old Santa Fe feel, Zane Bennett Contemporary Art blends seamlessly with the historic character of the Railyard Arts District, where it opened in 2008. On the inside, however, the art space reveals its utterly contemporary soul. Spacious, yet containing intimate exhibition rooms, Zane Bennett’s architectural centerpiece is a sky-lit two-story atrium whose glass staircase and catwalk provide extraordinary perspectives for experiencing contemporary art.
“I can take just about any piece of contemporary art in the gallery and show you something done 500 or 5,000 years ago that relates to it,” remarks William Siegal, owner of William Siegal Gallery. A compelling aesthetic and design dialogue between antiquity and contemporary art is key to the gallery’s presentation of museumquality works of both ages. The 5,000-square-foot high-concept art space, opened in 2007 in the Railyard district, offers the opportunity to view intriguing pairings of old and new, as well as extensive collections of each.
Exemplifying that experience are works by internationally recognized artists such as Mark di Suvero, Mimmo Paladino, François Morellet, Olivier Mosset, and Günther Förg. Blue-chip contemporary masters including Tony Cragg, Jim Dine, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Motherwell, and Tom Wesselmann are represented by original works on paper and prints. Among Zane Bennett’s local and regional artists are Colette Hosmer, Mary Shaffer, Rachel Stevens, Guy Dill, Barry X Ball, Pascal, Holly Roberts, and Dunham Aurelius, working in media ranging from paintings to sculpture to glass. The gallery also demonstrates its commitment to community through film screenings, fundraisers, and educational events. “We believe in creating a community connected by the arts,” says co-owner Sandy Zane. 435 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 505-982-8111 zanebennettgallery.com
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Siegal began studying, collecting, and dealing in historic and prehistoric Columbian textiles in 1971. Since then he has broadened his scope to include ceremonial objects and artifacts from Meso and South American cultures, China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Indonesia. Removed from historical contexts, these sculptural artifacts and textiles display visual sensibilities clearly echoed in contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, and monumental art—providing inspiration for exciting collecting possibilities. “In one way or another, all our contemporary artists have a relationship to antiquities,” Siegal observes, “because so much of 20th century abstraction evolved from the arts of the ancient world.” 540 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 505-820-3300 williamsiegal.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Railyard Art District
Gebert Contemporary at the Railyard This striking 6,000-square-foot exhibition space earned two American Institute of Architects design awards and is ideally suited for presenting large-scale sculpture, paintings, photography, video, and installation. A curator’s delight, the gallery takes full advantage of architectural firm Devendra Narayan Contractor’s highly contemporary design, featuring a 14-by-20-foot retractable skylight, clean-edged lines, and diamondpolished concrete and bamboo floors. Since it opened in 2007, Gebert Contemporary at the Railyard has exhibited monumental sculpture by such internationally recognized artists as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Manolo Valdes, and Xavier Mascaró. Its sister gallery in a historic, two-story adobe at 558 Canyon Road, Gebert Contemporary, also showcases Stephen and Ursula Gebert’s aesthetic vision with a range of contemporary abstract painting, photography, works on paper, and sculpture by emerging and established artists from around the world. An exhibition of Jun Kaneko’s ceramic dangos and glass sculpture will open on July 1—a true example of the perfect match of art and space. 544 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 505-983-3838 gebertcontemporary.com
GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Railyard Art District
GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Canyon Road
Charlotte Jackson Fine Art
Hunter Kirkland Contemporary
For more than two decades, Charlotte Jackson was happy to have her gallery in a less-traveled area of downtown Santa Fe, where the staff could linger with visitors curious about the sometimesesoteric nature of such genres as Monochrome, Concrete, Modernism, Color Field painting, and Light and Space art. Now a steady flow of visitors passes through the gallery doors in the spacious, light-filled location in the Railyard Arts District. “There is beautiful spreading light on the walls, and a lot of these artists want this kind of natural light,” Jackson observes.
At the corner of Canyon Road and Paseo de Peralta—the gateway to Canyon Road—Hunter Kirkland Contemporary presents one of Santa Fe’s most inviting gallery spaces, offering an aesthetically pleasing, intellectually satisfying collection by contemporary artists with established careers. Owner/director Nancy Hunter exhibits the work of regionally and nationally known artists, each of whom has developed a clear and unique artistic vision. The gallery features nonobjective paintings, as well as sculpture in bronze, glass/copper, and stone. Also featured are vibrantly hued landscapes, wire-mesh figurative pieces, and mixed-media works on canvas, paper, and wood.
The gallery owner and staff continue to welcome visitors’ questions, explaining, for instance, that the aim of Monochrome painting—which often contains multiple layers of colors—is simply to invoke the viewer’s personal emotional response. And that the Light and Space movement originated in 1960s California, incorporating glass, resin, neon, and other media to explore the effects of light in space. Jackson is especially pleased to represent a number of these artists, including Tony DeLap, Ed Moses, Ron Davis, David Simpson, and Phil Sims, as well as the late Florence Pierce. 554 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 505-989-8688 charlottejackson.com
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Situated in a historic, redesigned compound with three other well-established galleries, Hunter Kirkland’s inviting outdoor sculpture space lends itself to lingering in Santa Fe’s glorious summer weather. Hunter and her knowledgeable staff are always happy to share their expertise with both seasoned and new collectors. As the gallery owner puts it, “This is a great opportunity to view contemporary work in a stunning location—a beautiful way to begin one’s exploration of art on Canyon Road.” 200-B Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-984-2111 hunterkirklandcontemporary.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Canyon Road
Turner Carroll Gallery +Art Advisors
Pippin Meikle Fine Art
With backgrounds rich in art history, Michael and Tonya Turner Carroll opened the Turner Carroll Gallery in 1991 to share their passion for museum-quality international contemporary art. The couple’s cumulative experience includes Sotheby’s London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Israel Museum, and art studies in Russia and Italy. Both have curated exhibitions internationally and have written art monographs. With locations in Dallas and Mexico, the gallery exhibits at major international art fairs.
Warm, vibrant, joyful, and approachable: These terms describe both the artwork carried by Pippin Meikle Fine Art and also the two artists who founded the gallery, painters Aleta Pippin and Barbara Meikle. Housed in an early 20th century residence on a corner of Canyon Road, the five-year-old gallery brings a fresh sense of color and energy to the world of contemporary art.
This year Turner Carroll celebrates its 20th anniversary on Canyon Road. “We consistently hear collectors state how much they love Canyon Road and the high quality of its boutique galleries and exquisite restaurants,” says Tonya. “We enjoy being part of the history of this unique street that has been deemed one of the ten most beautiful streets in America.” For its 20th season, the gallery presents landmark exhibitions by Hung Liu, Rex Ray, Ashley Collins, and Igor Melnikov. A painting from the gallery by Hung Liu will be featured alongside Gustav Klimt and other major names in Vienna next year, and Turner Carroll will help curate an exhibition of Melnikov works at the Russian State Museum.
Along with the owners’ work, this uplifting aesthetic is expressed in a variety of styles and media by painters Robert Burt, Martha Kennedy, and Ray Wolf, as well as sculptors Gilberto Romero, Andrew Carson, Warren Cullar, and Nic Noblique. “Since opening in 2006, our goal has been to offer an intimate experience between the viewer and the artwork,” observes Pippin. “We’ve purposely limited the number of artists whose work we show, selecting artists who are as passionate about their work as Barbara and I. Additionally, our artists exhibit the high-key color that is a trademark of our gallery.” Visit the website for their 2011 events. 236 Delgado Street Santa Fe, NM 505-992-0400 pippinmeiklefineart.com
725 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-986-9800 turnercarrollgallery.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Canyon Road
Ventana Fine Art
Jane Sauer
The gallery in the historic red-brick schoolhouse on Canyon Road—with two outdoor sculpture gardens and an inviting, renovated interior—has gained a reputation over the years for representing contemporary artists with a “passion for excellence, originality, and powerful aesthetic impact,” notes Ventana Gallery owner Connie Axton. With almost 30 years in the art business, Axton opened her first gallery at the Inn at Loretto in 1983. Today she curates each exhibit with the intent of respecting the “brilliance of each artist.” Among other things, this means the gallery’s diverse collection of paintings and sculpture is generously spaced, well-lit, and centered at eye level.
For more than three decades, Jane Sauer has been a passionate advocate for the arts—as a studio artist with work in more than two dozen museum collections, as a curator, lecturer, and guest judge around the country and abroad, and as a board member of arts organizations including president of the American Craft Council. Sauer brings that same commitment and passion to her Canyon Road gallery. The artists she represents are scrupulously selected for their impeccable quality and enthusiasm for pushing boundaries. “I’m looking for that creative spark, for artists who are not afraid of mining new territory,” she affirms.
Established artists at Ventana include Malcolm Alexander, John Axton, Albert Handell, John Nieto, Tom Noble, Mary Silverwood, and Rebecca Tobey. Among the gallery’s painters and sculptors moving increasingly into the spotlight are Jim Agius, Barry McCuan, Robert Ritter, Lynne Windsor, and Tamar Kander. And younger talents such as Gregory Smith, Debra Corbett, and Kim Obrzut are poised to gain the attention of collectors and art lovers on an increasingly broad scale. 400 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-983-8815, 800-746-8815 ventanafineart.com
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For Sauer, the medium is less important than the vision, sophistication, and excitement of a piece and the quality of its rendering—whether in painting, glass, textiles, ceramics, recycled materials, basketry, or wood. Equally important, she believes, is the opportunity the gallery provides to educate the public and support artists’ careers. Sauer is proud of her knowledgeable and interactive assistants, who create educational experiences for each visitor with every show. 652 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-995-8513 jsauergallery.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Canyon Road
New Concept Gallery
Nüart Gallery
Intrigued by the concept of juxtaposing an artist’s early and recent creations, Ann Hosfeld opened New Concept Gallery in 2007. An artist herself, Hosfeld worked in galleries and museums in New York and Los Angeles before settling in Santa Fe in 1982. New Concept is housed in a 19th century Canyon Road adobe and represents a stable of professional artists working in a diverse mix of mediums and contemporary styles. While the primary focus is abstraction, the gallery also presents landscapes and photography, as well as bronze and scrap-metal sculpture.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Nüart Gallery is taking advantage of its recently expanded and renovated exhibition space by presenting an average of two shows each month in 2011. Costa Rican-born artist Juan Kelly and his wife, Kim Kelly, established the gallery in 2001. Last year a wall was opened to connect with an adjoining Canyon Road building, creating 3,000 square feet of art space with a welcoming, clean-lined feel.
Among New Concept’s 16 artists is acclaimed painter Frank Ettenberg, who has exhibited his nonobjective paintings in Santa Fe since the 1980s; Reg Loving, whose recent abstracted landscapes in acrylic often incorporate marble dust, achieving a sensuous texture; and Aaron Karp, who has lived and painted in New Mexico for more than three decades. Karp creates dazzling abstractions using fractured fields of color and space. Contrasting the artists’ current work with examples of early explorations provides a fascinating glimpse at how their distinctive styles have developed over the years. 610 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-795-7570 newconceptgallery.com
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Nüart represents some two-dozen mid-career and established contemporary artists from the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The relatively small, select stable reflects the high standards set by Juan and Kim for a collection diverse in genre and style. Painting and sculpture range from abstract with organic or architectural references, to figurative pieces that incline toward magical realism. Yet several key ingredients unite the gallery’s offerings: masterful composition and surface treatment, and a strong imaginative element. “We represent artists of exceptional talent and knowledge of their craft,” says Juan, adding, “We are passionate about the artwork we carry.” 670 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-988-3888 nuartgallery.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Canyon Road
Waxlander Gallery and Sculpture Garden
Darnell Fine Art
The world may be a challenging place, but home can be an art-filled sanctuary that consistently lifts one’s spirits, observes Phyllis Kapp. As an artist herself and owner of Waxlander Gallery and Sculpture Garden for more than 27 years, Kapp aspires to this sensibility for herself and all the artists she represents. “The work always has to come from a deep place in my artists’ lives to enrich people in a happy, positive manner,” she notes.
There is an ethereal quality to some works of art, a quality that Rachel Darnell refers to as the “purity of beauty.” It is art that speaks with a spiritually uplifting voice, that conveys a depth of aesthetic pleasure and meaning that takes it well beyond the level of wall candy, says the artist and gallery owner. This is the unifying principle behind the broad range of contemporary works at Darnell Fine Art, a collection whose diversity still presents a harmonious whole within the gallery space.
This love of life is expressed in the vibrant aesthetic of 30 artists working in such diverse media as watercolor, oil, acrylic, encaustic, mixed media, photography, woven copper, glass, and bronze and metal sculpture. The gallery’s dozen-plus rooms in an old Canyon Road adobe provide an attractive setting for works by numerous award-winning artists: Marshall Noice’s stunning oils and pastels of vibrant landscapes, Matthew Higginbotham’s prairie and sky paintings in oils, Patrick Matthews’ depiction of the Colorado Rockies, Andrée Hudson’s compelling figurative and pastoral works, as well as Kapp’s distinctive visual voice.
Darnell, a lifelong artist with more than 22 years in the gallery business, settled in Santa Fe 15 years ago and opened her Canyon Road gallery in 2004. From the Japanese wabi-sabi (the ephemeral beauty of nature’s imperfections) to the sublime—as she puts it—Darnell Fine Art offers a contemporary vision that includes Abstract Expressionism, Postmodern impasto, and Minimalist color field work, among other styles. Paintings in oil, acrylic, encaustic, gold leaf, and mixed media join sculpture in terracotta, stone, bronze, and wood. “I’m interested in the philosophy of beauty,” Darnell affirms, “and aesthetically valuable art.”
622 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-984-2202 waxlander.com
640 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-984-0840 darnellfineart.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Canyon Road
Michael Smith Gallery
Karen Melfi Collection
It’s easy to envision beautiful objects from the Michael Smith Gallery in the setting of a comfortable Southwestern-style home— because the gallery is a home. Situated in a thick-walled, 150-yearold adobe, the gallery space serves as the home of Michael and his wife, Laiyee. By day, visitors enjoy one of the finest collections of historic Navajo weavings, antique basketry and other American Indian art and antiquities, historic and contemporary pottery and landscape paintings, and exquisite palm leaf baskets by the Wounaan Indians of Panama’s Darien Rainforest.
In what its owner calls “the best location in Santa Fe”—a compound with plenty of parking that features a variety of fine-art galleries—the Karen Melfi Collection of handcrafted jewelry and art-to-wear offers superlatives in both diversity and price range. “I have a wide variety of choices in every price point, from earrings at $68 to necklaces at $10,000,” Melfi notes. The unifying factor is a focus on New Mexico artists, including weavers, clothing designers, and jewelry makers.
Michael LeRoy Smith settled in Santa Fe almost 18 years ago. He opened the 3,000-square-foot Canyon Road gallery eight years ago as a way of sharing his love of historic and contemporary Native art. “The gallery is our life. The gallery is personal because these are all the things I have collected,” observes Michael, who draws on decades of experience in educating collectors and visitors. Recently, a visitor told Michael he had learned more about Navajo weaving “in 15 minutes at the gallery than by living in Santa Fe for 30 years.”
A jewelry designer herself for 30 years, Karen Melfi entered the gallery business in 1989. Today she represents some 30 jewelry artists and an equal number in art-to-wear, with the gallery space divided to showcase both, as well as a smaller selection of ceramic art. Specializing in raw, natural-color diamonds set in gold or silver in a range of contemporary and classic designs, the jewelry collection also features stone inlay, beadwork, and ethnic-inspired work in various materials and styles. Textiles include hand-woven chenille scarves, shawls, jackets, and other distinctive forms of clothing art.
526 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-995-1013 michaelsmithgallery.com
225 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-982-3032 karenmelficollection.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Canyon Road
Marc Navarro Gallery
The William and Joseph Gallery
The ancient becomes cutting-edge at the Marc Navarro Gallery, with extraordinary Aztec- and Maya-inspired silver jewelry and objects of art. Representing the next generation in the footsteps of the Old Masters of Taxco, younger artists of Mexico are creating organic, contemporary, futuristic designs worthy of inclusion in SOFA exhibitions—such items as silver containers, perfume bottles, and candlesticks. These are showcased at Marc Navarro alongside vintage silver jewelry and hollowware, Mexican Modernist paintings, and Spanish Colonial textiles, antiques, and art.
There’s popular art, commercial art, and fine art. And then there is art that stops you in your tracks, seeps into your soul, and won’t leave. It is art you can’t forget, and it’s what Mary Bonney had in mind when she opened the William and Joseph Gallery in 2001. The gallery’s first incarnation was in New Orleans, until Hurricane Katrina hit the eject button. The gallerist landed in Santa Fe, and since 2008 the gallery named for her brothers and grandfather has been at home on Canyon Road.
Navarro, of Mexican descent, grew up in Los Angeles’ Chinatown and fell first for Chinese textiles and other Asian art. Later his tastes expanded to include Japanese textiles and French art glass. About 35 years ago he began collecting vintage and contemporary Mexican silverwork, which led to Spanish Colonial art. Among the artists whose work he carries today is the renowned Antonio Pineda, Sergio Gomez Carbajal, William Spratling, Hector Aguilar, Los Castillo, Hubert Harmon, and Margot de Taxco. Representing various eras and styles, “the quality of workmanship among all of them is superb,” he observes.
With a background as an international art rep and a contemporary painter and photographer, Bonney presents an eclectic mix of carefully chosen art. Barrett DeBusk’s charming Fat Happies joins other three-dimensional pieces in the sculpture garden. Inside, two- and three-dimensional works include richly layered beeswax encaustic paintings by Richard Potter, poetic mixed-media vessels by Bradley Bowers, and Stephanie Shank’s colorful abstract paintings. Check the website for a list of shows, including glass blowing demonstrations by Ira Lujan and Patrick Morrissey, and the annual August exhibition of Richard Potter’s work.
520 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-986-8191 marcnavarrogallery.net
727 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-982-9404 thewilliamandjosephgallery.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Canyon Road
Janine Contemporary
La Mesa of Santa Fe
Here’s a fun idea with early 19th century roots and a history soaked in mid-20th century nostalgia: miniature golf. Look for nine holes, each with outdoor sculpture by a different artist, amid the flowers and trees of Janine Contemporary’s extensive sculpture grounds— a surprising new take on the game. Formerly Mesa House Contemporary, this newly renovated and renamed gallery maintains its aesthetic vision, focusing on mixed-media works by a dozen local, national, and international artists, says owner/director Janine Stern.
The “Made in America” label may be hard to find these days, but your home can still be filled with beautifully handcrafted items reflecting this country’s long, proud history of locally made fine crafts. La Mesa of Santa Fe began in 1982 as a source of exceptional ceramic and glass tableware by area artists. Owner Mary Larson describes the gallery’s vision today as presenting functional and decorative art with a focus on extraordinary color and design.
The innovative twist includes regulation golf carpet, glow-in-thedark balls, and a chance for visitors to putt-putt around—and purchase—mini courses that also are sculptural art. As each portable, 12- to 16-foot-long, sculpture-adorned hole is sold, another will be created to replace it, Stern explains. Indoor art includes mixedmedia Buddha imagery by Anthony Abbate, Delos Van Earl’s gorgeous enamel paintings embedded with glass, and Rachel Wilson’s life-size hedge wood horses, deer, and elk. Before she opened Mesa House in 2010, Stern—an artist herself—co-owned Edge Gallery and Tadu Contemporary Art, and directed other art spaces on Canyon Road.
Among the gallery’s more than 60 artists, Melissa Haid creates inspired fused-glass pieces for windows, walls, even outdoors. Sally Bachman weaves both rag and wool rugs that brighten any interior. Patricia Naylor makes segmented clay wall sculptures, while Vicki Grant’s architectural background influences her richly hued ceramic wall and table art. Just as important as art for the table is the table as art. Fine handcrafted contemporary furniture by Scott Ernst, Christoph Neander, and P.J. Rogers provide excellent examples. “Paintings are a big part of the gallery, but we offer art in a very broad range of mediums,” Larson says.
715 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-989-9330 janinecontemporary.com
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225 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 505-984-1688 lamesaofsantafe.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Canyon Road
GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Paseo de Pueblo Norte,Taos
McCreery Jordan Studio
Hulse/Warman Gallery
Personal interaction with an artist at work is a rare treat for many, and as McCreery Jordan notes, the pleasure goes both ways. Jordan, a classically trained painter, sculptor, and mixedmedia artist who settled in Santa Fe in 1993, has discovered the delights of sharing the creative process with visitors since establishing a working studio/gallery in the historic heart of Santa Fe.
One of the earliest farmhouse compounds in Taos makes a surprising yet delightful setting for a compelling collection of works by established contemporary artists from Taos and beyond. Before settling in Taos, Clint Hulse and Jerry Warman owned a vineyard in Napa Valley, California, where the long-time collectors initiated the concept of a fine-art gallery in the wine-tasting room. A painter and sculptor himself, Hulse brought to that gallery and their current one an experienced artistic sensibility.
During a prolific 30-year career, Jordan has garnered numerous awards and honors for her work, which is represented in collections internationally. She is known for very large mixed-media figurative paintings whose contemporary sensibility combines realism with a delicate sense of mystery. Continually exploring mediums and styles, Jordan also recently began focusing on sculpture, working in clay or wax while explaining and demystifying the bronze-casting process for visitors. In this medium as well, Jordan is drawn to mythological, dream-like imagery. “My work is meant to echo my fascination with the passage of time, our journey through it, and the complex and fragile layers of our existence,” she says. For directions: 505-501-0415 or mccreeryjordan.com
Hulse/Warman opened in 2007 with a focus on painting, photography, sculpture, and glass by mid-career and emerging artists with a strong aesthetic and intellectual vision. Across several buildings and courtyard sculpture gardens are the works of, among others, sculptor Doug Coffin, painter Brian Coffin, stone sculptor Petro Hul, Michelle Cooke, who incorporates glass in her installation pieces, award-winning photographer David Zimmerman of New York City and Taos, and Mexican-born artist Gustavo Ramos Rivera, who hit the San Francisco art scene in the 1960s and continues to create striking monotypes and paintings in bright colors. 222 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, Taos, NM 575-751-7702 hulsewarmangallery.com
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GALLERY PERSPECTIVES Ledoux Street, Taos
203 Fine Art The legacy of the early Taos Modernists continues at 203 Fine Art, where owner/artists Eric Andrews and Shaun Richel represent the estate of Louis Ribak and Beatrice Mandelman and deal in works by such other early luminaries as Andrew Dasburg, Agnes Martin, Ward Lockwood, Howard Cook, Oli Sihvonen, and Leo Garel. The Modernists who settled in Taos in the mid-20th century were “quite visionary for their time,” Andrews notes. The gallery also presents a short roster of important contemporary artists, including Ron Cooper, Robert Ellis, Jack Smith, and the late Fritz Scholder (1937–2005) and Ann Saint John (1919–2011). Andrews’ own contemporary paintings combine the influence of early Modernist landscapes with abstracted figures as viewed through his aesthetic prism, while Richel creates passionate abstract works with a nod to the New York School of the 1950s. The gallery’s elegant, museum-like presentation—echoing the owners’ modernist/contemporary vision—is juxtaposed against the historical setting of a venerable building in one of the oldest parts of Taos. Check the gallery’s website for a schedule of this year’s exciting exhibitions. 203 Ledoux Street, Taos, NM 575-751-1262 203FINEART.com R
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CEL EBRATING F IF TEEN YE ARS ACCL AIMED BY NE W YORK T IME S, Z AG AT, T R AVE L + L EISURE BON APPE TIT AND JAME S BE ARD F OUNDAT ION
LUNCH TUE SDAY – SATURDAY 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM DINNER NIGHTLY FROM 5:30 • PATIO DINING • BAR MENU
548 agua fria
Eric Lamalle & Xavier Grenet present the new sister restaurant to Ristra Offering a creative and fun menu featuring foods from the regions surrounding the Mediterranean O P EN S L AT E M AY 2 011
Dinner from 5:30 pm 428 Agua Fria 505.992.2897 www.azursantafe.com
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www.ristrarestaurant.com
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505.982.8608
Wine/Dine
One Planet, One Sustainable Pot Luck BY LESLEY S. KING | PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM
176 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
O
ne late spring afternoon, Maria “Max” Renteria opens the door to her restaurant Max’s in downtown Santa Fe, and the intimate space with mustard-colored walls fills with an eclectic mix of chefs. Their goal: an adventurous search for the true heart of sustainable cooking and eating. The word sustainable, so bandied about these days, has become confounding, but these chefs live the truth of it daily as they work to make their businesses thrive. They hold to its main tenets: Buy locally, use seasonal ingredients when possible, and stay conscious of preserving our amazing planet. What comes to light today is that the very constraints that arise from cooking this way offer a springboard for creativity. Our first chef to arrive bears a sparkly maroon micaceous pot, its contents immediately imparting the warm, earthy scent of beans. Deborah Madison, noteworthy vegetarian chef, cookbook author, and local farm advocate, has made a gratin using tepary beans grown by the Tohono O’odham tribe in Arizona and bolita beans from Rose Trujillo at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market. “Bean culture has been important to New Mexico’s past,” Deborah says, which is why she chose the dish. She goes on to explain that since dried beans are often abundant at farmers’ markets throughout the colder months, the dish fits well with the challenge of cooking sustainably even in spring, when less variety is available. Our next arrival proffers a grand platter full of color. Megan Tucker, executive chef at Amavi, accompanied by her head baker, Jeremy Dellarosa, has made spinach, red chile, and herbed goatcheese tortelloni. The dish uses cheese from Old Windmill Dairy
Megan Tucker’s spinach and chile herbed goat-cheese tortelloni. Left: Max Renteria and Mark Connell enjoy some camaradarie at the front bar of Max’s. Opposite: A platter full of potato/apple/parsnip cakes, sunchokes, green chile, double red apples, smoked gouda, buffalo heart, and baguette.
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Wine/Dine
Left: Megan carries her platter of tortelloni to the table. Right: Mark adds mushroom foam to his egg and polenta dish.
in Estancia and sage, thyme, and parsley from Keen Ridge Farms in Edgewood. We head to the kitchen, where Megan adds a scarlet sauce of pureed beets and carrots. She explains her passion for cooking sustainably: “By spending locally, I put money right into the farmer’s pocket rather than supporting agribusiness.” Buying locally means food doesn’t travel long distances, and so contributes less to the global carbon footprint. And small farmers generally care heartily for their land and water. Each dollar spent this way “is a vote for sustainability,” she adds. Busy at the stove, Mark Connell, executive chef here at Max’s, prepares what he calls “polenta two ways.” He slow-cooks eggs from KJ Farms near Abiquiu and ladles them over a mixture of ground local posole and risotto with white porcini mushrooms. His strategy today is to focus on foraged food, such as mushrooms, 178 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
which is “as sustainable as you can get, because it’s grown naturally”—meaning it is planted by nature and picked in the wild. As he puts together his dish, two more chefs arrive. Trend’s contribution to the pot luck comes from Ric Lum and Tanya Story, who present a large clay bowl full of appetizers whose ingredients were purchased at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market. Potatoapple-parsnip cakes provide a welcome crunch, followed by sunchokes and green chile, which I sample with smoked gouda from Old Windmill Dairy on a piece of baguette that Tanya baked with flour from Valencia County. Ric, the chef behind Delicious Revolution catering in Sun Valley, Idaho, is especially fond of the foods of indigenous people, so he adds to the feast a buffalo heart from LaMont’s Wild West Buffalo. Cooked with Calvados, sage, and cayenne, the meat is potent in iron. “I consider it
prairie foie,” Lum says. “It’s a very special thing to eat—a sacred food.” We find our way to a long, white-clothed table, the delicacies passing among us. Everyone digs into Deborah’s beans, the conversation suddenly igniting around them. She explains that both types of beans have histories tied to where they are grown. “When you go to a farmers’ market, you look around and find that there’s a unique flavor for that particular place,” she says. Indeed, this dish tastes like the melding of two Southwestern cultures: the Native Americans with their tepary beans, and the Spanish with their bolitas. Next, Mark’s slow-cooked eggs-andpolenta makes the rounds. I scoop it onto my plate, the risotto and posole as a bottom crust with the egg on top, with delicate polenta cubes all topped with mushroom foam. Everyone remarks on the “pure, creamy quality,” with a perfect
Jeremy Dellarosa, head baker at Amavi, samples the Vilafonté. Right: The wine selections include a lively apple wine from La Chiripada Vineyard in Dixon. Far right: Deborah Madison takes a final sip of the Vilafonté.
Mark Connell’s polenta and eggs two ways with its topping of mushroom foam. Right: Deborah Madison’s gratin of tepary and bolita beans.
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Wine/Dine
Heart Gallery 10th Anniversary
Heart Gallery Celebrations ůů ƉƌŽĮ ƚƐ ŐŽ ƚŽ ďĞŶĞĮ ƚ EĞǁ DĞdžŝĐŽ ĨŽƐƚĞƌ ĐŚŝůĚƌĞŶ ƚŚƌŽƵŐŚ ƚŚĞ ,ĞĂƌƚ 'ĂůůĞƌLJ ŽĨ ED &ŽƵŶĚĂƟ ŽŶ
Friday, June 3rd The Gerald Peters Gallery 1011 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe 5 pm-7 pm FREE
ZĞĐĞƉƟ ŽŶ Θ ^ŝůĞŶƚ ƵĐƟ ŽŶ Unveiling of stirring portraits of New Mexico foster children awaiting adoption
Quinton Aaron
Sasha Lazard
Saturday, June 4th The Lensic Theater 211 W San Francisco St, Santa Fe 7:30 pm-9 pm
YƵŝŶƚŽŶ ĂƌŽŶ͕ ^ĂƐŚĂ >ĂnjĂƌĚ͕ Θ Friends Emcee Quinton Aaron, star of the award-winning film The Blind Side, Singer Sasha Lazard, the Pendulum dance troupe and the chorus of the New Mexico School for the Arts
Tickets: Ɵ ĐŬĞƚƐƐĂŶƚĂĨĞ͘ŽƌŐͬƚƐĨ Žƌ Ăƚ ƚŚĞ >ĞŶƐŝĐ ďŽdž Žĸ ĐĞ
A succulent platter of lamb ribs from Shepherd’s Lamb in Chama. Left: Trend publisher Cynthia Canyon and artist Ric Lum.
crispiness from the cubes and the earthy richness of mushrooms. Megan’s dish brings a stunning brightness to the table. The diners cut into the tortelloni, enjoying what Mark notes as the “sweetness of the beet, crunch from walnut, and then refreshing mint.” Though all agree the food is outstanding, the question arises: How we can commit to cooking this way—which can cost more and take additional time—when life’s challenges are already so great? Megan offers that the commitment can come in stages. Amavi has a long-term plan to keep adding sustainable components. They are now in Phase I, which focuses on using local produce. In summer that means 75 to 80 percent of their food is grown locally. Phase II will include filtering their own water and baking with local flour. Both of those are costly and don’t directly profit the restaurant, but they are in the plan. The real challenge, all the chefs agree, is serving certain meats and fish. Mark uses local, grass-fed beef and lamb, but for his fish entrees he must choose even more carefully. He doesn’t serve Chilean sea bass, for instance, because it is severely overfished and often caught using illegal and unsustainable methods. Instead he
ŚĞĂƌƚŐĂůůĞƌLJŶŵĨŽƵŶĚĂƟ ŽŶ͘ŽƌŐ 180 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
serves farm-raised sturgeon. “Most aquaculture practices are very sustainable,” he says. And farm-raised fish are often economical as well. All the chefs agree that cooking sustainably inspires them. “When you go to the farmers’ market, you’ll see black radishes, or some amazing heirloom tomatoes, or rhubarb,” says Mark. “You get ideas just from the produce itself.” Deborah adds that the variety at the market helps people expand their palates. “We have to overcome our lack of knowledge about certain foods, become more experimental,” she says. But it seems the most rewarding part of cooking sustainably is social. “It’s all about personal relationships—and that’s what life is about,” says Megan. Max echoes the sentiment: “Sometimes I see so many people I know at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market, it’s almost hard to get anything done.” Ric agrees, describing his day shopping for appetizers there: “It was a super community thing happening!” Silence falls over the table as everyone savors their last bites, and possibly, like me, relishes today’s greatest delicacy: the sense that we are all One, all nourished by the whole created through our conscious interaction with each other and our mother Earth. R
Wine/Dine Advertisement
A favorite chilled buffet item: a perfectly poached filet of salmon topped with a dill/sour cream sauce, accompanied by crisp asparagus.
Saveur Bistro
204 Montezuma Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico 505-989-4200
BY RENA DISTASIO | PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM
G
Partners in marriage for more than 50 years, and in business for nearly as long, Bernie and Dee Rusanowski say the secret to their success is a lot of passion mixed with a dash of compromise.
reat-tasting food prepared fresh daily and served with a hearty dollop of good cheer has been Saveur’s hallmark from the moment it opened for breakfast and lunch eight years ago. With its rustic tiled floors, earth-toned walls, gleaming copper pots, and brightly colored ceramics, the restaurant imparts a French country charm that co-owner Dee Rusanowski considers an extension of her home. So much so, that if Dee doesn’t welcome you by name and with a hug, it simply means you’ve never been in before. After that, you’re family. While Dee spreads the love with her infectious enthusiasm for people, her husband, Bernie, does it with his food: a compendium of carefully crafted American and French-style soups, salads, and sandwiches, daily specials, and hot and chilled buffet items sold by the pound. On any given day, the menu might include corned beef Reuben and croque monsieur, steaming crocks of cheesy French onion soup and fragrant bowls of chicken noodle, and comfort-food classics like Poulet Blanc, Pork Provencal, and Yankee Pot Roast. Dedicated Francophiles, the Rusanowskis make yearly trips to France so Bernie can continue to hone his culinary skills. Whether he’s stuffing an avocado with delicately flavored shrimp, steaming a perfectly seasoned, to-the-tooth-green bean, or whipping up a crème brulée that Gourmet magazine has called the best in America and France, Bernie shows his culinary knowledge and the depth of his emotional commitment to cooking what he calls “food the way it should be cooked, the food you remember from your childhood, the food that makes you feel good.” trendmagazineglobal.com Spring/Summer 2011 » Trend 181
Wine/Dine Advertisement
The Pink Adobe 406 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico 505-983-7712 | thepinkadobe.com
BY RENA DISTASIO | PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM
Originally from New Orleans, Rosalea Murphy was one of the first restaurant owners to bring seafood to Santa Fe. Today the tradition continues with the Pink’s lobster salad: lobster chunks, hard-boiled eggs, cheddar cheese, and fresh vegetables with house seafood dressing.
“P
A family affair: Priscilla Hoback with her son Joe Hoback and daughter Denise Lynch.
182 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
eople hold an idea of what Santa Fe is about,” says Priscilla Hoback, owner of The Pink Adobe. “It may not yet be a fully crystallized idea, but when they come inside the restaurant, they say, ‘Ah, this is it.’” The 300 -year-old adobe restaurant has captured the essence of Santa Fe, real and imagined, since Hoback’s mother, Rosalea Murphy, started serving up her favorite dishes in the former army barracks in 1944. The Pink remains a family-run operation, with Hoback and her son Joe Hoback and daughter Denise Lynch now set to become home to a new generation of diners. Convivial charm and a superb, eclectic menu keep drawing artists and politicians, locals and tourists to the artfilled dining room, hot-spot Dragon Bar, and all-new outdoor patio with inimitable New Mexican atmosphere. The kitchen boasts a menu as eclectic as the clientele, ranging from legendary favorites such as Steak Dunigan, lobster salad, Spaghetti Rossi, and apple pie with rum hard sauce to perfectly prepared New Mexican classics and the internationally flavored Tournedos Bordelaise, Poulet Marengo, and tomatillo-grilled salmon. Hoback continues her mother’s custom of sourcing as much as possible from regional organic and free-range suppliers. “One foot in the past, with one striding into the future,” she says, grateful for the “incredible loyalty and love” of her regular customers. “It’s that mix that makes us work.”
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Like many items on Pink Adobe’s menu, the world-famous Steak Dunigan is named after a long-time friend and customer. The charbroiled New York strip is topped with mushrooms and green chile and served with a piping hot potato—the perfect “power lunch.”
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Museum Hill Café 710 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe, New Mexico 505-984-8900 | museumhill.org/dine.php
BY RENA DISTASIO | PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM
S
urrounded by four world-class museums on a bluff above Santa Fe, Museum Hill Cafe is dining with an unparalleled view. Whether from the patio or through the floor-to-ceiling windows, diners are treated to a breathtaking hundred-mile expanse of azure skies and rolling piñon-dotted hills. Museum Hill Cafe is also a restaurant with a point of view. Weldon Fulton, who took over ownership in June 2010, delights in reinterpreting culinary traditions, from Southwestern staples to the timehonored soup, salad, and sandwich. Hearty, comforting options include a piled-high Reuben sandwich or a jalapeño-sprinkled bowl of Texas-style chili featuring lean, grass-fed beef from Bonanza Creek Ranch. The same locally produced beef makes for a superb burger and serves as the perfect foil to the zesty, mint- and lime-infused albondigas soup. Lighter fare includes Asian shrimp tacos marinated in mandarin orange and Chinese chili, grilled salmon on mixed greens with pineapple mango salsa, and Baja shrimp salad with bacon-buttermilk dressing. Southwestern style dishes range from a well-stuffed burrito to smoked-duck flautas and jalapeño tacos. All deserts and pies are made fresh on site daily, with ice cream provided by Taos Cow. There’s always something happening on Museum Hill, and at the restaurant as well, which puts on events like an occasional Sunday jazz brunch or Friday night tapas to match extended museum hours. Beer, wine, and a full spectrum of coffee drinks are available with your meal or just to sip on the patio while soaking in those hundred-mile views.
184 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
Mandarin orange and Chinese chili add a burst of bright flavor to the Asian shrimp tacos. Napa cabbage supplies crunch while corn tortillas and avocados add local flavor. Above: Bar-style seating along one side of the restaurant allows diners to enjoy the million-dollar view.
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Amavi Restaurant
221 Shelby Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 505-988-2355 | amavirestaurant.com
PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM
C
hef Megan Tucker brings a youthful exuberance to the farm-to-table movement with exquisitely prepared southern European offerings at the acclaimed Amavi Restaurant. “Local products grown in a sustainable manner are my passion,” says Tucker, who can often be found at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market procuring ingredients and conferring with area farmers. Located just one block south of the historic Santa Fe Plaza in a beautifully appointed adobe, Amavi impresses diners with a combination of Old World charm and innovative, locally inspired cuisine. The ever-changing seasonal menu abounds with fresh, local ingredients in offerings such as a beautifully presented roasted cauliflower and parsnip soup, or the classic Pollo al Mattone with locally raised organic chicken and house-made pancetta. Every item at Amavi, from the artisan breads to divine desserts, is made fresh daily by Chef Tucker and her talented staff. A seat in the lovely garden patio or the newly appointed lounge with its “small bites” menu is sure to please—as is the eclectic wine list combining Old and New World offerings. Consistently voted Santa Fe’s most romantic dining destination, Amavi Restaurant delights with a truly sensuous culinary experience.
Amavi’s rustic, romantic ambiance makes it the perfect spot to linger over a decadent Sunday dinner. Above: Meg’s Benedict is a must: soft-poached cage-free eggs, crispy roasted potatoes, house-made bacon, spinach, and hollandaise sauce.
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Wine/Dine Advertisement
Terra at Encantado An Auberge Resort 198 State Road 592 | Santa Fe, New Mexico 505-946-5800 encantadoresort.com/dining/restaurant/
BY RENA DISTASIO | PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM
J
ust as its award-winning design puts a fresh spin on classic Southwest architecture—rustic materials set in clean, minimalist lines—so does Terra’s menu marry simple but elegant flavors with festive regional influences. “This isn’t fussy food,” explains executive chef Charles Dale, who helped open Encantado Resort’s signature restaurant two years ago. “I don’t want to be super serious. I want people to relax and enjoy themselves.” There is a playfulness to the way the French-born chef juxtaposes flavors, colors, and textures in a cuisine he calls Modern Rustic. His seared diver scallops and pork belly are served with celery root/edamame puree and Sauternes-soy reduction. The beef tenderloin with foie gras butter and brandy sauce is accompanied by truffle pommes-frites. And what could be more fun than make-your-own s’mores, complete with homemade marshmallows, chocolate dunking sauce, and crushed graham cracker, nuts, and Oreo cookie toppings? But Dale’s is also a highly focused menu. You don’t get named the Best New Chef in America (by Food & Wine) by being capricious. Take his tamale dish: Stuffed with smoked lamb and guajillo chile, wrapped in a banana leaf and accompanied by tomato and corn relish, it exemplifies how he will work with only three elements on a plate at once. “I want my dishes to make sense, both intellectually and sensually, while still working within a cultural idiom,” he says—the perfect culinary enhancement to the expansive views and tranquil aura of the Encantado Resort and spa, on Condé Nast Traveler’s 2011 Gold List of the best places in the world to stay.
186 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
The dining room at Terra is a modern interpretation of classic Western architecture and design. Left: Named the Best New Chef in America in 1995 by Food & Wine, executive chef Charles Dale is also a two-time James Beard Foundation nominee for Best American Chef in the Southwest. Right: Lamb two ways illustrates Dale’s simple but focused approach to preparation: roasted rack of lamb with lamb shank tamale and garnish of tomato relish and Guajillo chile sauce.
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ART & SCIENCE
Artist, Science,Visionary Helmut Lohr (1955-2010)
Helmut Lohr was well known around Santa Fe as a visionary artist and inspired collaborator with musicians, environmentalists, corporate executives, tradesmen, and scientists, as well as fellow artists. He told Trend in 2007, “I learned more by working in all those different fields and incorporating the lessons I learned into my artwork. For me, it’s more important to satisfy my own needs as an artist than to cater to the needs of the market.” That declaration proved prophetic in the years before his sudden death on Christmas Day last year, as he turned from writing, musical composition, collage, and industrial design to a passionate scientific project mitigating the negative effects of electromagnetic radiation. He consulted to corporations including Bertelsmann Media Worldwide and Six Senses Resorts & Spas, recommending remedies for “sick” buildings and work environments. “My artwork is just a tiny, tiny part of my life,” he was once quoted as saying. “There are much more important things in life than art, like freeing oneself from the powers of the ego and looking nonjudgmentally at all facets of life.” In December, Helmut Lohr freed himself from all bonds, including—unfortunately for us—his creative spark. Trend publisher Cynthia Canyon felt a special obligation in this issue to address the passion of his final years, which he felt was a mission as important as anything he had done as an artist. She writes: We miss you, Helmut—your graciousness, your collaborative truth. “I am no longer an artist,” you said. Working to “heal the planet” was now your focus against invisible, harmful radioactive waves, you told me when we worked on the Trend lounge at the L.A. art show in 2009. You brought four devices and set them up in our 30 × 70 foot space—which of course was right next to the main electricity lines, just by chance—yet as things often are, perfect after all. Whatever happened that weekend, it was clear our lounge was a soothing and clear space that seemed to draw a continuous crowd. And if your devices brought a healing wave of health, no wonder! It made sense to me when you said metal in buildings acted like antennae to these harmful rays, and that green building includes removing metal as a structural material. Looking at life through your perspective opened my eyes to a new way of seeing, and I thank you for that. You bring to mind another visionary I wrote a poem for the day he died: John Lennon. Now you’re free, nothing can stop you john . . . No body to inhibit your mind, you inspire us to go on To question what is right, John you've been our guiding light You've touched our lives, sang our thoughts from our minds Given us the words to express ourselves Brother teacher father friend you take all forms Laughter tears anger love emotions never end While our lives paralleled, you gave the answers as we asked the whys And now you are free, soaring across the heavens, laughing at us all Holding the ultimate answer with no voice to express Only the love left in our hearts and minds forever —Cynthia Canyon
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PETER OGILVIE
AD INDEX
ANTIQUES, HOME FURNISHINGS, RUGS & ACCENTS The Accessory Annex santafebydesign.com 505-983-3007.........................80 Cielo c ielohome.com 505-992-1960 .........................20
Darnell Fine Art darnellfineart.com 505-984-0840 ...............115, 169
Twigs of Santa Fe twigssantafe.com 505-424-0563.......................158
Santa Fe Children’s Museum santafechildrensmuseum.org 505-989-8359.......................144
Statements statementsinsantafe.com 505-988-4440.........................21
David Richard Contemporary davidrichardcontemporary.com 505-983-9555 ..................13,162
Ventana Fine Art ventanafineart.com 505-983-8815 ..............108, 167
SOFA Art & Design Santa Fe sofaexpo.com 800-563-7632 ........................92
PHOTOGRAPHY & DESIGN SERVICES
Galleries at Lincoln Avenue sfgala.org .........................14–15
Waxlander Gallery & Sculpture Garden waxlander.com 505-984-2202 ..............114, 169
SantaFe.com santafe.com ..........................94
Chas McGrath chasmcgrath.com 505-670-2808.........................30
Santa Fe Opera santafeopera.org 800-280-4654...........................4
Peter Ogilvie Photography ogilviephoto.com 505-820-6001 .......................191
Constellation Home Electronics c onstellationsantafe.com 505-983-9988 .............24, 68–69
Gebert Contemporary gebertcontemporary.com 505-983-3838............8, 113, 164
La Mesa of Santa Fe lamesaofsantafe.com 505-984-1688 ...............105, 172
Gerald Peters Gallery gpgallery.com 505-954-5700 ..........Inside Front Cover, 160
Marc Navarro Gallery marc navarrogallery.net 505-986-8191 ...............110, 171 Onorato onoratosantafe.com 505-984-2008.........................38 Rekow Designs rekowdesigns.com 505-239-1156.........................48 Samuel Design Group samueldesigngroup.c om 505-820-0239 .......................147 Santa Kilim santakilim.c om 505-986-0340.......................118 Seret and Sons seretandsons.com 505-988-9151.........................50 Victoria Price Art & Design victoriaprice.com 505-982-8632.........................29 Visions Design Group visionsdesigngroup.com 505-988-3170.........................11
ARCHITECTS, DESIGNERS & LANDSCAPE COMPANIES Archiscape archi-scape.com 505-670-2375 ...............100–101 Barbara Felix Architecture + Design bjfelix.com 505-820-1555.........................45 Clemens & Associates clemensandassociates.com 505-982-4005.........................47 Tent Rock Inc. tentrockinc.com 505-474-9188...........................2 Victoria Price Art & Design victoriaprice.com 505-982-8632.........................29
ARTISTS & GALLERIES 203 Fine Art 203fineart.com 575-751-1262 .................28, 174 Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery andreafisherpottery.com 575-986-1234 .......................174 Canyon Road Arts canyonroadarts.com ....102–103 Charlotte Jackson Fine Art charlottejackson.com 505-989-8688...................7, 165 Cody Sanderson codysanderson.com......130 –131
Houshang’s Gallery houshangart.com 505-988-3322 ................12, 161 Hulse/Warman Gallery hulsewarmangallery.com 575-751-7702 .................41, 173
The William & Joseph Gallery thewilliamandjosephgallery.com 505-982-9404 ..............123, 171 William Siegal Gallery williamsiegal.com 505-820-3300...................5, 163 Zane Bennett Contemporary Art zanebennettgallery.com 505-982-8111 ...................9, 163
Taos Ecotourism Eco-Taos.com 1-855-ECO-TAOS 1-855-326-8267 ............142–143
FASHION & JEWELRY Cody Sanderson codysanderson.com ......130–131
REAL ESTATE & BANKS Los Alamos National Bank lanb.com 505-662-5171, Los Alamos 505-954-5400, Santa Fe .......157 Robin Zollinger—Barker Realty barkerrealtysf.com 505-660-5170.......................146
BUILDERS, DEVELOPERS & MATERIALS
Fairchild & Co. fairchildjewelry.com 505-984-1419...........................1
D. Maahs Construction dmaahsconstruction.com 505-992-8382.........................81
Golden Eye golden-eye.com 505-984-0040.........................19
Jane Sauer Gallery jsauergallery.com 505-995-8513 ...............117, 167
Destination Dahl destinationdahl.com 505-471-1811 .........................23
The Hatsmith of Santa Fe Inc. thehatsmith.com 505-995-1091.........................47
Janine Contemporary janinecontemporary.com 505-989-9330 ...............122, 172
The Firebird thefirebird.com 505-983-5264.......................155
Azur Mediterranean Kitchen azursantafe.com 505-982-2897.......................175
Jewel Mark jewelmark.net 505-820-6304 ...............106–107
Karen Melfi Collection karenmelfi.com 505-982-3032 ...............105, 170
H-Haus h-haus.com 505-989-1613 ..............100–101
Geronimo geronimorestaurant.com 505-982-1500 ...............120–121
Marc Navarro Gallery marcnavarrogallery.net 505-986-8191 ...............110, 171
La Mesa of Santa Fe lamesaofsantafe.com 505-984-1688 ...............105, 172
Santa Fe By Design santafebydesign.com 505-988-4111 ...........................3
The Historic Taos Inn taosinn.com 888-518-8267.......................144
Rippel and Company johnrippel.com 505-986-9115 .........................43
McCreery Jordan mccreeryjordan.com 505-501-0415 ..............124, 173
Tent Rock Inc. tentrockinc.com 505-474-9188...........................4
Hotel Parq Central hotelparqcentral.com 505-242-0040...................82–83
Rocki Gorman rockigorman.com 505-983-7833.........................42
Michael Smith Gallery michaelsmithgallery.com 505-995-1013 ..............111, 170
Il Piatto ilpiattosantafe.com 505-984-1091.........................35
CITIES, EVENTS & MUSEUMS
The Shops at La Fonda lafondasantafe.com 800-523-5002.........................42
The Inn of Five Graces fivegraces.com 505-992-9745.........................51
Spirit of the Earth spiritoftheearth.com 505-988-9558.........................31
La Boca labocasf.com 505-982-3433.........................34
HEALTH & BEAUTY
Luxx Hotel luxxhotel.com 505-988-5899.........................37
Hunter Kirkland Contem porary hunterkirklandcontem porary.com 505-984-2111 ...............104, 165
Morning Star Gallery morningstargallery.com 505-982-8187 .......................145 New Concept Gallery newconceptgallery.com 505-795-7570 ..............112, 168
AIA Santa Fe 2011 AIA/New Mexico Convention aiasantafe.org ........................93 Art Santa Fe artsantafe.com 505-988-8883.......................157 Canyon Road Merchants Association canyonroadarts.com ......102-103
Aesthetics Skin Care and Aesthetics After Care aestheticssantafe.com 505-982-5883.........................10
Nüart Gallery nuartgallery.com 505-988-3888 ...............116, 168
Design District/ Pacheco Business Park pachecopark.com 505-780-1159 ....................80-81
The Inn of Five Graces fivegraces.com 505-992-9745.........................51
Pippin Contemporary pippincontemporary.com ......109
Design Santa Fe designsantafe.org ..................95
Pippin Meikle Fine Art pippinmeiklefineart.com 505-995-0400 ................109,166
Destination Marcy Street destinationmarcyst.com .........33
Niman Fine Art namingha.com 505-988-5091 .................17, 162
Peyton Wright Gallery peytonwright.com 505-989-9888 ...160, Back Cover Sheridan MacKnight morningstargallery.com 310-488-1796.......................145 Shidoni Galleries shidoni.com 505-988-8001 ...........161, inside back cover Turner Carroll Gallery turnercarrollgallery.com 505-986-9800 ...............119, 166
190 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
Gallup thegallupchamber.com 800-242-4282 ................152-153 Ghost Ranch ghostranch.org 505-685-4333.........................40 Heart Gallery of New Mexico heartgallerynmfoundation.com180 Poeh Cultural Center & Museum poehmuseum.com 505-455-5041 ..............132–133 Railyard Arts District ................6
Light and Love Naturopathic Center lightandlove.info 505-955-9919.........................49
KITCHENS, TILE, LIGHTING, ELECTRONICS & HARDWARE The Accessory Annex santafebydesign.com 505-983-3007.........................80 AllBright & LockWood 505-986-1715 .........................25 Destination Dahl destinationdahl.com 505-471-1811.........................23 Form + Function Contemporary Lighting formplusfuction.com 505-820-7872 ........................80
RESTAURANTS, CATERERS & LODGING Amavi Restaurant amavirestaurant.com 505-988-2355.......................185
Max’s maxssantafe.com 505-984-9104.........................22 Museum Hill Café museumhill.org/dine.php 505-984-8900.......................184 The Pink Adobe thepinkadobe.com 505-983-7712 ...............182–183 Ristra ristrarestaurant.com 505-982-8608 .......................175 Rouge Cat rougecat.com 505-983-6603.........................36 Saveur Bistro 505-989-4200.......................181 Terra at Encantado encantadoresort.com/dining/ restaurant 505-946-5800 ...............186–187 Walter Burke Catering walterburkecatering.com 505-473-9600.........................46
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“An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it.” —Paul Valéry Antelope Canyon, Arizona PHOTO BY PETER OGILVIE
192 Trend » Spring/Summer 2011 trendmagazineglobal.com
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