The WILD eAST Santa Fe’s Monthly
m
a
g
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of and for the Arts • September 2011
L AT E C L A S S I C N AVA J O
R I C K D I L L IN G H A M
WIL L I A M P E N H A L L OW H E ND E R S O N
F IN N JU H L
53 Old Santa Fe Trail Upstairs on the Plaza Santa Fe, NM 505.982.8478 shiprocksantafe.com
CONTENTS 5 Letters 14
Universe
18
Art Forum: Simen Johan
of
artist Andrea Broyles
21 Studio Visits: Wesley Berg and Sandy Vaillancourt 23
Persons of Interest: SCUBA: Sandra Wang and Crockett Bodelson, by Jon Carver
25 One Bottle: The 2002 Bonneau du Martray CortonCharlemagne, by Joshua Baer 27 Dining Guide: Cowgirl Hall of Fame, Vinaigrette, and Il Piatto 35 Art Openings 31 Out & About 36 Previews: 20 in 2011 at Richard Levy Gallery (Alb.); Alexandra Eldridge at Nüart Gallery; and Erin Currier at Blue Rain Gallery 39 National Spotlight: Willem de Kooning at the Museum of Modern
Art, New York City 41 Feature: The Wild East, by Roger Salloch 45 Critical Reflections: Cannupa Hanska Luger with Jared AntonioJusto Trujillo at Eggman & Walrus Art Emporium; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center Symposium at the Santa Fe Hilton; Jennifer Steinkamp and Tyler Adams at dwight hackett Projects; Judy Tuwaletstiwa at William Siegal Gallery; Krista Peters at box Gallery; Land Use Misuse at Gerald Peters Gallery; Nancy Youdelman at Eight Modern; Pablo Picasso at LewAllen Modern; and Rose B. Simpson at Chiaroscuro 59 Green Planet: John Francis: writer, environmentalist, and speaker, photograph by Jennifer Esperanza 61
Architectural Details: The Haiku Roadsign Project, photograph by Matthew Chase-Daniel
62 Writings: “The Business of Poetry,” by Victor di Suvero
Louise Bourgeois’ fierce and sexually aggressive sculptures allowed her to confront her childhood traumas and fears. Bourgeois is best known for her larger works, including Maman—a massive steel spider—and The Destruction of the Father—a mixed-media work that Bourgeois described as “murderous.” In the 1960s, she began to incorporate fabric into her work, a medium with which she had a deep connection as her roots lay in Aubusson, France, a town founded by tapestry makers in the 1700s. Bourgeois’ grandmother was a tapestry maker, and her parents began a tapestry restoration business when she was a child. Bourgeois’ knowledge about tapestries and their creation is highly apparent in her series of intimate fabric works, which incorporates pieces of her own clothing and the clothing of those she was close to. Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works (Skira, $90) is a powerful collection of the artist’s textile works. The book includes an essay by contemporary art scholar Germano Celant, who writes: “The identity discerned in the Fabric Works will be an additional measure of the communicative and linguistic power of the artist, who has woven, over time, a web rich in memories and stories that is guaranteed to shine brightly in the history of modern and contemporary art.”
T I C K E T S A V A I L A B L E N O W ! at the Lensic box of fice • w w w.lannan.org
R E A D I NG S & CO N VE R SAT I O N S
—The Washington Post
211 W. San Francisco St, Santa Fe, NM. Tel 505.988.1234 www.lensic.com
“When she [Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie] turned 10 and read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, about the clash between Igbo tradition and the British colonial way of life, everything changed: ‘I realized that people who looked like me could live in books.’ She has been writing about Africa ever since.”
TICKETS: $6 general / $3 student + senior with ID. Lensic Performing Arts Center
Wednesday 28 September, 7 pm
Lannan is podcasting Readings & Conversations! Please visit http://podcast.lannan.org, to learn more, listen, and subscribe to have the events automatically downloaded to your computer.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with Binyavanga Wainaina
LETTERS
magazine
VOLUME XVIII, NUMBER XII WINNER 1994 Best Consumer Tabloid SELECTED 1997 Top-5 Best Consumer Tabloids SELECTED 2005 & 2006 Top-5 Best Consumer Tabloids PUBLisher/CreAtive direCtor
Guy Cross
PUBLisher/food
editor
Judith Cross
Art direCtor
Chris Myers
CoPy editor
edGar sCully
ProofreAders
JaMes rodewald KenJi Barrett stAff PhotogrAPhers
dana waldon anne staveley lydia Gonzales
Preview/CALendAr editor
elizaBeth harBall
Beginning at 8 am on Sunday, September 11, there will be a dedication ceremony and all-day event for a permanent sculpture—9/11–We Will Never Forget—by Douglas Mehrens, commemorating the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The sculpture consists of a thirty-six-foot round garden base, with glass panels set in a double triangular form. Each panel represents one of the significant memories from that day. The dedication will take place at Encaustic Art Institute, 18 Country Road 55a, (General Goodwin Road), Cerrillos. It will be led by local fire fighters, police, military, and interfaith clergy. Details: Mehrens@eainm.com, or 424-6487.
weBmeister
Jason rodriGuez ContriBUtors
diane arMitaG ita e, Joshua Baer, davis BriMBerG itaG er , erG Jon Carver, dana ChodzKo K , Julie ChaseKo daniel, Matthew Chase-daniel, viCtor di suvero, Kathryn M davis, Jennifer esperanza, Marina la palMa, iris MClister, Charles Moreau, roGer salloCh, riChard toBin, and susan wider
FROM THE EDITOR:
“One Bottle” column was, as usual, perfectly presented.
THE magazine offers a sincere apology to Melody Sumner
Baer’s writing is always a gem.
Carnahan of Burning Books for an unfortunate error that
—paul Bostos, Jr., watKins Glen, ny, ny via eMail
occurred on the August Art Forum page. Two lines of text that she had not written were accidentally added to the end
TO THE EDITOR:
of her piece. The correct text is below.
James Kleinert of American Wild Horse (August’s “Green
breathe () on the birth side of the unfinished cathedral
Planet”) is the perfect spokesman for such a great and much
Cover
() leaves turn to birds turn to stars () the dressed
needed effort. He looks like he was born to ride wild horses,
Courtesy: photo4Gallery, paris
stone smells of soap and money () nearby a white duck
and is so cute I’d like to pick him up and put him right in my
watches from a rock () down the way children pay to
pocket! (Quote me on that!) Be assured, I will be supporting
ride () in circles () in spirals () with blinking lights () the
American Wild Horse and helping to save the wild horse for
caracara bird () lives () in a cage () its left wing snapped
future generations. Thanks for bringing this important issue to
() the goat () with its horns () on the man-made earth
my attention!
pictured somewhere in the oldest drawings () crows
—elaine BerGan, tulsa, oK, via eMail
photoGraph By B serGei isaKov K Kov
are free to come and go () she () has () the () face ()
Advertising sALes
the MaGazine: 505-424-7641 edie dillMan: 505-577-4207 yvonne Montoya: 505-310-2200 vinCe foster: 505-690-1010 distriBUtion
JiMMyy Montoya: 470-0258 (MoBile) THE magazine is published 10x a year by THE magazine Inc., 320 AZtec St., Santa Fe, NM 87501. Corporate address: 44 Bisop Lamy Road, Lamy, NM 87540. Phone: (505) 424-7641. Fax: (505) 424-7642, E-mail: themagazineSF@gmail.com. Website: www.TheMagazineOnLine.com. All materials are copyright 2010 by THE magazine. All rights are reserved by THE magazine. Reproduction of contents is prohibited without written permission from THE magazine. All submissions must be accompanied by a SASE envelope. THE magazine is not responsible for the loss of any unsolicited materials. As well, THE magazine is not responsible or liable for any misspellings, incorrect dates, or inc rect information in its captions, calendar, or other listings. The opinions expressed within the fair confines of THE magazine do not necessarily represent the views or policies of THE magazine, its owners, or any of its, employees, members, interns, volunteers, agents, or distribution venues. Bylined articles and editorials represent the views of their authors. Letters to the editor are welcome. Letters may be edited for style and libel, and are subject to condensation. THE magazine accepts advertisements from advertisers believed to be of good reputation, but cannot guarantee the authenticity or quality of objects and/or services advertised. As well, THE magazine is not responsible for any claims made by its advertisers; for copyright infringement by its advertisers .and is not responsible or liable for errors in any advertisement.
| s e P t e m B e r 2011
of () God () everything reminds him of something else
TO THE EDITOR:
() all the water is missing () () there is no water in the
“It’s not why, why, why, why, why, why, why—it just is... and
river () the chickens don’t notice () unfamiliar as they
that’s all,” said Van Morrison. And so it is. Native American
are with the sky () a square tile on the death side of
art just is: evolving, changing, and modernizing, and that just is
the cathedral depicts this enigmatic image () something
good for contemporary art. Loved the article and perspective
approaches from the far hill
on Native American art. Keep it coming!
—Guy Cross, THE magazinE
—t tania leontov, Coral GaBles, fl, via eMail
TO THE EDITOR:
TO THE EDITOR:
From the front cover to the back cover, your August
BEEEEEEEP!!! The following is a test of the emergency
issue was quite spectacular. I especially enjoyed the
broadcasting system and a public service announcement.
“Person of Interest” article on Maurice Burns. Your
Please pay close attention: Your country has been taken
writer, Mr. Carver, composed a wonderful profile of the
from you by monied interests that have managed to convince
artist—it introduced me to a person who, in my way of
the majority of Americans that being working poor is really
thinking, fits the category of a true artist. As well, the
the same as being middleclass. This was all done while
photograph of Darren Vigil Gray was marvelous, and I
the whole country was watching the Kardashians! Wake
very much enjoyed the article on contemporary Indian
the f*ck up, unplug the TV, and take your country back!
art. And finally, Joshua Baer’s take on “oblivion” in his
—Gerard hartMan, plaC la itas, nM, via eMail
the magazine | 5
RICHARD DEACON IN ASSOCIATION WITH MATTHEW PERRY
DEAD LEG UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO ART M USEUM ALBUQUERQUE SEPTEMBER 1 0 – DECEMBER 18, 201 1
FOUR NE W E XHIBITIONS AT UNM ART MUSEUM OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 201 1, 5 – 7 PM
Sinners & Saints 15th – 19th Century Paintings in the Collection
An Inquisitive Eye, Seeing Into Prints Re-Imagining American Identity UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO ART MUSEUM ALBUQUERQUE
www.unm.edu/~ artmuse or 505–277–4001 Tuesday– Friday, 10 am– 4 pm / Weekends, 1– 4 pm Richard Deacon in association with Matthew Perry, Dead Leg (detail ), 2007, oak and steel, 28 x 9 x 8 feet, courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice, CA
ED MOSES
ASAP & FRIENDS SEPTEMBER 9 - OCTOBER 8, 2011 Opening Reception • Friday, September 9, 5 - 8 P.M. Gallery Talk: “Ed Moses, A Conversation” • Saturday, September 10, 3 P.M.
CHARLOTTE JACKSON FINE AR T 505.989.8688 / 554 South Guadalupe St, Santa Fe, NM 87501 / www.charlottejackson.com ACM#2, 2011, Acr ylic & glue on canvas, 60 x 60 inches
KeithJohnston fauna, fruit & fables artist reception: friday, sept. 2, 5:30-7:30 pM
ALI SILVERSTEIN
septeMber 2-october 2.2011 downtown gallery
“X”
WOODY SHEPHERD
Lemon Wedge, 2011, encaustic paint & graphite on wood panel, 36" x 36"
Chinese New Year, New York, 2011, encaustic paint & graphite on wood panel, 28" x 80"
ongoing exhibitions at the railyard
SWAN FLATS
August 26– September 24, 2011 RAILYARD ART DISTRICT 540 S. GUADALUPE STREET | SANTA FE, NM 87501 505.820.3300 | WILLIAMSIEGAL.COM
ronnielandfield
JohnKiley
beyond color field
inclination
LewAllenGalleries Downtown: 125 West Palace Avenue (505) 988.8997 RailyaRD: 1613 Paseo de Peralta (505) 988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com info@lewallengalleries.com
DAVID TAYLOR
WORKING THE LINE SEPTEMBER 2 – OCTOBER 8 OPENING RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 5– 7 PM
JAMES KELLY CONTEMPORARY 1601 PASEO DE PERALTA, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO 87501 T 505.989.1601 F 505.989.5005 JAMESKELLY.COM BORDER MONUMENT NO. 106, N 31º 19.978’ W 110º 27.515’ 2009, ARCHIVAL INKJET PRINT MOUNTED TO DI-BOND, 29-5/8 X 36-1/4 INCHES, EDITION OF 10
9 -11
“We Will Never Forget”
Designed and built by Douglas Mehrens 2011
10th Anniversary Memorial Dedication On Sunday, September 11, 2011 at the Encaustic Art Institute, the public is invited to a dedication ceremony of the permanent sculpture commemorating the 10th Anniversary of 9-11-2001. The sculpture consists of a 36’ round garden base with 6, 8’ X 6’ glass panels set in a double triangular form. Visitors can meander around and through the sculpture. Each glass panel represents one of the significant memories from that momentous day: The World Trade Center, The Pentagon, Flight 93, Police and Firefighters, All other responders, and the last panel the warriors who have given their all to defend our liberty. There will also be 4 sculptures, by various artists placed equally around the perimeter of the memorial. The participating sculpture artists are Adam Eisman, Michael Pearce, Brenda Roper, and Michael Billie. These pieces will be regularly renewed. The all day event will start at 8:00 AM Sunday, September 11, 2011 with a moment of silence at the time each event happened (8:46 [North Tower], 9:03 [South Tower], 9:37 [Pentagon], 10:31 [Pennsylvania]). The dedication ceremony “We Will Never Forget”, the 911 memorial will focus on remembering the event; remembering those Americans who perished and also to all the respondents who answered the call for help. The remainder of the day will be an open house in the EAI Gallery through sunset. A special commemorative show of EAI member’s art will be on display, along with refreshments.
Encaustic Art Institute, 18 Country Road 55a, (General Goodwin Road), Cerrillos, NM 87010 Just 20 minutes South of Santa Fe on Hwy 14. For more information and directions go to: EAINM.com and EAINM.blogspot.com Or email: Mehrens@eainm.com, or call (505) 424-6487
ERIN CURRIER Seven Miles per Second: New Mixed Media Portraits, September 2 –24, 2011 ARTIST RECEPTION
Friday, September 2nd 5–7 pm in Santa Fe
Mohammed Bouazizi, mixed media on panel, 60"h x 48"w
Blue Rain Gallery | 130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite C, Santa Fe, NM 87501 | 505.954.9902 | www.blueraingallery.com Blue Rain Contemporary | 4164 N Marshall Way, Scottsdale, AZ 85251 | 480.874.8110
Bruce Dorfman MIXED MEDIA
MONROE GALLERY of photography
Rachel Stevens SCULPTURES Carolyn Schaefer: World Trade Center and Washington Square Arch, 1998
9.11.01
9.11.11
112 DON GASPAR SANTA FE NM 87501 992.0800 F: 992.0810 e: info@monroegallery.com www.monroegallery.com
October 28 through November 18, 2011 Friday, October 28th, 5–7 pm
O P E N I NG RE CE PTION:
ZANEBENNETT CONTEMPORARY
ART
435 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501 505 982-8111 www.zanebennettgallery.com Mon–Sat 10–5, Sun 12–4, or by appointment Railyard Arts District Walk last Friday of every month
PAMELA WILSON
|
BIRDSHOt
02 september 5 – 7 pm | opening reception friday evening, through 30 september 2011
EvokeContemporary.com
A N DREA B ROY LE S is a figurative painter and sculptor whose work engages psychological, political, and feminist issues. She recently chopped up her last painting with an ax—this act of destruction was the completion of the piece. Broyles sets goals, makes lists, and creates deadlines in order to stay focused. She experiments with new materials and techniques, and is—amazingly—open to failure. At times Broyles intentionally tries to make bad art, which she finds to be freeing in many ways. Her work is in many private collections, both in the United States and abroad. Visit AndreaBroyles.com to see Broyles’ paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. the roLe of the Artist As witness
is Art A mAn’s worLd?
Since any creative endeavor has to come from personal experience or observation, an artist cannot do anything other than witness. I can’t conceive or complete any artistic vision unless it has a connection to the beauty and pain of the world. There is no choice then to take a role or not: one must have a role to participate in the creative process.
Absolutely, it is a man’s world. What isn’t? Yes, women have made significant progress in a lot of fields, including art, but there are many people who consider a male artist more serious and still look at art made by women as kind of a hobby. To see the progress women have made since the seventies, watch the movie The Heretics by Joan Braderman. One of my favorite parts is when Pat Steir is talking about if a woman wants a giant piece of art moved five inches to the right she is seen as a total bitch, but if a man has the same request everyone says he is brilliant.
sUstAining the eCstAtiC I usually create my worse piece of art when I feel like everything is working and that, yeah, I have finally got it. For me, my most successful work comes out of frustration and thinking that everything is crap. Only then do I go beyond the fear and take chances. All artists have highs and lows, and yes, at times they experience a sense of mystic selftranscendence, though it would be impossible to sustain such intensity at all times.
inner ConsistenCy As A test for An Artist I am consistent in my integrity and my studio practice. That is all I can do. These are the standards that I use to judge my work and myself as an artist. There absolutely needs to be consistency or the work will not progress.
the CUrrent work For some time now I have been painting the figure in various environments, but am currently looking at the body under water. I am also starting a new series called Domestic Landscape, which will focus on my everyday common objects and experiences. I have just completed two workshops at Anderson Ranch in Colorado, the last being a critique painting class with Fred Tomaselli. I am fired up from being in an intensive art environment, but now I want to slow down and focus on why I create.
UNIVERSE OF
photoGraph By B dana waldon | s e P t e m B e r 2011
the magazine | 15
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ART FORUM
THE
magazine
three
members
art community, clinical
asked of
our
and a
psychologist ,
to share with us their interpretation
of
this
1997 photograph by Simen Johan. They were shown only the image— they were not told the name of the artist or the title of the photograph.
Their responses follow. Something sinister brews inside this boy. One imagines he just choked the lamb he is holding. Fresh blood drips from the animal’s mouth. Flies, a symbol of evil and pestilence, gather on the lamb’s flesh and boy’s face as a sign of death. The lad is an amalgam of an older boy’s face atop the body of a younger boy. The figure also shows an adult woman’s makeup (eye shadow, lipstick). The composite gender with mixed ages illustrates Sigmund Freud’s theory of condensation of thoughts within dreams. Freud believed a single dream image could represent several simultaneous dream thoughts. Maybe we are looking at the artist’s dream? The lamb is a biblical symbol of sacrifice. It is an offering to atone for sin. Killing a lamb could be for food, or to serve as a sacrifice, or to represent the loss of innocence by a boy now passing into adult life. An adult sheep looks fearful in the background. She senses danger. The misty backdrop provides an early morning quality, as if everyone else is asleep— tucked safely in their beds. Weeds and flowers grow wildly in the distance. Unlike the lamb, they are unspoiled by human hands.
—Davis K. Brimberg, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist All movement arrests: a lifeless lamb held in the arms of a faunfaced half-child—fierce, sexless; flies clinging on a free ride to resurrection. Standing her ground, the ewe looks out, still pupil caught in the wide act of seeing—unflinching mirror. Which of us is not a mother of some sacrifice, hoping to awaken in a bath of light? “There is the necessary mystery of blood,” she says. When it comes, surrender—there is no other choice. Say the hollow gourd is there to catch it, or the silver chalice; say it is spilt for the greater good; say it will wash you clean—you and every other sin in this world. Say anything to keep the drool of it from crusting into an unholy seal on the lips. Say the blade is not sour with use. Say it can be wielded with compassion, that the cut is made in love, that it parts illusion’s veils—say that a merciful sacrifice is the birth of truth. Or that it is food. Imagine the burden of it becoming light—the white fleece as
18| THE magazine
Simen Johan, Untitled #65, photograph, 1997 Courtesy: Twin Palms Publishers, Santa Fe
a cloudmmoving in the mind’s sky. Such chatter mingles with our breath. Her womb will likely stir again and go fallow in time, this much we know. In this suspended instant of all our looking, imagine that we have the honeycombed gaze of flies— compounding, polarizing light and shadow—and where to lay our eggs, if not in the open wound of dead things?
A naked child clutches a lamb in his arms amid a mysterious landscape of grassy fields blurred by fog. Several feet behind, a worried-looking sheep is watching the scene. Four black flies are crawling on the couple that the child forms with the animal. This is what we see, but what exactly are we looking at? What about that devilish-looking kid? Is it a boy or is it a girl? And is this lamb dead or alive? Are the flies here to tell us about death? The sheep in the background could be the mother—anxious, feeling something’s wrong: “Where are they taking my baby?” This scene took place a long time ago—it is a sepia photograph after all, but there is fresh violence and drama written all over it. Pasolini is not very far away. And at the same time, nothing is obvious. You can imagine a sick child preying on small animals, like those who like to pluck insects’ legs—a typical version of kids’ cruelty (another Lord of the Flies). There is a feeling of pride and ownership in the eyes of the child; this life belongs to him. Everything in this scene is evocative of classical Christian symbolism—the shepherd, the lamb, the worried mother watching her offspring being taken to its implacable death. Is it John the Baptist hugging the sacrificed lamb, with the Virgin Mary in the background as a saddened witness? One thing seems sure: the day after, the lamb will be no more.
There is a book on my table about the avant-garde Czech photographer Jaroslav Rossler. Among the many beautiful black-and-white staged and manipulated commercial advertising photographs from the twenties and thirties by Rossler are what seem to me be more interesting experimental practices that reveal underlying socio-political aspects of Communism, Capitalism, and Constructivism. In this photograph of a boy/girl with sheep, I find myself again digging between the layers of information that reveal the history and perspective of the artist. Why is that face Photoshopped into that faded sepia photograph of sheep with flies? Why the hairy paw/hoof hand, like some old Greek contemporary Hollywood centaur holding a somewhat tired idea of living in two worlds? What motivates a work of art is not always apparent, and each perspective brings its own prejudice. Recently, I was annoyed when I saw the rising star, bad-boy photos of Tyler Shields’ young Hollywood starlets with lots of sex, violence, and plenty of blood. Aside from the obvious aggression and dominance questions, I learned that Shields sees blood as a positive and universal connector, or a common thread—and he can’t understand why everyone is always trying to “clean it up or get rid of it.” The honest, unconditional love between a shepherd and his sheep—or the love between a dog and his master—is always simpatico, especially in the midst of what appears to be the current dissolution of humanity. The sheared sheep in the headlights in the background holding the photograph together knows the whole story.
—Charles Moreau, Art Dealer, New York City
—Dana Chodzko, Artist, Abiquiu
—Julie Chase-Daniel, Writer and Poet, Santa Fe
| september 2011
STUDIO VISITS
Constantin Brancusi once said, “What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things . . . it is impossible for anyone to express anything
essentially
real
by
imitating
its exterior surface.” Two artists respond to
Brancusi’
s statement.
I think it is a bit overreaching for anyone to assume he or she can determine what is “real” and “essentially real”—not to mention the “essence of things.” In my current art practice, a statement like this from Brancusi isn’t even on my radar. My art became powerful and real to me when it returned to being simple. Drawing has become surprisingly simple—even effortless at times. I don’t have the voices of Brancusi or other artists and theorists in my head when I’m working. I simply put charcoal to paper and take comfort in the fact that I am creating images that feel worthy and necessary to me. It has been liberating to untie my work from the hold of other people’s theories. I’ll let my life and my art lead me to what feels essentially real.
—Wesley Berg During 2010 and 2011 Berg’s work has been shown at SOFA West (222 Shelby Street Gallery), Santa Fe; Baer Art Center, Hofsós, Iceland; Aviary Gallery, Jamaica Plain, MA; Big Paper, 333 Montezuma Annex, Santa Fe; and at The Drawing Room, Budapest, Hungary, among many others. Berg will be having a solo show in October at enter:gallery, in New York City.
I usually do not start a painting by trying to create anything real or exact. It is not in my nature. I am much more comfortable trying to express the essence of a person, place, or thing by taking into account all the colorful surrounding details. I try to create paintings that have meaning for me and for others. For me, the experiences that have the most meaning are simple and sometimes fleeting—so one has to capture the essence of a moment quickly without over-thinking. It sometimes seems impossible to recreate anything essentially real—to do so would be an arduous task. I don’t think I could ever paint a rose as lovely as a real rose, but I might try to incorporate the deep layers of color and shapes that make a rose a rose, or pair it with an African textile. I am not one for imitating, although many great artists have learned through imitation. It is far more exciting to free my soul to see and appreciate the little things in life, and to paint the essence of what I see. I am simply seizing the moment to visually capture the Santa Fe that I love, along with many other charming places. I find myself using the same response as Matisse, when he said to a woman who was looking over his shoulder and saying that the lady he was painting did not look like a lady, “Madame I am not making a lady, I am creating a painting!”
—Sandy Vaillancourt Vaillancourt‘s work has been shown at the Provence Shop, La Fonda Hotel, and The Station in Santa Fe. On September 9, 10, and 11, there will be a show/sale—Santa Fe Inspired—at La Fonda Hotel, with a reception on Friday, September 9, from 4:30 to 7:30 pm.
Photographs by Anne Staveley | september 2011
THE magazine | 21
SCUBA
PERSONs OF INTEREST
“Excellently
observed.”
answered Candide;
“but let us cultivate our garden.”—Voltaire Photographs by Jennifer Esperanza like a bright, white general mercantile of contemporary art. Art is being made in the back and hung directly on the studio wall for your immediate perusal. The work is whimsical and original and quirky, like something that we have always known, but now there is a new way to know it. There is a Paul Klee sense of play, and good reasons for The Enlightenment of 1700s Europe was an enlightenment
SCUBA, on the other hand, is busy un-selling their souls in
the strangest things abound. Clearly Margaret Kilgallen and
because, for the first time since the Neolithic, humanity
a way that is sweetly and subtly, cunningly and cleverly, anti-
Barry McGee are heroes.
divined the concept of a slavery-free, egalitarian society as
elitist while, like Warhol and Damien Hirst, also selling out in
Now they are making a volcano. The shape is the same
it became clear that, through the application of science and
a good way. SCUBA is an art collective. SCUBA made an ice
as an ice cream cone upside down, or kinda—a bunch of
the development of technology, we could easily house, feed,
cream cone of art. The shape the numerous little paintings
tiny painted sculptures, like little Niki de Saint Phalle’s,
and shelter large numbers of people in a kind of modern,
made on the wall was that of a confection. Very tasty.
dealing with all kinds of subjects, ideals, archetypes, and
material comfort zone. What an amazing thing to realize!
Everybody licked it with their eyeballs. Everybody bought
symbols will shoot like molten lava from the mountaintop.
the little paintings until the whole thing was devoured.
Like the paintings, the sculptures will be affordable as part of
So the plan was put into action, and out of this experiment came capitalism, industry, and an extremely
In its current modality, SCUBA is a painter, a sculptor,
SCUBA’s commitment to “organic local art in opposition to
significant advance in the material comfort level of larger and
an installation artist, and a performer of the Meow Wolf
the big-box stuff” ethic that seems to be the sea you swim in
larger numbers of people, globally, as material resources were
generation emanating from one couple. SCUBA draws and
when you swim with SCUBA.
seized and shipped (rather than the people you captured in
paints. SCUBA sculpts. SCUBA performs. SCUBA doesn’t
In the terms of the 1700s, they represent a kind
your raiding party), and empires fell to democratic uprisings,
give a damn that the banks won’t loan to the taxpayers
of cottage industry, a form of mercantilism with ancient
one of which was the American Revolution. And wealth
who bailed them out, or that the auction houses and neo-
roots. By transforming raw materials into objects of quality
was spread like they said it could be. In France, and in the
aristocrats have colluded to exclude most everybody from
through the pain and pleasure of their labors, and expecting
English colonies of North America, they had this dream of a
their big Art game, or that the gap between the wealthy and
a small profit in return, SCUBA is practicing a small-scale
large middle class. In fact, the whole capitalist concept was
the poor in America is wider than ever. SCUBA is nobody’s
proto-capitalism in which they play both laborer and boss.
essentially based on this. “Let the serfs get some currency
wage-slave.
This arrangement is ideal in that it tends to defuse
in exchange for being the workforce,” one aristocratic
SCUBA is Sandra Wang and Crockett Bodelson. The
management/labor disputes. And for you, it means you can
European dude said to another, “…with this large middle class
couple met on a street in San Francisco, selling paintings.
get the stuff at the source, uncut and unbrokered. You too
and these machines we can remain free of laboring and free
The duo of deep divers has now set up shop at the Baca
can un-sell your soul on the way to the next revolution. D
our consciences of this pesky slave thing in one fell swoop. I’ll
Street Studios, near Erika’s Witch Store. Their place reads
—Jon Carver
supply the capital and you go tell them they’re all freed, unless they want to stay on and work for meager wages.” So we can’t all be capitalists because the base premises of capitalism say so. By design, capitalism is devised for an aristocracy, and made to be elitist. Which brings us to today’s collapse, and what is really so wrong with the rich getting richer while the middle class stagnates, abandoned by true democratic redress because the transnational corporate elite has purchased the U.S. government from the people without asking. I know that aristo-corporatocracist Obummer’s s’posed to be the great triangulator, and he’s got his long-term chess game, and when he wins you still won’t even know it, but the guy’s clearly sold his soul like a common congressman. continued on page 38
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
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lunch - monday thru saturday sunday brunch dinner nightly
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one bottle
One Bottle:
T h e 2002 B o n n e au
du
M a r t r ay C o r t o n - C h a r l e m a g n e
by Joshua Baer #1. #2. #3. #4. #5. #6. #7. #8.
#9.
#10. #11.
#12.
#13.
#14.
#15.
#16.
#17. #18. #19. #20.
McCoy Tyner’s piano on the John Coltrane Quartet’s cover of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s My Favorite Things. Richard Diebenkorn’s works on paper, especially the spade pictures, the collages, and the drawings he made at Soda Lane. Stella and Gabe’s naked eyes. The last line of Ernest Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream. La Täche, in all of its aspects and vintages, especially the way the wine tastes like nothing but itself. Domaine Dujac, Jacques Seysses, and the Seysses family, for making red Burgundies that remind me of La Täche. Australian Shepherds, especially Saint Genevieve, Cuba and Azore, Marie-Galante and Arthur the Beast, and Jack and Louis. Tassajara Springs, especially the old baths, the curved bridge, “free and shining, within and without,” the stone cabins, the old and the new kitchens, Pajama Lane, the gutters in the pool, the kerosene lamps, the barn with the view of the tan oaks on the south-facing hillside, the three crossings, the Narrows, and the sound the water makes in the middle of the night. The view of San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge from the Berkeley Hills, especially at night during the late 1960s, when the old eastern span of the bridge was lit up from the toll booth to Yerba Buena Island so that the bridge resembled a ramp leading up to an enormous circus tent. Valeria Ciangottini’s face in the last frame of Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. All of Dan Welch’s gifts, including but not limited to his calligraphic paintings, his resemblance to the mountain, his fluency in Katakana, and his religious pizzas. Old Santa Fe, especially during the late seventies and early eighties, when hospitality was still a way of life and intimacy was still regarded as a virtue. Eliza’s mysterious ways, including but not limited to the way she laughs, the way she cries, and the way she cultivates theories about the people, places, and things that make her laugh and make her cry. The big dreams, especially the ones where the mountain is the landscape and the ancestors laugh, move, smile, and talk like they have all the time in the world. Classic Navajo blankets, especially the bayeta ponchos, the white background serapes, the early chief’s blankets, and the bayeta mantas. A lifetime of morning walks, most of them in the company of Black Jack, whose dark eyes see things long before they appear. The way the markets listen when everyone is talking, and the way they talk when nobody is listening. Bob Dylan’s characterization of Jimi Hendrix as “the gypsy.” John Lennon’s jaded voice, before, during, and after the echo chamber, but especially on I’m Only Sleeping. Matthias Goerne, the German baritone, especially his version of J. S. Bach’s Cantata #82, Ich habe genug. No one blends the ecstasy and the sorrow into a single sustained note like Matthias Goerne.
#21.
You look like who you say you are So scoot over let me drive your car Roll down the glass and give some wind Lock all the doors I’m on the loose again alright… Along with every other lyric, note, grunt, and howl in ZZ Top’s Thug. The best version is still the studio cut on Eliminator. Which brings us to #22, the 2002 Bonneau du Martray CortonCharlemagne. Corton-Charlemagne is a grand cru vineyard, an appellation, and an imposing hill located in the French communes of Aloxe-Corton, Pernand-Vergelesses, and Ladoix-Serrigny. The slopes of the hill are planted with vineyards. The top of the hill is covered with a forest of pine trees. From the south, the wide thin line of the forest looks like the crust at the top of a cheese soufflé. All of the vines at Corton-Charlemagne grow Chardonnay grapes but to refer to a CortonCharlemagne as “a Chardonnay” is like referring to a beautiful woman as “a chick”—it is not so much an understatement as an insult. Corton-Charlemagne got its name from the Emperor Charlemagne, who used to own the hill. The name “Charlemagne” comes from the Latin “Carolus Magnus,” or “Charles the Great,” though the French alchemists used to contend that Carolus Magnus meant “the great song.” According to Burgundian lore, Charlemagne’s second wife, Queen Hildegarde, preferred white Burgundies to red Burgundies because the white wines did not stain her husband’s beard. While a number of winemakers make Corton-Charlemagne, the best known domains are J.F. Coche-Dury, Louis Latour, Jean Chartron, and Bonneau du Martray. Of the four, Coche-Dury is the most expensive, Latour is the most typical, Chartron shows the most restraint, and Bonneau du Martray offers the greatest degree of enchantment. In the glass, the 2002 Bonneau du Martray CortonCharlemagne radiates golden light. The bouquet is steady at first, then it becomes what the French call sauvage or what we call “wild and crazy.” Be careful of the thoughts you have when you inhale the bouquet. If someone is reading your mind, he or she may never trust you again. On the palate, there are suggestions of modern longings and ancient ambitions. The finish is tragic, in the sense that it is over before you have the chance to enjoy it. What I love most about Bonneau du Martray’s CortonCharlemagnes is the way they age, and the way the wine from an aged bottle manages to be simultaneously aloof and engaged. Of the vintages that are available, the 1999, 2004, 2007, and 2009 are the most popular but the 2002 is the vintage that brings tears to my eyes. And that’s why it completes my list of favorite things. D
One Bottle is dedicated to the appreciation of good wines and good times, one bottle at a time. The name “One Bottle” and the contents of this column are ©2011 by onebottle.com. For back issues, go to onebottle.com. You can write to Joshua Baer at jb@onebottle.com.
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
THE magazine | 25
DINING GUIDE
Burgers, Brisket, BBQ, Beer, and more at
The
Cowgirl Hall of Fame 319 South Guadalupe 982-2565
$ KEY
INEXPENSIVE
$
up to $14
MODERATE
$$
$15—$23
EXPENSIVE
$$$
$24—$33
Prices are for one dinner entrée. If a restaurant serves only lunch, then a lunch entrée price is reflected. Alcoholic beverages, appetizers, and desserts are not included in these price keys. Call restaurants for hours.
VERY EXPENSIVE
$$$$
$34 plus
EAT OUT OFTEN
Photos: Guy Cross
...a guide to the very best restaurants in santa fe and surrounding areas... 311 Cafe on the Trail 311 Old Santa Fe Trail. 984-8500. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine Major credit cards. $$
Cuisine: International. Atmosphere: Casual. House specialties: For breakfast, have La Fruits Rouges Crepe (mixed berries and whipped cream) or the Stuffed and Toasted French Croissant. For lunch, choose from any of the homemade quiches or wonderful salads. Tempting dinner entrees include the Grilled Flat Iron steak and the Seared Duck Breast. Comments: Authentic French bistro fare. 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar 315 Old Santa Fe Trail. 986-9190. Dinner Full bar. Smoke-free inside. Patio. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: French. Atmosphere: Reminds on of an inn in the French counyside. House specialties: Steak Frites, seared Pork Tenderloin, and the Black Mussels are all winners. Comments: A beautiful new bar with generous martinis, a teriffic wine list and a “can’t miss” bar menu. Winner of Wine Specator’s Award of Excellence. Amavi Restaurant 221 Shelby St. 988-2355. Lunch/ Dinner/Sunday Brunch Full bar. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$$$ Cuisine: Mediterranean. Atmosphere: Elegant. House specialties: The tapas appetizer thrills and the pollo al mattone, marinated for two days and served with pancetta, capers, and house preserved lemon, may be the best chicken dish you’ve ever had. Also try the tiger shrimp. Comments: Farm to table. Chef Megan Tucker is doing it right. Andiamo! 322 Garfield St. 995-9595. Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine. Smoke-free. Patio. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Italian. Atmosphere: Casual H ouse specialties : Start with the Steamed Mussels or the Roasted Beet Salad. For your main, choose the delicious Chicken Marsala or the Pork Tenderloin. C omments : Good wines, great pizzas, and a sharp waitstaff. Anasazi Restaurant Inn of the Anasazi 113 Washington Ave. 988-3236 . Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Smoke-free. Valet parking. Major credit cards. $$$$ Cuisine: Contemporary American cuisine. Atmosphere: A casual, yet elegant room evoking the feeling of an Anasazi cliff dwelling. House specialties: We suggest blue corn crusted salmon with citrus jalapeno sauce, and the nine spice beef tenderloin. Comments: Attentive service. Aztec Cafe & Restaurant 317 Aztec St. 820-0025. Lunch/Sunday Brunch/Dinner: Friday/Saturday Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$
Cuisine: Organic comfort food. Atmosphere: Casual and friendly. House specialties: For our breakfast, we love the Smothered Vegetarian Breakfast Burrito and the Organic Egg Sandwich. Lunch favorites include the “real deal” Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich and the superfresh Garden Salad. Don’t miss the Fresh Fruit Smoothies and the delicious Housemade Ice Cream. Comments: Chef de Cuisine, Aidan Maloney knows his stuff. A zur 428 Agua Fria St. 992-2897 Dinner Wine/Beer Major credit cards. $$$ C uisine : Mediterranean. A tmosphere : Intimate restaurant housed in a small adobe building with a charming bar. H ouse specialties : If available, try the stuffed trout. Over a dozen tapas, including the flavorful grilled cauliflower with a grain mustard–caper vinaigrette. We also enjoyed the stuffed Piquillo peppers with pork belly and blue cheese crema. For dessert, we chose the pineapple crumble, served with caramel sea salt ice cream. C omments : Noice wine list, reasonably priced. Bobcat Bite Restaurant Old Las Vegas Hwy. 983-5319. Lunch/Dinner No alcohol. Smoking. Cash. $$ Cuisine: American. Atmosphere: This is the real deal—a neon bobcat sign sits above a small, low-slung building. Inside are five tables and nine seats at a counter made out of real logs. House specialties: The enormous inch-and-a-half thick green chile cheeseburger is sensational. The 13-ounce rib-eye steak is juicy and flavorful. Body Café 333 Cordova Rd. 986-0362. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: Organic. Atmosphere: Casual. House specialties: In the morning, try the breakfast smoothie or the Green Chile Burrito. We love the Asian Curry for lunch or the Avocado and Cheese Wrap. Comments: Soups and salads are marvelous, as is the Carrot Juice Alchemy. Cafe Cafe Italian Grill 500 Sandoval St. 466-1391. Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Italian. Atmosphere: Casual. House specialties: For lunch, the classic Caesar salad; the tasty specialty pizzas or the grilled eggplant sandwich. For dinner, we loved the perfectly grilled swordfish salmorglio and the herb-breaded veal cutlet. Comments: Very friendly waitstaff. Café Pasqual’s 121 Don Gaspar Ave. 983-9340. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner/Sunday Brunch Beer/Wine. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: Multi-ethnic. Atmosphere: The café is adorned with lots of Mexican
streamers, Indian maiden posters, and rustic wooden furniture. House specialties: Hotcakes get a nod from Gourmet magazine. Huevos motuleños, a Yucatán breakfast, is one you’ll never forget. For lunch, try the grilled chicken breast sandwich with Manchego cheese.
Full bar. Smoking. Patio. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: Spanish. Atmosphere: Wood plank floors, thick adobe walls, and a postagestamp-size dance floor for cheek-tocheek dancing. House specialties: Tapas. C omments : Murals by Alfred Morang.
The Compound 653 Canyon Rd. 982-4353. Lunch/Dinner Full bar. Smoke-free. Patio. Major credit cards. $$$$ Cuisine: Contemporary American. Atmosphere: 150-year-old adobe with pale, polished plaster walls and white linens on the tables. House specialties: Jumbo crab and lobster salad. The chicken schnitzel is flawless. Desserts are absolutely perfect. Comments: Seasonal menu. Chef/owner Mark Kiffin didn’t win the James Beard Foundation’s “Best Chef of the Southwest” award for goofing off in the kitchen.
El Mesón 213 Washington Ave. 983-6756. Dinner Beer/Wine. Smoke-free. Patio. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Spanish. Atmosphere: Spain could be just around the corner. Music nightly. House specialties: Tapas reign supreme, with classics like Manchego cheese marinated in extra virgin olive oil; sautéed spinach with garlic and golden raisins. Go.
Counter Culture 930 Baca St. 995-1105. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine. Smoke-free. Patio. Cash. $$ Cuisine: All-American. Atmosphere: Informal. House specialties: Breakfast: burritos and frittata. Lunch: sandwiches and salads. Dinner: flash-fried calamari; grilled salmon with leek and Pernod cream sauce, and a delicious hanger steak. Comments: Boutique wine list. Cowgirl Hall of Fame 319 S. Guadalupe St. 982-2565. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Full bar. Smoking/non-smoking. Patio. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: All-American. Atmosphere: Popular patio shaded by big cottonwoods. Great bar. House specialties: The smoked brisket and ribs are fantastic. Super buffalo burgers and a knockout strawberry shortcake. Comments: Lots of beers. Coyote Café 132 W. Water St. 983-1615. Dinner Full bar. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$$$ Cuisine: Southwestern with French and Asian influences. Atmosphere Bustling. House specialties: For your main course, go for the grilled Maine lobster tails or the Southwestern Rotisserie, or the grilled 24-ounce “Cowboy Cut” steak. Comments: Good wine list. Downtown Subscription 376 Garcia St. 983-3085. Breakfast/Lunch No alcohol. Smoke-free. Patio. Cash/ Major credit cards. $ Cuisine: Standard coffee-house fare. Atmosphere: A large room with small tables inside and a nice patio outside where you can sit, read periodicals, and schmooze. Over 1,600 magazine titles to peruse. House specialties: Espresso, cappuccino, and lattes. El Faról 808 Canyon Rd. 983-9912. Lunch/Dinner
Geronimo 724 Canyon Rd. 982-1500. Dinner Full bar. Smoke-free dining room. Patio. Major credit cards. $$$$ Cuisine: French–Asian fusion fare. Atmosphere: Kiva fireplaces, a portal, and a lovely garden room. House specialties: Start with the superb foie gras. Entrées we love include the green miso sea bass, served with black truffle scallions; and the classic peppery Elk tenderloin. Comments: Tasting menus are available. Il Piatto 95 W. Marcy St. 984-1091. Lunch/Dinner Full bar. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Italian. Atmosphere: Bustling. House specialties: Our faves: the arugula and tomato salad, the grilled hanger steak, the lemon rosemary chicken, and the pork chop stuffed with mozzarella, pine nuts, and prosciutto. Comments: Try the Enoteca Menu, available from 2-5 on weekdays. Prix fixe seven nights a week.
Kohnami Restaurant 313 S. Guadalupe St. 984-2002. Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine/Sake. Smoke-free. Patio. Visa & Mastercard. $$ Cuisine: Japanese. Atmosphere: Casual. House specialties: Miso soup; soft shell crab; dragon roll; chicken katsu; noodle dishes; and Bento box specials. Comments: The sushi is always perfect— the sushi chefs are knowledgeable Try the Ruiaku Sake. It is clear, smooth, and very dry. Comments: We love their new noodle menu. La Plancha de Eldorado 7 Caliente Road at La Tienda. 466-2060 Hiway 285 / Vista Grande Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner/Sunday Brunch Beer/Wine. Smoke-free Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Salvadorian Grill. Atmosphere: a casual open space. H ouse specialties : Loroco omelet and anything with the pan-fried plantains. Try the Salvadorian tamales and the poblano del dia. Everything is fresh. R ecommendations : The Sunday brunch terrific and plentiful. C omments : Chef Juan Carols and family work hard to please. Lan’s Vietnamese Cuisine 2430 Cerrillos Rd. 986-1636. Lunch/Dinner Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: Vietnamese. Atmosphere: Casual and friendly. H ouse specialties : Start with the Pho Tai Hoi, a vegetarian soup loaded with veggies, fresh herbs, and spices. For your entree, we suggest the Noung—it will definately rock your taste buds.
Jambo Cafe 2010 Cerrillios Rd. 473-1269. Lunch/Dinner Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: African and Caribbean inspired. Atmosphere: Basic cafe-style. House specialties : We love the tasty Jerk chicken sandwich. Try the curried chicken salad wrap; or the marvelous phillo stuffed with spinach, black olives, feta cheese, roasted red peppers and chickpeas served over organic greens. Comments: Obo was the executive chef at the Zia Diner.
La Plazuela on the Plaza 100 E. San Francisco St. 989-3300. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Full Bar. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: New Mexican and Continental. Atmosphere: A gorgeous enclosed courtyard with skylights and handpainted windows exudes Old World charm. H ouse specialties : Start with the Classic Tortilla Soup or the Heirloom Tomato Salad with baked New Mexico goat cheese. For your entrée you will not go wrong ordering the Braised Lamb Shank, served with a spring gremolata, roasted piñon couscous, and fresh vegetables. C omments : Good wait service and easonal menus.
Josh’s Barbecue 3486 Zafarano Dr., Suite A. 474-6466. Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Barbecue. Atmosphere: Casual, House specialties: Delicious wood-smoked meats, cooked low and very slow are king here. Recommendations: Try the red-chile, honey-glazed ribs, the tender brisket, the barbecue chicken wings, the smoked chicken tacquitos, and the spicy queso. Comments: Seasonal BBQ sauces. Josh’s was written up in America’s Best BBQs.
Mangiamo Pronto! 228 Old Santa Fe Trail. 984-2002. Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine/Sake. Smoke-free. Visa & Mastercard. $$ C uisine : Italian. A tmosphere : Casual. H ouse specialties : Lots of great pizzas to choose from. We suggest our favorite—the Pesto pizza, with roasted chicken, basil pesto, red bell peppers, caramelized onions and mozzarella cheese. C omments : For dessert, choose from a variety of delicious pasteries, cookies, pies, cakes, and gelato.
continued on page 29
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
THE magazine | 27
FULL
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shibumi
Crispy Eggplant with Local Feta & a Smoky Tomato Broth Grilled Asparagus with Oyster Mushrooms, Baby Arugula & Bernaise Sauce Calamari with Peppernata Sauce & Basil
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Charcuterie Plate Lunch: 11:30 am – 2:30 pm Monday – Friday Dinner: 5:30 –10 pm Monday – Saturday Kaiseki / Izakaya Dinner: Last Thursday of the Month
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Kevin Allende
Marcelo Aragon
Davin Corriz
7 Caliente Road Santa Fe, NM 87508 505.428.0024
DINING GUIDE
Atmosphere: Casual and friendly. House specialties: The beers are outstanding when paired with beer-steamed mussels, calamari, burgers, and fish and chips, Second Street Brewery at the Railyard 1607 Paseo de Peralta. 989-3278. Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine. Smoke-free inside. Patio. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Simple pub grub and brewery. Atmosphere: Casual and friendly. House specialties: The beers are outstanding, especially when paired with beersteamed mussels or the beer-battered calamari, burgers, fish and chips, or the truly great grilled bratwurst. Comments: Fun bar and great service.
Farm-to-Plate-to-Table-to-Fork-to-Mouth at
Vinaigrette
709 Don Cubero Alley • Santa Fe • 820-9205 M aria ’ s N ew M exican K itchen 555 W. Cordova Rd. 983-7929. Lunch/Dinner Full bar. Smoking/non-smoking. Patio. Major credit cards. $$ C uisine : New Mexican. A tmosphere : Rough wooden floors and hand-carved chairs set the historical tone. H ouse specialties : Freshly made tortillas, green chile stew, and pork spareribs. C omments : Perfect margaritas.
Max’s 401½ Guadalupe St. 984-9104. Dinner Beer/Wine. Non-smoking. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Contemporary. Atmosphere: Intimate and caring. House specialties: Specializing in “sous vide,” a method that maintains the integrity of the ingredients. Start with the Baby Beet Salad. For your main, try the Pan Seared Day Boat Scallop or the Sous Vide Chilean Sea Bass. For dessert, we love the Dark Chocolate Globe. Comments: Chef Mark Connell is making magic. Mu Du Noodles 1494 Cerrillos Rd. 983-1411. Dinner/Sunday Brunch Beer/Wine. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Noodle house. Atmosphere: Casual and friendly. House specialties: Salmon dumplings with oyster sauce, and Malaysian Laksa. Museum Hill Cafe Museum Hill, off Camino Lejo. 984-8900. Breakfast/Dinner Beer/Wine to come. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: American, Mediterranean and Mexican. Atmosphere: Casual and friendly. House specialties: The Thai Beef Salad is right on the mark. Try the Smoked Duck Flautas—they’re amazing. Comments: Menu changes depending on what is fresh in the market.
specialties: Try the Northern New Mexico rack of lamb with black olive tapenade.
Pizza Centro Santa Fe Design Center. 988-8825. Agora Center, Eldorado. 466-3161 Cash or check. No credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Real New York-style pizza. Atmosphere: Counter service and a few tables. House specialties: Try the Central Park and the Times Square thin-crust pizza. Comments: A taste of the Big Apple. Plaza Café Southside 3466 Zafarano Dr. 424-0755. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner 7 days Full bar. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: American and New Mexican. Atmosphere: Bright and light, colorful, and friendly. House specialties: For your breakfast go for the Huevos Rancheros or the Blue Corn Piñon Pancakes. The Brisket Taquito appetizer rules. Try the green chile stew. Rasa Juice Bar/Ayurveda 815 Early St. 989-1288 Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Organic juice bar. Atmosphere: Calm. House specialties: Smoothies, juices, teas, chai, cocoa, coffee, and espresso, all made with organic ingredients. If juice is your thing, our favorite is the Shringara (love and passion), made with beet, apple, pear and ginger. Comments: Add to this mix vintage clothing, handmade jewelry, Ayurvedic herbs and treatments. Rasa is an expansion of Spandarama Yoga Studio. Real Food Nation Old Las Vegas Hwy/Hwy 285. 466-3886. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: Farm to table with an on-site organic garden. Atmosphere: Cheery, light, and downright healthy. House specialties: A salad sampler might include the red quinoa, roasted beets), and potato with dill. Muffins and croissants are baked in-house. Recommendations: An inspired breakfast menu.
Nostrani Ristorante 304 Johnson St. 983-3800. Dinner Beer/Wine. Smoke-free/Fragrance-free Major credit cards. $$$$ Cuisine: Regional dishes from Northern Italy. Atmosphere: A renovated adobe with a great bar. House specialties: Menu changes by season. Great dishes may include: Shrimp and Calamari Fritti with Rice Croquettes, Potato Gnocchi with Basil Cream, and Veal Scaloppiini with Sauteed Potatoes Comments: European wine list. Frommer’s rates Nostrani as one of the “Top 500 Restaurants in the World.” Note: Fragrance-free.
Rio Chama Steakhouse 414 Old Santa Fe Trail. 955-0765. Sunday Brunch/Lunch/Dinner/Bar Menu. Full bar. Smoke-free dining rooms. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: All-American classic steakhouse. Atmosphere: Gorgeous Pueblo-style adobe with vigas and plank floors. House specialities: USDA prime steaks and prime rib. Haystack fries and cornbread with honey butter. Recommendations: For dessert, we suggest that you choose the chocolate pot.
O’Keeffe Café 217 Johnson St. 946-1065. Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine. Smoke-free. Patio. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: Contemporary Southwest with a French flair. Atmosphere: The walls are dressed with photos of O’Keeffe. House
Ristra 548 Agua Fria St. 982-8608. Dinner/Bar Menu Full bar. Smoke-free. Patio. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: Southwestern with French flair. Atmosphere: Elegant bar with a nice bar menu, sophisticated and comfortable
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
dining rooms. House specialties: Mediterranean mussels in chipotle and mint broth is superb, as is the ahi tuna tartare. Comments: Ristra won the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence in 2006. San Francisco Street Bar & Grill 50 E. San Francisco St. 982-2044. Lunch/Dinner Full bar. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: As American as apple pie. Atmosphere: Casual with art on the walls. House specialties: At lunch, do try the San Francisco Street hamburger on a sourdough bun or the grilled yellowfin tuna nicoise salad with baby red potatoes. At dinner, we like the tender and flavorful twelve-ounce New York Strip steak, or the Idaho Ruby Red Trout served with grilled pineapple salsa. Comments: Visit their sister restaurant at the DeVargas Center. Santacafé 231 Washington Ave. 984-1788. Lunch/Dinner Full bar. Smoking/non-smoking. Patio. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: Contemporary Southwestern. Atmosphere: Minimal, subdued, and elegant. House specialties: For starters, the calamari with lime dipping sauce never disappoints. Our favorite entrées include the perfectly cooked grilled rack of lamb and the pan-seared salmon with olive oil crushed new potatoes and creamed sorrel. Comments: TAppetizers at the bar during cocktail hour rule. Santa Fe Bar & Grill 187 Paseo de Peralta. 982.3033. Lunch/Dinner Full bar. Patio. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: American and New Mexican. Atmosphere: Casual and friendly. House specialties: Start with the cornmealcrusted calamari. For your main course, try the Santa Fe Rotisserie chicken, the Rosemary and Garlic Baby Back Ribs, or the Prawns à la Puebla. Comments: Chef Carlos Rivas is doing a yeoman’s job in the kitchen. Saveur 204 Montezuma St. 989-4200. Breakfast/Lunch Beer/Wine. Smoke-free. Patio. Visa/Mastercard. $$ Cuisine: French meets American. Atmosphere: Casual. Buffet-style service for salad bar and soups. House specialties: Daily chef specials, gourmet and buildyour-own sandwiches, wonderful soups, and an excellent salad bar). Comments: Breakfasts, organic coffees, and super desserts. Family-run. Second Street Brewery 1814 Second St. 982-3030. Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine. Smoke-free inside. Patio. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Simple pub grub and brewery.
Shibumi 26 Chapelle St.At Johnson St. 428-0077. Lunch/Dinner Smoke-free/Fragrance-free Cash only. $$. Parking available Beer/wine/sake Cuisine: Japanese noodle house. Atmosphere: Tranquil and elegant. Table and counter service. House specialties: Start with the Gyoza—a spicy pork pot sticker or the Otsumami Zensai (small plates of delicious chilled appetizers), or select from four hearty soups. Shibumi offers sake by the glass or bottle, beer, and champagne. Comments: Zen-like setting. Shohko Café 321 Johnson St. 982-9708. Lunch/Dinner Sake/Beer. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: Authentic Japanese Cuisine. Atmosphere: Sushi bar, table dining. House specialties: Softshell crab tempura; sushi, and bento boxes. Steaksmith at El Gancho
Old Las Vegas Hwy. 988-3333. Lunch/Dinner Full bar. Smoke-free dining room. Major credit cards $$$ Cuisine: American. Atmosphere: Family restaurant with full bar and lounge. House specialties: Aged steaks; lobster. Try the pepper steak with Dijon cream sauce. Comments: They know steak here. Teahouse 821 Canyon Rd. 992-0972. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner 7 days Beer/Wine. Fireplace. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: Farm-to-fork. Atmosphere: Casual. House specialties: We love the Salmon Benedict with poached eggs, the quiche, the gourmet cheese sandwich, and the Teahouse Mix salad. Terra at Encantado 198 State Rd. 592, Tesuque. 988-9955. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Full bar. Patio. Major credit cards. $$$$ Cuisine: Contemporary. Atmosphere: Elegant, with great views from the dining room and the bar. House specialties: Enjoy cocktails with appetizers in the cozy ambience of the bar. At lunch, our faves are the Wild Mushroom Quesadilla and the Encantado Burger, with perfect Pomme Frites. For dinner, start with the Risotto with Shaved Truffles. For your main, order the Harris Ranch Beef Tenderloin served with foie gras butter, or the Fish of the Day. Comments: The service is excellent, Chef Charles Dale certainly knows what “attention to detail” means. The Pink Adobe 406 Old Santa Fe Trail. 983-7712. Lunch/ Dinner Full Bar Major credit cards. $$$
Full Bar Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: All American, Creole, and New Mexican. Atmosphere: Friendly and casual. House specialties: Start with the Creole Mary—a Bloody Mary. For lunch in the Dragon Room, we love the Gypsy Stew with cornbread and the Pink Adobe Club. For dinner, rder the Steak Dunigan, smothered with green chile and sauteed mushrooms or the Fried Shrimp Louisianne. Comments: Great pour at the bar. The Shed 113½ E. Palace Ave. 982-9030. Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine. Smoke-free. Patio. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: New Mexican. Atmosphere: A local institution just off the Plaza. House specialties: You an’t go wrong ordering the stacked red or green chile cheese enchiladas. Comments: Try their sister restaurant, La Choza. Tia Sophia’s 210 W. San Francisco St. 983-9880. Breakfast/Lunch No alcohol. Smoking/non-smoking. Major credit cards. $ Cuisine: New Mexican. Atmosphere: This restaurant is absolutely a Santa Fe tradition. House specialties: Green chile stew and the huge breakfast burrito stuffed with bacon, potatoes, chile, and cheese. Comments: The real deal. Tree House Pastry Shop and Cafe 1600 Lena St. 474-5543. Breakfast/Lunch Tuesday-Sunday Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$$ Cuisine: Only organic ingredients used. Atmosphere: Light, bright, and cozy. House specialties: You cannot go wrong ordering the fresh Farmer’s Market salad, the soup and sandwich, or the quiche. Tune-Up Café 1115 Hickox St.. 983-7060. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: American, Cuban, Salvadorean, Mexican, and, yes, New Mexican. Atmosphere: Down home, baby. House specialties: Breakfast faves are the scrumptious Buttermilk Pancakes and the Tune-Up Breakfast. C omments : The El Salvadoran Pupusas are the best this side of El Salvasor. Guaranteed Vinaigrette 709 Don Cubero Alley. 820-9205. Lunch/Dinner Beer/Wine. Smoke-free. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: We call the food here: farmto-table-to-fork. Atmosphere: Light, bright and cheerful. House specialties: All of the salads are knockouts— fresh as can be. We love the Nutty Pear-fessor salad—it rocks! Comments: fresh, fresh, fresh. Zia Diner 326 S. Guadalupe St. 988-7008. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Full bar. Smoking/non-smoking. Patio. Major credit cards. $$ Cuisine: All-American. Atmosphere: Down home. House specialties: Huevos Rancheros or the chile rellenos and eggs are “cannot miss” breafast choices. For lunch or dinner, we love the meat loaf, chickenfried chicken, and the fish and chips. Comments: Generous drinks. The hot fudge sundaes are always perfect and lots of dessert goodies for take-out.
Grilled Calamari with shaved-pepper salad, onions, and aioli @ Il P iatto, 95 Marcy Street, Santa Fe. 984-1091
THE magazine | 29
julian stanczak TacTilE SEE-Through, 1974 Acrylic on canvas, 36” x 36”
Elusive Transparencies
blacK rEcTanglE wiTh whiTE linES, 2009 Mixed media on linen, 71 1/2” x 65 1/2” x 3”
OTIS Jones
EvErybody KnowS, 2011 Flashe on Birch plywood, 11 3/8 x 8 x 4”
Richard roth
September 1 - 30, 2011 Opening Reception Friday, September 2, 2011, 5:00-7:00 PM
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
ART OPENINGS
SEPTEMBER
ART OPENINGS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 BrA r nigA nig n CULt UL UrAL rAL Center, 501 N. Main St., Las rAL Cruces. 575-541-2155. 5000 Flowers: group exhibition commemorating the events of 9/11. 5-7 pm. Bright rAin gALLery, 206 1/2 San Felipe St. NW, Alb. 505-843-9176. Shifting Lines: paintings and prints by Monique Janssen-Belitz. 6-9 pm. dAvid Avid riChArd rd ContemPorA or ry, 130 Lincoln Ave., Suite orA D, Santa Fe. 983-9555. Elusive Transparencies: paintings by Julian Stanczak. Minimalist and geometric paintings by Otis Jones. Geometric paintings on three-dimensional forms by Richard Roth. 5-7 pm. evoke ContemPorA or ry, 130 Lincoln Ave., Suite F, Santa Fe. orA 995-9902. Birdshot: oi paintings by Pamela Wilson. 5-7 pm. geBert ert ContemPorA or ry, 558 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 992orA 1100. New Paintings: works by Dirk De Bruycker. 5-8 pm. hUnter kirkLA irkLAnd LAnd ContemPorA orAry orA Ary, 200-B Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 984-2111. Mixed media on wood by Joan Bohn. Canvas panels and oil on canvas by Leslie Tejada. 5-7 pm. inPost ost ArtsPACe At A the oUtPost ost PerformAnCe sPACe, 210 Yale Blvd. SE, Alb. 505-268-0044. Intersections II: artwork created by the elementary school children of Escuela del Sol Montessori. 5-8 pm. JAmes keLLy LLy ContemPorA or ry, 1601 Paseo de Peralta, orA Santa Fe. 989-1601. Working the Line: photography by David Taylor. 5-7 pm. LAs As CrUCes mUseUm of Art, 491 N. Main St., Las Cruces. 575-541-2137. From the Ground Up XXV XXV: juried exhibition of contemporary ceramics. 5-7 pm. LewALLen gALLeries downtown, 125 W. Palace Ave., Santa Fe. 988-8997. Fauna, Fruit, and Fables:
encaustic paintings on wood panel by Keith Johnston. 5:30-7:30 pm. mABLe dodge LUJAn hoUse, 240 Morado Lane, Taos. 575-751-0071. Taos Studio Tour Meet the Artist Reception. 5-8 pm. Reception mAriPosA os gALLery, 3500 Central Ave. SE, Alb. 505-268osA 6828. Mixed-media works by Vicki Bolen. Graphic art and digital photography by Jesse Garves. 5-8 pm. meyer eAst Ast gALLery, 225 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 9831657. New Directions: works by P.A. Nisbet. 5-7 pm. new ConCePt P gALLery, 610 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 795Pt 7570. Spontaneous Expressions: paintings and monotypes by Kathleen Doyle Cook and Frank Ettenberg. Sculpture by Jeff Smith and Roger Arvid Anderson. 5-7 pm. one Artist roA oAd fine Art, 142 Lincoln Ave., Suite 102, Santa Fe. 988-5866. Sculpted Paintings: new works by L. Scooter Morris. 5-7 pm. PAtin AtinA gALLery, 131 W. Palace Ave., Santa Fe. 9863432. Stones: jewelry by Andrea Williams. 4-7 pm. red dot gALLery, 826 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 8207338. Lumen Digital Santa Fe: Digital art by SFCC students. 4-7:30 pm. weyriCh gALLery, 2935-D Louisiana Blvd. NE, Alb. 505-883-7410. Unstable Leptons: new paintings by Emily Trovillion. 5-8:30 pm.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 greg moon Art, 109-A Kit Carson Rd., Taos. 575770-4463. Definitive Nature: mixed-media work by Greg Moon. 5-7 pm.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9
ChArLotte L Lotte JACkson fine Art, 554 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe. 989-8688. Solo Show: new works by Ed Moses. Gallery talk: Sat., Sept 10, 3 pm. 5-7 pm.
ChiArosCUro, 702 1/2 & 708 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 992-0711. Black Wings: works by John Geldersma. 5-7 pm.
exhiBit it/208 gALLery, 208 B’way SE., Alb. 505-2664292. Solo show: work by Bruce Lowney.
mesA esA PUBLiC C LiBrA r ry Art gALLery, 2400 Central rA Ave., Los Alamos. 575-662-8253. Ursonate: A Sound Visualization Painting by Jack Ox. 4-5:45 pm.
Preston ContemPor PorA Por orAry Ary Art Center, 1755 Avenida de Mercado, Mesilla. 575-523-8713. 2011 Fall Exhibition: sculpture by Willie Ray Parish & Bill Burgess. Exhibition Paintings by Carla Falb & Julie Rofman. 6:30-8:30 pm. University of new mexiCo o Art mUseUm, 1 University of New Mexico, Alb. 505-277-4001. Four four shows. unm.edu/~artmuse. 5-7 pm.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 rio BrA rAvo Avo fine Art, 110 N. Broadway, Truth or Consequences. 575-894-0572. Moods, Influences, and Happenings Happenings: group show. 6-9 pm.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 gALeríA erí tePín, 2220 Calle de Parian, Mesilla. 575-523eríA 3988. México Lindo y Querido—Beautiful and Beloved Mexico: juried photography exhibition. 6-8 pm. Mexico kimo theA heAtre Atre, 423 Central Ave. NW, Alb. 505-8915101. Albuquerque Rail Yard Photo Exhibit: works by the Flickr Albuquerque/Santa Fe Social Pool and the Enchanted Lens Camera Club. 6-8 pm. sAntA nt fe CommUnity nity CoLLege, 6401 Richards Ave., Santa Fe. 428-1501. Helll & Heaven: group show. 5-7 pm.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 Box gALLery, 1611-A Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe. 989-4897. Desire: paintings by Kathleen Morris. 5-7 pm.
meyer eAst A gALLery, 225 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 983-1657. New Works: still-life paintings by Jacob Pfeiffer. 5-7 pm. meyer gALLery, 225 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 9831434. Oil paintings by Daniel Gerhartz. 5-7 pm. verve gALLery of PhotogrAP hotogr hy, 219 E. Marcy St., Santa Fe. 982-5009. Group show: photogravures by Joséphine Sacabo, solar-plate etchings by Laurie Archer, platinum palladium and gelatin silver prints by Ryuijie. 5-7 pm. vivo ContemPorA or ry, 725 Canyon Rd., Santa orA Fe. 982-1320. Meditations in Silk and Wax: works by Rosemary Barile. Whimsical Still Lifes and Landscapes: works by Linda Fillhardt. 5-7 pm. Landscapes
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 hAnd-Artes gALLery, 137 Country Rd. 75, Truchas. 689-1000. A New Awareness Series: works on canvas, wood, and paper by Mahoney Keefe. Recent Paintings Paintings: new works by Alvaro CardonaHine. 3-5 pm.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 LAs As PLACitA itAs itA As PresByteri B Byteri An ChUrC r h, 7 Paseo de rC San Antonio, Placitas. 505-867-5718. Placitas Artists Series: group show. 2-5:30 pm. Series
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 gvg ContemPorA or ry, 202 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. orA 982-1494. Measuring the Light: paintings by Lori Schappe-Youens. 5-7 pm.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 one Artist roA oAd fine Art, 142 Lincoln Ave. Suite 102, Santa Fe. 988-5866. Form and Color: oil paintings by Inger Jirby. Ceramics by Steven Gootgeld. 5-7 pm. sAntA nt fe CLAy LA , 545 Camino de la Familia, Santa Fe. 984-1122. Inhabited Porcelain: Sandra Byers, Jennifer McCurdy, and Susan Schultz show white vessels. 5-7 pm.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 the sAntA nt fe women’s CLUB, 1616 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe. 660-4495. Fashionwerks: wearableart show and sale. 10 am-4 pm.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 eight modern, 231 Delgado St., Santa Fe. 9950231. Group show: new works by Lora Fosberg, Shaun Gilmore, and Michelle Cooke. 5-7 pm. meyer eAst A gALLery, 225 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 983-1657. One Man Show: plein air paintings by Michael Workman. 5-7 pm. Working the Line—photographs by David Taylor documenting the 276 obelisks that mark the international boundary from El Paso/Juarez to San Diego/Tijuana—at James Kelly Contemporary, 1601 Paseo de Peralta. Reception: Friday, September 2, from 5 to 7 pm.
continued on page 34
the magazine | 31
WHO SAID THIS? “Keep It Simple” 1. Eckart Tolle 2.Richard Tuttle 3. Paul Theroux 4. John Nichols 5. Agnes Martin
Interdisciplinary artist seeking person to help with projects and general studio activities. Should be adaptable, good with materials and tools, and be knowledgeable of digital photography, Photoshop, inkjet printing, and contemporary art. Flexible schedule— 8 to12 hours a week. 473-3751.
HERE’S THE DEAL! $500 B&W full-page ads ($900 for color) in the October issue for artists without gallery representation in New Mexico. Reservations by Wednesday, September 14. 505-424-7641
OUT & ABOUT Photos: Mr. Clix, Dana Waldon,
Lisa Law, and Jennifer Esperazana
Read THE magazine online at
themagazineonline.com
Randolph Laub studio 303 825-9928
ART OPENINGS
Taos. 575-751-0071. Taos Studio Tour. Sat., Sept. 3 through Mon., Sept. 5. taosartist.org
new ConCePt gALLery, 610 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 795-7570. Landscapes of the Southwest: paintings by Cecilia Kirby Binkley and Linda Petersen. Photographs by Woody Galloway and Steven A. Jackson. 5-7 pm.
wiLLiAm siegAL gALLery, 540 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe. 820-3300. X: watercolors by Ali Silverstein. Swan Flats: paintings by Woody Shepherd. Through Fri., Sept. 23. williamsiegal.com
SPECIAL INTEREST Addison rowe fine Art, 229 E. Marcy St., Santa Fe. 982-1533. Oil paintings by Mary Robertson. Through Fri., Sept. 16. addisonrowe.com
zAne Bennett ContemPorA or ry Art, 435 S. orA Guadalupe St., Santa Fe. 982-8111. Contemporary works by Jim Dine, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, and Olivier Mosset. Throughn Fri., Sept. 23. zanebennettgallery.com
AxLe ContemPorA or ry at various locations in Santa orA Fe. 670-7612. I am Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: group show. Through Fri., Sept. 16. axleart.com
PERFORMING ARTS
Center for ContemPorA or ry Arts, 1050 Old orA Pecos Trail, Santa Fe. 982-1338. Kaleidospoke: bicycle-themed group show. Through Sun., Sept. 4. ccasantafe.org
ALBUqUerqUe theAtre A Atre gUiLd, P.O. Box 26395, Alb. Various performances throughout September. abqtheatre.org Inhabited Porcelain Porcelain: Sandra Byers, Jennifer McCurdy, and Susan Schultz show white vessels at Santa Fe Clay, 545 Camino de la Familia. Reception: Friday, September 23, from 5 to 7 pm. Above: Jennifer McCurdy.
destiny ALLison fine Art, A-1 7 Caliente Road, Santa Fe. 428-0024. What’s New in New Media? What’s Here Now?: discussion with speaker Ellen Berkovitch. Thurs., Sept. 1, 6-7 pm. destinyallison.com
and Community in Confluence Confluence: featuring sculptor Daniel Richmond. Sat., Sept. 10, 2-9:30 pm. leapsite.org
ghost rAnCh Piedre LUmBre edUCAtion UCA UCAtion And visitors Center, US Hwy. 84, Abiquiu. 982-8539. The Illusion of Colors Colors: group show by VSA Day Arts Program participants. Through Mon., Sept. 12. ghostranch.org
LAs As CrUCes Convention Center And visitors BUreAU re , 211 N. Water St., Las Cruces. 575-523reAU 6403. Second Annual Color Las Cruces Plein Air Competition and Community Arts Festival Festival. Fri., Sept. 9-Sun., Sept. 11. las-cruces-arts.org
hArwood mUseUm, 238 Ledoux St., Taos. 575-7589826. Under the Skin of New Mexico—The Art of Cady Wells. Nod Nod Wink Wink—Conceptual Art in New Wells Mexico and Its Influences. Through Mon., Sept. 5. Oli Sihvonen—The Final Years Years. Sun., Sept. 4 to Feb. 5, 2012. Black Mountain College and New Mexico. Sat., Sept. 24 to Feb. 5, 2012. harwoodmuseum.org high roA oAd Art toUr r at various locations in and around Taos. 1-866-343-5381. High Road Art Tour. Sat. Sept. 17, Sun., Sept. 18, Sat., Sept. 24, Sun., Sept. 25, 10 am-5 pm. highroadnewmexico.com LAnnAn foUndA ndAtion ndA Ation at the James A. Little Theater, 1060 Cerrillos Rd., Santa Fe. 988-1234. Richard Wolff with Anthony Arnove. Tues., Sept. 13, 6:30 pm. lannan.org LAnnAn foUndA ndAtion ndA Ation at the Lensic, 211 W. San Francisco St., Santa Fe. 988-1234. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with Binyavanga Wainaina. Wed., Sept. 28, 7 pm. lannan.org
Los rAnChos Agri-nAt A Ure Center, 4920 Rio Grande Blvd., Los Ranchos. 897-9651. Retrospective of paintings by Carmine DeVivi. Through Fri., Sept. 30. monroe gALLery of PhotogrAP hotogr hy, 112 Don Gaspar Ave., Santa Fe. 992-0800. History’s Big Picture: photographs by Richard Stolley and Hal Picture Wingo. Through Sun., Sept. 25. monroegallery.com new mexiCo history mUseUm, 113 Lincoln Ave., Santa Fe. 476-5200. “Death Along the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, 1670—The Bernardo Gruber Story”: lecture by Dr. Joseph P. Sánchez. Wed., Sept. 7, 6 pm. museumofnewmexico.org offCenter CommUnity off nity Arts ProJ ro eCt Ct at Robinson Ct Park, 801 Central Ave. NW, Alb. 505-247-1172. 9th Annual We Art the People! Folk Art Festival: Sun. Sept.
11, 10 am-4pm. offcenterarts.org PhArrwest gALLeries at St. Ignatius Church, Monticello. 575-743-0868. A Fair and Balanced Assessment: lecture and discussion by Kimberly Assessment Camp, former executive director and CEO of the Barnes Foundation. Sun., Sept. 25, 1pm. galleries@pharrwestgalleries.com PoJ o oA oAq AqUe river Art toUr, various locations in and around Pojoaque. 455-3496. 2011 Pojoaque River Art Tour Tour. Sat., Sept. 17 and Sun., Sept. 18, 10 am-5 pm. pojoaquerivertour.com riChArd Levy gALLery, 514 Central Ave. SW, Alb. 505-766-9888. 20 in 2011: group show. Through Sat., Oct. 1. levygallery.com site sAntA nt fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe. 989-1199. I Write the Songs: mixed-media works by Suzanne Bocanegra. Material Mutters: tapestries by Pae White. Through Sun., Sept. 18. sitesantafe.org
AsPen sAntA nt fe BALLet at the Lensic, 211 W. ntA San Francisco St., Santa Fe. 988-1234. Encore!: contemporary ballet. Sat., Sept. 3, 8 pm. aspensantafeballet.com mUsiC from AngeL fire in Angel Fire, Taos, Raton, and Las Vegas. 888-377-3300. Music from Angel Fire—28th season: international chamber music festival. Fri., Aug. 19 to Sun., Sept. 4. musicfromangelfire.org rio grA r nde theAtre A Atre , 211 N. Main St., Las Cruces. 575-523-6403. Various performances and exhibits in September. riograndetheatre.com teresA nePtUne stUdio dio/gALLery, 728 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe. 982-0016. Sevillanas Jam— Flamenco and Photography Fridays. Fri., Sept. 23, 6-7:30 pm. teresaneptune.com the Lodge At A sAntA nt fe, 750 N. St. Francis Dr., ntA Santa Fe. 988-1234. Po’pay Speaks: performance by Robert Mirabel. Tues., Aug. 16 through Sun., Sept. 4. ticketssantafe.org
stABL t es gALLery, 133 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, Taos. 575-758-2052. Arte de Descartes VII—Taos’ Eleventh Annual Recycled-Art Show and Celebration Celebration. Through Sun., Sept. 11. tcataos.org
wArehoUse 21, 1614 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe. 603-1370. The Guys: play by Anne Nelson. Thurs., Sept. 1, Fri., Sept. 2, Thurs., Sept. 8, Fri., Sept. 9, 7:30 pm. Sat., Sept. 3, Sun., Sept. 4, Sat., Sept. 10, Sun., Sept. 11, 4 pm. warehouse21.org
tAos Aos Artist orgAnizA nizAtion nizA Ation, P.O. Box 1294,
CALL FOR ARTISTS 516 A rts, 516 Central Ave. SW, Alb. 505242-1445. ISEA2012 Albuquerque: Machine Wilderness: exhibition and call for proposals. Wilderness Deadline: Sat., Oct. 15. isea2012.org
LAnnAn foUndA ndAtion ndA Ation gALLery, 309 Read St., Santa Fe. 986-8160. Avenue Patrice Lumumba: works by Guy Tillim. Through Sun., Sept. 4. lannan.org LAs As CrUCes mUseUm of Art, 491 N. Main St., Las Cruces. 575-541-2137. From the Ground Up XXV XXV: regional, juried exhibition of contemporary ceramics. Through Sat., Oct. 15. las-cruces.org/museums
Border Book festivAL estiv at Galería Tepín, 2220 Calle de Parian, Mesilla. 575-5233988. México Lindo y Querido—Beautiful and Beloved Mexico Mexico: seeking photo submissions for juried exhibition. Deadline: Fri. Sept. 9. bbf@borderbookfestival.com.
LAs As CrUCes mUseUm of Art at New Mexico State University, 1780 E. University Ave., Las Cruces. 575-541-2221. “The Red Queen”: lecture by ceramic artist Kurt Weiser. Thurs., Sept. 1, 2 pm. las-cruces.org/museums
doñA A nA A rts C oUnCiL, 211 N. Downtown Mall, Las Cruces. 575-523-6403. Second Annual Color Las Cruces Plein Air Competition and Community Arts Festival Festival. Deadline: Fri., Sept. 9 to Sun., Sept. 11. las-cruces-arts.org
LA tiendA iend exhiBit sPACe, 7 Caliente Rd., Santa Fe. 428-0024. The Next Realm—Urban Art Collective: group show. Through Wed., Sept. 28. Collective destinyallison.com
r io r AnCho A rts C ommission And the U niversity of new mexiCo, 3200 Civic Center Circle NE, Rio Rancho. 505-8968769. Seeking an existing or commissioned work of art for the UNM West campus. Deadline: Wed., Sept. 28. ci.rio-rancho. nm.us/artscommission.
L LeAP at Wild Rivers Recreation Area, Questa. 575-586-1150. NeoRio 2011—Art, Nature, Culture,
34 | the magazine
Sculpted Paintings Paintings: new works by L. Scooter Morris will be on view at One Artist Road Fine Art, 142 Lincoln Avenue, Suite 102. Reception: Friday, September 2, from 5 to 7 pm.
sePtemBer
2011 |
H I R S C H F I N E A RT
From the Ground Up XXV Regional Juried Exhibition
Museum Quality Works on Paper For the New to Experienced Collector
JJu urie ried d by by K Ku urt rt We Weis iser er
MILTON AVERY
BEATRICE MANDELMAN
EMIL BISTTRAM
REGINALD MARSH
DONNA GUNTHER BROWN
ROBERTO MATTA
MARIO CARRENO
CARLOS MERIDA
LEONORA CARRINGTON RANDALL DAVEY
ALFRED MORANG ROBERT MOTHERWELL JANE PETERSON
RICHARD DIEBENKORN
LOUIS RIBAK
WERNER DREWES
DIEGO RIVERA
ANNE FARRELL
ROLPH SCARLETT
NORMA BASSETT HALL
LOUIS SCHANKER
HANS HOFMANN
JOHN SLOAN
CARL HOLTY
NILES SPENCER
WOLF KAHN
RUFINO TAMAYO
GENE KLOSS
ABRAHAM WALKOWITZ
GINA KNEE
WILLIAM ZORACH
WIFREDO LAM
FRANCISCO ZUNIGA
CAROL CORELL
Las Cruces Museum of Art August August 19 19 -October -October 15 15 Las Cruces Museum of Art 491 North Main Street • Las Cruces, New Mexico Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 9-4:30 • Info: (575) 541-2137 Admission is FREE and open to the public
www.las-cruces.org/museums
BY APPOINTMENT 505.988.1166
LITERALLY STEPS OFF CANYON ROAD
www.hirschfineart.com
TaosArtCalendar:September2011 See more at TaosArtCalendar.com
Taos HARWOOD
TCA
SOMOS
Ongoing Exhibits
Encore Gallery Exhibits
Literary Events
august 12 – september 22 The Art of Paul Pascarella, recent paintings
october 07 Lecture: Cherie Burns, author Searching for Beauty: The Life of Millicent Rogers Harwood Museum
Agnes Martin painting installation Ken Price altar installation
through september 05 The Art of Cady Wells, 1933-53 Nod Nod Wink Wink: Conceptual Art in NM
Stables Gallery Exhibits
september 17 – february 05 Oli Sihvonen: The Final Years Black Mountain College and New Mexico
Ongoing Events
Ongoing Events
Events
Children’s Art Classes, Saturdays Museum Store Trunk Shows, Saturdays Yoga in Agnes Martin Gallery, Wednesdays Selected Events
september 08 Bill Cunningham: New York, documentary film
august 27 – september 10 Arte de Descartes XI, 90% recycled art show Movies at the TCA Sunday 2 pm, Monday & Tuesday 7:30 pm
september – every wednesday night SMU-In-Taos & UNM-Taos, Free Lecture Series september 03 Chamber Music Concert Music from Angel Fire
september 10 – 11 Taos Chamber Music Group
september 13 – 17 & 26 – 30 Collage and Mixed Media Workshop with Gwen Fox Stables Gallery
september 23 – 24 Opening of Fall Exhibitions
september 24 Quick Draw & Live Art Auction
september 24 Black Mountain College, panel discussion
september 28 Manhattan Short Film Festival
HARWOOD MUSEUM OF ART, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO harwoodmuseum.org 575.758.9826
TAOS CENTER FOR THE ARTS tcataos.org 575.758.2052
october 21 – 22 Tickets now available for the 12th Annual Taos Storytelling Festival featuring headliners Regi Carpenter and Jackson Gillman Ongoing
Used Book Sale at SOMOS office, first Saturdays of the month, 10am-1pm Monday-Friday SOCIETY OF THE MUSE OF THE SOUTHWEST somostaos.org 575.758.0081
MARK YOUR CALENDAR:
37th Annual Taos Fall Arts Festival september 23 – october 02 Two comprehensive exhibitions: Taos Select and Taos Open, Taos Convention Center open 10am – 5pm, taosfallarts.com
PREVIEWS
20 in 2011 August 19 through October 24 Richard Levy Gallery, 514 Central Avenue SW, Albuquerque. 505-766-9888. Reception: Saturday, October 1, 6 to 8 pm. When Constance DeJong began a new series of luminous copper works, she chose the Richard Levy Gallery to represent these works in her 2005 show, Arc. The gallery was also the first in New Mexico to discover Teo González, known for his provocative grids of dots and spots. However, the Levy Gallery did not always work directly with artists. Twenty years ago, Richard Levy partnered with Jeff Ryan to form 21 Steps, an Albuquerque-based print-publishing company that produced limited edition prints by important artists of the 1990s. The Richard Levy Gallery was the main distributor of these editions. Since then, the gallery has evolved into one of Albuquerque’s boldest and most progressive galleries. During the past two decades, the gallery has exhibited works by acclaimed artists such as Frederick Hammersley, in 1993, and Christopher Brown, in 1991. It has also participated in prominent art fairs, such as Art Chicago, Pulse New York, and Art Miami. Gallery director Viviette Hunt states: “Our philosophy is straightforward… We show a wide range of mediums by emerging, mid-career and established artists from all over the world. An aesthetic thread binds our program, which is cohesive in its diversity.” 20 in 2011 is a group exhibition in honor of the
Frederick Hammersley, Greetings #6, oil on linen, 9” x 12”, 1990
Richard Levy Gallery’s twentieth anniversary. Works by Constance DeJong, Teo González, and Christopher Brown will be exhibited, in addition to works by seventeen other artists who have played an important role in the gallery’s history.
Erin Currier: Seven Miles Per Second September 2 through September 24 Blue Rain Gallery, 130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite C, Santa Fe. 954-9902. Reception: Friday, September 2, 5 to 7 pm. Erin Currier is both an artist and an activist—her mixed-media paintings make heroes and gods out of the forgotten and the oppressed. Currier has traveled to thirty-five different countries, including Nepal, Venezuela, Turkey, and India. The stories she encounters during her travels inspire and inform her art. Currier‘s focus is on people struggling against poverty and oppression. During her travels, she gathers post-consumer waste to use in her works—Currier explains that she “collects the discarded waste to portray the discarded.” She then creates complex collages out of these foreign words and images, which comprise the foundation of her portraits. The eyes of her subjects often look directly at the viewer, perhaps accusingly, or simply
Erin Currier, Ai Wei Wei: Art is the Solution, mixed-media on panel, 72” x 60”, 2011
to remind us of their humanity. Currier’s style resembles the work of Latin American muralists, but she is also influenced by Eastern Orthodox icons and Social Realism. Her upcoming show is centered on peoples who do not live under a democratic government. The title of the show, Seven Miles Per Second, comes from a quote by artist David Wojnarowicz: “The minimum speed required to break through the earth’s gravitational pull is seven miles per second—we would have to run awful fast to Alexandra Eldridge, The Wild Hare, mixed media on panel, 80” x 36”, 2011
escape from where we are heading.” Although Currier’s art is beautiful, it is created for more than simple aesthetic pleasure. It is intended to incite a revolution in the minds of her viewers—connecting us to those who live with injustice and inspiring us to take action.
Alexandra Eldridge: The Art of Wandering September 2 through September 18 Nüart Gallery, 670 Canyon Road, Santa Fe. 988-3888. Reception: Friday, September 2, 5 to 7 pm. In April, Alexandra Eldridge was invited to Paris by a collector, who gave her a copy of The Flâneur by Edmund White. “Flâneur”—a term coined by Charles Baudelaire— is from the French word flâner, which means “to stroll.” A flâneur is a wanderer, an observer, and a casual adventurer. Eldridge embraced the philosophy of the flâneur during a month in France. “I came to see that this sensibility of the ‘aimless stroller’—vigilant, alert, with no destination, moving easily from the interior to the exterior worlds—was my sensibility.” While elements of her travels appear in her work, Eldridge does not paint pictures of foreign lands. Instead, her images are of inner landscapes—to look at her paintings is as if to interrupt a fairy tale or a dream. Like one of her greatest influences, William Blake, Eldridge has created her own mythology. Ordinary objects like birthday cakes, wide-eyed rabbits, and eggs are symbolic in her artistic universe. After the recent death of a close colleague, Eldridge found significance in an image of a triptych of ladders, a symbol that is particularly important in this series. She explains, “Each ladder came into being as a revelation to me, each offering a deeper understanding of self-exploration, of death, of rebirth, and of the existence of eternity.” In The Art of Wandering, Eldridge explores the mentality of the wanderer and the possibilities of eternity, using her rich imagination as her guide.
36| THE magazine
| september 2011
G
ALAGalleries ARTSAtDISTRICT Lincoln Avenue ďŹ rst friday artwalk monthly ~ 5 - 7pm
David Richard Contemporary julian stanczak | elusive transparencies
Pippin Contemporary thoryn ziemba
Evoke Contemporary pamela wilson | birdshot
Allan Houser allan houser | major works in stone
Niman Fine Art dan namingha
Windsor Betts fritz scholder (1937 - 2005)
Legends Santa Fe carol hagan
One Artist Road Fine Art inger jirby | new mexico sunsets and moonlight
Blue Rain Gallery erin currier | seven miles per second
CONNECT TO OUR GALLERIES WWW.SFGALA.ORG
DANA CHODZKO New Work in Abiquiu Sculptures & Prints Saturday & Sunday October 1-2 11am to 7 pm
Directions: 285/84 North towards Abiquiu Right on HWY 554 toward El Rito Studio Tour 3.75 miles then right on Bean Creek Dr / Prado Valley Ranch Right on Buffalo Trail #50. Red gate dchodzko@windstream.net / 505-685-0068
The Andrew Smith Gallery, INC. Presents Louviere + Vanessa Exquisite Collaborations: Concerto da Camera Continues through September 10, 2011 The Andrew Smith Gallery is pleased to introduce New Orleans multimedia artists Jeff Louviere and Vanessa Brown to Santa Fe. Known artistically as Louviere + Vanessa, the couple have been collaborating on photographs, films and multimedia prints since 2004. Louviere + Vanessa have created a fascinating hybrid of photographically generated prints and objects from an arsenal of antique and modern technologies. Unlike so much contemporary photographic work that merely documents or constructs events as technically proficient but artistically inferior digital prints, Louviere + Vanessa’s art works transcend imagery. Instead, they craft exquisitely beautiful objects rich in physicality that are also supremely intelligent.
The Forest and the Tree, 2009 © Louviere + Vanessa
122 Grant Ave., Santa Fe, NM 87501 Next to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum • 505.984.1234 • www.AndrewSmithGallery.com
N AT I O N A L S P O T L I G H T
Woman I by
Willem de Kooning
Abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning—known for his fierce yet sensual Women series—is one of the great artists of the twentieth century. This month, the Museum of Modern Art presents De Kooning: A Retrospective. The artist and New York City’s MoMA have enjoyed a long relationship—de Kooning visited MoMA numerous times in the 1930s and was greatly influenced by the museum’s 1939 Picasso retrospective. His work was featured in MoMA’s 1936 exhibition New Horizons in American Art, and the museum purchased his controversial Woman I after its first exhibition. MoMA exhibited de Kooning’s later works in 1997, produced at a time when the artist—who was suffering from Alzheimer’s—punched holes in his canvases with his violent brush strokes, and could hardly sign his name. This vast show occupies the museum’s 17,000-square-foot sixth-floor gallery and embraces the full scope of de Kooning’s work, including his sculptures and prints. Visitors can enjoy the evolution of de Kooning’s provocative art, from early works created before his immigration to America in 1926 to the great masterpieces of his career, including Excavation and Pink Angels. The exhibition runs from September 18, 2011 through January 9, 2012. Visit moma.org for more information. D
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
THE magazine | 39
Tuesday 13 September
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PHOTOGRAPHY
The WILD eAST
F E AT U R E
by artists from the former Soviet Union is an act of
faith. And an act of the apostate. It seeks to preserve the recollection of the motherland, the miracle of Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and it seeks to record the abyss into which
those forgotten by the collapse of the Soviet Empire have fallen, but survive anyway, thanks to their imaginations or because there is no other choice.
Mikhailov, Klimov, Voitenko, Isakov, Mayofiss, Sokolenko, Dou, Mokhorev, Zinchenko, Teshaieva, Nikolskaya, Maximishin, and dozens of other unfamiliar names—
the vanguard of contemporary Russian photography—a world unlike others, a world coming into the light.
When you call them up on your iPhone, stay with them. Let them come slowly.
Don’t just slip your finger onto the next image. Get in behind the borders of any of the
moonscapes explored by Sergei Isakov. Look around before that shadowy prison guard begins to blow his whistle, threatens you with some Soviet police procedure. Go to the
back of the frame where anonymous buildings hardly disturb the mist-obscured distance.
Wherever you are, silence and ice seem to hover over the composition—hover like
death. In case you had any doubts, now look at the foreground of one picture that could well be the foreground to them all: a grave, surrounded by a low wooden fence, a grave lost in the snow banks, and even this one half-filled with snow. You hardly need to be told that Vorkuta was once an important center of the Gulag archipelago.
CONTEmPORARy
In the same series, another photograph—recently exhibited in Paris at Photo4, a
gallery near St-Germain-des-Prés—sticks des-Prés—sticks to one’s memory. It is a mug shot of a bus on a bridge to nowhere, a bridge that was never completed. The photographer goes there, as the citizen goes everywhere in the former Soviet Union today, looking for the way out
from the old dreams of empire. Is there an exit? Who but a photographer cares to find the way back in? As Loudmila Lounina, a Moscow-based critic, has remarked, this place is like ancient Egypt must have been when the Pharaohs departed, leaving behind nothing but their own images, their own pyramids, and the sphinx, with his interrogation of
the future: with a bus suspended in mid-air like an afterthought, how can anything happen next ?
From Isakov in black and white is it far to Sergei Maximishin in full-blooded color?
A former physicist become photographer, in image after image—a blue tattoo on a flexed but sagging muscle, a distended pink belly in a spa—Maximishin leads us into
a larger understanding of what this world is really all about. In one photograph, a distorted red Mickey Mouse puppet dominates a landscape in which pilgrims gather around an orthodox chapel; in another, a drunken truck driver surges into view like a fifth horseman of the Apocalypse. Again, go beyond the frame of the image, step past the gold teeth, and the gold cross, swinging like the relics of faith on the crucifix
RuSSIAN PhOTOGRAPhy
of the man’s grin. See the pale faint structure of the church in the background, like
a phantom support for all that gold, all that clutching to the miracle yet to come. Or consider the abandon of those at the party for a colleague in a bank, alcohol
in excess, bawdy hedonism in excess, indecency in excess, everything in excess
except hope. Václav Havel once said that “hope is not a feeling: hope is the belief that what you are doing makes sense.” To draw a tentative conclusion from the vast
body of Russian photography slowly becoming available, there is not a lot in Russia today that makes sense.
hf
Liza Fetissova runs the Russian Tea Room Gallery in Paris (42 rue Volta, 75003).
She specializes in Russian photographers and has been successful in calling previously unknown artists to the attention of the international public. She writes about her
discoveries with intelligence and passion, as if she had married the art she is promoting, and there is about her something of the crusade.
“It is normal,” she says. “No one knows anything about Russian photography. Five years ago who has heard of Dou? Maximishin, Mokhorev? Now they command the highest prices because they address something that is missing elsewhere. A surrealist reflex to a surrealist world.”
by ROGER SAllOCh
continued on page 42
| s e P t e m B e r 2011
the magazine | 41
“Why I left? A series of coincidences: Russians are sad, of course, melancholy. But Sally
light and colors shape an environment beyond the reach of accidents and events, beyond
Mann’s photographs are sad, too. What Russians add is compassion. You have to remember,
headlines and the rewriting of history. In the same way, in her black-and-white work, she
we know something about what the world has become. Never in the history of Russia has
isolates bits of the body and gives them a radiant importance, a hand lightly posed on a
there been a year when the people lived well. I was the child of nomenklatura parents. I had
railing, with something daring about the gesture (how long will they let it stay there?), or
good doctors while I was growing up, I had vacations. But even my well-established mother
a face disappearing into the wash of the coming light.
and father had very, very difficult lives. Photography comes in, traces this narrative, and
supplies a record of what is about to vanish, of people watching the past disappear.”
hf
Mila Teshaieva won The National Press Photographers’ first prize for photojournalism
hf
Liza Fetissova: “In the history of Russia there has never been a year when people lived well. Russian young people are dancing on the corpse of the old empire. We are doomed. Even the younger generation has this feeling. The church walks hand in hand
in 2010. Ukrainian by birth, she lives in Berlin, and looking in part for her own identity she
with the state. Now no one knows where the state is going. Art is an escape. When you
wanders the Old World, goes to the far corners of the defunct empire and lends her heart
see how people escape, you see indirectly what they are escaping from. I am typical. I
and her intelligence to people who no one else even knows are there. The Rise and Fall
began my career thinking I was going to become a language professor. Now I run a gallery
of the Caspian Sea consists of images in which individuals look out from the banks of the
in Paris. Russians have several lives. Photography puts light on all of them. Of course we
Caspian Sea into the dream of what was supposed to come true the day after tomorrow,
have traditions. Rodchenko, for one, the power of abstraction as a response to the feelings
staring out across the once-promising waters while trying to survive with the poverty of
of incarceration, so symbolic of the totalitarian state. And yes, I agree with Larisa Grinberg
what has accumulated just behind them, on the shore. These are not naked bodies—these
who runs an important photography agency in Moscow, there is also the documentary
are naked souls. They know the camera is there, but they are beyond expectations. They
tradition in the eighties that worked parallel with the collapse of the Soviet Union. These
don’t care. The Buffer Zone, a series done in Georgia, makes this even more obvious. Against
brave photographers refused to toe the party line. They photographed the end of empire,
the backdrop of industrial collapse, color barely saves the figures in Teshaieva’s pictures.
they did not photobrush the collapse. Out of this come our multiple possibilities. Some
The factories are bent metal, broken roofs, leaning walls. Until your eye lands on the yellow
people insist on the past: others seek to invent a future.”
dress worn by an adolescent girl walking out of what was probably once her bedroom,
you don’t know what to hold on to. Fortunately, the yellow dress is there, a yellow dress
draped like defiance around the frail body of a young girl in an environment of wrecked
Content matters in contemporary Russian photography, but increasingly form
floors and twisted pipes through which no one except dead souls has walked for years.
dominates that content. While the documentary school juxtaposes the individual with
Always this in Russian photography: up-front negation, or in-your-face, reckless moments
his surroundings, “realist expressionists” use bodies to make statements, as though the
of extreme truth, and in the background, survivors, wanderers, dreamers, drunks, and
photographer was speaking for the contortions of the individual who can only get through
little children playing hopscotch in the shambles flaunting despair—flitting ghosts of hope.
another day by slipping into the fourth dimension, a playground for his body, a merry-go-
Like Teshaieva, another woman photographer, Lyudmila Zinchenko is, for want of a
hf
round for his soul.
better term, a “realist expressionist.” She has taken photographs of all the places where
So it is with Evgeny Mokhorev. Often he uses an old Rolleiflex to capture people lost
Russian journalists have been “disappeared” (nineteen in all at the time of her show in
in the austere refuge of their own thoughts, subjects who seem determined to abstract
2006) using a basic pinhole camera that adds a blurred sense of witness to the mystery of
themselves from the immediate world. With Mokhorev, composition is the sine qua non
what occurred. She uses a camera obscura with long exposures to create images in which
for studies that want to preserve the timeless beauty of youth, that refuse to let the rigors
F E AT U R E F E AT U R E
of daily life, like time and aging, into the arena. A kind of willful submission dominates the
they conquered it from Indians who have been conveniently “disappeared.” From my point
black-and-white work. Only the subjects’ arms protest. These arms are everywhere in
of view, Ansel Adams is propaganda. It is perfect as far as technique goes, and soulless.
Mokhorev’s studies and never quite fit the setting or the frame, always seeming to grasp at
We didn’t conquer our land. We have always had it. Now what can we do with it? The
something that lies just beyond the focus point of the camera. One imagines bodies carved
Soviets used our landscapes to make propaganda shots and movies. Our photographers
into and trapped by the stone of shrines lost in the jungle. Or of a musical score from a
cannot follow in their footsteps. Look at the work of Alexander Gronsky: he is our
civilization that has left us no indication, no recordings, and no instruments with which we
great landscape photographer. Most of the time he just photographs snow. That is our
might imagine what the music really sounds like.
landscape, all the different kinds of snows with which a Russian struggles: Gronsky’s work
Oleg Dou is not from the same family of photographers as Mokhorev, but his work is just as silent. Imagine portraits by Dorothea Lange taken during the Depression years
seems to say, “Snow is our distress and our boredom. Snow is our soul and snow is our magic because it changes every morning. Children love it. Prisoners die in it.”
in America, but without the suffering, without emotion, without the stains and strains
of real life, “RL” as they call it in Silicon Valley, “one of the possible windows.” Dou goes
through other windows. Instead of making us feel what his subjects have been through,
For the brief moment revealed in each shot, the best Russian photography, which is to
Dou makes us wonder what he himself has been through. Men become Kafkaesque
say the best photography out of the former Soviet Union, contains a kind of Fitzgeraldian
creations, souls transmogrified, little children decked out with antlers, or wrapped in the
whisper—murmuring of dreams, speaking of horrors, but always with enough rhythm
fur of apocryphal mice, fixing us with stares, like creatures hunted long ago, expressions
and light to make one believe in the visceral strength of the culture. If black-and-white
forever riveted to their mystery in a tomb of neutral light. Like the rock stars of a museum
silverplate photography is often the medium, should we be surprised? Surely, devils know
of mutants, they could be stepping out of the ashes of Chernobyl, stepping out and asking
how to slip between the pixels. As Sergei Maximishin has remarked, “Content is the
us quietly, Well, what did you expect ?
exchange between two people. Form is the exchange between you and God.”
Finally, we get to Dmitry Sokolenko. He has upped the ante. A former microbiologist, his work takes us beyond the old dogmas about “seeing is believing.” When you consider Sokolenko’s studies, even the hyperrealist or surrealist dimensions come to feel dogmatic. His images are born in a microscope but they don’t stay there. The wing of a butterfly in close-up becomes a symbol for the twin towers and 9/11. Saint Sebastian, patron saint of the army and police officers, but also Christianity’s protector against the plague, is evoked with a twisting pattern of what might be blood corpuscles. John Lennon is a design worthy of Malevich, or Mondrian, a soft gray background for a fragile black rectangle, and a long, thin, black fence pole to keep it in place. Dimitry Sokolenko is a photographer who has left mother Russia behind. In conceptualism is the word.
hf
Liza Fetissova: “You have to understand, photography was always trying to better what the painter could do. But we no longer live in a linear universe. Time and space are finished. Everything is curved, instantaneous; Americans believed in their landscape because
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
hf
hf
Clockwise from top left: Mila Teshaieva, House of Meri, from the series Buffer Zone, digital, 15¾” x 23½” 2009; Dmitry Sokolenko, World Trade Center, photographic object, 11¾” x 8¾”, 2008; Oleg Dou, Fawn, from the Cubs series, Lambda print under Diasec, 70¾” x 48½”, 2010; Sergey Maximishin, Alexandro-Svirsky Monastery, Lambda print, 31½” x 47¼”, 2002; Evgeny Mokhorev, Kyzya and Alena, silver gelatin print, 15¾” x 15¾”, 2004; Lyudmila Zinchenko, from the series Alphabet of Hands, Makhachkala, Luky negative, 14” x 19¾”, 1999
hf Roger Salloch lives in Paris. He is a writer and photographer whose stories have appeared in The Paris Review, The North Atlantic Review, Fiction, and Ploughshares, among other publications. He contributes articles about the arts for the French edition of Rolling Stone, and has written about Lucian Freud, Robert Longo, Anselm Kiefer, and Henry Darger for THE magazine. Exhibitions of Salloch’s photography have taken place in New YorkCity, Paris, Hamburg, and Naples, and last summer in Vologda, Russia. Salloch’s photography is regularly reproduced in the Italian quarterly Sud.
THE magazine | 43
INTRODUCING
ONLINE ART AUCTION
Clinton Adams an anonymous artist, late 20th c. Stuart Arends Thomas Barrow William Betts Christopher Brown James Casebere August 19 - October 1 Constance DeJong Teo González gallery reception Frederick Hammersley Saturday, October 1: 6 - 8pm Jeff Kellar David Levinthal celebrating our 20th anniversary Wes Mills Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison Scott Peterman Johnnie Winona Ross Lorna Simpson Lisa Solomon Jennifer Vasher Richard Tom Waldron Levy Gallery Albuquerque • www.LevyGaller y.com
You are cordially invited to the Encaustic Art Institute’s
Third Annual Gala and Art Sale THUMOS: The Passion of Life
Saturday, September 17, 2011 5:30 - 8:30 PM Suggested donation: $25/person Live Greek Music • Cash Raffle ($5 per ticket) Art for Purchase • Greek Food Please RSVP before September 14th to: Douglas Mehrens: mehrens@eainm.com www.eainm.com • www.eainm.blogspot.com 18 County Road 55 A (General Goodwin Road) Cerrillos, New Mexico 87010
505-424-6487
BIDDING OPENS THE 15TH OF EACH MONTH
collectorsguideauctions.com
Encaustic Art Institute’s Pyramid Gallery EAI is a registered 501c3 non profit
F
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
R ose S impson : T hesis For Rose B. Simpson,
C hiaroscuro 702 ½ C anyon R oad , S anta F e the process
is a portion of a female torso, legs curved upwards. This
Despite the large size of the work, its implicit fragility
of making art seems less like a conscious choice and
ethereal section of belly and thighs again seems natural
conveys a vulnerability which all of us experience.
more like a deep-seated obligation; as if she has some
and complete. Think vs. Feel #4 is deeply effective as an
There is an extraordinary weight apparent in the
urgent, subterranean drive to express herself creatively.
exploration of our variously pragmatic and passionate
work of Rose Simpson, lending gravitas to this very diverse
Thankfully, she’s really, really good at what she does.
animal instincts.
exhibition. Her desire to explore the peculiar relationship
Simpson is constantly making art, but the only real
Elsewhere in the exhibition, Simpson creates
between human frailty and human power makes for a
consistency within her artwork is the voraciousness
nest-like habitats using ropes, wires, and straw. Smaller
truly fascinating body of work. Regarding her approach to
with which she creates it. Having established herself as
pieces may contain reclining or crouching clay figures,
artmaking, Simpson asserts that “as soon as someone says
a solid presence in contemporary Native arts at twenty-
but dominating the main gallery space is Missing Note
I’m one thing, I do something else.” It’s not surprising then
seven, Simpson is already a veteran of the Santa Fe art
Pod, a giant, hive-like structure suspended from a rope.
that Thesis achieves such complexity. Simpson noted in her
scene. Thesis is Simpson’s first solo show since she
Imagine walking into a pristine white room with a beaver
artist statement a desire to “instigate healing by revealing
completed a master’s program in ceramics at Rhode
dam descending from the ceiling! As a viewer, you can’t
a truth that makes sense to any intuition.” If this cerebral,
Island School of Design in May, and from the looks of it
help but be immersed by such an enigmatic and strangely
mature body of work is any indication, Simpson is certain
,she’s been busy. To understand Simpson’s current work,
affecting piece. The somewhat precariously suspended
to have a lasting impact not only on contemporary Native
it helps to know about her upbringing. The daughter
pod belies the physicality of its creation; Simpson had to
American art but on contemporary art in general.
of renowned sculptor Roxanne Swentzell—whose
crawl into the pod in order to apply plaster to the inside.
—Iris McLister
soft-featured, expressive clay figures have had a lasting impact on contemporary Southwestern Indian art— Simpson was born and raised in the Santa Clara Pueblo. Simpson has an extended family network of artists who have enriched and validated her creative endeavors from childhood. Since the beginning of her career, Simpson has been keen on exploring a wide range of mediums and styles. Featuring large-scale installations, ceramic work, adobe tiles, framed photographs, and mixedmedia sculpture, Thesis is a richly varied exhibition. Simpson’s sculpted figures are assembled with an utterly unique combination of deliberation and with the metal armature sometimes left exposed. The forms look like carefully bandaged mummies, wrapped to preserve their fragility. Though they look haphazardly constructed, the figures, lying down or crouching in recognizably protective postures, are strangely convincing portrayals of human vulnerability. Simpson has expressed an interest in exploring how a person’s intense need for a sense of individuality is tied into our equally intense need for belonging. In The Answer That Ended Creation D, a clay form is cut off mid-thigh and placed onto one of three adobe blocks. The bricks look freshly made, with bits of straw poking out from the rough edges. Supported by a cupped palm, the figure’s face is pensively cast upwards, with a graceful arm draped across the stomach. Placing this rough-hewn figure on an equally unpolished platform is fitting; a meditation, perhaps, on how our personal development is inextricably tied to our connection with the earth. The tender rawness of the adobe bricks suggests a fondness for this Southwestern material, making this a touching homage to Simpson’s desert home. Think vs. Feel #4 is cleverly and dramatically executed. A pristine, L-shaped black pedestal is the setting for two ceramic sculptures, the first of which is an upside down head cut off at the arching neck, eyes closed and mouth slightly open. This form occurs to the viewer as graceful, not discorporate or macabre. Adjacent to this head and also positioned upside down
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
RoseB. Simpson, Missing Note Pod, wood, ceramic, straw, rope, wire, iPod, speakers, 46” x 40” x 40”, 2010
spontaneity. They are patchily comprised of clay strips,
THE magazine | 45
F
Krista Peters: Scar Paper For
1611-A Paseo
de
box G allery Peralta, Santa Fe
some, bones are objects of horror and
space. Orientations to up and down, left and right no
the wall, giving it freedom to move gently with the air
violent ritual, suggesting death. For others, they express
longer exist. Unexpected axes develop. These have the
currents and the light. The skin-like papers appear to be
compelling sculpted forms of great beauty. Krista
power to simultaneously intrigue and disturb as they pull
breathing through the bones.
Peters works with images of bones, ripping apart and
us into an image or push us away. They keep us from
mobile three and mobile four look the most like
scattering the architecture of the human skeleton across
catching and centering the image by asking us to pursue
traditional images of mobiles. Horizontal elements are
her mixed-media works. By combining drawing with
it, letting it grow according to its own time and impulse.
vertically spaced parallel to one another. Smaller curved
photolithography, collage, and painting, she creates bone
The artist builds her mobiles on the concept of spatial
and circular forms suspend from them, creating a curious
mobiles on Asian papers made from mulberry fibers, silk,
continuity, of endlessness, urging us to become part of
nautical impression. I imagine broken masts and torn,
and other natural materials. Her explorations become
her fragmented forms that are drawn into a suspended
flapping sails set free upon an imaginary ocean. Although
unmoored landscapes of paradox—sensual and raw
landscape that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
these works seem like random gestures among the bone
terrains that build on psychological and philosophical
bone mobile four is an abstract “figure” composed
mobiles, it’s clear that they present a necessary pathway
concerns. She studies a taboo architecture with a fresh
of long bones of the leg joined to both ends of a column
in Peters’ investigations. Perhaps they are essential to how
approach, giving the subject a luminous glow.
of vertebrae. Stretching through space, it reminds
she learns and unlearns from herself during her search to
The artist draws skeletons with India ink onto
me of Louise Bourgeois’ Arch of Hysteria. An erotic
find the essence of form activating space—and vice versa?
Mylar and then prints them onto gampi paper via
arrangement of bones brings forth, like Bourgeois’
Peters’ intentions come together in bone mobile
photolithography. She begins by tearing the printed
sculpture, a vestigial physicality. Peters’ organic forms
twelve. Here her explorations of form, space, texture,
images apart, separating the bones, reassembling them
are triangulated and pulled by India ink threads through a
gesture, and light are distilled. She creates a stripped
in unexpected configurations, then gluing them to
tactile space where anchor points don’t seem necessary.
down “landscape” where three vertical shapes are
other layers of gampi. Because of the great strength of
According to the laws of gravity this is a highly unstable
suspended among ghostly—but luminous—shadows of
the extremely thin paper, she is able to manipulate the
situation, but the artist mysteriously creates an invisible,
tree-like forms. Space is being investigated in, around,
layers with water and glue, wrinkling and pushing them
yet dynamic, equilibrium. She maintains an ungraspable
and through the bones in order to permit abstraction to
into three-dimensional configurations. They become a
balance in the way she has composed and rendered the
evoke sensory experience.
textured and transparent surface like flayed, scarred,
work. The seemingly suspended bones and connecting
Four dismembered and flattened bronze hands,
or healing skin, with ragged contours and irregular
threads/nerves have been drawn with a Rapidograph
derived from woodcuts, are also mounted on the wall.
boundaries. Marcel Duchamp’s parchment studies for
pen. The uniform line weight and lack of fluidity in
In each of these, like in the gampi works, Peters plays in
Étant Donnés come to mind.
rendering seem unimportant because the artist breaks
two dimensions to suggest the third. A full exploration
Using the concept of a mobile, Peters draws
the monotony of tautness and density by introducing
of three-dimensional space appears to be where she
fragile lines to connect and animate the bones in each
opaque gouache gestures and tinted transparent washes.
is going. By releasing gravity to develop and suspend
composition. These channels represent the underlying
These produce energy, volume, and psychic resonance
the fugitive, she potently maintains the urgency of the
tensile and compressive forces inherent in three-
that set the lines in motion through the scarred landscape
moment. And maintaining the urgency of the moment
dimensional space. They also suggest nerve fibers. The
beyond their original placements. Appropriately, Peters
reveals the raw intensity of her poetic sensibility.
does not frame her works. Each is loosely pinned to
—Susanna Carlisle
lines expand and redefine space, especially psychological
Krista Peters, bone mobile twelve, ink, graphite, and gouache on paper, 35” x 32”, 2011
Krista Peters, bone mobile four, ink and gouache on paper, 28” x 39”, 2011
T
Judy Tuwaletstiwa: A Patterned Language The
French
psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan famously described the unconscious as
William Siegal Gallery 540 Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe
eccentricity of vocalization in the overall pattern of an
even further. And yet, these reflections are of a piece
orchestral score.
with Blood Meridian’s Gnostic prophecy, albeit farther
“structured like a language.” To make matters even
Much that is literary, as well as cinematic, comes
down that dismally euphoric road conquered by
more confusing, Lacan described language itself as
to mind when viewing Tuwaletstiwa’s work, and, as
McCarthy’s horde of belching mercenaries, led by the
something material, stipulating that, “Interpretation
a result, I was reminded of two other artists; one
massive, pink, megalomaniacal demiurge, The Judge.
is…grounded…in the fact that the unconscious has
a novelist, the other a video artist. Lingering over
And this brings me to the other artist: the relentlessly
the radical structure of language and that a material
A Patterned Language 10, I couldn’t help but think of
upbeat video renegade and Internet magus, Ryan
operates in the unconscious according to certain laws.”
Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, itself an enigmatic
Trecartin. As language metastasizes into a purely
In Judy Tuwaletstiwa’s exhibition, A Patterned Language,
Gnostic fable disguised as an American Western.
pictorial disease, the chattering classes can now revel
at the William Siegal Gallery, the artist takes up the
As the breeze coming through the gallery door moved
in the chaotic, disjunctive, and discordant mess of
visual properties of symbolic language and rigorously
the material exuding from the dark canvas, shadows
syncopated cynicism and mercenary amorousness
addresses the enigma of the relation between the
and geometric light added new perspectives and
so essential to The Judge’s butchered jouissance in-
external and the internal, between, in the parlance of
dimensions to the painting’s body. (The William Siegal
Trecartinland! One can, in fact, say that Trecartin,
philosophy, the Real and the Ideal. An insistence that
Gallery, by the way, with its “ancient contemporary”
as the updated, lurid avatar of The Judge’s wildest
language isn’t clearly immaterial, that it has materiality
aesthetic, is a perfect fit for Tuwaletstiwa’s fertile
dreams of jouissance, speaks a collapsed counter-
as well as meaning, that, in fact, it exists as a foreign
and abyssal codex.) At any rate, Tuwaletstiwa shares
language to Tuwaletstiwa’s harmonia mundi. But this
embodied presence, has been expressed in its
a landscape with McCarthy, and it evokes him from
is just a thought.
various guises by artists throughout history. William S.
unexpected directions: black acrylic backgrounds; sand
The conceit that the rich sonic textures of the
Burroughs believed that language is a virus. Similarly,
and paint reaching for deep numerological bedrock;
voice can be materialized in the painterly medium
Schelling, foreshadowing modern science in a striking
fine red threads sewn along a barred landscape of
has long been a problem in the visual phenomenon
way, proclaimed that “even language contains a spiritual
reed and leaf; white quill interrupted by one poppy
of figuration. While not as sensorial as literature, or
essence and a corporeal element.” In the March 1995
note, one dark note…there is much in this work that
as haptic as video, Tuwaletstiwa has achieved a
issue of Scientific American, in the article “Talking
conjures the Southwest before its present incarnation
triumph in her own right, a visually engaging solution
Trash,” scientists claimed to have found “word”
as a simulation. While McCarthy proffers a tour de
to a conceptual argument that might otherwise
patterns in the “junk” DNA of humans. In human
force that ranges with supernatural brio and panache
remain mute.
beings, about 97 percent of the genome is “junk,” the
all over the terrain of the Southwest, Tuwaletstiwa’s is
—Anthony Hassett
non-coding segments interspersed with the coding (or
a more cosmological vision that stretches the terrain
nucleotide base) material of DNA. Working from the methods of linguist George K. Zipf, scientists ranked the frequency with which non-coding material followed Zipf’s language-frequency research. They found that non-coding regions followed the Zipf pattern more closely than did coding regions, suggesting that junk DNA “follows the structure of language.” The odd force of Judy Tuwaletstiwa’s paintings, and the kind of looking they demand, cannot be adequately handled by the “aesthetic” model of art viewing. This is due, above all, to the way her work gives full play to a secondary aspect: interventions and details associated with non-aesthetic genres. At work in these ostensibly “abstract” paintings is a great outburst of intellectual energy. Psychoanalysis, semiotics, linguistics, deconstruction, feminist theory, and forays into utterly Gnostic realms of symbolic delivery systems augment, inflect, and magnify the potential force and political resonance of their patterning. Following grid harmonics, Tuwaletstiwa allows forms and techniques, details, and affects— elements that would normally threaten to throw off their role as backdrop—to defend and elaborate denied prominence. Feathers, bamboo, earth, sand, quills, and reed, through mellifluous stitching, swerve significantly from set geometric paths, not unlike the Judy Tuwaletstiwa, de harmonia mundi. remember III, feather quills, bamboo, basket reed, and sand, acrylic on canvas, 48” x 66”, 2005
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
THE magazine | 47
SANTA FE INSPIRED Art Show & Sale
Fun, Whimsical, and Vibrant Oil and Watercolor Paintings by Santa Fe artist Sandy Vaillancourt
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, September 9, 10 & 11 Opening Reception; Friday, September 9, 4:30-7:30 pm at La Fonda Hotel Coronado Room • 100 East San Francisco Street, Santa Fe www.SandyVaillancourt.com
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
W I Love You
to
Death: Cannupa Hanska Luger
A W ide - eyed B obcat
with J ared
Antonio-Justo Trujillo Eggman & Walrus Art Emporium 130 West Palace Avenue, Santa Fe
creeps along
erotic kiss as well. The bodies of both animals are
holds it in his hands and asks it who it wants to be,
the branch toward Bluebird, easing one front paw
constructed of steel frames covered in recycled
and the animal species and predator-prey decisions
around her soft blue wings and behind her back
thrift-store afghans (fuchsia, kelly green, and brown
evolve from his question. He calls it reverse
as she closes her eyes and turns her head toward
granny squares for Cougar—granny squares never
personification. It is important to Hanska Luger
him for a kiss. Fox is in mid-pounce, front paws
looked so good—and thick stripes in bold, bright
to use recycled materials wherever he can, and to
tucked neatly underneath him, but Pheasant closes
colors for Deer), with colored felt and foam rubber
hybridize craft materials. “It’s how you apply it,” he
her eyes anyway and waits for him to kiss her.
accents for ears and claws. Deer’s legs and antlers
says, “rather than what the material actually is.” The
Goldfish—caressed by Eagle’s talons—watches
are wrapped to a tapered point in loose spirals
feet of his mythical, waist-high Cockatrice sculpture
for her kiss with one eye open. Cannupa Hanska
of steel-banded packing material—chosen for its
are shaped from rebar and wrapped with artificial
Luger’s take on predator and prey is at once sensual
springiness.
sinew. The feathers and fur of the wall-mounted
and frightening. And that may well be the point.
Hanska Luger begins each sculpture by making
birds and beasts are cut from colored foam rubber
Hanska Luger’s mixed-media sculptures stun
the porcelain faces for his creatures. He uses casein
and felt. Hanska Luger is even responsible for the
and shock. Fresh from a recent show at Tower
paint, which he usually leaves flat but sometimes
color accents on the walls around Deer and Cougar.
Gallery, in Pojoaque, the artist has assembled seven
burnishes for a shiny forehead or a rosy cheek.
He painted scalloped swatches at ceiling and floor
new works for a show at the tiny Eggman & Walrus
Most of the faces feature closed eyes for kissing,
level using shades of turquoise and orange to match
Art Emporium, ideal for such intimate art. In the
often with a thin line of color where the closed lids
two of the color stripes in Deer’s afghan body.
freestanding sculpture I Love you to Death, the
meet. The faces are androgynous, and leave the
Two entire walls of the gallery showcase
exhibition’s title piece, Cougar has just landed on
observer wondering whether these predators, or
Hanska Luger’s collaboration with Jared Antonio-
Deer’s back. Hanska Luger captures perfectly the
perhaps lovers, are male or female. The puckered,
Justo Trujillo to depict Brownfox Earth, Redsnake
movement and power of both animals; Deer’s legs
perfect-kiss lips are sometimes painted in lipstick
Wind, Bluebird Fire, and Goldfish Water. Each scene
begin to splay under Cougar’s weight and Cougar’s
shades of rich reds and mauves. But each is the kiss
features two Hanska Luger animals in a seductive,
claws sink into Deer’s body. Startled, Deer looks
of death, and the viewer knows this long before the
predator-prey encounter. They are mounted on the
over his right shoulder to find Cougar’s Dior lips
innocent prey.
wall so that each pair emerges from a black Dibond
kissing his neck, and the viewer feels her gentle,
When each face is completed, Hanska Luger
circle crafted by Trujillo that depicts the element in question. He uses a water-jet cutter to create vinyl plant fronds (earth), clouds (wind), telephone wires (fire), and waves (water). To connect each of the four Dibond circles, the plant fronds become the clouds become the telephone wires become the waves. Rounding out the show are The Weight of the Other and Cockatrice. The former features a lifesize, all-ceramic woman. She is a neutral sand color, clad only in the same ton-sur-ton jeans and boots, naked above. Her face is covered by sandy ceramic hair, and a rainbow band surrounds her chest. The band matches the rainbow foam rubber horns on three cows’ skulls at her feet and a fourth that she balances above her head, à la Salomé with the head of John the Baptist. Cockatrice began appearing in Hanska Luger’s childhood dreams long before he knew who she was. Her ceramic head sports over two hundred individually applied ceramic feathers, which Hanska Luger glazed—rare in his body of work—for strength and stability. Their opalescent red-grey luster hints at Deer and Cougar’s lips, a few steps away. Hanska
Luger’s
artistry
and
creativity,
paired with Trujillo’s intelligent backdrops, bring a freshness to mixed-media ceramics that both startles and seduces the lucky viewers. Cannupa Hanska Luger, in collaboraton with Jared Antonio-Justo Trujillo, I LoveYou To Death: Blue Bird Fire, ceramic, steel, foam rubber, Dibond, & vinyl, 48”h x 60”w x 14” d, 2011
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
—Susan Wider
THE magazine | 49
discover delgado
c a n y o n ro a d ’ s h i d d e n t r e a s u r e
4th
friday
gallery walk September 23 5-7 pm
Hasson Gallery
Marileigh Schulte
Fine Art ~Music ~ Faire ~ Fun
Pippin Meikle Fine Art Barbara Meikle
Ordover Gallery
Art of Russia
Lisa Ross
INART
d e l g a d o s t r e e t g a l l e r i e s . c o m
V
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
Pablo Picasso: Important Works Vollard—the
on
Paper 1613 Paseo
name alone evokes the heady
LewAllen Modern Peralta, Santa Fe
de
of a large sculpted female head, whose direct source are
As Elliot M. Richman points out in his informative
From the
his own sculptures from 1931 depicting the abstracted
introductory essay, these images from the Suite Vollard convey
turn of the century until his death in 1939, Ambroise
ovoid portrait, built as if from leftover coils of clay, cast in
a style in which Picasso has synthesized his revolutionary
Vollard, art dealer, patron, print and book publisher,
plaster or bronze. Picasso’s conceit of the female head’s
abstraction with classicism. The tradition of a classical revival,
critic, was the foremost champion of the emerging, and
contemplation by artist and model in many of the etchings
openly embraced, dates from the Renaissance. What is
disparaged, Modernist painters in Paris. Between 1895
could well have been taken from Rembrandt as well, a
unique here is Picasso’s achievement in fusing that legacy’s
and 1904 he launched or otherwise shaped the careers
brilliant conversion of the latter’s Aristotle Contemplating
language of representation with the radically disparate idiom
of Cezanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Picasso.
the Bust of Homer.
of Modernism. He does so by his mastery of the etching and
days of early twentieth-century Modernism.
His stern, somnambulant visage locks in
drypoint mediums, achieving sculptural, tonal,
place the flat metal shards of his 1910
and expressive effects normally the province
Cubist portrait by Picasso, whose first
of ink or graphite drawing. He deploys this
French exhibition Vollard put on in Paris in
technical virtuosity to arrive at a seamless
1901. Vollard accepted Picasso’s proposal to
fusion of expressive form and ordered space
purchase paintings by Cezanne and Renoir
that is achieved by his interplay of distortion,
in exchange for one hundred original prints
outsize scale, varied degrees of finish, and
by the artist which were executed between
restless facture against the self-contained
1930-1937 (mostly in 1933). They became
sufficiency of classical composition, with its
known as the Suite Vollard. All but three of the
economy of line, idealized motifs, and elegant
twenty-three prints in this recent LewAllen
contours. This synthesis is explicit throughout
Modern exhibit of etchings by Picasso are
the series, from the archaic understatement of
from the Suite Vollard, all of them featuring
Young Sculptor Finishing a Plaster Bust (1933) to
the Suite’s dominant sculptor’s-studio theme.
the visual complexity of Sculptor at Work on a
Writing on Arshile Gorky in 1962, art
Motif, with Marie-Thérèse Posing (Bloch 168).
critic Harold Rosenberg grounds the artist’s
By explicit, I mean the transparent handling
Mt. Pisgah breakthrough to a new, abstract-
of hatched and cross-hatched lines, almost
expressionist idiom in Gorky’s “Picasso
rendered with the crude effect of woodcut
discipleship,” one that pursued an aesthetic
to underscore its status as a graphic device
that was exemplified by the master himself:
with a dual role: it is charged with rendering
“In our time each new work must constitute a
the illusion of three-dimensional form at the
decision as to what is living and what is dead in
same time as it reveals the reflective presence
the painting of the past. The artist’s rumination
of the artist—trading descriptive integrity for
upon the history of art is thus a rumination
expressive gain. This is evident in the latter
upon himself as well in this epoch of historical
work, for example, by his rendering of Marie-
self-consciousness. But of course individual
Thérèse as both living model and marble stele
genius is at work as well in the case of Picasso,
relief of a modest young Aphrodite.
whose most authentic work often bears the
The exhibition’s strongest instance of
character, or the traces of, his recourse to
Picasso’s profound dialogue with past art and
art of the past—usually implicit in his work,
his brilliant extension of the etching medium
but often explicit in his foray into printmaking.
is the aquatint of Venus and Cupid, after
This is especially the case with the Vollard Suite.
Cranach, the artist’s contemplation of Lucas
It allows viewers a rare entry into Picasso’s
Cranach’s paintings featuring the amor motif.
constant recourse to past art. But what is
Here, Picasso has fully captured the Northern
openly art-historical in the Suite is not simply
Renaissance esthetic at the same time as he has
Picasso’s evocations of Rembrandt but the self-
made it his own, authentic statement. This is art that takes the breath away.
conscious classicism that pervades the Suite’s
Picasso gets the last word (from an interview in
highly personal style. The sculptor’s-studio theme exemplifies
1923): “To me there is no past or future in art.
Picasso’s own “double rumination” on
If a work of art cannot live always in the present
past art and his appropriation of it. Its
it must not be considered at all… Art does not
iconic infrastructure is the artist-andmodel
evolve by itself, the ideas of people change and
motif—which he takes from Rembrandt—
with them their mode of expression.”
invested in the early scenes with the motif
—Richard Tobin Pablo Picasso, Venus and Cupid, after Cranach, aquatint, 388/ 10 ” x 23¼”, 1949
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
THE magazine | 51
A L E X A N D R A
E L D R I D G E
t h e a r t o f w a n d e r i n g [opening reception : friday|september 2nd|5to7pm]
Photo: nadelbachphoto.com Ad Design: FlavorGrafix.com
please join us for hors d’oeuvres + live music
www.jadudesign.com - 505-695-0777
www.nuartgallery.com
Available in Santa Fe at Rippel & Company - 111 Old Santa Fe Trail
SANTA F E COMMUNIT Y CO LLEG E
S CH O O L O F ART S A N D DE S I G N
TWO EXHIBITS CURATED BY DAVID SOLOMON/BANG! HELL AUG 25-SEP 9 2011 OPENING RECEPTION THU AUG 25 | 5-7 HEAVEN RUNS SEP 15-29, 2011 OPENING RECEPTION THU SEP 15 | 5-7 THE GALLERY IS OPEN MON-FRI 8AM-5PM 6401 RICHARDS AVENUE 505.428.1501 WWW.SFCC.EDU/GALLERY
LESLIE AYERS SUSANNA CARLISLE VICTORIA CARLSON JENNIFER CHENOWETH CHRIS COLLINS BRUCE HAMILTON JAMIE HAMILTON CHACE HAYNES TIM JAG IRA KUSNETZKY ROCKY LEWYCKY KELLY MORRIS JONATHAN MORSE M. LISA PHIPPS LAUREN OLIVER MOLLY WAGONER TUSCANY WENGER
O
Nancy Youdelman: Outside
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
the
Realm
Eight Modern 231 Delgado Street, Santa Fe
Outside the Realm takes its title from a Marcel
gone; even the extensive use of plaster bandages could
see lingerie publicly aired. But the repurposed maiden forms
Proust quote, “The past is hidden somewhere outside the
seem to be a kind of mummifying ritual. But anyone
of Pin Bra #2 and Pin Bra #6 evoke the breastplates of punk-
realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object
familiar with the watershed Womanhouse artistic moment
manga goddesses; they bristle quietly with the dissonant
(in the sensation which that material object will give us) which
will recall that anger, defiance, revolt, and exhilaration
energy of pricked fingers that inevitably goes with extensive
we do not suspect.” Nancy Youdelman continues to take on
were an important part of the mix. (One installation
pinning. Process is Youdelman’s prime interest, and these
questions of the female body and identity, and the sensations
included a trashcan overflowing with used tampons, a
pieces were clearly fun to make. Their affect walks a line
they give us, using the outdated detritus of social femininity—
transgressive gesture that later works, such as Warhol’s
between exuberance and obsession. It would be interesting
specifically cast-off clothing. Titles such as Nothing is Ever Really
urine paintings or even Serrano’s Piss Christ, did not begin
to see this artist take up the sartorial social semiotics of
Lost give clues to at least one aspect of the artist’s motivations.
to match.) The finished works play off dichotomies such
falling-down pants that reveal underwear, or the ubiquitous
Familiar forms are placed in odd juxtapositions that point to
as presence and absence, pliancy and rigidity, permanence
turned-around baseball cap, for example, or to engage with
how social identity—changing but always in great measure
and decay. The inevitable question becomes, “Is all this
some of the social tensions around the burka, hijab, and other
arbitrary—is constructed and historical. Youdelman’s Applied
stuff decoration or suffocation?”
controversial female symbolic headwear.
Arts juggernaut takes the form of assemblages, reliefs, and
Post-Madonna and Lady Gaga it is no longer unusual to
—Marina La Palma
cast-bronze pieces. These are human scale, but the savvy use of materials destabilizes our expectations of what they should weigh and feel like. Some uncanny reversals are thus pulled off. Thorn Shoe, an old-timey, high-heeled lace-up boot cast in bronze, has eyelets that morph into thorns; it draws you in and then pokes you back. However odd it is to convert a fragile, temporary foot covering into a heavy, impenetrable object, the tradition of bronzing a baby shoe, a long-accepted practice for enshrining memories of infancy, is another instance of the human yearning to make permanent what is ephemeral. In art practice, as in life, reproducing a thing in a different material can radically transform its meaning. Youdelman’s transformations are executed with an attention to detail that pushes all the way through to excess, speaking of containment as much as adornment, of investigation as much as preservation. While new clothes can convey status, sexual preference, character, and lifestyle, few are kept indefinitely unless they represent a ceremony or rite of passage (wedding or christening gowns). Hence the plenitude of old clothes we see in thrift stores and at garage sales. Youdelman’s focus is on the residual allure of these lost/found objects. One piece is titled Adored. The disembodied garments she selects are coated with wax, plaster bandages, gesso, and paint, and are festooned with scraps of letters, old photos, spools of thread, buttons, costume jewelry, needles, zippers, safety pins, buckles, and other accessories so that their pliancy becomes fixity. The delicacy and decay of personal articles is wrenched into brittleness via repeated layering. The embellishing of “women’s work” here perversely makes armor out of a camisole. Youdelman studied costume design at Fresno State University and was drawn into the Feminist Art Program founded by Judy Chicago in 1970. She went on to the Cal Arts program that followed a short time after this. Youdelman participated in the 1972 Womanhouse, in which artists created elaborate installations in the various rooms of an old Hollywood mansion slated to be demolished. Womanhouse went on to become the influential and long-lived Los Angeles Woman’s Building project, and inspired similar undertakings in other cities. Youdelman’s use of puffy-sleeved girls’ party dresses and women’s clingy evening gowns, old photos, love letters, and flower petals could suggest a kind of nostalgia, an attempt to preserve the precious and cling to what is Nancy Youdelman, Zippers and Pins, mixed-media relief with encaustic, 54” x 37” x 4”, 2011
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
THE magazine | 53
September 2-October 3, 2011
Red Dot Gallery
T
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
Tyler Adams: Interstitial Jennifer Steinkamp: The Vanquished The
first time
I
dwight hackett P rojects 2879 All Trades Road, Santa Fe
saw Jennifer Steinkamp’s
by flowers, then just as quickly heads into autumn, then
this expansion of the senses in order to engage with
work was at SITE Santa Fe in 2001. One of her videos
winter again. This whole “natural” cycle takes no more
the artist’s 5 Sound Studies, a series of very quirky, even
was featured in Dave Hickey’s Beau Monde: Toward a
than five minutes to complete. The bare branches spiral
whimsical sound-and-image videos—staged situations
Redeemed Cosmopolitanism, an exhibition so loaded
outward from a turning center and contain the same
with speaker heads interacting with things like melting
with visual pleasure that people still refer to it as a gold
morphology as arteries and veins and the dendritic
ice, a tennis ball, or Styrofoam peanuts. This is where
standard for curatorial depth and breadth. Steinkamp’s
structure of nerves. The essential bifurcating nature of
the idea of focusing on small but significant changes
large projection was high on a curved wall, and it was
life forms and certain processes of mineral growth are
comes into play. Adams’ work is demanding, yes, but
the first work you saw when you entered the exhibition.
reflected in the underlying architecture of Steinkamp’s
not in a burdensome way. Spread out over time, you
Called sin (time), the piece—with its pulsating geometric
writhing trees.
wouldn’t mind watching these videos on a regular basis, as each one is quite riveting for all the simplicity of its
patterns and sound by Jimmy Johnson—appeared as
The Vanquished creates the illusion of three distinct
a vivid and hypnotic messenger escorting you into a
doorways on the gallery walls, and this pared-down
world rich with sensitive pairings and dazzling contrasts.
industrial space is not subservient to Steinkamp’s work
For example, in the piece Addition/Subtraction, a
Hickey’s biennial was a feast of curatorial conceits that
but an active partner and essential matrix, complicit in
round speaker head is placed iconically in the center of the
made no apologies for being polymorphically perverse,
this visualization of the birth and death of artifice. I was
frame and, one by one, Styrofoam peanuts are dropped
and sin (time) was presented as a dazzling electronic
tempted to say the birth and death of nature—and perhaps
into it. Because of the frequency setting, the peanuts fall
dance joyfully positioned on the threshold of a new
this is a larger allegory in the work—but Steinkamp’s
with a slight crashing sound as if the peanuts were made
millennium.
animations are faux-nature—pseudo-representations of
of something dense. The forms are bounced around by
mise en scene.
Steinkamp’s new three-part work, The Vanquished
the real on a fulcrum of mannered, stylized process that
the sound waves, and once a critical mass is achieved—
(summer and fall), has a very different kind of resonance
masquerades as reality. In the end, her work is a set of
of peanuts filling the disc—the frequency is adjusted so
than sin (time), and it is destined for Dan Cameron’s
exacting calibrations of color, pattern, and movement—a
the forms bounce more violently until, one by one, they
second biennial, Prospect.2, in New Orleans. The
beautiful filigree of forms that beckon toward nature but
are ejected onto the tabletop. It’s a wonderfully staged
Vanquished takes its title from Rodin’s sculpture of the
provide instead ornamental crimes of a high-tech heart.
scenario that keeps you guessing and musing until the next
same name, which will be temporarily replaced by
Tyler Adams’ installation Interstitial functions
of the Sound Studies begins and you are once again caught
Steinkamp’s video. But given the content of her piece,
as an inadvertent soundtrack for Steinkamp’s silent
up in what seems like an experiment of minimal means
is the title a commentary about co-opting Rodin’s place
leaf-and-branch stylizations, and the work of both
tweaked by an artist with the sensibilities of a magician.
in the museum, or conquering the challenges of spatial
artists is deeply meditative. Adams’ sound sculptures
—Diane Armitage
constraints inherent in the Beaux Arts architecture of
and videos require a great deal of paying attention
the building? Steinkamp’s three computer animations
to small changes in aural frequencies and amplitudes,
are similar to one another in their depiction of a tree
as well as an intense focus on the objects that both
cycling through the seasons—from a skeletal presence in
cause and contain these changes. Interstitial comprises
winter; to leafing and flowering in spring to the fullness
seven swinging amplifiers that form regular orbits
of summer; and finally an autumnal display followed by a
over seven aluminum cylinders of varying heights.
cascade of falling orange, red, and yellow leaves.
The cylinders have motorized elements inside, and
Steinkamp’s simulation of seasonal growth and
the amplifiers pick up on the modulated sounds that
decay could be appreciated at face value—a mesmerizing
are created. Altogether, the amplifiers create a kind of
animated ballet of tree limbs that twist clockwise and
sound tapestry, a low, slightly throbbing hum that has
then counterclockwise in a regular rhythmic movement
an immediate calming effect and may be conducive to
as verdant growth appears quickly, spreads, is accented
widening your attention span, because, in fact, you need
Top: Tyler Adams, Addition/Subtraction (from 5 Sound Studies), video, 2010 Bottom: Jennifer Steinkamp, The Vanquished (summer and fall), installation view of computer-generated animation, 2011
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
THE magazine | 55
O
Challenging 1945: Exploring Continuities
in
American Art, 1890s
to the
Present
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center Symposium Hilton Santa Fe, Mesa Ballroom, Santa Fe
the late nineteenth century? Are we going to disprove
profound change in this country, in which artists in the
canonical dates used in the generally accepted tenets
United States took Wassily Kandinsky’s theories about
of modern art history, and/or are we looking for ways
abstraction as presented in his Concerning the Spiritual
to show that art history is, like all history, a looping and
in Art (originally published in English in 1914) to their
usual tourists in the downtown Hilton’s lobby were
ever-evolving kind of excursion that is never quite linear?
next stages.
outnumbered by a crowd of scholarly geeks—in this
Why not go all the way and challenge the dates we assign
Leave it to Rob Storr, Dean of the Yale School of Art,
particular case, art-history geeks. As with Ivory Tower
to early modernism’s developments, and include the
to put the professors in their places with his clear-eyed
denizens everywhere, bad haircuts and questionable
rest of the hemisphere when we say “America”? (Full
approach. The man is brilliant, his thinking transparent
outfits were de rigueur (especially among the men—
disclosure: I teach art history at the college level and have
while it operates at such a high altitude that most of the
the ladies, for the most part, maintained a certain well-
always held, at least for the purposes of survey courses,
rest of us need oxygen to follow him. He posited, among
heeled façade of vaguely artsy, post-menopausal chic).
that Modern Art begins in 1863 with Manet’s Olympia.
other ideas, and I paraphrase, that art-historical canons
The draw was a symposium put on by the Georgia
I have also taught at least four classes titled “Art Since
and rhetoric have expunged entire histories of art, or
O’Keeffe Museum’s Research Center in celebration of its
1945.” I teach these things because of what I learned in
condemned them to exist solely as footnotes. For example,
tenth anniversary. With a mission dedicated to furthering
graduate school in the 1990s. I am also what’s called in
there’s Mexico: In the 1930s the art world couldn’t get
the study of American Modernism—that is, in this case,
art history an Americanist—largely because I began my
enough of Los Tres Grandes, the muralists Diego Rivera,
art in the U.S. since the 1890s—the Research Center
studies in the modern history of Latin American art, but
David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. Their
is a valuable resource nationwide, and big names in the
became sidetracked by the use of the word “America.”
work was hugely influential to the Ab-Ex painters, including
field (among others, William Agee, Whitney Chadwick,
My degree specialty is in modern and contemporary Art
Jackson Pollock, who studied with Orozco. To extrapolate
Erika Doss, Richard Meyer, and Robert Storr) showed
of the Americas.)
from Storr’s presentation, the Greenbergian model of High
It’s interesting that there is so little history in Art History. —Robert Storr
Over a long weekend in mid-July, the
up to deliver twenty-minute papers over the course of
From Agee’s keynote address on Thursday
Modernism and medium purity demanded that art history
the symposium. Unfortunately, any attempts to squarely
evening, all the way through to an artists’ panel
construct a direct pedigree between Europe and the U.S.,
define the very phrase “American Modernism” bring up
moderated by Jonathan Weinberg, sitting through the
thus completely erasing the American experience as one
at least two concerns: Does the word “America” mean
entire symposium was a bumpy ride. With few notable
shared by a whole hemisphere. As Storr put it, art history is
the United States, or would it more accurately include all
exceptions (Agee suggested that “We’ve been looking at
not a linear narrative, it is a “textile… with histories woven
of North, Central, and South America? How exactly do
the wrong artists;” Chadwick discussed how weavers,
together through cultural connections.” What would Storr
we define Modern Art in the U.S. as opposed to the rest
especially the iconoclast Lenore Tawney, inspired Agnes
have suggested that the symposium Challenging 1945 focus
of the Western world, i.e., Europe? A third taxonomic
Martin to explore the grid; and Storr asked all the right
upon? Pretty much none of the topics that had preceded his,
problem arrives with the symposium title, which seems,
questions), no one veered from the prototypical stance
all of which, according to him, were “mainstream topics”
upon close examination, to be oxymoronic. If we are
that 1945 marks the high point between Early and Late
that art historians consider the only history of art.
challenging the idea that there was a momentous break
Modernism. Interestingly, no one used the “post” word
Too bad the symposium didn’t begin with Storr.
in American Modernism before and after 1945—the year
(postmodernism), but “pluralism” was tossed around a
All of the presenters could have hustled back to their
is loaded with significance: World War II ended with our
lot to describe what happened in the second half of the
respective hotel rooms for a round of re-thinking,
military’s detonation of two atomic bombs over Japan,
twentieth century. Doss directly addressed the whole
scrapping, and writing anew, with a new paradigm—or
and our nation emerged as a global superpower—why
dilemma of the date by stating that while “challenging
maybe none at all—as inspiration.
are we going to be looking for continuities in art since
1945 is a good idea,” it was nonetheless a time of
—Kathryn M Davis
Symposium panelists (left to right) Whitney Chadwick, Patricia Hills, Michael Leja, and Elizabeth Turner with moderator Barbara Buhler Lynes, July 15, 2011 Photo: Tony Bonanno
L
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
Land USE MISUSE: The Celebration
and
Exploitation
of the
American Landscape Gerald Peters Gallery 1011 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe
Like so much about Gerald Peters Gallery, and The Peters
landscape scene that feels uncomfortably like an animation of
Gwynn Murrill’s three abstracted, bronze deer peeking
Corporation in general, this exhibition is big (featuring nearly thirty
a painting. Somehow, I don’t think the curator intended for the
at pictures of their ruined habitat lent the exhibition some
artists), it’s rather good, and it comes very close to being too
exhibition to embody our relationship with our environment
needed levity. Overall, though, there wasn’t much to balance
much. In short, Land USE MISUSE is smart in a commercially viable
quite as literally as it does, but the dramatic extremes of
the deliberate, even obdurate, gravity of the exhibition’s
way. Smart enough that just as the viewer is ready to wave a white
human violations against the natural world and our increasing
premise. I didn’t always understand what it was, exactly, that
handkerchief in retreat from, say, all that saturated color, a painting
disassociation from our physical surroundings are, indeed,
each picture had to add to the discourse, but the two distinct
like Eric Aho’s Ice Field pops up, seemingly out of some curatorial
twin themes. From Michael Scott’s Dying Black Spruce on Lake
messages of Land USE MISUSE are “Look at how wrong-headed
nowhere, and saves the day with its de Kooningesque whites and
Superior to Tom Uttech’s Minomandan (presumably the site of a
we are and what we’ve done to Nature. Bad people! Bad, bad
greens. Aho’s work could hardly be framed as derivative of the
forest fire in the artist’s native Wisconsin) to Chuck Forsman’s
people!” and “Buy this painting because it’s serious and it will
Abstract Expressionist’s imagery, but his sense of the lusciousness
American Fable with its ticky-tacky suburb built into a quarried
prove that you are a good person.” Steve Cope’s three little
of oil pigments most certainly reflects that of de Kooning, the
mountaintop, we get it: This is not Eden or Disneyland we’re
paintings of unspoiled mountains offer a slight helping of hope;
painter’s painter. Ice Field is a present-day flashback to New York
living in. It’s the Earth and we have used, abused, and taken it
but don’t dare to become too optimistic. John Ganis has plenty
in the fifties, with an intriguing edge of photorealism thrown into
for granted at the risk of our future survival.
of photographic proof that we’ve screwed up, and badly. His
Oddly, scenes of the desert are included, as if it were
ink-jet prints are nonetheless quite lovely for all their grimness.
Finding visual respite in Land USE MISUSE is a serious
aberrant in the visual lexicon of landscape; Stephen Hannock’s
A statement by Forsman, posted as wall text, offers a whole
undertaking, beginning with Subhankar Banerjee’s super-
Desert Nocturne depicts the lonesome emptiness of those long
new dimension that the art doesn’t quite manage to convey:
saturated ultrachrome print, Autumn on the Taiga. It’s hard to tell
stretches of flat desert that can easily turn monstrous to those
“Landscapes are observed places. As such, they may serve as
here if we’re being presented with the land as “celebrated” or
who think green trees are the only true landscape subjects. To
indicators of the health of ecosystems and human communities.
“exploited.” If an exhibition is going to set up a distinct polarity in
devolve the desert to an oddity in a Santa Fe-based exhibition
They are not innocent. Distinctions we make between
its title, there needs to be less ambiguity in its content—that, or
seems strange. William Clift’s digital print of a New Mexico
cultivated and plundered landscapes will mean little to the
the ambiguity must be knock-out brilliant. Perhaps Banerjee’s
desert looked perfectly lovely to me; it was a series of twelve
species that are displaced and the resources that disappear.” It
piece is meant to be a template for the norm; that is, what we
sixteen-inch squares of green, Karen Kitchel’s Looking at Central
is not always clear which of these images portrays “cultivated”
tend to expect landscapes to provide retinally. Harold Gregor’s
Park, that gave me the sensation that I was looking at moon
versus “plundered” landscapes, when the home team was
Flatscape #102 is a wildly hued Fauvist nightmare; to the artist’s
rocks on the wrong planet. In Manhattan, however, grasses and
scoring touchdowns versus when it was taking sacks. That this
credit, Flatscape’s setting appears unreal, as elaborately staged
growing flora may read as specimens of nature, a nature that
is a game that no one can win is evident. But it kind of felt like
as a Gregory Crewdson photograph. Nearby, Chester Arnold’s
is “out there” in the mythic West, somewhere far away from
taking side bets on the date the last polar bear will die.
Prospector is a puzzler; we see traces of an individual within a
the urban norm.
—Kathryn M Davis
the pluralist mix that is art today.
J. Henry Fair, Bottom Ash, New Roads, LA, C-print, 50” x 70”, 2010
| s e p t e m b e r 2011
THE magazine | 57
GREEN PLANET
John Francis, Ph.D., a.k.a. Planetwalker, Environmentalist, Writer, and Speaker
“I started off walking as a protest, but that changed into walking without the angst and became a way of life.” In 1971, when John Francis was a young man, he witnessed two oil tankers collide in the San Francisco Bay. As he watched 400,000 gallons of oil spill into the water, his life was changed forever. Francis worked with other volunteers to clean birds and sea creatures, but this was not enough. He felt upset and unsettled. In 1972, a dear friend of his died. Each of these events moved him to action. Francis stopped traveling in motorized vehicles and traveled everywhere on foot or by water for the next twenty-two years. Francis was full of determination, and a bit delusional at first, thinking that his action would stir others to join him. Friends and neighbors challenged him in his small town of Point Reyes Station when they saw him walking on the road with his backpack and his banjo, and he would argue with them. Francis says now that he had an over-inflated sense of himself at the time. Tired of arguing with others, he decided to stop talking for just one day, on his birthday in 1973. He learned while staying silent that he had never listened to others. He learned that he only listened enough to form a comeback in his mind while the other person was still talking. Francis stayed silent for seventeen years, speaking only once—when he called his mother on her birthday. In his silent years, Francis earned three degrees, earning a Ph.D. in Land Management. He walked to Ashland, Oregon for the first part of his studies, then to the state of Washington, where he built a boat. After his studies, he walked to Wisconsin, where he worked on the effects of oil spills for his doctoral thesis. He then walked to Washington D.C.—this took him seven years. There he spoke for the first time on Earth Day. In 1991, he was named a United Nations goodwill ambassador. Feeling imprisoned by his own actions and wanting to be a more effective environmentalist, he boarded a bus on the Venezuela/Brazil border in 1994, and broke free once more. Today Francis speaks—sharing his stories, playing his music—and continues to inspire many. Books by John Francis: Planetwalker: How to Change the World One Step at a Time; Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking—17 Years of Silence; The Ragged Edge of Silence: and Finding Peace in a Noisy World. www.planetwalker.org
Photographed by Jennifer Esperanza at Bioneers, Marin, CA, October 2010. | s e p t e m b e r 2011
THE magazine | 59
Sept 2011 Artist & Writer, Greg Sholette Lecture: Tue 9/13, 6pm Tipton Hall. $10 general | $5 students/seniors
Exhibition Opening & Hip Hop Dance Party: See the work of Monika Bravo & Greg Sholette and dance with some local B-boys! Fri 9/9, 6-8pm SFAI Reading & Film Screening: Daniel Banks & guests will read from his book Say Word and Darrell Wilks will introduce his film about the hip hop community in NYC after 9/11, Hip Hop Hope. Sat 9/10 beginning at 6pm Spoken Word Performances & Film Screening: Poets from around the city will perform spoken word pieces and Darrell Wilks will introduce his film Hip Hop Hope. Sun 9/11 beginning at 6pm Guided Mural Painting: Join SFAI graffiti muralists to paint the barracks wall next to the SFAI. Sat & Sun 9/10-11, 10am - noon Short, silent films about 9/11 will be projected on the SFAI building exterior from sunset until sunrise starting 9/9 through the month of September. Many more events! Check sfaiblog.org for schedule details.
September Open Studio: Thu 9/22, 5:30pm SFAI WWW.SFAI.ORG, (505) 424 5050, INFO@SFAI.ORG, SANTA FE ART INSTITUTE, 1600 ST MICHAEL’S DRIVE, SANTA FE
NM 87505 | THE SANTA FE ART INSTITUTE EXPLORES THE INTERCONNECTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY ART AND SOCIETY THROUGH ITS ARTIST AND WRITER RESIDENCIES, PUBLIC LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS, EXHIBITIONS, AND EDUCARTIONAL OUTREACH.
THIS SERIES IS PARTIALLY FUNDED BY THE CITY OF SANTA FE ARTS COMMISSION AND THE 1% LODGERS’ TAX AND BY NEW MEXICO ARTS, A DIVISION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS, AND THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS.
l— pa s y oi . t m wh eps y ec le ot in— s m pr hk by t to h. to nc ba isi ont rn u a a v m bo le m like is ch as litt ng rd ea I w he pi wa er t ee e m sl y r roo M g
MARK Z. MIGDALSKI, D.D.S.
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| s e P t e m B e r 2011
By
Matthew Chase-daniel
the magazine | 61
WRITINGS
The Business of Poetry B By
viCtor di suvero
The business of poetry is more than the arrangement of readings, the trading of favors, the wooing of audiences, or the management of notices, of schedules and publications. The business of poetry is more than the evocation of feelings, the confrontation of falsehoods, the creation of visions of order and the promise of bountiful pleasures. The business of poetry is more than a transaction for dinner dinner, or solace, or recognition or even of vengeance. The business of poetry is more than an advertisement for love discovered, uncovered, appreciated or lost. The business of poetry is the recognition of that which is true, which brings us face to face with ourselves in the morning and with laughter at noon. The business of poetry is the flight of the kestrel, the throat of the jaguar and the sound of a frozen river breaking to run in the spring. It is the recognition of the child by the father and the song of the mother at evening. It is that which makes the heart glad, the harvest bountiful and permits hope to rise up once more in the throat of the weary weary. The business of poetry is poetry.
In the introduction to A Gathering (Pennywhistle Press, $12), Orlando Romero writes, “Di Suvero, like all good poets, makes you think about how we live our lives or, more precisely, how time and events slip through our fingers and we seem totally unable to control our destinies. Yet, precisely because of that, it is the time that becomes so precious, illusive yet to be savored, celebrated, commemorated.” Victor di Suvero has been writing poetry for sixty years, and A Gathering is a collection of poems written during his twenty years in New Mexico. In poems like “Arriving in Taos,” and “Chimayo,” di Suvero blends thoughtful reflection with his love of the land and people of New Mexico.
62| the magazine
| sePtemBer 2011
Santa Fe art auction The Southwest’s Largest Auction of Classic Western Art
Live auction | noveMBer 12, 2011 1:30pm MST | Santa Fe Convention Center Previews: November 11th from 5pm - 8pm & November 12th from 9am - 1pm
view HigHLigHtS & regiSter onLine at SantaFeartauction.coM
Presented by Gerald Peters Gallery
©
Santa Fe Art Auction | P.O. Box 2437, Santa Fe, NM, 87504-2437 Tel 505 954-5858 | Fax 505 954-5785 | curator@santafeartauction.com PleASe viSiT Santafeartauction.com FOr MOre iNFOrMATiON Images clockwise from top left: Ernest L. Blumenschein (1874-1960), StudIo FIrEpLacE, oil on linen, 30 x 25 inches. clark Hulings (1922 - 2011) , aix Fountain, oil on canvas., 27 x 44 inches. E. Irving couse, tHE EagLE dancE, oil on canvas, 24 x29 inches. Walter ufer (1876 - 1936), the White pack, oil on canvas, 12 1/4 x 16 1/4 inches. © 2011 courtesy, Santa Fe art auction
John Gel dersm a :
September 16 - October 15, 2011
Front Space: Mateo Galvano: Gunnar Plake:
c h i a r o s c u r o 702
1/2
& 708 Canyon Road, at Gypsy Alley Santa Fe, New Mexico 505.992.0711
www.ChiaroscuroSantaFe.com