Santa Fean Magazine Feb/Mar 2010

February/March 2010 santafean.com

Discovering New Mexico Through the Lens of History 800,000 Images and Counting at the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives

Ansel Adams photographing Rainbow Lodge

Carole LaRoche: 25 Years of Iconic Art // Art + Love: Three Santa Fe Artist Couples Who Make It Work

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february / march 2010

features

22 desert of the (un)real How Santa Fe became Santa Fe—and other stories waiting to be told inside the photo archives of the Palace of the Governors

PHOTO COURTESY PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS ARCHIVES

30 running with the wolves Inside the mind and home of longtime Santa Fe artist Carole LaRoche

33 the art of synergy Susan Contreras + Elias Rivera, Jim Asher + Joe Anna Arnett, and Lynne Windsor + Barry McCuan—three committed couples on art and life

22

Wyatt Davis gets meta, in this picture of him taking a photograph of himself taking a picture—from the Palace’s photo archives.

departments

4 Publisher’s Note 13 City Different

Theremin Detectives, Hot on the Chocolate Trail, Pliner speaks

15 Q+A

Historian Orlando Romero speaks his mind

19 Making History Sculptor Jeff Brock races into the record books

44 Design Five innovative Santa Fe jewelers

49 Home

Guest columnist—Trey Jordan on architectural guidelines, landscaper Kendall McCumber

55 Dining Pizzo Centro, getting romantic in Santa Fe, Restaurant Week

61 Hot Tickets

36 Social History

63 Personal History

Bringing back the Bishop’s grapes

Joseph Smith in search of Native artist Quincy Tahoma

37 Art

RAY THE RAT

Art restorer Linda Nader, ArtFeast, Fine Art for Children and Teens grows up + reviews

cover Bill Lippincott’s photograph of Ansel Adams photographing Rainbow Lodge, around 1944. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Archives

19

Sculptor and speed freak Jeff Brock’s 1952 Buick on Bonneville, Utah’s Salt Flats—site of his world-record–setting performance.

Santa Fean (ISSN 1094-1487) is published bimonthly by Bella Media, LLC, 215 W San Francisco, Ste. 202A, Santa Fe, NM 87501. Periodicals postage paid at Santa Fe, NM, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Santa Fean, P.O. Box 469089, Escondido, CA 92046-9710.

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santa fean

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

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history and the romance THIS YEAR MARKS SANTA FE’S 400TH ANNIVERSARY—but of course the history and inhabitants of the Santa Fe area pre-date the arrival of the Spanish in 1610. Every time a new building is planned in downtown Santa Fe, an extensive dialogue ensues between past and present, the city again seems to discover (or rediscover) another fascinating moment of its history, and everyone from archaeologists and historians to parking attendants and cab drivers weighs in on how best to proceed, while making sure all the unearthed artifacts are well preserved. We are blessed to have such a rich history and live in a place that wants to savor the details and understand its former and sometimes ancient inhabitants. (While my house is relatively new, I know that I’m not the first human to put his head down on that plot of land.)

This issue affords you an opportunity to view slices of Santa Fe’s history through the truthfulness of the camera lens. Photography, especially vintage photography, as you see on our cover and in these pages, delivers an unaltered version of history. An artist’s hand has not embellished the scene. Familiar places take on a deeper significance when seen as part of our rich history.

On a different note, we also take a look at Santa Fe’s romantic side. Our mountains, skies, and sunsets give a seductive backdrop to romance. We look at the art and lives of three fascinating artist couples and learn how this place has provided a foundation for their art and their romance (p. 33). And while you’re feeling romantic, think about Santa Fe’s innovative jewelers. (Jewelry and romance do go hand in hand, so to speak.) In our story on page 44, you will see how these artists have taken jewelry design to new limits.

So as you dive into this issue, consider the history each of us is making today.

Part of that history comes from the special relationships in our lives. Whether it’s a piece of jewelry, art, or some other item, honor that special relationship in your

BRUCE ADAMS Publisher

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C O N T R I B U TO R S

MISSY WOLF

life. It will add a beautiful and meaningful element to your personal history.

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Q: What has been the most significant moment in Santa Fe history for you—personally or on the part of the city itself?

Jason Silverman, author of the photo archives feature (p.22), boils it down to three moments. “Santa Fe was headed to dusty anonymity until city planning took hold in 1912, right around the time of statehood. The concept—to reinvent Santa Fe as an ‘ancient city’ for the benefit of tourists—was visionary, and, shockingly, it worked. The 1957 Historic Districts Ordinance transformed the romantic 1912 plan into law, frustrating for architects but great for Kodak. And the 1962 ordinance declaring Canyon Road a mixed-use arts/residential area transformed Santa Fe’s barrio into a vibrant arts center. Certainly, Santa Fe lost something in each transition, but here we are.”

“The most significant moment in my Santa Fe history was when I met my husband,” says Norah Levine, who took the portraits of historian Orlando Romero (p.15). “We crossed paths while I was in Santa Fe for a six-month–long externship through my university in Philadelphia. During my stay I was fortunate to work for the Andrew Smith Gallery in their archiving department (talk about history!), and then for photographer and master printer, Alan Ross. Those six months changed my life, and Santa Fe shortly after became my home.”

“That’s tough,” says photographer Julien McRoberts, who took the pictures of Carole LaRoche and her home (p. 30). “New Mexico is so rich in history. The building of the atomic bomb was a pivotal moment not only in New Mexico history but history on a global basis that still effects all of us. What I find most interesting about that is the back story of the people and scientists who lived and worked in Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project. Basically, they did not exist. According to the government, you were a number, and nobody was born there or died there. It’s hard to get your head around what life must have been like for those residents during that time of secrecy and paranoia.”

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A GREAT TIME FOR A CREATIVE CAUSE Friday, February 26 Fashion Show & Luncheon 11:30 am – 2 pm, Inn at Loretto, $100

Edible Art Tour 5-8 pm, Canyon Road & Downtown, $35

Feast or Famine 8 pm, Coyote Cafe $10 or free admission with EAT ticket

Saturday, February 27 Art of Home Tour 12-4 pm, free admission

Gourmet Dinner & Auction Honoring Sam Scott 6 pm, La Posada de Santa Fe, $175

Purchase Tickets at artfeast.com 505.603.4643, info@artfeast.com, and at the ARTsmart office, 102 E. Water Street, El Centro Mall.

Edible Art Tour tickets are also available at participating galleries and through Tickets Santa Fe, Lensic Box Office, 505.988.1234, ticketssantafe.com.

Thanks to all Contributors, Grantors and the following Underwriters Mary & Robert Harbour

Sunday, February 28 Artists’ Champagne Brunch & Auction 11:30 am – 2 pm, Hotel Santa Fe, $75

Art of Home Tour 12-4 pm, free admission

Partially funded by New Mexico Tourism Department, newmexico.org & City of Santa Fe Lodger’s Tax, santafenm.gov

ARTsmart is a volunteer organization that believes the visual arts are critical to a child’s development.

Through charitable donations and events, ARTsmart funds art programs for Santa Fe schoolchildren.

Our annual fundraiser, ARTfeast, is a community project that also promotes economic development.

ARTsmart is a 501c3 nonprofit corporation that works with the Santa Fe Gallery Association.

How do I love thee?

PUBLISHER

devon jackson

EDITOR

Let me count

bruce adams

ART DIRECTOR

demitri fregosi

SENIOR EDITOR

dianna delling john vollertsen

FOOD+DINING EDITOR

SALES MANAGER

anne mulvaney

SALES REPRESENTATIVE

robbie o’neill emilie mcintyre

HOME & DESIGN SALES MANAGER MULTIMEDIA CONSULTANT

the ways…

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WRITERS

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COURTESY TODOS SANTOS

the buzz around town

taking on history’s detectives

One of the chocolate milagros offered at Todos Santos

F O O D MOVE OVER, green chile.

The Chocolate Trail is here, giving foodies another delicious reason to eat their way through town.

More a marketing concept than an actual footpath, the Chocolate Trail links four downtown Santa Fe chocolatiers. C. G Higgins (847 Ninita), selected as the official candymaker for Santa Fe’s 400th Anniversary celebration, offers rich chocolate truffles, fudge, and caramel corn in flavors like lavender caramel. The ChocolateSmith (851 Cerrillos) is known for its handmade dark chocolates, some with regional ingredients like chile and lavender. Kakawa Chocolate House (1050 E Paseo de Peralta) specializes in all-natural chocolate elixir drinks made from historic European and Mesoamerican recipes. And Todos Santos (125 E Palace) features handcrafted chocolate milagros—Mexican good luck charms—decorated with edible 23-karat gold and silver leaf.

The Chocolate Trail’s name came from a 2008 story in the Houston Chronicle, in which travelers were encouraged to visit several of Santa Fe’s sweet shops in succession.

“We’re normally competitors, but we came together as co-marketers to promote this,” says ChocolateSmith owner Jeff Keenan. “We each have our own niche, so you get a different slice of the chocolate world at each stop.”—Julia Martinez

Andrew Baron standing behind his Theremin

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RENATO RODRIGUEZ, COURTESY THE HISTORY DETECTIVES

camino de cocoa

ANDREW BARON, 47, a paper engineer (or, the guy who puts the pop in pop-up books), knew he’d lucked into a significant and highly coveted artifact of musical history. Just to be sure, though, he figured he’d have it vetted by the experts of The History Detectives, PBS’s second-highestrated program (behind Antiques Roadshow). His question to the Detectives: Was his Theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments ever made (between 1929 and 1939), and which he’d purchased on eBay in 2007, actually one that Léon Theremin himself constructed?

A precursor to the Moog synthesizer, and popularized in fi lms such as Spellbound and The Day the Earth Stood Still and in the Beach Boys’s 1966 hit, “Good Vibrations” (technically, an electro-theremin), the Theremin has an eerie, ethereal sound that’s produced not by touch but when a Theremin player moves her hand around the two antennae that are attached to a wooden box resembling a dais.

It was Theremin’s story, as much as his instrument, that grabbed both Baron (the 1994 documentary Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, was what hooked him) and the Detectives. “A Russian spy who shows up during the Roaring 20s, bringing with him an instrument that will lead to a revolution in rock and roll,” effuses Eric Slade, a Detectives producer. “What more could you want?”

Baron, who restores antique electronics, had already built his own Theremin in 1997 and owns another one (an RCAmanufactured model, not one purportedly built by Theremin). He’d hoped the Detectives would determine if his newer Theremin is what he thinks it is. (Their verdict?

Watch for the segment in June.)

“We’re always looking for some way to tell a story about American history,” says Slade, whose experts have investigated ledger drawings, passports, and the American flag, among other interesting objects. “I’d never heard of a Theremin before, and this was one of the most passionate groups we’ve ever profi led.”

Not that the Detectives’s judgment will sway Baron one way or the other.

“Beyond a doubt,” he says unequivocally, “mine was made by Theremin.”

—Devon Jackson ANTIQUES

the Lensic Brings You

the blues

Eric Bibb & Ruthie Foster

February 13, 7 p.m. $15-$30 / students $10-$25 The soul and blues singer/songwriters at the forefront of a new generation of the blues.

COURTESY DONALD J. PLINER

www.folkloreproductions.com/EricBibb www.ruthiefoster.com

ZUM

February 27, 7 p.m. $15-$30

A stunning fusion combining the fire and brilliance of Eastern European gypsy fiddle music with the hotblooded passion of Argentine Tango.

Donald Pliner relaxing with his dog

gypsy tango

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Bill Frisell, Rahim AlHaj & Eyvind Kang

March 26, 7:30 p.m. $15-$45 / $5 discount for Lensic and Outpost members & students The contemporary jazz guitarist meets the world of Iraqi maqams. Presented by The New Mexico Jazz Festival.

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Puerto Plata

April 24, 7 p.m. $15-$35

The legendary guitarist from the Dominican Republic, with virtuoso guitar legends Edilio Paredes and Frank Mendez, playing bachata, boleros, merengues and son native to the island. www.iasorecords.com/puerto-plata.cfm

Discounts apply for Lensic members.

211 W. San Francisco St. Santa Fe

a legend

The Lensic is a nonprofit, member-supported organization.

Help us continue to bring diversified events and programs to Santa Fe! Call 988-7050 ext. 203 or visit www.lensic.org/ support for more information.

Tickets: call 988-1234 or visit www.TicketsSantaFe.org 14

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the pliner things in life SHOES INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN shoe designer Donald J. Pliner— who will appear at Goler Fine Imported Shoes on February 20—is a longtime fan of Santa Fe. “I’ve been coming here since the early 1970s,” he says. “I always thought I wanted to be a cowboy.” Pliner collects art by two local painters—Carole LaRoche (see story on page 30) and Ethelinda—and has incorporated the City Different style into the design of his six eponymous “concept stores,” in New York, California, Texas, Florida, and Nevada. “I have antlers in all of them, and furniture that I have custom made in Santa Fe.” While Pliner’s high-end shoes, boots, and handbags are sold at other stores around the world, 2010 marks the twelfth year he’ll make time to visit Goler, where he’ll preview his new spring line. He’ll also announce the winner of the 2010 Peace Boot Design Contest, which he sponsored with the local shoe store. “Some of my best public appearances have been at Goler,” he says. “The clientele that follows me in Santa Fe . . . it’s mindboggling. I see some of the most incredible, creative people in the world.”

mayor up E V E N T S ON FEBRUARY 4, at 5:30 at the Inn & Spa at Loretto, Santa Fean owner and publisher Bruce Adams will moderate a debate among Santa Fe’s three mayoral candidates: Mayor David Coss and challengers Asenath Kepler and Miguel Chavez.

The topic: Creativity and Tourism.

| Q+A |

orlando romero a his t orian lo oks back—and ahe ad i n t e r v i e w by Robe r t Maye r • photos by Norah Le vi ne

Orlando Romero has devoted his life to studying the history and culture of Santa Fe. His strongly held opinions, expressed with passion, are often provocative, rarely dull. He lives in Nambé, where years ago he built his own adobe home.

What led you to become a historian?

I was born in Santa Fe, grew up in Nambé, but spent my youth in Santa Fe and Las Trampas with my grandfather and his ancestors. If I am a historian, it is because of the osmosis of their stories. Magical stories about gypsies with dancing bears that I thought were mythical until I discovered WPA documents that verified their veracity. In Grandfather’s flour mill in Nambé I heard stories from the pueblos that were just as special. But it was actually working with New Mexico history that brought it all together.

Where did you do your formal study?

I received my undergraduate degree at the College of Santa Fe and my graduate degree from the University of Arizona.

In 1976, I began running the Southwest Room at the New Mexico State Library.

But it was during my last 12 years at the Fray Angélico Chavez History Library that I got to sink my teeth into untranslated documents from early New Mexico, Mexico, and Spain.

At the libraries, what questions were you asked most frequently by the public?

The most annoying question was “Where is the Jane Fonda Hotel?” The most frequent was “Where is the Square?”

The actual historic questions dealt with architecture, culture, mythology, family history, and political corruption, as in the infamous “Santa Fe Ring.”

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General Stephen Watts Kearney, who commanded the American Army of occupation of 1846, when the city was still under Spanish rule. That brought a radical change to Santa Fe. One of our elementary schools is named after him. More recently, Debbie Jaramillo, who served as mayor from 1994 to 1998. She was our first female mayor.

Even if you disagreed with some of her well-publicized rants, she brought necessary attention to the fact that the citizenry and its children were losing their city to unbridled development and tourism.

Which three events or trends have most affected the course of Santa Fe history?

Orlando Romero: Champion of New Mexico history and Hispanic culture

Now for some history questions of our own. What did the site look like back in 1610, when the city was founded?

Why was the city considered strategic enough that Don Diego De Vargas was sent to recapture it in 1692?

Actually, we believe that Spanish settlers were in what is now Santa Fe by 1607, possibly earlier. As far as what it looked like, we know that by 1610 the farm fields of the villa had been planted, and two ditches had been dug to irrigate those fields. We also know that a large government-military compound containing arsenals, a jail, a chapel, governor’s residences, and offices had been built, along with four torreóns, or watchtowers, as part of a fortified villa. A book being published soon by Sunstone Press, offering essays by 19 scholars, should greatly add to our knowledge of early Santa Fe.

Santa Fe was “retaken” because it was somewhat defensible against hostile nomadic tribes that attacked the pueblos as well. But also, Santa Fe at that time offered abundant water, fertile soil for farming, and timber for vigas and firewood. Like the English, Dutch, French, and Portuguese, the Spanish were not about to abandon their interests in the New World. Those interests were not just about territory but also about the conversion and “saving of souls.” It’s rarely mentioned, but the pueblos themselves sent an emissary to bring the Spanish back, because Popé, leader of the Pueblo Revolt, turned out to be a tyrant, and all hell had broken loose. Also, without Spanish arms the ancient enemies of the pueblos returned to the scene.

Why did the Pueblo Indians revolt against the Spanish 70 years later, in 1680?

For various reasons, among them religious intolerance and the banning of specific Indian religious rituals. Other reasons included the tribute required by the Spanish, drought, famine, Apache raids.

The best source for understanding the revolt is Charles W. Hackett’s Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680-1682. Also, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680? edited by David J. Weber.

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What three individuals, aside from De Vargas, influenced Santa Fe life the most from the 17th century to the present?

That’s a loaded question. It depends on who you ask. For me they would have to be Santa Fe’s first bishop, Jean-Baptiste Lamy. He was born in France and had very definite ideas on what Catholicism should be, and battled constantly with the native Hispano clergy. Second, Brigadier

Those would have to be the opening of the Camino Real, the ancient road that linked the city of Santa Fe to Mexico and its commerce; the Santa Fe Trail, which originated in St. Louis and opened up another route of commerce between Santa Fe and the United States; and the twentieth-century “discovery” of Santa Fe as a tourist destination.

What changes do you see occurring here in the next 20 years?

Most important will be strict enforcement of limits on development and water use.

Great societies and cultures have disappeared because of lack of planning, and underestimating the limitations of man against nature. Even with the Buckman Project, the expensive water-diversion project named for its location on the Rio Grande, there just is not enough water in the Rio Grande to sustain Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

What do you think the city will be like on its 500th anniversary?

Without that enforcement of strict water laws, there may not be a 500th anniversary.

But for now, this beautiful city is a jewel to be enjoyed and preserved for all of us.

Orlando Romero is the author of Nambé Year One and Adobe—Building and Living with Earth. A longtime columnist for the Santa Fe Reporter, he now writes a monthly column for the New Mexican.

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Terry Allen / HAsAn elAHi / MccAlluM & TArry / KAAri upson 1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501 | 505.989.1199 | www.sitesantafe.org Terry Allen is made possible in part by a generous grant from Lannan Foundation. Hasan Elahi is a project of Creative Capital, which receives support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Ford Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the LEF Foundation, The Muriel Pollia Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, the TOBY Fund, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and more than 130 other individuals and institutional donors.This announcement is partially funded by the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers’ Tax. Special thanks to the Santa Fean. Image: Terry Allen, detail of “Ghost Ship”, 2009, mixed-media installation, work in progress, courtesy of the artist and L.A. Louver Gallery

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| M A K I N G H I S TO R Y |

the art of speed s culptor Jeff Bro ck race s into histor y

CARRIE MCCARTHY

By De von Jac k s on

IT WAS A SHY 14-year-old who called his attention to it, just over a year ago at Pomona, California’s annual Grand National Roadster Show. Had the teenage friend not been with him that fateful day in January 2009, Jeff Brock, 48, a bornand-bred gearhead and lifelong sculptor of metal and wood, might never have seen his future. “I saw that car and it changed my world,” recalls Brock after gazing upon one of his favorite “leadsleds” of all time—a mid-’50s beauty hand-formed by the legendary land-speed racer Bill Burke. “It was something I could wrap my head around.”

And his arms, ideas, time, and energy.

Brock decided then and there to chop, drop, wedge, stretch, and streamline his own lead sled; he’d customize the 1952 Buick

Riviera he’d found the year before and get it ready for a rumble on the salt flats at Utah’s 61st annual Bonneville Land Speed Week in August. Little did he know that this whim would not only reinvigorate his art it would earn him a place in racing history. “It’s a sentimental car to me,” says Brock, looking wistfully at the tricked-out Buick here at the 120-year-old adobe home, horse ranch, and art studios he shares with his wife, sculptor Star Liana York, just outside Abiquiú. “Built in my hometown, and in the same year my wife was born.”

Sexy as the car was, automotive aficionados questioned its racing abilities (too big, too bulky). Brock remembers the advice he got last May from one of the organizers at Speed Week. “He said, ‘You should

rethink your build. It’s not an aerodynamic car.’ And I thought, I’m not going to break a world record. I just want to race it at the Salt Flats. It wasn’t like I wanted to prove anybody wrong.”

As honest as he no doubt is when he says this, one might also find it a tad disingenuous. After all, it takes all of five minutes around Brock to palpably feel his enthusiasm, his drive (so to speak), his intensity, his stubbornness. Not to mention his wonderfully self-deprecating and irreverent sense of humor, strong moral code, and respect for his elders and for the Way Things Should Be—plus charisma up the yin-yang.

Unfazed by the naysayers and determined as ever, in June, Brock enlisted locals Sergio Juarez, 22, and Lupe Nino, february/march

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JERRY GARNES

23, to work with him in his garage/studio.

It was part of his and York’s communityoutreach efforts—what they later named Rezerrection Racing—to revive the work ethic and pride of the area’s younger generation. “I wanted to share my technical knowledge,” says Brock, “and show kids other avenues that are worth seeking out.”

Inspired in part by The World’s Fastest Indian (starring Anthony Hopkins as legendary speed-bike racer Burt Munro, who set numerous world records at Bonneville), and perhaps just as much by Warner’s— and others’—doubts as well, Brock and his apprentices put in 10-to-12-hour days, six and seven days a week. “We just hit it hard to build that car,” marvels Juarez, who still works for Brock. “A lot of the locals never thought I could do something like this.”

Brock also turned to veteran drag-race machinist Doug Anderson, of Albuquerque’s Automotive Machine Services, to help with the design and machining of the necessary high-performance modifications.

At 2 P.M. on August 7, the day before check-in, Brock and his two-man crew made their final tweak: installing a homebuilt windshield. He and Juarez then drove all night (Nino’s community college commitments prevented him from coming) and arrived in Bonneville at 4 A.M. They caught three hours of sleep in their truck, checked in for a mandatory 9 A.M. meeting, and were then subjected to the longest tech inspection in Speed Week history.

“Unknown to me, it was very controversial, what we’d done,” says Brock. “It’s an unorthodox car.” Unorthodox in that a car like his had never raced at Bonneville before. “It’s an XO/GCC,” he says of the XO—straight-eight-cylinder inline engine— Gas Competition Coupe. “It’s not normal to make a Buick straight-eight go fast. But this was my interpretation of how to build a race car. The officials would ask, How’d you get this? And I’d tell ’em, ‘That’s how I read the rule book.’ It was real touch-and-go for a while. Luckily, the old-timers took me under their wing. They saved my ass.”

Unintimidated by it all—the 568 other racers, the 9,000 fans, the never ending inspection, the other race crews with their matching outfits and sponsors on their uniforms—Brock and Juarez went about

Brock’s sexy beast awaiting its turn at the Bonneville Salt Flats

their business. “We looked like thugs,” says Juarez. “There were all these guys in their rigs looking at us. They had the money, but we had the coolest car.” Cool, but still untested. They touched it up Sunday and Monday, to meet various last-minute requirements, and didn’t drive it before Tuesday’s big day, because doing so would disqualify them from racing.

Born and raised in Flint, Michigan, Brock had his own gallery and electrical contracting business before chucking it all to move to Santa Fe and become a full-time artist. Almost immediately after arriving, he fell in—and in love—with York, whom he met while pointing up her Touch the Earth sculpture. (Point-up artists enlarge another artist’s sculpture.)

Brock had raced motorcycles all his life and was nationally ranked in ice racing and dirt drags. Two years ago, he decided to merge his passions by building art cars.

“I had to get the vintage motorcycle thing out of my head,” says Brock, whose father, 74, still rebuilds and races vintage bikes.

“I’m a lean and mean hot-rod builder. So [I decided] this is how I’m going to express myself in the arts.”

One way he’s expressing himself is through the 1929 Nash roadster he’s transforming—with York’s involvement— into a turquoise-bejeweled art car. The other way was at Bonneville.

“Fear?” Brock asks rhetorically. “People

always ask me that: Was I scared? There is justifiable fear. But when they drop that flag and you’ve got to go, your fear is gone. You satisfy some primal need that is very close to sex. It’s euphoric. You feel like a gladiator.”

“I was just thinking, Jeez, I hope it makes it down the track,” laughs Juarez.

Negotiating the salty, slippery threemile speedway, Brock, whose experience in motorcycle racing gave him an advantage, didn’t level out till he hit 120 mph. (“A lot of guys spin out,” he says. “You can run and slide on it like it’s snow out there. Three cars in front of me that day, a guy crashed and died.”) He then punched it up to 132 miles per hour—setting a new world record (the old one: 127 mph) for inline-engine competition coupes. Weeks later, at the Land Speed World Finals, Brock topped his own record, reaching 136 mph.

Racing success has brought Brock, Juarez, and Nino a sense of personal accomplishment. “Instead of me getting in trouble, my little brother and my dad, they’re watching me do something in my life,” says Juarez. “Jeff showed me if you set your mind to it, you can do it.”

As for Brock, he’s found the ideal outlet.

“People are just drawn to this car, and I want to make more like it,” he says. Turns out, he has plans for making a belly-tank racer that he thinks can top 200 mph.

“After all,” he says with a grin, “mankind has always had a need for speed.”

The Old House is priced more accessibly, and paced just as comfortably.

Enjoy expertly prepared cuisine and the service we’re famous for, which makes for a practical yet elegant dining choice any day of the week.

AAA Four Diamond. Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence. Honored as New Mexico’s best by Zagat.

For reservations, please call 505.995.4530.

309 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, NM | EldoradoHotel.com

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HEARD MUSEUM GUILD

Where Santa Fe begins.

March 6 & 7, 2010 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Make Your Plans TodaY! • More than 700 top American Indian artists • The finest American Indian jewelry, textiles, sculpture, pottery, paintings, baskets, carvings and beadwork • Best of Show Reception on Friday, March 5 features juried competition winners

earlY Bird shoPPing for MeMBers onlY! Become a Heard member and beat the crowds! Members get the first chance to shop on Saturday, March 6, from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., an hour before the gates open to the public. For membership information, call 602.251.0261 or visit heard.org.

signaTure arTisT Hopi artist Michael Kabotie is this year’s Fair artist! Whether crafting imaginative imagery on canvas or in metal, Kabotie’s work is distinctive, colorful and sought-after by collectors.

Best of Show and Fair advance tickets on sale beginning January 1, 2010. Call 602.251.0209 x6414 or visit heard.org.

Michael Kabotie, Lomawywesa, Hopi, “Rainbow Maiden with Chanter,” 2007 Acrylic on canvas, 8x10, Private Collection

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Connecticut photographer Ferenz Fedor’s somewhat self-reflexive view of Acoma Pueblo, taken around 1940

Desert of the (un)Real: Teasing Meaning from the New Mexico History Museum’s Photography Archives

By Jason Silverman All photos courtesy Palace of the Governors Archives

W

hen archivist Daniel Kosharek began work at the Palace of the Governors photo archives in 2005, he walked into a situation as daunting as it was thrilling—down there in the basement of the New Mexico History Museum he discovered a labyrinthine world of cardboard boxes, filled and overflowing with photos, piled in stacks, tucked under tables, hidden behind desks.

Most were unlabeled. Some of the photos were disintegrating. And the archives didn’t even own a computer.1

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Originally founded by the New Mexico Historical Society in 1851, the collection currently boasts more than 840,000 works.2 But anyone other than the most dogged of researchers might find the place impossible to navigate.3 During the past four years, Kosharek, curator Mary Anne Redding (who joined the team in 2006), and a team of volunteers have made it their Sisyphean mission to make the visual history of New Mexico, and the history of photography in general, available to New Mexicans.4

To accomplish that, the two, along with digital specialist Nicholas Chiarella and, finally, proper equipment, have begun organizing the massive collection according to the principles of modern library science. No more cardboard boxes: The crumbling negatives have been scanned and are now kept frozen in a special refrigerator, and all of the archives’ holdings have been logged into a database. “In the past it was a secret society,” admits Redding. “Nowadays, we want people to know we are here.”

Ironically, getting the word out about its vast trove of images harks back not only to one of the seminal moments in the history of both the archives and Santa Fe (in 1912), it also gets at the heart of that weird, alluring, loaded, contextually squishy intersection where photography, reality, fantasy, history, the west, and the American Dream all collide-again and again, it seems—and what comes out of that collision is a new mythology, one where the west becomes “the West,” Santa Fe “Santa Fe” (or, better, Fanta Sé)—a strange brew of the real and the magical, a place onto which America—and Americans—projects its fantasies and aspirations.

Fittingly, photography was being birthed5 right about the time the United States had perfected its concept of Manifest Destiny.6 Equally fitting, photography and Manifest Destiny served each other’s purposes: Photography showed the glorious, adventurous, potent possibilities of an American empire, and M.D. gave American photographers the resources to go out and shoot everything in sight—miners, Native Americans, the building of the railroad, the landscape. But, while both put into a frame (or into a box) whatever they came across (capturing an elusive moment in time, capturing an elusive race of people), photography caught its subjects artfully, romantically, powerfully, and often unforgettably. On occasion, it even did so truthfully as well.

For example, when the U.S. government, in the late 1860s, commissioned four major surveys of the uncharted West, the images sent back east by esteemed photographers Timothy O’Sullivan, Alexander Gardner, and William Henry Jackson, among others, forever instilled into Americans the impression of the West as a limitless frontier, sometimes teeming with savages needing to be tamed,7 but otherwise big enough, open enough, wide enough for anyone.8 As Eva Respini, associate curator of photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art observed in her notes on MoMA’s 2009 exhibit Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West, “photography created the myths that galvanized people to move west.”9 It’s a statement with which practically any curator of photography would tend to agree. Redding certainly does. In her essay for a book written with historian Krista Elrick, Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe,

1. One reason for such disarray: The archives was not formally managed as a museum collection until the 1960s; PoG didn’t get its first photo archivist until 1971; and only in 1974 did it finally designate someone, a Dr. Richard Rudisill, curator of photographic collections.

2. Housing one of the oldest collections of photographs in the western U.S., the archives’ holdings include original and copy negatives, daguerreotypes, tintypes, ambrotypes, more than 30,000 glass-plate negatives, stereographs, postcards, panoramas, lantern slides, and color transparencies documenting the history of the West, New Mexico, and Santa Fe, as well as historical pictures of Paris, the Philippines, Mexico, and other areas around the world.

Top: William Henry Jackson’s view of Mesa Encantado from Acoma Pueblo, 1899; middle: Jackson’s 1881 photograph of Santa Clara Pueblo; bottom: Jackson’s 1897 shot of Gold’s Old Curiosity Shop on West San Francisco at Burro Alley 3. Of those 800,000-plus images, maybe 10 percent have been cataloged; the other 700,000 or so remain unknown, unidentified, or otherwise waiting to be categorized.

4. Sisyphean because for every image they identify and catalog, as many as 100 new images arrive or await classification.

5. In 1849.

6. The mid-19th century idea that the U.S. was divinely ordained to expand across the North American continent.

7. In Turner’s words, “the meeting place between savagery and civilization.” february/march

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Above: Jesse Nusbaum’s 1912 photograph of an unidentified Santa Fe residence—part of that year’s municipal marketing campaign to rebrand the city as a tourist destination; right, top: Nusbaum’s 1912 image of Sylvanus G. Morley’s home—another shot emphasizing adobe and the soon-to-be-adopted “Santa Fe Style”; right, bottom: Nusbaum’s 1912 shot of Morley and his daughter Virginia on the portal of their Santa Fe adobe home

based on the PoG exhibit exploring the visual history of the city, Redding wrote that “photography . . . offers us a captured (or created) view of the multiple meanings of Santa Fe,” and “much of the world understands Santa Fe through visual imagery that provides both historical and contemporary reference.” Redding can make such claims, which are neither negative nor untrue, because they get at the essence of both photography and, for the past 100 years or so, the history of Santa Fe.

Ready for its close-up: reinventing Santa Fe Santa Fe may be the best example of Western-style reinvention in the age of photography. Once a major trading site, the town, forsaken by the railroad (for--gasp--Albuquerque), had by 1912 become a dusty, slow-dying village. Desperate for an identity that would revivify the city’s fortunes, that year the mayor appointed a committee to create a revitalization plan, and they in turn asked 29-year-old Sylvanus Morley and 24-year-old Jesse Nusbaum, both employees of the Museum of New Mexico, to photograph nearly every building in 8. Well, almost anyone. Largely absent from the new visual age were the 100,000 Chinese who built the transcontinental railroad, the Hispanic communities established long before the first photos were snapped, evidence of the genocidal conduct and forced relocation of the West’s many indigenous peoples, or any hint of the Deadwood-like moral turpitude rampant among many a mining town. Why? Because the glorious West Americans came to worship was actually a carefully constructed one, powered by sophisticated marketing campaigns run by entities with a financial stake in the conquest of the resource-rich West (namely, the railroads).

If O’Sullivan, Jackson, or Gardner made a picture, the government, a mining company, or a railroad probably paid the bill. Equally influential, photographers such as Edward Curtis reaffirmed certain preconceptions America had of its indigenous peoples; Curtis and others were careful not to problematize the mythic ideas that they created and promulgated.

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town. The two then sorted through the pictures, identifying the most interesting architectural elements in hopes of codifying what Morley called “the hundred variations of the Santa Fe style.”

At the photo exhibit New-Old Santa Fe, held at the Palace of the Governors in November 1912, Nusbaum and Morley presented their findings, which suggested a new architectural style that would blend the best elements of the existing buildings and romantic flourishes lifted from other styles into a photogenic new mix: Pueblo Revival. The city then held architectural competitions and gave tax credits to encourage buildings that would suggest the romance of an ancient city.10 By the 1920s, in the interests of the city’s survival, builders in Santa Fe had reached a consensus: Let’s make our structures conform to this new-old local architecture. As more Pueblo Revival buildings rose, photo-rich marketing projected the new-old Santa Fe as an age-old Southwestern city—a strategy that continues to this day.

The millions of visitors who believe they know Santa Fe to be an authentic, ancient place would be surprised: A group of mostly Anglo newcomers, armed with cameras, reinvented it 100 years ago.11 9. Those myths, though—what helped construct America—were far from innocent. Native Americans suffered massacres, forced relocations, broken treaties, and assimilation, and many photographers, intentionally or not, helped justify all this, making portraits showing indigenous warriors staring solemnly into the camera, alone, out of touch, and seeming to await their fate.

These photographs helped illustrate stories about the “vanishing race,” doomed to disappear under the wheels of American progress.

10. In hindsight, these early marketing efforts were what historian Daniel Boorstin termed, in his 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, “pseudo-events”— “events,” or phenomena, where nothing meaningful actually occurred but which are later deemed “real” after viewed through advertisements, articles, brochures, or TV.

“Nusbaum, Morley, [T. Harmon] Parkhurst, and [Carlos]Vierra were focused on creating Santa Fe as a cultural destination,” says Redding. “They used their photographs to create an attractive view of Santa Fe.”12

20th-century photography: layers of meaning Redding herself, it turns out, was influenced by the romanticized notions of the West that magazines and tourist boards continue to use.13 As a child born in Washington, D.C., she consumed her mother’s copies of Arizona Highways,14 mesmerized by its gorgeous, Technicolor Western landscapes. “[The media] gave me preconceptions about the West,” she admits. “What I saw in the magazine was far different from what I found when I arrived here.”15 What Redding and many others discover in the Southwest, with just a little bit of digging, is a land of complexity, and images that reflect it. After nearly a century of romanticized images, photographers have spent much of the past 70 years exploring the distance between the reality of the West and the nostalgic, market-driven images that helped shape it. In the 1930s, for instance, WPA photographers including Russell Lee (who created a series in Pie Town, New Mexico) and John Collier, Jr. (who shot in Trampas) captured the brutal poverty of the Great Depression, and Dorothea Lange included portraits of Dust Bowl refugees heading west in her 1939 book An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion. Other photographers interested in this evolving New West were Edward Weston (who twice based photo expeditions from Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Taos house), Robert Frank, and Lee Friedlander, and later, revisionist explorers such as 11. Surprised? Maybe not. So successful was Nusbaum’s 1912–13 renovation that in 1960 a commemorative stamp celebrating Santa Fe’s 350th anniversary showed the Palace of the Governors as seen in a 1959 image taken by Tyler Dingee.

Left: A rare black-and-white picture taken in 1968 by Kodak Colorama’s Neil Montanus, at Bishop Lamy’s chapel; right: Russell Lee’s portrait of Pie Town resident Mrs. George Hutton at her altar, commissioned by the Farm Security Administration

Garry Winogrand, photographer turned filmmaker Dennis Hopper, and contemporary photographer Cindy Sherman shot and/or created their own narratives of How They Saw the West.

As photography caught on and cameras and equipment became cheaper and easier to use, more people started shooting away, the narratives broadened, the images broke through the barriers of old.

The visual history of the West expanded. Finally reflective of that accessibility, today’s archives is hardly the purview only or primarily of academics and the intelligentsia (or artists and arbiters of what’s history-worthy and what’s not), and is, as much by default as by design,16 transparent, democratic, and accessible, and serves as a

12. Thus was Boorstin’s concept of the pseudo-event taken even further by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (yes, that Baudrillard, the fascinating provocateur and author of the asininely appellated though astutely argued book, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place).

Baudrillard, who, in a series of literary-philosophical palimpsest-like renditions that in a sense mirror photography’s mirrorings of reality, cites Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “On Exactitude in Science,” which itself borrowed from Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, argued that nowadays, and in America particularly, one attains fulfillment not in or from reality but via a simulacrum of reality, where even the simulacrum is not a copy of the real but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal. Hyperreality thus being that state—the state of these United States—where any distinction between reality and illusion is indistinguishable (à la Disneyland, à la Las Vegas, à la reality TV—à la photography). february/march

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Above: Workers taking a break during construction of the Elephant Butte Dam, taken sometime between 1912 and 1916 ( photographer unknown); right, top: Henry Dendahl’s picture of the La Fonda Hotel (c. 1940); right, bottom: Raton celebrates the arrival of the automobile, 1915 ( photographer unknown)

repository of images of this multilayered, diverse Southwest.

It’s a place where different truths, in the form of pictures, overlap, intersect, and bump up against each other. Though viewers can find pictures that reinforce the standard, John Ford–style mythologies— the rugged, pristine, heroic—the archives also contains impoverished kids in shabby clothes, seemingly mundane street photos, Chicano hipsters, and images from a gay pride parade. “You can come down here and look at Ansel Adams and Laura Gilpin and have a romantic vision of New Mexico,” says Redding. “Or you can look at photographs that give you a different sense of the place. You can create whatever story you want to down here.”

In that way, photographic archives—and every Western state has at least one—offer a more honest depiction of the West than the one that marketing companies continue to push our way. At the archives, the sensational is filed directly next to the ordinary, the historically charged next to the seemingly irrelevant, anonymously snapped shots next to works by celebrity photographers. The archives is, in essence, a giant, collectively created scrapbook, documenting a complicated place during a tumultuous time. Or maybe it stands as a metaphor for our own mental processes—a physical manifestation of the way we make sense of the world in the photographic age: not as a monolithic story, but as a series of competing narratives.

“The most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads—as an anthology of images,” Susan Sontag wrote in her groundbreaking 1977 collection On Photography. “To collect photographs is to collect the world.”

13. It’d be egregiously disingenuous if we here at the Santa Fean weren’t to admit to a certain amount of complicity in this preference for presenting more of what’s beautiful about Santa Fe—and alluring and romantic and worth crowing about. (The same, however, must be said of other regional periodicals.) Santa Fe—or “Santa Fe”—may be a creation, but it’s no less beautiful today than it was then.

14. Arizona Highways is owned and operated by the state of Arizona’s Department of Transportation.

15. As Redding put it in Through the Lens, “photography and Santa Fe tourism are inextricably linked, perhaps now more so than in the past.”

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16. But let’s give Redding and Kosharek credit: Not only have they taken on a Herculean task with good humor and professionalism, they’ve created a warm and welcoming environment.

Redding plans to make the archives even more user-friendly: She wants to build up the website’s bank of available images, expand the hours of the reading room, and provide access to the research skills of the archives’ staff.

Staff Favorites “EACH IMAGE IS INTERESTING both aesthetically and historically,” says Mary Anne Redding, curator of the Museum’s photo archives. “This picture of the Harvey Cars at Lamy was taken in the 1920s or 30s and shows the importance of tourism to Northern New Mexico. The Fred Harvey Company ran the La Fonda Hotel and designed tourists’ entire experience. Harvey cars came with a driver and one or more of the Harvey Girls (all employees in full dress) would meet the tourists at the train station in Lamy and bring them in to Santa Fe to check into the hotel. Then tours would be arranged to take people out to the pueblos so they could see Native life and architecture and of course purchase pottery and jewelry from the Pueblo peoples.”

“THIS PICTURE FROM JAPAN was chosen because it shows the depth of the collection at the Archives—not only do we collect images that tell the history of this region, we collect images that tell the history of photography. This hand-colored albumen print is one of a fairly large collection of images from the Middle East. Early photographers took the grand tour to various countries and brought images back to sell to armchair travelers and to those who could not afford to travel the world.

For many people who could not afford to travel outside the U.S., the Southwest was as exotic as Egypt or Japan.”

On a side note, Redding points out that the Archives also tells the stories, and so, collects images, of the countries whose flags have flown over the Palace of the Governors: Spain, Mexico, and, during the Civil War, the flags of the Confederacy and the Union. “We would love to find a photo of the Palace with the Confederate flag flying over it.”

“THE TRAIN at the station here in Santa Fe talks about two things: When the railroad originally bypassed Santa Fe, the city fathers had to come up with creative ways to market Santa Fe. One way: They built an 18-mile spur line to bring people in via rail so they wouldn’t have to ride in a wagon or a touring car. Trains, or the lack thereof, have always been critical to the economy of Santa Fe and all of New Mexico. So each photo tells a story by itself and, being part of the larger archives, collectively the images tell larger stories, which is part of what makes being a curator so rewarding.” february/march

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San Francisco Street Through the Ages

San Francisco Street looking east in 1900, when donkeys still trod its dirt road, taken by Christian Kaadt

San Francisco, also looking east in 1900, but closer to the Plaza, through the lens of Reverend John C. Gullette

Robert H. Martin’s view of San Francisco and the Plaza’s southern side in the winter of 1947

Karl Kernberger’s aerial view of San Francisco in 1965

San Francisco on the north side of the Plaza, looking east toward the Cathedral Basilicia of St. Francis of Assisi, taken by Richard Wilder, c. 1983-84

AMERICAN INDIAN ART AUCTION Spring 2010 • DallaS, TX • live & Online!

Now Accepting Consignments for Our Spring 2010 Auction!

For more information about Heritage, please visit HA.com today, and for inquiries about American Indian Art, contact Delia E. Sullivan at 800-872-6467, ext. 1343 or email DeliaS@ HA.com.

Receive a complimentary copy of this catalog, or one from another Heritage category. Register online at HA.com/SF18102 or call 866-835-3243 and mention reference SF18102.

A Crow or Plateau Buffalo Hide Blanket Strip Decorated with Quill-Wrapped Horsehair Sold for $47,800 on September 19, 2009 HA.com/6029-27023

Annual Sales Exceed $600 Million • 475,000+ Registered Online Bidder-Members World Headquarters • 3500 Maple Ave, 17th Floor, Dallas, Texas 75219 • 800-872-6467 TX licenses: Samuel Foose 11727; Andrea Voss 16406 • This auction is subject to a 19.5% buyer’s premium.

February and March Shows:

Caribbean Comes To Santa Fe!

Margarete Bagshaw “On Top Of Life” Oil 30” X 40”

Featuring Our Artist Friends From The Caribbean

Show Opens February 26, 2010, 5:00pm

Modernist Show

Helen Hardin “Santo Domingo Meal” Acrylic 12” X 16”

“A New Dawn”

Neal Ambrose Smith, Margarete Bagshaw and more!

Show Opens March 26, 2010, 5:00pm 201 Galisteo St., Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 505-988-2024

www.goldendawngallery.com - info@goldendawngallery.com

Copyright in all work sold or shown is owned by the Artist or their heirs or assignees unless otherwise confirmed in writing, and is subject to all applicable copyright laws

Always On Display:

Pablita Velarde “Pueblo Ceremonial” Casein 18.5” X 29.5”

*Golden Dawn Gallery is the Exclusive Representative of the Estates of Helen Hardin and Pablita Velarde

The Art and The History! february/march

2010

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by Dianna Delling • photos by Julien McRoberts

T

he Carole LaRoche Gallery is a virtual menagerie. A bronze polar bear greets visitors in the foyer; the white walls are lined with vivid paintings of zebras, elephants, and pandas. And then there are the wolves, the animals that have helped make Carole LaRoche famous. Simply drawn in bright pastels that pop off black paper backgrounds, the wolves look almost sweet enough to decorate a child’s bedroom—almost. Like most of the critters LaRoche creates, they have glowing, ominous eyes that stare out at viewers, causing some to squirm and others to feel a sense of connection.

There’s certainly something about LaRoche’s work that draws people in. After 26 years as a Santa Fe–based painter and gallery owner, LaRoche is a Canyon Road legend who remains one of the top-selling artists in the city. By her count, LaRoche sells more than 100 original pieces a year, plus dozens of giclée prints, monotypes, and bronzes. Almost as popular as her wildlife portraits are what she calls “spirit people,” earth-toned acrylic paintings featuring primitive, mask-like faces. Like her animals, they are simply composed and have a strong mystical quality—a reflection of LaRoche’s interest in shamanism and, for lack of a better term, New Age spiritualism.

“They just come out of me,” LaRoche says, shrugging, as she surveys the paintings in her gallery one recent December morning. “I

feel like I’m supposed to do them. The images come to me and I paint them.”

LaRoche sees the characters in her art as spiritual guides—messengers from a parallel universe she’s tapped into that combines elements of Egyptian, Native American, and other mythologies. “People can look at them and find answers,” she says.

The wolves, she explains, are not predators but guardians; her polar bears “are here to remind people to take care of the earth.” She uses the term “channeling” to explain the way animals and other images pop into her head, but she is clearly uncomfortable trying to verbalize her creative process. “I feel it,” she says, “but I can’t put it into words.”

A few days later, LaRoche offers a quote she’s recently come across, something written by Albert Einstein that comes close to describing her view of life and art. “ ‘The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious,’” she says, reading it aloud. “Those words fit how I feel.”

L

ike so many Santa Fe transplants, LaRoche was originally drawn here by the art scene. It was 1983; she was 44, divorced, and tired of selling real estate in Boston, where she’d grown up and raised her family. With the oldest of her three children off to college, she recalls, she “felt free for the first time in years” and hoped to rediscover her passion for painting. She’d had little time

Opposite, top: LaRoche at home, with her dog Tutankhamun; bottom: detail from Blue Wolf and Leopard, pastel, 41 x 32".

This page, top: Little Village, pigment giclée archival print, 40 x 54"; above: Red Zebras, acrylic, 60 x 40".

to be creative since the late ’50s, when she dropped out of the Massachusetts College of Art to get married. LaRoche was intrigued by a magazine article on Fritz Scholder and the artists’ colony in Santa Fe, so she bought a one-way plane ticket to New Mexico. “You are what you think you are,” she says. “So I decided I was going to think of myself as an artist.”

LaRoche found an apartment at 622 Canyon Road and began painting, displaying her finished pieces on the walls. A few months later she hung a sign outside— CAROLE LAROCHE GALLERY—and started stuffing her futon bed into the bathroom each morning to make room for curious visitors. “The things on my wall started to sell!” she says, still sounding surprised more than two decades later. “It was like a miracle.”

Inspired by the artists Cy Twombly and Franz Kline, LaRoche initially focused on abstract painting. But thanks to her increased exposure to Native American cultures, her style took a radical turn about six months after she came to Santa Fe. “I started seeing animals in my abstracts, and faces—they looked like kachinas—so I started to bring those things out,” she says. She created her first wolf painting that summer, after a pack of the animals appeared to her in a vision while she was relaxing on her gallery’s patio.

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LaRoche’s tidy studio is part of the living room; right, her Africa-themed guest bedroom features her painting Red Elephants, acrylic, 58 x 80"

enough art to stay in Santa Fe year-round.

Today her many collectors include Ralph Lauren, actor Judge Reinhold, and shoe designer Donald Pliner, who displays two LaRoche paintings—one of them featuring her iconic wolves—at his Miami home. “Her work is mysterious and gripping,” Pliner says.

“Those eyes follow you around. I have two rooms basically devoted to those paintings.”

LaRoche has run her own gallery since 1984, showing her work along with pieces by six other artists who, she says, “are on the same wavelength.” She’s rented gallery space on Canyon Road and West Palace over the years, but she found a more permanent space in 2004, when she bought the gallery building that formerly belonged to artist William Vincent, at 415 Canyon.

“To come here with nothing and end up owning a building on Canyon Road, after 20 years of renting space?” she says. “That was a big deal to me.”

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hough LaRoche stops in at her gallery almost every morning, she spends most of her days in as beautiful a spot as any to be found in Santa Fe: her 32

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adobe home and studio, which sit on a wooded, two-acre lot off Cerro Gordo, along the Santa Fe River. The 200-year-old building was run down when she bought it ten years ago, but LaRoche could see its potential, having already remodeled three East Side adobe houses.

“I love adobe—you can work with it,” she says, gently patting a double-thick wall. “You take off the plaster and find brick and straw that’s been standing for more than a hundred years. You can carve it or shape it. or knock out a couple of bricks to make a window.”

LaRoche didn’t add exterior windows— historic guidelines prohibited it—and she preserved the home’s original footprint. Inside, though, she tore down and replastered walls, raised ceilings, and put in skylights to create the open, expansive feel she craves.

While LaRoche is known for her vivid paintings, at home she gravitates toward neutral hues and an aesthetic she calls “primitive but comfortable.” “I’m constantly surrounded by color when I’m working, so I like a peaceful, calming background in my house,” she says. Her collections of African tribal art and pre-Columbian pottery are displayed unobtrusively on built-in shelves and atop

cabinets, all set quietly into the background.

LaRoche’s airy and open living room, with its 11-foot-high ceilings, doubles as her studio.

“Friends come over and like to see what I’m ‘working on, so it’s a gathering place,” she explains. Her eight-foot-high easel is one of the room’s focal points, displaying her latest work in progress, a pair black, white-maned horses.

Always ready for a new creative project, LaRoche is thinking about building a small stone house near the old garage that sits at one end of the property. She’s planning her fourth book, a self-published collection of her paintings, to be titled Mystery.

She’s working, too, on a whimsical series of computer-generated images—ants, monkeys, and aardvarks—which she may eventually use in a children’s project.

And still, after nearly three decades in Santa Fe, she marvels at her success. “I never dreamed I could make a living as an artist,” she says with characteristic modesty. “That first red wolf, it was like my gift from God. It was a good luck symbol. It brought me luck.”

“When I meet a new artist,” she adds, “that’s what I tell them: ‘I hope you find your red wolf. ’”

the art of synergy How Three Santa Fe Couples Make It Work—Creatively and Interpersonally

by Devon Jackson

PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTISTS

Are artist couples more special because they’re both working artists as opposed to one being an artist and the other a dentist, a masseuse, a banker? (Who knows?) Are these same-field relationships easier or more difficult? I.e., do they get along swimmingly, like contemporary painters John Currin and Rachel Feinstein, or end up more like Elaine and Willem de Kooning? (No data on these questions either.) Maybe our fascination for artist couples stems from the almost schadenfreude-like conception that these people have such huge egos (huger than the average bear’s) that the relationship can’t possibly survive. And yet these three Santa Fe couples have not only endured but endured well. And have seemingly enhanced their respective partners’ growth creatively as much as personally.

The mere longevity of these relationships—professional and personal—makes them noteworthy. But just as compelling is the role geography, or, more specifically, Santa Fe has played in their mutual success: Might they have lasted as long as they have if they were New York or Los Angeles artist couples? After all, despite being the second-largest art market in the country, Santa Fe’s hardly the pressure cooker of New York or L.A. Herein, a look at how these three couples have made it this far.

lynne windsor & barry mccuan MCCUAN, RAISED IN Texas but a denizen of Taos and Santa Fe since 1970, met Windsor, an Englishwoman, while painting outdoors at the Ranchos de Taos church in 1993. Sparks? Check. Mutual admiration? Check. Woman starting out while man in mid-career? Check again. It helps, it seems, if one or both parties are done enough with some of life’s other major events (incompatible previous relationships, kids, previous careers) to focus solely—or primarily (or is it selfishly?)—on their art, and share that passion with another artist.

“Everything we do revolves around our lives as artists,” e-mails Windsor, 56, in England tending

to her father. (Windsor’s own children reside in England; McCuan’s daughter, also an adult, lives in Texas.) And while McCuan, 65, has been painting the Western outdoors for years, Windsor had just begun when they met. “Barry taught me a lot, but I then moved away from his style of painting.”

In return, McCuan has listened to Windsor. Though not always. “She helps me, she tells me when to quit,” he offers. “But I’ve learned: You don’t offer suggestions.” Indeed. “We have a policy of not making comments about each other’s paintings unless invited to,” writes Windsor. “Most of the time this works!”

As with the other couples, McCuan and Wind-

sor have learned how much criticism to offer and when, and have figured out each other’s respective strengths (one stretches canvases, the other cooks, etc.). And as with any relationship, there are challenges. “But for me,” responds Windsor, “the fact that Barry and I both care the most about our art and our families—above everything else—helps us understand each other and get along as well as we do.”

“We understand how it is to be struggling, or when things go right,” says McCuan. “Maybe a little more so than if one of us weren’t an artist.”

“We don’t have to be in each other’s pockets, and we allow each other freedom,” adds Windsor.

Clockwise from left: Windsor, The Bumble Bee and the Apple, oil on canvas, 6 x 6"; Windsor and McCuan; McCuan, The Change Begins, oil on linen, 12 x 16"; Windsor, Wren—Perched, 8 x 8" february/march

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PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTISTS

jim asher & joe anna arnett IN 1984, when Asher and Arnett first met, through an art dealer, in Scottsdale, Arizona, he was just reestablishing his career and she was just beginning hers. She’d made the leap into fine art after almost a decade as the art director for New York’s high-powered Young & Rubicam ad agency—relocating to Santa Fe because “there was no question that a woman can be an artist here; it’s a real job,” says Arnett. “People here don’t question you about your ‘real’ job when you tell them you’re an artist.” Asher had been in Santa Fe for two years, having lost all his galleries after developing an allergy to turpentine and being forced to switch from oils back to watercolor and gouache.

Clicking instantly (“Sparks flew when we met,” says Asher), “we combined our objectives, we built our studio together [in the house Asher bought, which they still live and work in today], we never assumed we’d be anything but a good team,” says Asher.

“Loving each other’s work was never in question.

Many people told us not to get married—that it’d be

competitive. That’s what they thought.”

Not that there haven’t been trying moments. “We get a lot of ‘Do you do paint, too?’” laughs Arnett. “You have to be very grown up about it and in realistic control of your ego. You either accept it and deal with that or you’ll be less. I guess we’ve been lucky. Those times when the ego came up, we got over it.”

It also helps that they not only love and support each other but—as artists—they often know what the other’s feeling, what they’re up against. “You’ve got a shoulder to cry on,” says Arnett. “Someone who knows exactly what you’re experiencing. Jim knows I’m dealing with stuff, like when I’m destroying paintings. I don’t have to tell him or explain it to him.” It’s the art-world version of “don’t ask, don’t tell”: Fellow artists need not ask nor tell. They get it. It’s understood. Implicitly.

Unlike other art couples, though, they admit that if they painted similarly, or thought they did, that might’ve caused some friction. “But that’s never been

an issue,” says Arnett, “because we see ourselves as very different in what we do, and how we paint.”

“I wouldn’t like it at all if we painted similarly,” admits Asher. “If we did, that might have sparked a destructive competition.” As it is, they don’t compete. He likes to paint outdoors; she’s more a studio rat. But they both love to travel, and paint when they travel, and they’ve just finished their first series of documentaries about artists for PBS—yet another facet of their collaborative yet distinct artist relationship. “Without Jim, I might not have gone into my outdoor painting with quite as much depth,” says Arnett. “But I also know that I showed Jim some out-of-the-way places. There’d be none of his Venice or Paris series if it weren’t for my tantrums,” she adds with a laugh.

As for having remained in Santa Fe all these years?

“Would we live somewhere else?” asks Jim rhetorically. “The trade-off isn’t worth it. There are very few places that are as good for artists as Santa Fe.”

Clockwise from top left: Asher, Hotel Villa Venezia, watercolor, 14 x 16"; Asher, Quiet Canal, watercolor, 15 x 12"; Arnett, Windmills of Santorini, oil, 9 x 12"; Asher, Silver Day, Grand Canal, watercolor, 12 x 16"; Arnett, Peggy’s Cove, oil, 11 x 15"; Arnett and Asher in Cancún, Mexico; Arnett, Peaks of Zion, oil, 14 x 12". Center: Asher, Magda, gouache, 11 x 9" 34 34

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PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTISTS

susan contreras & elias rivera GIVEN THAT IT WAS “lightning bolts when we first met” (according to Rivera), back in 1981, it’s no surprise that Rivera and Contreras continue to emit sparks—for each other, in their paintings—today.

Rivera, 72, is a New York–born Latino of Puerto Rican descent; Contreras, 57, came from a jet-setting Scottish mother and a Mexican father. “That’s real important for us,” says Rivera, “that we’re both Latin.” Another factor: Although on different journeys artistically (Contreras had switched from photography to painting when they met, while Rivera has remained a master portraitist throughout his career),

“we’re both storytellers, figurative painters,” says Contreras, “and that’s important, too. It’d be hard if one of us were a landscape painter. And if I hadn’t made my career, there might’ve been a problem.”

Among the many things they share (love of art, love of each other’s work, collectors), they also give each other feedback. “I respect Susan’s eye and her honesty,” says Rivera, “and we know that there’s never an agenda—it’s all about the work. The professional part of our lives never gets in the way.”

Trust, though, is crucial. “There’s a sense of comfort if you respect somebody’s work,” continues

Rivera, who taught Contreras plenty about paint but in return rediscovered his subject matter (the people of Oaxaca and Guatemala) through Contreras. “Otherwise, you live a life of lies or constant battles.”

From mutual respect comes mutual support. “The biggest thing we get from each other is the confidence and the inspiration to continue,” says Contreras. “If you’re an artistic person, you do question yourself sometimes. We’ve grown so beautifully.”

“And this has been a very fertile environment to grow in,” adds Rivera. “New Mexico’s been so blessed to us.”

Clockwise from top left: Contreras, Studio Door, oil on linen, 54 x 42"; Rivera, Reflections of Time, oil on canvas, 48 x 36"; Contreras, Friend or Foe, oil on linen, 70 x 56"; Rivera, The Gathering II, oil on canvas, 60 x 72"; Contreras, Bavarian Toy Festival, oil on canvas, 30 x 40"; Rivera and Contreras february/march february/march

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| S O C I A L H I S TO R Y |

back to the garden r epla n ting Bishop La my’s orig inal g rape s

PHOTO COURTESY PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS ARCHIVES

by Di a n na Del l i ng

Bishop Lamy, second from the left, in his garden with a few of his fellow priest-gardeners

ON A CHILLY AFTERNOON last November, Richard Verruni, the managing director of Bishop’s Lodge, dug a hole in the dirt behind the resort’s main building and ceremoniously inserted the cuttings from a grapevine. It wasn’t just any grapevine; it was the first planting in what will one day become the Bishop’s Lodge vineyard. But it also symbolized a homecoming—the roundabout return of a legendary vine believed to have been planted on the property more than 120 years ago by Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy.

As famous as he was for his ecclesiastical accomplishments, the bishop was also a dedicated horticulturist known for his gardens, both in downtown Santa Fe and at Villa Pintoresca, his weekend retreat in Little Tesuque Canyon. Lamy owned the rural property from the 1860s until his death, in 1888. Though it then changed hands several times, in 1918 it opened as a resort hotel named, appropriately enough, the Bishop’s Lodge. Now called the Bishop’s Lodge Resort and Spa, the property is still shaded 36

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with peach, pear, apple, and apricot trees the Bishop planted during his years there.

Grapes once grew there too. But the vines were destroyed in 1969, when the resort’s management cleared some land to make room for additional lodging facilities. When the property was sold to new hoteliers in 1998, the vines had been all but forgotten, and a little piece of horticultural history appeared doomed to wither away.

Enter Los Alamos-based wine historian Tom Hill. In 2006, Hill was doing research for a magazine article about Jacona Valley Vineyards, a small winery 20 miles north of Santa Fe, whose 2004 Estate Pinot Noir had just won a silver medal at the Southwest Wine Competition. Hill was interviewing vintner Trey Naylor at Jacona when Naylor pointed out a gnarled old vine. It had been planted, Naylor explained, by the property’s previous owner, Elmer Townsley. At that point, Hill realized that they were looking at a plant of considerable historic interest.

Having been active in northern New

Mexico’s viticulture scene for years, Hill remembered meeting Elmer Townsley in the early 1970s, at gatherings of the New Mexico Vine and Wine Society. He also remembered hearing that Townsley had spent hours digging up one of the grapevines at Bishop’s Lodge before the plants were destroyed by construction workers.

“I thought he was crazy as a loon to do something like that,” Hill recalls. “If you want to propagate a vine, you can just take some cuttings. But Elmer went out there with a trailer and dug a huge vine out of the ground!

Vines that old can have root systems that go down 30 feet or more.”

Townsley died in 1989, and until Hill visited Naylor at Jacona, he never knew what had become of that rescued vine. “When I took a look at it, it immediately leapt into my mind—because of the size of the trunk—that this must be a Lamy original,” Hill says. “I’ve seen plenty of 80- to 140-year-old vineyards in California, and none of them have vines with a trunk of that size.”

Hill and cowriter Susan Clough published their story, “Jacona Valley Vineyards and Its Bishop Lamy Heritage,” in Edible Santa Fe’s Winter 2006 issue. Three years later, when Bishop’s Lodge public relations director Lynn Strauss came across it, she and Verruni hatched a plan to bring a cutting from “the mother vine” back to Bishop’s Lodge.

No one can be certain, of course, that the vines growing at Bishop’s Lodge until 1969 were actually planted by Bishop Lamy. But historians know that after a visit to his native France in the 1860s, Lamy returned to New Mexico with a bunch of plant cuttings.

There is also evidence that those cuttings included grapevines.

“I was so excited that we found Tom Hill and then Jacona,” says Verruni. “We wanted to replant the vines so we could relive Lamy’s legacy.” And someday soon, he can toast it with a glass of wine pressed from the bishop’s own grapes.

art

openings | events | reviews | people

Robert Highsmith’s earth-toned watercolor landscapes capture the expansiveness of the American Southwest with an almost photorealistic clarity. In his New Work exhibit at Marigold Arts (424 Canyon, 505-982-4142, marigoldarts.com), February 5–March 18, reception February 5, 5–7 PM, the Las Cruces-based artist gets the shadows and light just right, whether he’s painting New Mexico’s canyonlands under the warm autumn sun or a lonely high-plains railroad track beneath a big, snow-filled sky.—Dianna Delling Robert Highsmith, Canyon de Chelly in Fall, watercolor, 20 x 14", courtesy Marigold Fine Arts february/march

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PREVIEWS

Jimi Gleason, The Vision, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60"

Jimi Gleason: Linked by Light LewAllen Gallery at the Railyard 1613 Paseo de Peralta 505-988-3250, lewallencontemporary.com Feb 19–March 21, reception Feb 19 5:30–7:30 PM Gleason’s abstractions are all about light—and the way their pearlescent color changes depending on the viewer’s perspective. Like his mentor, painter Ed Moses, Gleason is a master of his technique and his materials.

These minimalist acrylic paintings, with color-saturated borders and luminous, almost transparent centers, captivate.—Dianna Delling

Douglas Ethridge, Cabo San Lucas, platinum palladium print, 14 x 14"

Various Artists: An Exhibition with Douglas Ethridge, Dominic Rouse, and Mark Citret Verve Gallery of Photography, 219 E Marcy 505-982-5009, vervegalleryofphotography.com March 19 May 8, reception March 19, 5–7 PM The common link among these three photographers seems to be their meticulousness of purpose. Rouse’s circusy tableaux, nude portraits (of women, of course—and headless, to boot), and Victorian-era little girls and broken statuary amid backdrops of ruined buildings and interiors strain at themes of beauty and innocence in a world of decay and dilapidation.

Think Joel-Peter Witkin—lite. Ethridge’s range from wonderful shots of water in motion (ocean waves, water flowing over concrete structures), that are both formal and abstract, to Bressonian snapshots—only they feel preconceived and premeditated, as if to better explore the tensions between foreground and background. And then there are Citret’s powerfully philosophical portraits of emptiness, stillness, and silence—whether of a fogged-out park at night, a view of cypresses, or a single glass wall. His black-and-white pictures are all about light and shadow, form and contrast, and recall the works of photography’s early masters.—DJ

Group Show: Wine, Chocolate, and Jewelry Manitou Galleries, 123 W Palace 505-986-0440, manitougalleries.com Feb 5–Feb 19, reception Feb 5, 5–7:30 PM The “wine” and “chocolate” in the show’s title refer to treats from Susan’s Fine Wines and the ChocolateSmith, each of which will be served at the opening reception. But the focus here is the jewelry. Jay West’s gold rings glitter with stunning opals in iridescent blue and green; Star York’s pendants—bronze horses accented with turquoise—are like miniature versions of the equine sculptures she is known for. Louise Perkinson strings together turquoise beads or dyed freshwater pearls to create necklaces of simple beauty. Most interesting are the organic, contemporary sterling-silver pieces by Buenos Aires-based Maria Moreno, which incorporate pieces of coral, horn, and hematite. Her “Black Coral Cuff” bracelet, in sterling silver and black Icelandic coral, is primitive and bold; her seven-inch-long “Easter Island Lapel Pin,” in sterling silver with coral, horn, and stainless steel wire, is an ethereal, textural masterpiece, despite its unusual size.—DD

Susan Rothenberg, Folded Buddha, oil on canvas, 91 x 111", Collection Miami Art Museum, gift of Mimi and Bud Floback

Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, 217 Johnson 505-946-1000, okeeffemuseum.org Through May 16 This retrospective spans the master Galisteo artist’s oeuvre from her horse paintings of the mid-1970s (the ones that put her on the art-world map) to her most recent works—the puppet paintings.

Ironically, the figurative pieces tend to be more intellectual(ly engaging) than emotional(ly moving), while the abstract ones feel psychologically deeper. Still, as Georges Braque once said: “In art only one thing counts: what one cannot explain.”—Devon Jackson

Maria Moreno, Easter Island Lapel Pin, sterling silver, horn, coral, and stainless steel, 7 x 2"

Mark Castator: Steel Poetic Winterowd Fine Art, 701 Canyon 505-992-8878, fineartsantafe.com March 19–31, reception March 19, 5–7 PM With their cool geometric patterns, Castator’s polished steel sculptures have a kind of 1960s, Austin Powers vibe. The Boulder-based artist constructs his seven-foot-tall cylinders and squat, two-foot-high spheres by stacking and welding dozens of square and rectangular steel pieces, creating (as he has said) form through repetition. His pieces are chaotic while organized, airy while substantial, and feats of engineering while aesthetically intriguing.

They make you think—but more than anything, they’re fun to look at. Showing concurrently at Winterowd: paintings by J.D. Wellborn.—DD Mark Castator, Cascade, steel, 91 x 12 x 12", and Spheres, steel, 22" and 13" (in diameter)

Sloane Bibb, The Perfect Dress, mixed media, 27 x 30"

art

PREVIEWS

Sloane Bibb: Heart of Dixie LaKind Fine Art, 662 Canyon 505-982-3221, lakindfineart.com Feb 9–23, reception Feb 12, 5–7:30 PM Bibb hails from Alabama, hence the exhibition’s title.

But his textural, mixed-media pieces—acrylic, paper, beeswax, metal, tar, and other found objects on wood—reflect a vision that’s more surreal than Southern. Like the 20th-century assemblage artist Joseph Cornell, Bibb fancies birds and bird imagery in many of his pieces. He also focuses on guitars and cakes, the latter appearing as layered, white-frosted confections topped with pink and red roses—wedding cakes that in their sweetness manage to mock the idea of marital bliss. There’s a cynicism behind Bibb’s whimsical creations, but their prettiness makes the commentary on modern life go down easy. —DD

Group Show: Dog and Pony Show Brandon Michael Fine Art, 202 Canyon 505-795-7427, brandonmichaelfineart.com Feb 12–21, reception Feb 12, 5–7 PM With an appealing theme and clever title, Brandon Michael’s second annual invitational exhibit is a celebration of equines and canines—and more than 50 artists who’ve captured their essence in bronze or glass and on canvas. Among the standouts: Painter Roseta Santiago’s “Leap of Faith,” a glowing, movement-filled portrait of a chestnut-and-white horse jumping mid-air, and Liz Wolf’s bronze “Spirit Journey,” a primitively rendered pup with a terracotta-colored patina that resembles a piece of pre-Columbian pottery. Part of the proceeds from the show, which is sponsored by the Santa Fean, will benefit Santa Fe Equestars, a therapeutic riding program, and Watermelon Mountain Ranch, the largest “no-kill” animal shelter in New Mexico.—DD

Liz Wolf, Spirit Journey, bronze, 11 x 14 x 5"

Group Show: Variations in Black and White New Concept Gallery, 610 Canyon 505-795-7570, newconceptgallery.com March 12–April 9, reception March 12, 5–7 PM With works from each of New Concept’s twelve artists, this exhibit of black-and-white art—with a few muted colors sneaking in—is pleasant and well-rounded, if not particularly groundbreaking. Photography is well represented: In Bill Heckel’s blackand-white photographs of Tent Rocks, nude figures arched across the rocks highlight the sensuality in an otherworldly landscape, while Woody Galloway’s photos capture the beauty of wild horses in a snowy northern New Mexico winter. Abstract and realistic paintings and bronze and scrap-metal sculpture are also featured, with Deborah Martin’s bronze, “Walk Like a Lamb”—an upright sheep dancing joyously on one leg—adding a touch of whimsy to the mix.—DD

GREAT FOOD, GREAT ART, GREAT CAUSE Art lovers, foodies, and most of all, Santa Fe’s kids benefit when Santa Fe’s creative community comes together for ArtFeast, February 26–28. Sponsored by ArtSmart, the nonprofit charitable group formed by the Santa Fe Gallery Association, the three-day festival is a celebration of the city’s artistic, design, and gastronomic talents, with proceeds funding arts programs in Santa Fe’s public schools.

More than 80 local galleries will particpate in ArtFeast’s events, which include a fashion show, tours of art-filled homes in Las Campanas, and live and silent auctions of works by both established artists and Santa Fe students.

In Friday night’s Edible Art Tour, sponsored by the Santa Fean, guests “gaze and graze”— strolling between openings at 43 galleries in the downtown, Canyon Road, and Railyard districts—and sampling food from the city’s top chefs at each one. Restaurants featured range from high-end (La Boca and Agua Santa) to homey (Cowgirl BBQ and the Zia Diner).

“What’s unique about ArtFeast is that galleries and gallerists put it on to support the next generation of artists,” says Martine Bertin-Peterson of the Peterson-Cody Gallery, which will serve food from the O’Keeffe Café during this year’s Edible Art Tour. “It’s not just a party for a party’s sake — it’s an event that actually gives back to the community.”

In 2009, ArtFeast raised more than $86,000, which was used to buy art supplies and fund art projects and scholarships for Santa Fe’s young people. In all, the festival has raised about $750,000 since its 1998 inception.—DD For tickets and a complete schedule of events, visit artfeast.com.

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PROFILE

the healing (of) arts Behin d the sce ne s, L inda Nade r make s old works lo o k ne w a ga i n

By Devon Jackson

Top: one of Taos Society painter Emil Bisttram’s untitled paintings before Nader worked her magic on it; middle: the Bisttram landscape after Nader cleaned it up; bottom: Linda Nader

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MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE of the paranoia of the dealers from whom they get most of their old or damaged paintings. Maybe it’s because they work in seclusion. Or maybe it’s because nobody really knows just what it is they do or how—so it’s a bit mystical, arcane, even alchemical. “Restorers are all very weird,” observes Linda Nader, who’s been restoring artworks, primarily by turn-of-the-century Western artists such as Walter Ufer, Gustave Baumann, and Ernest Blumenschein, for several years now. “We’re really behind-the-scenes people. We’re puppetmasters who don’t want to be seen.”

Operating out of an unmarked studio somewhere near Second Street, Nader (who’s loath to reveal her exact location) repairs works created on canvas and in wood, metal, stone, and other media, from every culture and time period. “I’ve gotten 500-year-old Buddhas that are fi lthy and black and there’ll be gold lacquer underneath,” she says. “That’s really exciting. They come back alive after you’re done.”

Like the other ten or so restorers in and around Santa Fe, she is often entrusted with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of dirty or damaged art. Her mission: to bring it back to its pristine, original condition. That’s no easy task, especially given that dealers and owners may have tried to wipe away a food stain with Windex or rub off a layer of dirt with acetone.

“Usually you test a little section of the painting so you know how to proceed,” explains Nader. “I may have to test half a dozen things, and I start out with the least abrasive material and work my way up. But it’s creative, not tedious. You just have to stay focused. As focused as the artist who painted it.”

About 90 percent of Nader’s business comes from dealers of historic Western art, the other ten comes from collectors and galleries. But she won’t get any more specific about the pieces she’s worked on. As she explains it, art dealers expect discretion from restorers because they don’t want word of what they have to get out to other dealers. Another reason for the secrecy—one that Nader doesn’t mention—may be that dealers would prefer to keep restoration details about certain pieces of art on the down-low.

Nader, who studied graphic design at Ohio’s Columbus College of Art and Design, worked as a graphic designer and a photographer before moving to Santa Fe. She fell into her unique line of work here after responding to an ad seeking an apprentice for a local restorer. After two years on the job, she was eager to take her restoration skills further. But she discovered there are no schools for such study in the U.S. “So I found a program in Italy—and it was totally life-changing,” says Nader. “I came back with this confidence, the confidence to go out on my own. All my experience came together for this one thing.

My love of history and art history, my love of antiques, my background in graphic design.”

Never trained in any scientific or CSI-like way, Nader nevertheless knows from experience what substances can be used to clean a piece of art without damaging it. “There are pieces that come in and I start drooling because I can’t wait to get at them, because I know how to approach it,” she says. “I can take off layers and layers of dirt and you see what it was like the day Ufer or [Victor] Higgins fi rst painted it. Or I can make a really huge hole or tear in the canvas disappear.”

Removing dirt, smoke, food, or other odd debris is only half the job. “Restorers want to put a piece back to where it’s perfect, as perfect as it was before it got damaged or started to age,” says Nader. That means repainting what’s been lost or what has faded over time, a process known as inpainting.

Whereas restorers aim to make an old piece of art look new again, conservators—most all of whom work in museums—believe that any retouching or repair on a work of art should be clearly visible and obvious to the observer. “Museums think what we do is terrible,” sighs Nader, who doesn’t really side with one camp or the other. “But if I can clean a painting to where it looked like Blumenschein originally, that’s great. Or if I can inpaint it, great. I don’t think I’m destroying the value or taking the place of these artists or that I’ve intruded into what they’ve made. I wouldn’t want something on my wall with part of it missing.”

Most works that have been cleaned or restored tend to increase in value, yet the restorer’s lot remains somewhat hush-hush. “It’s a curious business,” says Nader. “It’s all word of mouth. People ask me, Why don’t you advertise? Because I’d get grandmothers calling asking me to touch up their kitty-cat pictures.

No one’s going to call with a $500,000 painting after seeing an ad. So it’s still a bit of a secret society—in a weird way.” Weird, maybe. But clean weird, not dirty weird.

2010

art

SCENE

arty FACTs the kids are alrig ht —at 20

By Devon Jackson

FINE ART FOR CHILDREN AND TEENS—otherwise known as F.A.C.T.—celebrates its 20th anniversary March 18 at Santacafé with an auction and fundraiser (with proceeds going to the nonprofit’s various programs). In the two decades since it was founded, by Juliet Myers and Rosanne Kadis, it has grown from its one-room haven for artistically passionate grade-school children near Warehouse 21 into a group that now reaches over 4,500 children throughout Northern New Mexico.

On March 19, the organization hosts a reception and public exhibition of F.A.C.T. alumni artwork at Warehouse 21. Kids from its current programs will be there, as will some of its alumni—most of whom remember F.A.C.T. fondly, and more than a few of whom have gone into art as a career.

Nick Pena, for example, found his calling at F.A.C.T., and in some ways personifies F.A.C.T.’s mission: using the visual arts to help kids find out more about themselves, their worth, their talents. “It’s real validating for kids who are overlooked by society,” says Pena, 27, who majored in art and art history and now plays in a band (La Junta) and has his own recording studio. “Art kept me in school, and F.A.C.T.’s why I went to college. It’s social activism. It was also a safe, comfortable place and,” adds Pena, “we got snacks.”

“We take our methods and adapt them to the needs and skill sets and cultures of the kids,” says interim executive director Anna Marie Tutera Manriquez. “We make it accessible and relevant to them.”

Madeleine Tozzi, for instance, who started there as an eightyear-old student before finishing up as an instructor’s assistant at 18, remembers F.A.C.T. as a safe place, too. “It definitely turned me on to art in a way I hadn’t previously been,” she wrote via email from Santa Barbara, where she’s pursuing a degree in community arts. “I owe much of my inspiration and passion for the arts to Juliet and Rosanne, and to F.A.C.T.” Molly Weisse-Bernstein, another out-of-town alumnus and onetime studio assistant, also characterized F.A.C.T. as a refuge, and wrote from Washington, D.C., also via email, that, “It helped me realize that all art is important.” Although she recently earned her degree in psychology, “To know that I am an artist,” she wrote, “whether I make art or not—is important.”

And, yes, just in case you were wondering: there will be snacks at all the events.

For tickets and a complete schedule of events, call 505-992-2787, or visit factsantafe.org.

Top: one of the tenets of F.A.C.T., as expressed by one of its participants; above: kids finding F.A.C.T. fun

dallas art fair THE SECOND ANNUAL Dallas Art Fair, running February 5–7, at the Fashion Industry Gallery in downtown Dallas, adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art, will be bringing in over 40 art dealers from around the country, including eight from Santa Fe: William Siegal, Tai, Linda Durham, James Kelly, Gebert, Charlotte Jackson,

and William Shearburn. “It’s a good fair, and a good market for us,” says Ylise Kessler, director of contemporary art at William Siegal. “Plus, William Shearburn did it last year and liked it, and suggested we should go, too.” On hand as well: the Santa Fean, who’s also one of the fair’s sponsors. february/march

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SPECIAL ADVERTSING SECTION

The William & Joseph Gallery

Art Exchange Gallery

Dorian Vincent Scotti, getting there is half the fun, oil on canvas, 30 x 40”

Jeff Tabor, Tierra Contenta, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30”

Trained in the classical realist tradition, I paint what is best described as contemporary realism. This new series, “Passages,” explores the lines between girlhood and womanhood.

The drama of the New Mexico sky is difficult to capture, “but we keep trying,” says Jeff Tabor, native New Mexican. “I try to capture more of a sense of how it feels to look at the sunset rather than the pictorial representation of it.” That sense of presence is enhanced by the use of deep reds and dark blues in this scene from Tabor’s studio, looking toward the Jemez mountains over the neighborhood houses. See this and other works by Jeff Tabor and 30 other artists at Art Exchange Gallery.

727 Canyon, 505-982-9404

618 Canyon Road, 505-982-6329, www.aegallery.com

the gallery ART SHOWCASE

Alexandra Stevens Fine Art E. Melinda Morrison, The Kiss, oil, 20 x 24"

Frank Howell Gallery Frank Howell, Strawberry Flight, acrylic, 40 x 50"

E. Melinda Morrison: “I paint light and how it affects a scene. My brush is just an extension of how I see the world.” E. Melinda Morrison solo exhibition, February 12–28 at Alexandra Stevens Fine Art. Opening night: Friday, February 12 from 5:30–7:30 pm. Artist’s demo will be on Saturday from 1–3 pm.

Also available in limited edition giclée. Located on the northeast corner of the plaza, the Frank Howell Gallery has operated for over 20 years, showcasing world-renowned artists, including Frank Howell, Bill Worrell, Ray Tracey, and Oreland Joe. We are always interested in purchasing Frank Howell originals.

820 Canyon, 505-988-1311, alexandrastevens.com.

103 Washington, 505-984-3115, frankhowellgallery.com

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SPECIAL ADVERTSING SECTION

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian Narciso Abeyta (Ha So De), Untitled, gouache on paper, 21 x 29"

The exhibition Through Their Eyes: Paintings from the Santa Fe Indian School, running from May 17, 2009–April 18, 2010, focuses on paintings created by students who attended the Santa Fe Indian School between 1918 and 1945. Featured artists include Fred Kabotie, Allan Houser, Andrew Tsihnahjinnie, Pablita Velarde, and Sybil Yazzie.

704 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, 505-982-4636, wheelwright.org

Carole LaRoche Gallery Carole LaRoche, The Protector, Limited Edition, 37 x 50", framed

At a time when people are looking deeper and wiser into their core beliefs, LaRoche’s images of protection, connectedness, and preserving our environment have more meaning than ever.

This Canyon Road gallery has long been a favored destination in Santa Fe. Open 7 days.

415 Canyon, 505-982-1186, laroche-gallery.com

Marigold Arts Robert Highsmith, Deep Snow, Watercolor, 22 x 30"

New Mexico’s destination gallery for watercolors.

“See Winter in New Mexico: New watercolors

by Robert Highsmith.”

Reception with the Artist: Friday, February 5, 5–7 pm through March 18.

424 Canyon, 505-9824142, marigoldarts.com

Parks Gallery Victoria Carlson, Chance Has Accepted Your Invitation, watercolor and flocking on paper, 30 x 22"

Greenberg Fine Art 205 Canyon, 505-955-1500, greenbergfineart.com, info@greenbergfineart.com

”Five Paintings” is the title of an exhibition of Carlson’s new work that’s filled with stunning, madcap imagery.

“The world is often divided into two camps,” she says of her subjects, “those with and those without power.

I’m saying the world is more complicated than it looks.“ March 5 to April 1, 2010.

127A Bent, Taos, 575-751-0343, parksgallery .com

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| DESIGN |

shining examples Sa nt a Fe ’s cont e mpora r y je welr y s ce ne i s t h r i v i ng— t hanks in pa r t t o t he se f or wa rd-t h i nki ng a r t i s t s by di a n na del l i ng

From top: Bracelet (sterling silver, 14-karat gold, emeralds), Keri Ataumbi; pin (sterling silver, glass beads), Mary Kanda; earrings (Damascus steel, 18-karat gold, diamonds), Phil Poirier

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SILVER AND TURQUOISE JEWELRY, which local Navajo and Pueblo artists began crafting in New Mexico in the 1860s and ’70s, will always help define Santa Fe style. But while it gets most of the attention, it’s not the only kind of jewelry that stands out here. These five artists are drawing from local traditions and the region’s confluence of cultures to create work that’s as innovative—and finely crafted—as you’ll find anywhere in the country.

Doug Magnus has been one of Santa Fe’s best-known silver-andturquoise artists since the late 1970s, making Western-style belt buckles prized by both authentic cowboys and stylish imitators. His fine jewelry designs, however, show off his versatility, and by setting green-blue turquoise in 18-karat gold, he gives the classic stone a fresh and elegant update. Magnus has long been fascinated by turquoise from the Cerrillos Hills, just south of Santa Fe, which are believed to have been mined by the Pueblo Indians as early as A.D. 600. Today he owns 16 of the Cerrillos mines, which are no longer operating, and he uses turquoise he finds there in many of his pieces, available at the Magnus Studios (905 Early, douglasmagnus.com).

Rather than setting stones, Mary Kanda sets colorful seed-beads—using straight-from-the-hardware-store tile grout. The Alcalde-based artist crafts tiny sterling-silver “frames” to look like oak leaves, stars, and circles, among other shapes. She fills each one with beads—in hues like mustard yellow, red, or lime green—then grouts them to create earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and brooches with bright, mosaic-like looks. Kanda first came up with the technique in the 1990s, when she had left New Mexico to spend a few years in New England. “I was really missing the artwork I’d seen in Santa Fe, with all the colors and the primitive, tribal qualities,” she says. Kanda returned here in 2001, and the oak and beech leaves in her jewelry are a reminder of how both New England and the Southwest have influenced her designs. Her work is available at Patina Gallery (131 W Palace, patina-gallery.com).

It’s subtle pattern, rather than color, that adds interest to Phil Poirier’s work. The Taos-based artist hand-forges his material, known as Damascus steel, by layering two different alloys and then manipulating the red-hot metal to create intricate swirling and wave-like patterns. “Traditionally, Damascus work has more of a wood-grain pattern,” notes Alison Barnett of Patina Gallery, which shows Poirier’s jewelry. “But Phil has six or eight different patterns he works with. He’s very savvy with the technical aspects of his art.” Poirier also designs in 18-karat gold; particularly impressive are his “Pick-Up Sticks” pieces—earrings, pendants, and bracelets that resemble artful scatterings of delicate, precariously balanced gold needles, some accented with diamonds.

Santa Fe’s Keri Ataumbi, a Native American of Kiowa descent, is another metals artist known for her technical mastery. But in creating what she terms “wearable art,” she is equally interested in exploring the relationship

between a piece of jewelry and the human body. Ataumbi’s silver cuff bracelets, some adorned with 14-karat gold dragonflies, some with bees and tiny gold or diamond “honey drops,” are show-stoppers. “She’s doing something totally different than any other Native American artists,” says Jamie Khan, director of Shiprock Santa Fe (53 Old Santa Fe Trail, shiprocktrading. com), which features Ataumbi’s work.

“She’s unique among silversmiths in general. I can wear her pieces in New York, Dallas, and Santa Fe, and they stand out everywhere.”

Elan Varshay designs 18-karat gold jewelry in a range of elegant styles, from basic (a bracelet of thick, two-inch-long oval links) to blingy (a glittering, rare green amethyst set in a bold ring band peppered with tiny, Swiss-cheese-like holes, some holding diamonds and rubies). Originally from Israel, Varshay created jewelry for couture houses in New York before moving here in 1993. He designed jewelry and belt buckles at James Reid Ltd. before striking out on his own, in 1996, and now sells his work exclusively at Evoke Contemporary (130 Lincoln, evokecontemporary.com), which he co-owns. “My latest collection was inspired by Frida Kahlo,” he says. “I try to challenge myself and take my designs in new directions every few months.”

In fact, while Varshay’s jewelry designs appear to have little in common with the typical “Santa Fe style,” he believes the past is what fuels the area’s forward-looking jewelry scene. “A place like this, that has some history, is very accepting of new innovation,” he says. “It’s comfortable with itself, and exploring a new direction is not going to undermine its established culture.

In my mind, combining the new world with the old world keeps the old world alive and makes the new world richer.”

From top left: Earrings (14-karat gold, turquoise), pendant (18-karat gold, turquoise, diamonds), Douglas Magnus; ring (18-karat gold, citrine, diamonds, rubies), Elan Varshay

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Boots & Boogie Santa Fe’s premier gallery of fine, handcrafted boots. Elegant while still being comfortable. Owner Roy Flynn will personally and expertly size you in the finest and most beautiful hand-tooled boots available. Whether the black kangaroo, soft-and-supple leather bottom with hand-tooled upper-classic Tyler Beard design, shown here, or any of the hundreds of other designs available, Boots and Boogie outfits you with style.

Boots and Boogie, 227 Don Gaspar #5, 505-983-0777 santafebootsandboogie.com

Packard’s on the Plaza Lawrence Baca’s contemporary antiques at Packard’s on the Plaza. All handmade, award-winning, iconic designs in silver, gold, and semi-precious stones. Packard’s extensive collection offers one of the finest personal shopping experiences in the Southwest.

61 Old Santa Fe Trail, 800-648-7358 or 505-983-9241

enchanted treasures

CG Higgins

Real heart, soul, and Santa Fe! We love Santa Fe and you can feel it in these 400th anniversary pieces in silver and gold with genuine Cerrillos turquoise from Douglas Magnus at Packard’s on the Plaza, New Mexico History Museum Shop, or douglasmagnus.com.

Chocolate is always a winner! Celebrate the holidays with handcrafted candy creations— chocolate fudge truffles, boutique caramel corns, and brittles as featured on The Food Channel Network. Gifts for yourself, your friends, your family, your clients. Sweets that nourish the body and the soul! Stop by our candy showroom. C.G. Higgins Confections—The official candy maker of Santa Fe’s 400th anniversary celebration!

905 Early, 983-6777

847 Ninita at St. Francis, 505-820-1315, cghiggins.com

Douglas Magnus

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KatieO Jewelry This beautiful one-of-a-kind necklace from the KatieO Jewelry Fringe Collection features: Emerald Mountain turquoise, Chinese turquoise from the Hubei Province, antique silver Tuareg beads from Africa, and sterling silver. Visit their website to see more unique and sophisticated designs.

954-638-9118, katieojewelry.com

Packard’s on the Plaza Rocki Gorman Rocki Gorman created the December Nights white agate and crystals necklace. Gracefully suspended is a sterling silver cross with a white agate center. Timeless in its design, each piece can be enjoyed separately or together.

Pam Springall showcases fabulous jewelry in unusual cuts and colors.

Pearls, turquoise, stones, beads, and briolettes with handmade findings are her signature. Select something special at Packard’s on the Plaza, in the same location for more than 80 years.

61 Old Santa Fe Trail, 800-648-7358 or 505-983-9241

221 Galisteo, 505-983-7833

Santa Fe Bliss Discover a different kind of spa. Santa Fe Bliss. Located in a beautiful space right downtown, Santa Fe Bliss offers services that include traditional massage, acupuncture, chiropractic, and biofeedback technology.

Massage starts at $55.

505-820-1572, santafebliss.com

february/march

2010

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BEN TREMPER

architecture | design | people

As elegant as the dining room of this South Capitol–area home looks now, five years ago it was completely funkadelic: bright purple and bright green walls, with a staircase right in the middle that led to the basement. Oy. The new owners wisely brought in Architectural Alliance’s Eric Enfield and interior designer Emily Henry. Practically everything went, save the Prairie-style windows. “When I’m working with a smaller space like this,” explains Henry, “my motto is: Less stuff and a bigger scale.” She mounted two chandeliers onto the ceiling, picked up the chest and lamps from David Naylor’s Visions Design Group showroom here in town, and found the Frank Lloyd Wright–like chairs at Los Angeles’s Mimi London. It all makes for a fresh, eclectic feel. “When projects turn out well, like this one did,” says Henry, “it’s not because of me, it’s because of the client.”—Devon Jackson

COLUMN

rethinking our architectural identity

HONORING SANTA FE’S historic buildings depends almost entirely on one thing: innovative contemporary architecture. Fine older buildings deserve to sit gracefully on their sites, exuding the craft, style, and cultural values of their era. This does not, however, imply that they should be locked in time, or, just as bad, surrounded by a sea of cloyingly imitative architecture—architecture that only robs these historic treasures of their true identity.

Ideally, historic districts that develop over time express an honest narrative. Unfortunately, this has not been the case recently in Santa Fe where, even though designs are restricted in areas like height, form, color, massing, materials, size of windows, and solid-wall area—to name a few— recent rulings by the city’s Historic Design Review Board have required architects and homeowners to modify the most picayune of details (such as the metal finish color of an exterior light fixture, or the specific curvature of a building corner) in order to receive approval. This severely limits architectural expression by requiring that all new construction be strongly imitative of historic buildings, down to the smallest detail, removing much of the latitude provided in the ordinances. This narrow view of what is permissible seems clearly outside the intent of the ordinance, given that “Recent Santa Fe Style” (in contrast to “Old Santa Fe Style”) is specifically codified in the ordinance. This enforcement of a false vernacular—“weathered” adobe build“In the rooms I design,” Trey Jordan once said, “while they might be done in a more pared-down fashion, the proportions are quite traditional.” ings that are “preserved” in order to create the appearance of an older streetscape—reduces architectural expression to the style of a bygone era. By trying so hard to be “historic,” the latitude necessary for creativity—even a symbiotic creativwe are, paradoxically, creating an architectural environment that ity between old and new buildings. Given the right parameters, is ahistorical.

Santa Fe’s streetscapes could sustain a variety of architectural This “moment-in-time” approach is dangerous for two major expressions and still harmoniously reflect the history of its reasons. First, it forms a damaging context for historically sigdistricts. The best, most appropriate parameters would allow the nificant buildings. It robs them of their apparent age by setting fabric of the city to honestly reflect the current cultural values of them among newer buildings that were designed to look historic. the people who live in Santa Fe and have lived here throughout Second, suppressing innovative architecture results in an enviits rich and evolving history. ronment of rote expression and bland structures that, because As an architect practicing in Santa Fe, I strive to create they lack unique character and artistic value, are fodder for buildings that people value for their beauty and integrity. With frequent renovation. Given that a building must be maintained a strong knowledge of the historic vernacular of our city, my and unaltered for 50 years in order to be classified as historically work references the materials, spatial relationships, organizing significant, few, if any, buildings constructed today will attain principals, and historic details of Santa Fe’s historic buildings historic status as “contributing” or “significant.” while trying to express current tastes and cultural values, just as Historic districts remain most vital when creativity is allowed architects have done throughout the past century. This is how to flourish in them—when new buildings are designed in a way our historic districts will stay vital. Perhaps one of the greatest that shows an understanding of, and sensitivity to, the underlyachievements for an architect is to design a building that is reing architectural vernacular of the area. Santa Fe’s rich history spected and valued, and therefore preserved without alterations, of Pueblo Revival and Territorial architecture gives architects a long enough to become historically significant. I hope Santa Fe broad vocabulary of details and historic reference to interpret in can resurrect an environment that makes that possible. new ways. And yet our historic ordinances fail to grant architects Trey Jordan is the principal architect and owner of Trey Jordan Architects.

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COURTESY TREY JORDAN ARCHITECTS

by Tre y Jordan

PROFILE

the great l’scape KENDALL MCCUMBER STARTED OUT her landscaping career as a gardener, tending to people’s backyards and frontyards, their flora and fauna during the summers. This was back in the ’80s, when Santa Fe was smaller, and greener (or, if not greener—in fact—than it is today, most people, even gardeners, weren’t as conscious, or conscientious, about water usage).

McCumber came out in 1988 from Washington, D.C., where she’d grown up. She’d been attending St. John’s College, and the off-campus gardening gigs looked more and more appealing as each semester ended. “I knew I wanted to clear my head and see what happened next after college,” says McCumber. “I have a love of plants and the need to create and be artistic and be outdoors. So I saw landscaping and gardening as a way not to jump into any kind of career.”

In 1994, having backfl ipped her way into her profession, McCumber opened her own landscaping business (McCumber Fine Gardens). “People think I spend all this time outdoors,” she says with a laugh. “Actually, I’m inside a lot. Or in my car going from job to job.” Most of those jobs involve maintenance work for their 30 or so clients, a few—lasting anywhere from two weeks to four months—involve installation, putting in flagstone steps, dams, and other water features.

Landscaping, though, essentially comes down to control—and flexibility. “Nature changes what you do and what you can or cannot do,” says McCumber. “So you have to have in mind how a place will look in five years—the architectural elements, the planting, the irrigation. And plants do grow, and eventually crowd each other out. So you also have to balance them out for now and for the future.”

And because plants in this high-desert environment tend to peak out in mid-July, that means starting in on your garden in February. (At least in theory, if not in practice.) As for the stonework and the planting, those can be done anywhere from April through June. Plants also don’t grow as fast here, so it’s best to start out with onegallon perennials; and there are certain plants that thrive here that won’t anywhere else (and vice-versa). But that means bringing in soil. Amended soil. “Gardens do better with amended soil,” says McCumber, who, true to her Greek and Latin readings at St. John’s, knows the Latin names of most every plant out here. “It usually has some compost in it, because there are very little nutrients in the soil here.”

And while most people are prepared to be introduced to a different plant palette (which in this climate makes drip irrigation pretty much essential), “It’s possible,” stresses McCumber, “to get color in a drought-tolerant way. You can have colory stuff up front and native shrubs in the background.”

Flexibility, then—flexibility that comes from being informed and educated about the uniqueness of this particular terrain—is key to starting and maintaining one’s landscape. But McCumber points out that there are fi ve other things to be mindful of when considering your landscape: • Plan carefully. Decide what your priorities are for your outdoor spaces. Are they for entertaining, family space, beauty, plant cultivation, peace, color, shade, view enhancement, privacy, or all of the above? What kinds of plants are most important to you?

Trees, shrubs, herbs, vegetables, perennials, annuals—or the whole shebang?

• Start with the backbone. If you don’t start with your hardscaping, you’ll probably end up moving things around later.

• Choose plants that are appropriate for this area and create special microclimates for your traditional perennials and container gardens.

• Use great soil, soil amendments, and mulch—lots of it.

• Explore the many easily available water-conservation and water-harvesting options.

COURTESY MCCUMBER FINE GARDENS

by D e von Jackson

Top: Absent a backyard in this downtown historic house, McCumber created a mini Machu Picchu, with tall steps and terraces that create enough space for a vertical garden; bottom: McCumber designed this stone terrace in such a way that it becomes the focal point of this north-of-town garden while also serving its primary function—erosion control

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CHIRS CORRIe

Tesuque Pasa Only ten minutes from downtown Santa Fe, the village of Tesuque, founded in 1740, offers a uniquely countrified feel.

Surrounded by cottonwoods, ensconced within the pink, sunbaked mountains of the Sangre de Cristos, and graced by the Tesuque River and its centuries-old acequias (usually running with water), Tesuque features spacious low-slung adobes and adobestyle ranches and ranch houses, apple orchards and stables, unmarked entrances and unpaved roads.

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It’s no wonder this bucolic spot, reminiscent in its own highdesert fashion of the more relaxed neighborhoods of Santa Barbara or Kentucky’s rolling horse farms, and with the Santa Fe Opera just across the road and the famous Shidoni Foundry as productive as ever, continues to attract as many Hollywood celebrities and high-profile artists as it always has. Nestled in the bosom of its lush valley, it’s a home to many and a home-awayfrom-home for many others.

SPECIAL ADVERTSING SECTION

19 Arroyo Pequeno Deborah Douglas, Associate Broker

74 Tesuque Ridge Rick Theobald, Associate Broker

sotheby’s international realty 326 Grant avenue 505-954-0777 Direct 505-577-5169 Mobile deborah.douglas@sothebyshomes.com

sotheby’s international realty 326 Grant avenue 505-954-5518 Direct 505-231-4088 Mobile rick.theobald@sothebyshomes.com

PREVIOUSLY PRICED AT $1,269,000! Impeccable 4BR, 2BA, 3,000-square-foot adobe home. Privately tucked away, a stones throw from the Tesuque Village Market. On almost an acre with an abundance of aspen, fruit trees, and grapevines. Outdoor deck and river-rock walls. Half of the property is fenced. Wood floors throughout and the huge portal doubles as an outdoor dining and living room at least half of the year. Owner/Broker.

MLS# 906270, $839,900

Spectacular Woods estate on 9 acres. Four BR, 6BA, sanctuary space, secret hidden room, and awesome media/game room. 7,400 square feet of Pueblo-style architecture, and includes a LR/DR that is actually a bridge spanning a creek bed! Flagstone/bamboo floors, AAA+ kitchen/wine storage, and 5 fireplaces. Radiant heat, A/C (5 systems!),14-foot-high ceilings, hi-tech systems—including private cell phone relay tower, security system, cistern, and hi-tech audio system. MLS# 905098, $4,500,000

Lot 6 Heather Lane Robin Zollinger

28 Blue Tesuque Liz Sheffield

associate Broker Barker realty inc.

505-660-5170 cell 505-992-3568 office direct robinzollinger@mac.com barkerrealtysantafe.com

Lucie Lawson

Exquisite handcrafted new construction in Tesuque Villas. 3600+ square feet, perched on 3.3 acres with arguably some of the best vistas in Santa Fe. Owner is a licensed New Mexico Real Estate Broker. Offered at $1,495,000

49 Rancho Escondido Michaelann Huitfeldt santa Fe properties 1000 paseo de peralta santa Fe, nM 87501 505-670-9486 Mobile mhuitfeldt@sfprops.com

Hidden in the hills of Tesuque, no detail was spared in the planning and construction of this extraordinary family compound with guest house, horse facilities, and pool. Surrounded by a 40-acre conservation easement, enjoy unobstructed, breathtaking views of the Sangre’s within minutes of the Plaza. Custom enhancements afford an unparalleled experience in indoor-outdoor entertaining and daily living. Price includes most furnishings. MLS #802256 $15,000,000 (photo: Chris Corrie)

505-954-5514 Direct

505-984-5182 Direct sotheby’s international realty 326 Grant avenue santa Fe, nM 87501

Unique Tesuque compound on 5 acres. Main house: adobe construction, 2,010 square feet, 2BR, 2BA with brick floors, high beamed/wood ceilings and Santa Fe architectural details.

Guest house: Santa Fe Style, passive solar,1,700 square feet, 2BR, 2BA, open concept with kiva fireplace. apartMent: 1BR, 1BA. Outstanding outdoor areas and big views! Great opportunity for family compound or rental investment. MLS# 906261, $950,000

Tesuque Villas Lots Robin Zollinger associate Broker Barker realty inc.

505-660-5170 cell 505-992-3568 office direct robinzollinger@mac.com barkerrealtysantafe.com

Only 4 lots left! A stone’s throw from the new Auberge resort, these parcels command truly unbelievable vistas, underground utilities, and environmentally sensitive covenants. tesuquevillas.com. Starting at $179,000 february/march

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Photo by David O. Marlow / The Santa Fe Catalogue®

Many people know us for our incredible antique furnishings or Italian leather sofas and chairs. Others seek our unique lamps and accessories.

Some appreciate the largest selection of Votivo products in New Mexico and exquisite gift items. What will you find?

Selection.

Quality.

Value.

Antique Furniture, Art and Accessories

asian adobe

1 block west of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum 310 Johnson Street Santa Fe 505-992-6846 Monday - Saturday 10 am to 5 pm www.asianadobe.com

300 Years of Romance, Intrigue & History.

Your stay becomes extraordinary at the Hilton Santa Fe Historic Plaza. Originally the hacienda of the influential Ortiz Family who settled in Santa Fe in 1694, we offer luxury guestrooms, private casitas and thoughtful touches for the leisure and business traveler alike. For the start of the day, lunch, or a lite dinner El Cañon offers fabulous fare morning, noon & night. Just steps from Santa Fe’s Historic Plaza with fine art galleries, museums and shopping—a unique experience in a unique destination.

open nightly for lite dining and spirits

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Now AvAilAble oggetti • hubbardton forge aldo bernardi • murray feiss harmony forge • juno lighting lightning bug • tech lighting lightolier • pure lighting charles edwards • bega baldinger • studio italia venini • arte de mexico arroyo craftsman • fortuny oxygen • lucifer lighting wendelighting • reggiani targetti • elliptipar • kurt versen custom wrought iron & tin lighting fans, doorbells & mirrors

1000 siler park lane santa fe, nm 87507 505.471.7272

DOUGLAS MERRIAM

Pie-eyed Santa Fe sure is a pizza-loving town. You’d think you were in Naples with all the pizza joints around. The new pie on the block is Pizza Centro, tucked into the Santa Fe Design Center, with a second location in the Agora Center in suburban Eldorado. Brothers Nathan and Jason Aufrichtig—he also owns Counter Culture—have done their homework, studying with a variety of pie-meisters on their native East Coast to create the perfect New York–style version, complete with classic thin crust and clever toppings. The pie names are a tribute to the Big Apple, too: Alphabet City is a handful of veggie ingredients, including flash-fried eggplant, and Chelsea appeals to meat lovers (like myself) and is teeming with sausage, meatballs, and bacon. Delicious, any way you slice it.—John Vollertsen

Pizza Centro, 418 Cerrillos, 505-988-8825, and 7 Avenida Vista Grande, Ste. D7, 505-466-3161, Mon–Sat 11:30 AM–8 PM

ROUND UP

romantic santa fe

by John Vollertsen

KATE RUSSELL

WHEN CUPID DRAWS back his amorous bow and takes aim at unsuspecting lovers, where you find yourself (and where the arrow strikes) will determine the outcome of the spell he casts. My choice for this lovely, loving time of year is right in the heart of Santa Fe. Whether you are celebrating an old or new love, or perhaps wooing that somebody you hope will keep you warm for the rest of this winter and winters to come, the allure of our romantic city can assist you in your ardent quest: a magical inn, a soothing massage, and a fabulous dinner in a recently reenergized popular restaurant. All you need to bring is your heart, emotions, and sentiment.

Start your romantic night by checking into the charming Inn of the Five Graces.The Plaza is only blocks away, and the area’s packed with restaurants and cafés to ensure you won’t have to wander far from your love nest for sustenance. A member of the heralded Relais & Chateaux hotel group, the Five Graces, with its 22 suites, is made up of a small cluster of buildings and lodgings each with a unique décor, held together by gardens and patios that give

One of the many delish dishes at 315—Santa Fe’s best “new” restaurant

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it a secluded hideaway feel. Opened in 1996 by the Seret family, internationally known importers of Oriental rugs and antiques, the distinctive accommodations will assist you in your seduction; this is no ordinary hotel.

The fabulous factor of the Five Graces begins a week prior to your visit, when the concierge team contacts you to offer assistance in planning your stay: restaurant reservations, tour information, or any special need you might require. A gorgeous bouquet of red roses greets us in our suite and boosts our feeling of welcome. The rooms are adorned with silken fabrics, and the bathrooms gilded with custom inlaid tile—each room with a different motif, and every room a beauty. After a bracing latte from the lobby espresso room, my date for the night and I head off to our reserved massage at the Inn and Spa at Loretto, just steps away.

Though there are a plethora of unusual and exotic treatment options to choose from, the Couples Massage seems to be in order at this luxurious spa, set deep in the historic hotel situated in the shadow of the soaring Loretto Chapel. Our massage room is replete with full bathroom for pre- and post-showering if required, and side-by-side massage tables ready to unwind us. The masseuse team works wonders on my knotted shoulders while my date implores extra manipulation on a tender lower back. Conversation is allowed, or you can simply lie back and lose yourselves in the music and hot-towel wraps that accent the work. I inquire as to whether couples ever get over-amorous as the massage ensues, to which my attendant replies, “Not a lot, and conversely one time a wife barked at her hubby to stop snoring.” Ah, the joys of marriage!

Couples can choose an optional ritual bath finale: a double tub rich with aromatic herbs and floating rose petals. As we dress, we gobble up our tray of nutty truffles and chocolate-dipped strawberries, saving room for the romantic dinner ahead.

I joke to my date that our dinner destination, 315 Restaurant and Wine Bar, is just crawling distance away (should the wine and champagne get the best of us), but I choose it not only for its proximity but because to me 315 is Santa Fe’s most romantic eatery.

Candlelight, lace curtains, and excellent service enhance the wondrous menu, which has been invigorated by newcomers Executive Chef Ryan Mann and Chef du Cuisine Michael Easton. Though 315 opened in 1995, a new culinary direction (under the guidance of proprietor and Chef Louis Moskow), along with the recent expansion of the dining rooms (which gives the cozy bistro added clout for private dining and bigger groups), have turned an old favorite into my favorite “new” restaurant in town.

New Mexico’s bubbly Gruet goes perfect with the pristine West Coast Sister Point oysters. (I’m only a little delighted that my date doesn’t eat them and happily gobble up the whole dozen!) Silken duck liver pâté with grilled bread is the perfect appetizer with which to feed each other—all of the charcuterie here is made inhouse by wizard Easton. The award-winning wine list boasts over

50 half-bottles, and a crisp, clean Robert Sinskey pinot blanc is a delightful change from my usual choice of sauvignon blanc.

Pork belly, to many foodies the new aphrodisiac, thrills us here, all crispy-skinned and glazed with a cider reduction. Delish! Nothing speaks sensuality to me more than a buttery béarnaise sauce, especially when ladled over a medium-rare steak au poivre sided with crispy frites. Our half-bottle of Landmark pinot noir pairs elegantly with our main courses—gazing through its inkiness into the shimmering candle is positively hypnotic.

We save the last sips for a decadent flourless chocolate cake sexed up with Grand Marnier

syrup and homemade vanilla ice cream.

Upon returning to our suite, we are thrilled to discover that the fire is lit and rose petals have been scattered across the bed and set adrift in the deep tub, which is filled with steaming bath-salt-seasoned water. Two nips of the luscious dessert wine the Inn has set by the hearth alerts us that it’s bedtime. A marvelous day and night in Santa Fe—Cupid strikes a bulls-eye.

Inn of the Five Graces: 505-992-0957, fivegraces.com

Experience a Santa Fe Tradition!

The Spa at Loretto, 505-984-7997, innatloretto.com

La Plazuela at La Fonda has a sophisticated menu, an award-winning wine list and is Santa Fe’s most beloved gathering place.

315 Restaurant and Wine Bar, 505-986-9190, 315santafe.com

Reservations: 505.995.2334 Main Line: 505.982.5511 On the Plaza, Corner of Old Santa Fe Trail and East San Francisco Street

cheap(er) eats WHO DOESN’T LOVE a bargain?

Whether the economy is booming or floundering, whether rich or poor, on your way up the ladder of success or on your way down, the attraction of getting a deal remains the same. Way back in 1992, New York City restaurants banded together and created the first Restaurant Week, where lunches in participating high-end restaurants were a mere $19.92 (get it?). The promotion, aimed at stimulating business in the quieter off-season winter months, allowed everyone to experience the delights of Big Apple temples of cuisine— such as the Four Seasons, Lutèce, and 21.

The gimmick paid off, and soon the clever spending motivator was popping up in cities across the country—San Diego, Boston, Seattle, Dallas, Chicago, and more.

Now, New Mexico is finally getting onboard with its very own version: “Savor the Flavor—Relish the Price” in Santa Fe from February 28–March 5 and in Albuquerque March 7–13.

Designed to showcase the extraordinary talent and variety of local restaurants, Restaurant Week NM participants will feature three-course, prix fixe dinners for just $25 ($25 for two in some restaurants and $40 per diner in some of the swankier joints), from Sunday to Saturday. Menus for each restaurant will be posted in January on the Restaurant Week NM website, restau-

rantweeknm.com.

Several area hotels will offer reduced room rates as well.

“For many years we in Santa Fe have looked for a midwinter program to bring diners in from the cold,” says Michael O’Reilly, proprietor of both Pranzo Italian Grill and the O’Keeffe Café. “With Restaurant Week I think we have found it.”

The Compound’s Mark Kiffin concurs.

“Our goal is to build Santa Fe’s Restaurant Week in March into what our Santa Fe Wine & Chile festival built up for the last week of September. As Kevin Costner said in Fields of Dreams, if you build it —and support it—they will come!”

“My enthusiasm for Restaurant Week knows no bounds,” raves Rio Chama chef Tom Kerpon. “Even though Santa Fe is a tourist-driven town, the locals are the base upon which successful businesses are built.

I think Restaurant Week is an excellent opportunity to reconnect with our local clientele, to invite them back into our restaurants and let them know how much we appreciate them.”

Foodies and gourmands, come celebrate, and remember, it’s months and months before you have to squeeze into those swimsuits!—JV

NATALIE BACA

by John Vollertsen

0INK IS THE .EW "LACK

406 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 505-983-7712 www.thepinkadobe.com february/march

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taste of the town

northern new mexico’s finest dining experiences

featured listing Luminaria Restaurant and Patio

El Mesón

213 washington, 505-983-6756 elmeson-santafe.com

211 old santa fe trail, 505-984-7915, innatloretto.com

Located at The Inn and Spa at Loretto, Luminaria’s eclectic menu features locally sourced dishes in artful presentations. Chef Brian Cooper uses indigenous seasonal ingredients and Southwestern nuances creating unexpected flavors and textures. Luminaria’s décor includes whitewashed pine floors, vigas and latillas, reclaimed barn-wood tables, a kiva fireplace, and Native American paintings. Informal dining fireside in the Living Room features happy hour and late-night specials with weekend entertainment.

Luminaria: Breakfast, lunch, dinner seven days. The Living Room: 2–11 pm daily.

Amavi Restaurant

221 shelby, 505-988-2355, amavirestaurant.com

Amavi Restaurant’s delicious regional Mediterranean cuisine paired with fine wines, decadent ever-changing desserts, and impeccable service make it a must.

Just one block southeast of the Plaza, Amavi offers fine dining as well as a sophisticated new lounge and bar serving a full menu. Chef/owner David Sellers creates seasonal menus highlighting regions throughout the Mediterranean. Acclaimed as “hot as can be,” Amavi’s classic yet relaxed atmosphere is great for professional and romantic meetings alike. Signature bouillabaisse: classic French Provençal stew with clams, mussels, shrimp, and halibut simmered in a rich saffron-scented broth of fennel, tomatoes, and fresh herbs accompanied by house-baked bread perfect for dipping. Dinner served nightly 5:30–10 pm.

The Bull Ring

150 washington, 505-983-3328

Serving Santa Fe since 1971, the legendary Bull Ring is “the prime” steakhouse in Santa Fe. Voted “Best of Santa Fe” year after year, it also offers fresh seafood, chicken, chops, an extensive wine list, saloon menu, and patio dining. If there’s one thing New Mexico’s politicians can agree on, it’s where to eat in Santa Fe. Conveniently located one block north of the Plaza in the courtyard of the New Mexico Bank and Trust building. For a quick bite after a stroll at the nearby Plaza—or for a late-night snack— the lounge’s bar menu is sure to satisfy. Lunch 11:30 am–2:30 pm, Monday–Friday; dinner nightly starting at 5 pm.

Underground parking available on Washington Street.

Celebrations Village West 1620 st. michael’s, 505-989-8904 celebrationssantafe.com

After two decades on Canyon Road, Celebrations has moved to 1620 St. Michael’s Drive. Now Celebrations Village West, the renowned eatery features floor-to-

ceiling windows, mountain views, a walled patio, and parking galore. Eclectic menus feature upscale new American, contemporary Creole Cajun, and Northern New Mexican dishes. Local favorites include housemade breads, fresh salads, soups, and, of course, signature house-made vanilla ice cream (more flavors this spring). A delightful Wine Bar appetizer menu is served the days the restaurant is open for dinner.

8 am–2:30 pm breakfast and lunch, 7 days a week..

Spring and Summer hours: 7:30 am –3:30 pm, breakfast and lunch, 7 days a week. 5–9 pm dinner starting March 17th, Tuesday through Saturday.

The Compound Restaurant 653 canyon road, 505-982-4353 compoundrestaurant.com

Recognized by Gourmet magazine’s Guide to America’s Best Restaurants and The New York Times as a destination not to be missed. James Beard Foundation’s “Best Chef of the Southwest”, chef/owner Mark Kiffin pairs seasonal contemporary American cuisine with professional service in a timeless, elegant adobe building designed by famed architect Alexander Girard. Extensive wine list, full bar, picturesque garden patios, a variety of beautiful settings for wedding receptions, social affairs, or corporate events for 12–250 guests. Private parking.

Seasonal specialty: Tuna tartare topped with Osetra caviar and preserved lemon. Lunch 12–2 pm, Monday– Saturday; bar nightly 5 pm–close; dinner nightly from 6 pm; full lunch and dinner menu available in the bar.

Doc Martin’s at the Historic Taos Inn 125 paseo del pueblo norte, taos, 575-758-1977, taosinn.com

Doc Martin’s restaurant is an acclaimed fine-dining establishment located in a registered historic landmark. Doc’s is a true Taos tradition, earning multiple awards. Executive chef Zippy White specializes in organic foods, with chile rellenos being his signature dish. With over 400 wine selections, our world-class www.santafean.com

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wine list has earned Wine Spectator’s “Best Of” Award of Excellence for 21 consecutive years. The Adobe Bar features complimentary live entertainment nightly. Patio dining as weather permits. Featured dessert: apple cherry upside down cake with home made prickly pear ice cream. Breakfast is served daily 7:30–11 pm; lunch 11:30 am–2:30 pm; dinner 5:30–9 pm; Saturday and Sunday brunch 7:30 am–2:30 pm.

A native of Madrid, Spain, chef/owner David Huertas has been delighting customers since 1997 with family recipes and specialties of his homeland. The paella is classic and legendary—served straight from the flame to your table in black iron pans where the saffron-infused rice is perfectly cooked and heaped with chicken, chorizo, seafood, and more. The house-made sangria is from a generations-old recipe with a splash of brandy. The ¡Chispa! tapas bar offers a fine array of tapas. The full bar includes a distinguished Spanish wine list and special sherries and liqueurs imported from a country full of passion and tradition. Occasional musical entertainment and dancing. Dinner is served 5–11 pm, Tuesday–Saturday.

Flying Star Café

500 market, #110, 505-216-3939 flyingstarcafe.com

Fine cuisine in a friendly scene. We’re your locallyowned neighborhood cafe featuring made-fromscratch food, handmade desserts, and pastries. We open early and stay open late for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and everything in between. Free Wi-Fi, diverse magazines, locally roasted coffee, fine beer and wine, and a bakery in the heart of our cafe. Deliciousness awaits. Monday–Thursday 6 am–10 pm; Friday and Saturday 6 am–midnight. flyingstarcafe.com

Geronimo

724 canyon, 505-982-1500 geronimorestaurant.com

Señor Geronimo Lopes would be very pleased if he knew how famous his 250-year-old hacienda on Canyon Road has become. The landmark adobe is now home to a cutting-edge restaurant—elegant, contemporary—serving the highest-quality, creative food. Award-winning chef Eric DiStefano serves up a creative mix of French sauces and technique with culinary influences of Asia, the Southwest, and his own roots in Italy blended to bring taste to new levels. Geronimo is New Mexico’s only restaurant to hold both Mobil 4 Star and AAA 4 Diamond awards.

Dinner seven days a week, beginning at 5:45 pm.

Graham’s Grille by Lesley B. Fay 106 paseo del pueblo norte, taos 575-751-3242, grahamstaos.com

Graham’s Grille has become the “in” place in the Taos historic district. Visitors and locals alike are raving about the combination of unique food and comfortable atmosphere. Lesley B. Fay, who designed the restaurant to convey a cosmopolitan atmosphere that fits the mission of this extraordinary culinary endeavor, also doubles as the executive chef. Fay and her husband, Peter, created

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Graham’s Grille to provide honest, creative food at a reasonable price, with great, friendly service in a hip, fun place. Voted Best of Taos ‘07 and ‘08 and #1 on tripadviser.com. Call us about Graham’s Grille Catering Company. Open daily for lunch, 11 am–2:30 pm and dinner 5–9 pm.

Il Piatto

95 W Marcy, 505-984-1091

Locally owned Italian trattoria located one block north of the Plaza. Nationally acclaimed and affordable, il Piatto features local organic produce and house-made pastas. Prix fixe three-course lunch, $14.95. Dinner, three courses, $29.50, or four courses $37.50 (anything on the menu, including specials). No restrictions. Lunch Monday–Friday 11:30 am–2 pm; dinner seven nights a week at 5 pm. “Everything is right at il Piatto, including the price.”—Albuquerque Journal

India Palace

544 Agua Fria, 505-984-1969 maukarestaurant.com

Voted “Best Ethnic Restaurant” in Santa Fe. Located in downtown Santa Fe, just one block from the plaza, India Palace specializes in the dynamic, complex cuisine of Northern India using ayurvedic (the science of longevity) cooking principles. Homemade cheese, yogurt, ghee, and kulfi (pistachio ice cream), and tandoori-fired traditional breads complement the extensive menu, which includes chicken, lamb, seafood, and vegetarian dishes. Entrees may be ordered mild, medium, or hot. No artificial flavors or MSG. Vegan and glutenfree meals also available. Open seven days a week. Lunch 11:30 am–2:30 pm; dinner 5–10 pm.

Joseph’s Table

108A S Taos Plaza, inside Hotel La Fonda 575-751-4512, josephstable.com

Located in the La Fonda hotel on the plaza, runs the most lauded—and probably the most beautiful—restaurant in Taos. The moodily lit room glitters with gilt butterflies and pussy-willow chandeliers, the better to appreciate decadent treats such as trout with trout roe, pork liver from local pigs, and duck breast with French lentils.

You can also enjoy a smaller menu of more casual items (such as duck-fat french fries) at the bar, or the diverse Sunday brunch. Featuring the culinary brilliance of Joseph Wrede, this Food & Wine Best Chef relies on the freshest ingredients from local farms, and he does a solid vegetarian special every night. Sunday brunch and lunch is served 11:30 am–2:30 pm (seasonal) and dinner is served 5:30–10 pm daily.

Josh’s Barbecue 3486 Zafarano, 505-474-6466, joshsbbq.com

Voted best new restaurant of 2008! Savor the flavor of classic American barbecue created with a special New Mexican Twist. Chef/owner Josh Baum, with his manager Rodney Estrada, dish up a huge fresh daily selection of slow-smoked, mouth-watering meat choices, including tender brisket and succulent natural ribs, served with a choice of sides, sauces, and desserts, all house made. Special regional dishes like smoked chicken tacquitos and green-chili brisket

burritos have made this eatery a local favorite, with additional chef’s specials offered daily. Also available: beer and wine, dine in or take out, catering for all occasions, and a small private dining room for special events. Located next to Lowe’s and Regal 14 cinemas off Cerrillos at Zafarano. Open for lunch and dinner. Winter Hours: 11:30 am–8 pm, Tuesday– Thursday and Sunday; 11:30 am–9 pm Friday and Saturday; closed Mondays.

La Casa Sena

125 E Palace, 505-988-9232, lacasasena.com

La Casa Sena is located in the heart of old Santa Fe, in the historic Sena Plaza. Featuring innovative American Southwestern cuisine, an extensive wine list, and a spectacular outdoor patio, La Casa Sena is one of Santa Fe’s most popular restaurants. Recipient of the Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator. For a more casual dining experience, visit La Cantina and be entertained by a wait staff performing jazz and Broadway musical reviews nightly. Lunch is served 11:30 am–3 pm, Monday–Saturday; dinner 5:30–10 pm nightly.

Sunday brunch in a beautiful patio setting 11 am– 3 pm. Our popular wine shop adjacent to the restaurant features a large selection of fine wines and is open 11 am–8 pm, Monday–Saturday; noon–6 pm Sunday.

La Plazuela at La Fonda On the Plaza

100 E San Francisco, 505-995-2334 www.lafondasantafe.com

La Fonda de Recuerdos - a place of many memories - is an apt description for our legendary hotel and signature restaurant, La Plazuela. This sophisticated dining room is filled with natural light, handcarved furnishings and our much-loved, hand-painted windows. Our wine list is award-winning and the menu weaves old favorites with New World twists, showcasing authentic New Mexican cuisine. And, our La Fiesta Lounge offers a fabulous all-you-caneat New Mexican Lunch Buffet. La Plazuela hours: Breakfast 7–10:45 am daily. Lunch 11:30 am–2 pm, Monday–Friday; 11:45 am–3 pm, Saturday and Sunday. Dinner 5:30–10 pm daily.

Lambert’s of Taos

309 Paseo del Pueblo Sur, Taos 575-758-1009, lambertsoftaos.com

Contemporary American cuisine in the heart of Taos. Our focus is on quality, value, and consistency. Try our grilled ginger shrimp, glazed roast duck, or grilled medallions of beef tenderloin along with the perfect wine from our extensive list.

Nightly specials include seafood and game dishes.

Vegetables are fresh and local when available, our sauces made from scratch, our desserts to live for.

Bar opens at 5 pm. Dinner served nightly at 5:30 pm.

Maria’s New Mexican Kitchen 555 W Cordova, 505-983-7929 marias-santafe.com

We Wrote the Book on Margaritas! The Great Margarita Book—Random House. Maria’s features over 160 margaritas, chosen best margarita in Santa Fe, 14 years in a row. Each is hand-poured and hand shaken, using only premium tequila,

triple-sec, and pure fresh-squeezed lemon juice (no mixes; no sugar). A Santa Fe tradition since 1950, specializing in Old Santa Fe home-style cooking, with steaks, burgers, and fajitas. You can even watch tortillas being made by hand! Lunch and dinner 11 am–10 pm, Monday–Friday; Noon–10 pm, Saturday and Sunday. Reservations are suggested.

Old Blinking Light Restaurant

Mile Marker 1, Ski Valley Road (State Road 150) Taos, 575-776-8787, oldblinkinglight.com

Restaurant opens daily for happy hour 4–6 pm; dinner at 5 pm. Wine shop opens every day at noon. Breathtaking high-country views provide a spectacular backdrop for Southwestern cuisine, skillfully executed by three great chefs. Our wait staff is efficient, our famous margaritas perfect, our bar diverse and lively, and the live entertainment (Monday nights) will give you unforgettably happy feet. Our wine shop (largest and only wine shop in Taos) has 100 fine wines under $15, full liquor selection, lots of microbrews. (Also in Highlands Ranch, CO, 303-346-9797.)

Rancho de Chimayó

County Road 98, on the High Road to Taos ranchodechimayo.com

Rancho de Chimayó Restaurante’s grand reopening.

Serving world-renowned traditional and contemporary native New Mexican cuisine in an exceptional setting since 1965. Enjoy outdoor dinin g or soak up the culture and ambience of this century-old adobe home.

Try the Rancho de Chimayó’s specialty: carne adovada—marinated pork simmered in a spicy, red-chile caribe sauce. Come cherish the memories and make new ones. Rancho de Chimayó is a treasured part of New Mexico’s history and heritage...a timeless tradition. Check the website for updates and hours. Online store is now open!

Rancho de San Juan Country Inn and Restaurant 34020 US Hwy 285, 505-753-6818 ranchodesanjuan.com

Celebrating 15 years in New Mexico, 1994–2009.

“The faraway nearby.” Exquisite world-class, awardwinning restaurant. Enjoy comfortable dining in an elegant but casual atmosphere. Savor innovative cuisine with a Southwestern flair. Watch our website for special events, wine dinners, Dine Around the World evenings, plus Easter, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day brunches. Enjoy our patio in the summer, and dinner by firelight in the fall and winter.

Full bar for sunset cocktails, and award-winning wine list with reasonable prices to complement your dining pleasure. Zagat Survey winner, #1 in New Mexico. Only 40 minutes north of Santa Fe. Conde Nast Traveler Gold List #28 in USA. Come celebrate our 15th anniversary all year! Reservations required.

Dinner served at two seatings only: 6:30 and 8 pm, Tuesday–Saturday. Table is yours for the evening.

Closed Sunday and Monday.

Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi

113 Washington, 505-988-3236, innoftheanasazi.com

Leading the culinary team at the award-winning

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Anasazi Restaurant is Rosewood’s rising star, Chef Oliver Ridgeway. Open daily for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Chef Ridgeway’s seasonal menus feature fresh, regional, and seasonal ingredients like chiles, chorizo, and piñon nuts. Fresh fish is delivered to the restaurant daily and menu items such as Hatch chile-crusted tuna and blue corn-crusted salmon are a favorite of restaurant patrons.

The interior of the Anasazi Restaurant is beautifully appointed, yet rustic and comfortable; the lively outdoor patio is available for guests wishing to experience the busy sidewalk traffic to and from the nearby Santa Fe Plaza.Service is friendly and attentive, and the restaurant staff takes pride in always remembering the guests’ names.

Wine lovers will be thrilled with the extensive wine selection, and for those wishing a casual dining experience, enjoy a handcrafted cocktail at the chic Anasazi bar accompanied by a selection of savory hors d’oeuvres.

During high season, our courtyard, protected by a sun canopy, becomes one of the most coveted locales in Santa Fe. Open daily for lunch and dinner.

Tabla de Los Santos

210 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe, 505-992-6354, hotelstfrancis.com

Tabla de Los Santos, located inside the Hotel St. Francis, is Santa Fe’s new dining treasure featuring exquisite cuisine made from fresh, organic, local, and seasonal ingredients. Experience delectable food based on the right traditions of New Mexico as Chef Estevan Garcia redefines New Mexico cuisine with a fresh, simplified, and uncomplicated approach. Enjoy a relaxing dining experience in the restaurant or on the lovely outdoor patio. Open for breakfast 7:30–10:30 am, lunch 11:30 am–2:00 pm, dinner 5:00–9:00 pm.

Terra at Encantado Resort 198 State Road 592, 505-946-5800 encantadoresort.com

Santacafé

231 Washington, 505-984-1788, santacafe.com

Centrally located in Santa Fe’s distinguished downtown district, this charming Southwestern bistro, situated in the historic Padre Gallegos House, offers your guests the classic Santa Fe backdrop. Step into the pristine experience S antacafé has been consistently providing for more than 25 years. New American cuisine is tweaked in a Southwestern context and the food is simply and elegantly presented. Frequented by the famous and infamous, the Santacafé patio offers some of the best people-watching in Santa Fe!

Santa Fe’s new dining destination located at the new Encantado Resort. “The cuisine at Terra is elegant, yet simple; interesting, yet approachable; and contemporary, while maintaining its connection to the cultural and historical antecedents of the region,” explains Chef Charles Dale. “Terra will introduce a new perspective to the Santa Fe dining scene, with more European accents to the rustic regional cuisine and an environment alight with energy and intrigue.” Please call to reserve your dining experience.

new work by

Photograph by Addison Doty

Liz Wallace

Susan Swift

www.susanswiftsantafe.com 924 Paseo de Peralta • Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 • 505.820.1101 • 916.206.3421

ssw_santafean_feb102.indd 1

12/9/09 5:08 PM

COURTESY LES BALLETS TROCKADERO DE MONTE CARLO

like mrs. doubtfire, only en pointe Tired of the whole ice-queen prima ballerina thing? This one’s for you. New York’s Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is an all-male troupe that turns the traditionally serious dance form on its bunned-and-braided head, performing classical and original works in drag. “The Trocks,” as their many fans call them, come to the Lensic (211 W San Francisco) on February 9 for a 7:30 PM performance. Tickets: $20–$72, 505-988-1234, ticketssantafe.com.

PAUL GILMORE

DANCE

keeping it wild

the woman behind the lens

The chirps, buzzes, and birdsongs of the Florida Everglades come to the high desert at 7 PM on February 25 when baritone John Boehr and pianist David Boehr perform Pahayokee: A Plea for Life at the Santa Fe Art Institute. The environmental oratorio by Florida-based composer Jack Tamul incorporates ambient recordings of birds, frogs, and insects as it narrates the plight of the 3-million-acre wetlands, which are threatened by development, water-management systems, and urban and agricultural pollution. Proceeds from the performance benefit the Santa Fe Conservation Trust, which works to protect open spaces under similar threat in Northern New Mexico. Tickets: $25, 505-989-7019, sfct.org

Annie Leibovitz, who’s been shooting portraits of top artists, musicians, actors, and politicians since she started working for Rolling Stone in 1970, is among the world’s legendary living photographers—and she’s now being honored with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s 2010 Women of Distinction award. Leibovitz will discuss her impressive body of work on stage at the Lensic (211 W San Francisco) on March 6 at 7 PM. Tickets: $30–$250, 505-988-1234, ticketssantafe.com

BENEFIT

LECTURE

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| H I S TO R Y |

searching for tahoma a di s ta n t r elative ponde rs t he le g acy of t his long -de ad Nat ive a r t i s t by jo seph smit h

THERE IT WAS: section 13, row 11, grave number 34. My research had led me to Rosario Cemetery, but I didn’t think there’d be much to find. Everything I read said unmarked, and despite the literalness of that word, its actual meaning hadn’t yet materialized for me. I hadn’t expected to find the actual grave of Quincy Tahoma.

It was a breezy, cold day last fall when I did find it. A man in the cemetery office gave me a map of Rosario’s grounds and a list of names. Tahoma was near the bottom, highlighted. Holding the papers tight in my hands, I found Tahoma’s spot rather easily.

I marveled for a moment—I was actually standing above his grave. Not that anyone else would know. “Unmarked” meant that Tahoma’s final resting place was nothing but gravel. No headstone, no vase for flowers, no designation marker, nothing. His spot was simply coordinates on a sheet.

I couldn’t help wondering how many people had come to Rosario, in Santa Fe, in search of the unmarked grave of this once successful and prolific Navajo artist, an alcoholic who died over 50 years ago, in 1956, at the age of 35. Without a marked grave, he couldn’t even be stumbled upon. His name couldn’t even be spoken arbitrarily, like many names are when people search for others; all that could be heard above his grave was the shuffle of feet on gravel. A name and a set of dates chiseled in stone is significant, maybe more so when absent.

I first heard Quincy Tahoma’s name when I was a kid. My mother would mention him from time to time, mostly in relation to our family’s supposed acquisition of a handful of his paintings back in the 1940s and early ’50s. Paintings I have yet to see. Tahoma’s art, though, was certainly the driving force in his life, and continues to be what floats his name around museums and galleries today. What he created with his hands is what marks him in today’s world, the one thing that propels his legacy

forward and backward. His paintings are the coordinates that give direction back to the places and people that crossed his path, and ultimately to the short life he lived.

An early piece of his, titled Watching the Sheep (1932), offers a simple look into his early life: tending sheep in the rural areas of Tuba City, Arizona. He was 12 years old when he painted it, a fifthgrader attending the Santa Fe Indian School. He received art direction under Dorothy Dunn, who had created the COURTESY SILVER SUN GALLERY Quincy Tahoma’s The Chase of Monument Valley, 1947 Studio art program, from life. He certainly left his mark, though: which many prominent Native American Badertscher and Havens have so far verified artists would emerge (Allan Houser, Oscar about 200 of his paintings, and expect the Howe). He went on to blossom as an artist total to reach at least 1,000. in the late 1930s, and found much sucAt the cemetery that day last fall, I kept cess and admiration throughout the ’40s. wondering about this enigmatic artist. The He never went back to the reservation in foggy vision I’d had of him growing up was Arizona and was known to tell people that clearer now, but tragic ends always leave he didn’t have a family. questions. Did his telling people he had no Research done by authors Vera Marie family lead him to this unmarked grave?

Badertscher and Charnell Havens, who Of course, I had to consider the possibility have written a soon-to-be-published that maybe the art he created was enough biography of Tahoma, points out that at the to stand as his marker, and that for him a peak of his success he “seemed poised to chiseled stone would only tell the story of a dominate the Indian art market. He worked life short-lived. constantly . . . continued to experiment and As historic and monumental as cemeterinnovate and easily sold everything he proies are, there’s a pageantry and sentimentalduced.” But his deterioration at the hands of ity to them that tends to dwell more on the alcohol seems to be what filled the shadows death of a person, as opposed to the life. All of his existence, bringing his life to an end one needs to do is take a look at any one of on October 9, 1956, “in a small, bare Santa Tahoma’s paintings and it’s clear that the Fe apartment near De Vargas St.” imagination and vision he gave to his work Tahoma received many awards for his speaks more about life than death. Section work throughout his life, including, in 1956, 13, row 11, grave 34. Quincy Tahoma’s final first prize at the New Mexico State Fair resting place. It is an unmarked grave—one for “best Indian watercolors.” Yet, despite all the success, the friends, and the conof dozens, maybe hundreds. But it does not nections he made in and around Santa Fe, need to be marked for Tahoma to have his clearly none of it was enough to save his place in history. february/march

2010

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