TREND Spring 2016

Thomas Gifford Fills Albuquerque In

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The Burmeisters: Collectors with Minimal Attitude RICOCHET’s Acrobatic Artistry

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features

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68 Filling in the Blanks To Thomas Gifford, infill architecture is the key to preserving a city’s character and livability.

By Nancy Zimmerman | Photos

by

Kirk Gittings

78 String Theory For over three decades, the Robertson family has advanced the art and science of making beautiful music, together.

By Anya Sebastian | Photos by Chris Corrie

84 Art in Flux For one savvy young couple, building an art collection is an inspirational and intellectual journey.

By Kathryn M Davis | Photos by Kate Russell

94 The RICOCHET Project KATE RUSSELL

Deeply affecting acrobatic acumen takes circus performance to a whole new level.

By Edie Dillman | Photos by Kate Russell Spring 2016 TREND

trendmagazineglobal.com

PATINA 2016 SPRING SUMMER APRIL Jack Parsons MAY Petra Class JULY Gretchen Ewert AUGUST Atelier Zobel

Jocelyn Montoya wearing Atelier Zobel jewels, at the Santa Fe Opera.

Photo: Peter Ogilvie

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Patina Gallery is recognized as one of the most beautiful galleries in Santa Fe. Now in its 17th year, Patina offers the finest in contemporary jewelry, fine art and design.

departments 14

FROM THE EDITOR

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CONTRIBUTORS

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FLASH Global Outreach Doctors go where disaster strikes; a new proposal for Albuquerque’s State Fair Grounds; architect Terrance Brown serves with distinction; THE FENCE photography show goes off the wall and out to the streets; form & concept blurs the lines between art and craft.

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108

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CONSCIOUS BUILDING The future of fine heirloom furniture is in the hands of Boyd & Allister.

By Christina Proctor Photos by Caitlyn Ottinger

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MIDTOWN VISION Creating community in Santa Fe.

By Gussie Fauntleroy & Richard Martinez Photos by Daniel Quat

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OUTLOOK A cadre of gallerists and museum directors have big plans to create a hub for contemporary art in Albuquerque.

By Kathryn M Davis Photos by Kate Russell

trendmagazineglobal.com

118 ARTIST STUDIO Marietta Patricia Leis distills expression to its minimalist core; Scott Greene casts a wry romantic eye on the American landscape.

By Keiko Ohnuma Photos by Douglas Merriam

STATE OF THE ART More and more these days, the answer to where to shoot on location is right here in the Duke City.

By Heidi Utz Photos by Robert Reck

Spring 2016 TREND

ON THE COVER: Thomas Gifford’s Sleepy Hollow. Photo by Kirk Gittings.

PASSION OF THE PALATE Albuquerque’s culinary scene is all about transforming the basics into the sublime.

By Nancy Zimmerman

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IN THE Q Roy Solomon’s vision to create community in the heart of Albuquerque is stacked with possibilities.

By Megan Kamerick Photos by Kate Russell & Sergio Salvador

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GASTRONOMICA Albuquerque’s food trucks serve diners-on-the-go with convenience and flare.

By Nancy Zimmerman Photos by Sergio Salvador

Top: Richard Levy Gallery; Bottom: Scott Greene’s Numerations (2015)

TOP: KATE RUSSELL; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF SCOTT GREENE AND CATHARINE CLARK GALLERY

ENTREPRENEUR A Corrales-based innovator of interactive technology makes a fine art out of high touch.

By Cyndi Wood Portrait by Caitlyn Ottinger

The Art of Sculptural LED Lighting from Hubbardton Forge

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PUBLISHER Cynthia Marie Canyon EDITOR Rena Distasio ART DIRECTOR & GRAPHIC DESIGNER Janine Lehmann PRODUCTION MANAGER & ASSOCIATE GRAPHIC DESIGNER Jeanne Lambert COPY CHIEF Cyndi Wood MARKETING & PUBLISHING COORDINATOR May Mandy Han PHOTO PRODUCTION Boncratious REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Judith Leyba, 505-988-5007 SALES AND MARKETING Nigel Rudlin, 505-470-6442

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Kathryn M Davis, Rena Distasio, Gussie Fauntleroy, Megan Kamerick, Richard Martinez, Keiko Ohnuma, Christina Procter, Anya Sebastian, Heidi Utz, Cyndi Wood, Nancy Zimmerman CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Chris Corrie, Patrick Coulie, Kirk Gittings, Wendy McEahern, Douglas Merriam, Caitlyn Ottinger, Daniel Quat, Robert Reck, Kate Russell, Sergio Salvador NORTH AMERICAN DISTRIBUTION Disticor Magazine Distribution Services, disticor.com NEW MEXICO DISTRIBUTION Andy Otterstrom, 505-920-6370 ACCOUNTING Danna Cooper, 505-988-5007 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Loka Creative, 505-603-7190 SUBSCRIPTIONS Visit trendmagazineglobal.com and click “Subscribe,” call 505-988-5007, or send $24.99 for one year (four issues) to Trend, P.O. Box 1951, Santa Fe, NM 87504-1951.

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Manufactured and printed in the United States.

Copyright 2016 by Santa Fe Trend LLC. All rights reserved. No part of Trend may be reproduced in any form without prior written consent from the publisher. For reprint information, please call 505-988-5007, or email santafetrend@gmail.com.

Trend art + design + architecture + cuisine ISSN 2161-4229 is published 4 times a year, with Spring (circulation 25,000), Summer (25,000), Fall (25,000), and Winter (35,000) issues distributed throughout New Mexico and the nation at premium outlets. Ask your local newsstand (anywhere worldwide) to carry Trend. Find us on Facebook at Trend art + design + architecture + cuisine magazine.

Editorial inquiries to editor@trendmagazineglobal.com.

Trend, P.O. Box 1951, Santa Fe, NM 87504-1951 505-988-5007, trendmagazineglobal.com

12 TREND Spring 2016

from the editor

Making the Scene

14 TREND Spring 2016

The lesson we can take from the City Different is the importance of cultivating a vibrant art and social scene that fits with our unique geographical and cultural dictates.

Kathryn M Davis speaks to some of the major players in Albuquerque’s contemporary art scene (page 108) who are trying to create a centralized arts and culture district that will finally allow our grasp to match our reach. In a similar spirit, longtime Albuquerque restaurateur Roy Solomon just created a buzzing hotspot in the middle of the city that is redefining how we eat, drink, gather, and share experiences (page 128).

Albuquerque’s food truck scene (page 137) is likewise redefining not only how we eat when on the go, but also what we eat. And if you think Albuquerque isn’t a food town, we beg to differ. As does Travel + Leisure, who last year ranked Albuquerque one of the Best Cities for Foodies.

But we’re not “food snobs.” If you ask me what makes this such a great city, I’d say that I’ve been around the world enough to know that Albuquerque may be many things, but off-putting isn’t one of them. One of the beauties of our often-unwieldy growth is that it’s encouraged Burqueños to feel free to reinvent and redefine—themselves, their city, its neighborhoods, and its businesses (page 27). Entrepreneurs, artists, scenesters, and average Joes: we’re all taking note, bounded only by the limits of our imaginations.

—Rena Distasio, Editor

KENNY KINLAW

I

’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a great city. Is it economic opportunity? Cultural diversity? A sense of history? Access to a wide range of recreational options? It’s different for everyone, I know, but I think at least one factor binds us all.

As our world grows larger and more complicated, we seek opportunities to hunker down close to home and connect with people who share our sense of place and how best to live within it.

Albuquerque fits the bill in many of the ways I mention above—it’s begun to show up on a variety of “best of” lists for publications ranging from Travel + Leisure (who called us one of America’s 20 Most Charming Cities) to Wallethub.com (Best Cities for an Active Lifestyle) to Movie Maker Magazine, which recently ranked the Duke City no. 5 on its list of best places for filmmakers to live and work. None of these rankings surpise us, especially the latter. On page 42, Heidi Utz talks to some homegrown film and television scouts who give Albuquerque an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

A kind of vertigo arises when a city grows so rapidly from a small agricultural community into a modern-day Sun Belt metropolis—it becomes a struggle to find its heart, its shared sense of community, its purpose. But there is evidence that Albuquerque’s sprawl is beginning to coalesce. We can, finally, only expand so far, given our natural and man-made boundaries, and I get the sense that we are now focusing our attention inward. For instance, Nancy Zimmerman’s profile of architect Thomas Gifford on page 68 reveals an unprecedented potential for exciting infill revitalization. If a city like Santa Fe, with its strict architectural covenants, is contemplating reworking its inner city (page 52), then certainly Albuquerque could lead by example.

art // craft // design

form ď concept

opening friday, may 27, 5-7pm artist talks, saturday, may 28, 2pm 435 s guadalupe st / santa fe, nm w w w. f o r m a n d c o n c e p t . c e n te r

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kate russell

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kathryn m davis

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caitlyn ottinger

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anya sebastian

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douglas merriam

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heidi utz

Mexico Magazine, and Edible Santa Fe. Based in Santa Fe, she is also a published author and an award-winning radio-show host.

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WRITERS Kathryn M Davis, art historian, writer/editor, and curator, specializes in modern and contemporary visual arts and critical theory.

She is a contributing writer for various Santa Fe–area and national magazines, and hosts ArtBeat, a weekly radio show about art on KVSF, The Voice of Santa Fe, at 101.5 FM. Davis received an MA in the Art of the Americas from the University of New Mexico in 1999 and has been active in the field of contemporary art for more than 25 years.

Anya Sebastian started out as a BBC reporter in London before becoming a freelance writer. British by birth, she has contributed to print and online publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including Vanity Fair, The Daily Telegraph Magazine, Broadway World, New

PHOTOGRAPHERS Douglas Merriam is a travel, food, and lifestyle photographer who has a lot of fun on his assignments, no matter what he’s shooting or for whom. He has an affinity for green chile, lobsters, blueberries, and piñon, and loves cooking with his wife, Shannon, and daughter, Sage. He splits his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Portland, Maine.

Caitlyn Ottinger was born and raised in Albuquerque, attended Middlebury College in Vermont, did a brief (but expensive) stint in San Francisco, and spent three years teaching English in southern Japan before returning to New Mexico. Professionally, she divides her time between graphic design and photography.

Personally, she enjoys an interesting read on a sunny patio with a beer, her lounging dog, and jocular husband.

A plate of good cheese never hurts.

Kate Russell is a nationally recognized photographer based in Santa Fe, known for her ability to create evocative images and elevate simplicity to an art form.

Her work is seen in The New York Times, Western Interiors, Santa Fean, and Su Casa, among others. She’s also featured in The Restaurant Martín Cookbook: Sophisticated Home Cooking From the Celebrated Santa Fe Restaurant by Martín Rios with Bill and Cheryl Jamison, Old World Interiors by David Naylor, and Designers Here and There by Michele Keith. R

1 KATE RUSSELL; 2 LAURA SHIELDS; 3 CAITLYN OTTINGER; 4 AMANDA MCCARTHY; 5 ANONYMOUS; 6 HEIDI UTZ

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Heidi Utz has covered film and photography for Trend, Pasatiempo, and the Santa Fe Reporter, and has served as a judge for the Santa Fe Film Festival. She attended film school at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and is also a professional photographer. She has published features in publications including Outside magazine, NPR.org, and E: The Environmental Magazine, and is currently an editor with National Geographic Books.

Flash

news, gossip, and innuendo

Mitigating Disaster

I

“My new currency is karma, not cash,” Lustig says.

Today, the naturopathic doctor and emergency medical technician plies his corporate-world skills in the service of Global Outreach Doctors, the Santa Fe nonprofit humanitarian organization he founded in 2014 to bring medical services to wherever disaster strikes. Comprising a half dozen or so medical and non-medical volunteers from around the world,

During its fall 2015 deployment to Lesbos, Greece, Global Outreach Doctors hit the ground running with a doctor from New York, a doctor from London, four acupuncturists from around the US, and two Arabic interpreters. Here, Andrew Lustig helps carry refugees ashore, where they will receive immediate treatment.

FILMCOPTERS.COM

t’s a far cry from running a national production company to a blanket on the island of Lesbos, Greece, tending to the medical needs of a family of refugees from Afghanistan. But for Andrew Lustig, who 12 years ago left his New York-based familyfounded businesses, National Recording Studios and National Video Center, his current vocation is a more than welcome change.

global RELIEF

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—Megan Kamerick

globaloutreachdoctors.org

trendmagazineglobal.com 19

Visit us at statementsinsantafe.com 1441 Paseo de Peralta, 505-988-4440

S TAT E M E N T S

the group is small but nimble.

“We’re light on our feet and we can move quickly,” Lustig says.

That’s how he wound up on Lesbos last fall, where hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere have been landing after treacherous crossings over the Aegean Sea. Lustig often donned a wetsuit to wade out and meet the rafts—sometimes five or six each hour—and begin triaging passengers immediately. Some were shot or stabbed or beaten. Others had chronic conditions like diabetes. Most were suffering mental distress.

The Global Outreach Doctors team includes nurses, paramedics, naturopaths, homeopaths, acupuncturists, and psychologists as well as doctors. This combination of Western medicine with alternative modalities is useful to meet a variety of needs in different situations, Lustig says. The acupuncturists, for instance, are trained in a technique that can rapidly reduce stress by using points on the ear.

The Afghani family Lustig met that day were like many refugees landing on Lesbos, traveling hundreds of miles on foot to flee violence from the Taliban or the Islamic State before climbing onto dangerously overcrowded rafts. They arrive hypothermic, traumatized . . . and very hungry.

Which was why Lustig was shocked when one of them actually pulled a cracker out of a pocket and offered it to him.

“They arrive on the shore, they faint, they kiss the ground, they scream and cry, handing us their children,” he says of the people he met during the group’s two-week stay. “Anything we can do to improve their lives is worth doing. It doesn’t matter the quantity.”

The organization is considering a second deployment this April to a large refugee camp in Jordan at the Syrian border and it is also investigating buying a bus and making it into a mobile medical clinic.

TILE / LIGHTING / KITCHENS / FLOORING

Flash

Flash

news, gossip, and innuendo

COMMUNITY REnewal

F

or some New Mexicans, the 368acre fairground in the heart of Albuquerque is the seat of many a nostalgic memory: the spot where they’ve scoured for bargains at the flea market on weekend mornings and stuffed themselves with fry bread at the New Mexico State Fair in the fall. But some residents, like entrepreneur David Vogel, view the plot as more blight than blessing—and Vogel has put forward a plan to transform it into a year-round multiuse green space.

Dubbed “Central Park New Mexico,” the sweeping proposal includes creating a “destination park” and education center with sustainability-oriented programming.

Vogel, a longtime community organizer/ activist and founder of the Lovelace Health Plan in Albuquerque, envisions a public commons that incorporates the preferences and values of area residents and businesses in ways that both empower them on a grassroots level and would

David Vogel’s vision is to turn the New Mexico State Fair Grounds, shown above in a Google Earth snapshot, into Albuquerque’s version of Central Park.

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prove economically viable in the long term.

The creation of Central Park New Mexico would move the annual 11-day state fair to another location, such as Balloon Fiesta Park, raze decaying buildings, remove motor vehicles and massive parking lots, and add community gardens, children’s programming, bridle trails, and a variety of recreational sites, facilities, and bikeways. It would retain and improve the fair’s existing agricultural features and cultural pavilions.

The plan would also upgrade the surrounding neighborhood to reflect guidelines for walkable communities and create an economic zone that could include affordable and senior housing, businesses, mixed-use areas, a hotel, restaurants, and sidewalk cafés—the revenue from which could help maintain the park.

The project took root when Vogel and his wife, artist Marietta Leis, drove by the periphery and Leis observed the high walls and barbed wire that isolated the property from its environs. As a child, the New Jersey native had enjoyed walking through Central Park and now wondered why the state-owned property couldn’t be transformed into something similarly vital.

“The current fairground does not relate at all to the adjacent neighborhoods,” Vogel notes, “and contributes nothing to them.”

Instead, he continues, the grounds actually contribute to the area’s decline, due in part to the increase in traffic and crime, especially during the fair. In addition, Expo New Mexico sustained an operating loss of $2.5 million in 2014, and the lack of funding has left fairground buildings in serious disrepair.

And while others have floated fairground

proposals in the past, Vogel asserts that they “didn’t have enough support, community engagement, effective leadership, or meaningful vision to be effective.”

Spurred into action in 2010, the Nob Hill resident phoned neighborhood association presidents and received an enthusiastic response to the idea. He then formed a steering committee that included area residents and sketched out a vision for a park that would elevate the entire area—an urban green space the community could take pride in.

A significant part of the proposed plan promotes arts and culture. Recently Vogel met with the City of Albuquerque Arts Board to present the concept of a “virtual arts center” within the park. “Our arts community is perhaps one of the most diverse and innovative art markets in the country,” he says. “However, it is extremely dispersed and not easy to find. The concept of a ‘virtual arts center’ would be to create a comprehensive and current guide to all types of art in our community, where they are located, when citizens and visitors can see what they do, and precise guidance and a transit system that would easily take them there.” In addition, he envisions year-round events accentuating the state’s multicultural heritage in the fairground’s cultural pavilions, such as the Indian Village and the Villa Hispana performing arts areas.

As support for the project grows, it’s clear that Vogel’s 21st-century vision could transform a significant area of the city into a much more healthy and inviting place for locals and visitors to relax and recreate.

—Heidi Utz

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DAVID VOGEL; CONSERVANCY’S OFFICIAL HISTORIAN AND PHOTOGRAPHER, SARA CEDAR MILLER; GOOGLE EARTH

From Fairground to Park Space

LOCAL EXPERTS, GLOBAL REACH The Directors of Bonhams Auctioneers and Appraisers are pleased to announce the appointment of Michael Bartlett as representative for the state of New Mexico. Michael’s deep understanding of the auction market and extensive research skills were honed by years of working with auction houses and museums around the world. He has handled hundreds of transactions and specializes in managing complicated estates. He looks forward to collaborating with fellow collectors, dealers, and trust and estate attorneys to bring important items to market.

As a regional representative, Michael can draw on the resources of dozens of other expert specialists at Bonhams offices around the world, and is always prepared to help collectors pursue their interests in any category. Every year, Bonhams conducts 400 auctions across four continents, and the New Mexico office provides local access to the exceptional resources of this global network.

To discuss consigning to auction or to schedule a confidential appraisal, please contact: +1 (505) 820 0701 michael.bartlett@bonhams.com

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1 AN IMPORTANT DEEP-BLUE DIAMOND ‘TROMBINO’ RING circa 1965 Sold for $9,463,000, a world-record price per carat

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2 WILLIAM WENDT The Old Coast Road oil on canvas Sold for a world-record $1,565,000 3 FROM THE MARANELLO ROSSO COLLECTION THE WORLD’S LONGEST SINGLE-OWNERSHIP 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Sold for a world-record $38,115,000 4 A VERY LARGE AND RARE BLUE AND WHITE VASE Yongzheng mark and of the period, 1723-1735 Sold for $9,800,000

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5 FREDERICK CARL FRIESEKE The Garden Chair, 1912 oil on canvas Sold for $962,500

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International Auctioneers and Appraisers – bonhams.com/newmexico ©2016 Bonhams & Butterfields Auctioneers Corp. All Rights Reserved.

news, gossip, and innuendo

Serving With Distinction

creative solutions

B

ack in the 1960s, people used to say that if you weren’t a part of the solution, you were a part of the problem. Corrales-based Terrance J. Brown has spent his life embodying that sentiment.

A Vietnam veteran who won the Bronze Star Medal flying helicopter reconnaissance missions, Brown went on to distinguish himself as a disaster-relief specialist before focusing on architecture.

His passion for problem solving and devising design solutions, combined with his ongoing philanthropy, recently garnered him the prestigious American Institute of Architects 2016 Edward C. Kemper Award for significant contributions to the profession through service to the AIA. Among the projects that led to this honor was his work to create a disaster response system to help AIA members collaborate with federal, state, and local authorities in their temporary housing and rebuilding efforts. Following the attacks of September 11, Brown trained fellow architects to work in disaster preparedness and recovery and led an initiative to add emergency response training and credentialing to the relief and recovery efforts. He also co-authored an AIA disaster-assistance handbook and has developed response programs for cities, regions, states, and international entities.

Before settling in New Mexico in the 1980s to ply his trade as an architect, Brown honed his talents for organizing, teaching—and

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Terrance Brown at the Edward C. Kemper Award ceremony. Bottom left: Interior of his Dulce Health Center rotunda in Dulce, New Mexico, with circular staircase, teepee cables at the upper balcony, and feather-like sound attenuation baffles. Bottom right: Brown’s health center at Tohatchi, New Mexico, is designed in the form of the traditional eight-sided Navajo hogan. Opposite: Brown’s sketches for temporary housing for Sri Lanka tsunami victms.

generally getting things done­— in Central and South America.

Among his many stops in the region was an eight-year stay in Antigua, Guatemala, where he set up language schools and trained Peace Corps volunteers in cultural adaptation. His sensitivity to and appreciation of the cultural values of native populations were born from his interaction with residents of the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, where he grew up, and this led him to work regularly with Native American firms around the country to develop, design, and build healthcare and educational facilities and housing.

“I love sitting in meetings with tribal officials and learning about what’s important to

TOP: COURTESY OF EDWARD A. VANCE, FAIA; BOTTOM: KIRK GITTINGS FOR WELLER ARCHITECTS (2) USED BY PERMISSION; OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF TERRANCE BROWN

Flash

LA MESA OF SANTA FE

Flash

225 Canyon Road • Santa Fe NM 505-984-1688 • lamesaofsantafe.com

Vicki Grant

them, then designing for their needs,” Brown says. “Designing a building in downtown Albuquerque, even a beautiful one, is not fun or interesting to me.”

Brown’s work with AIA over the years has bulked up his already impressive resume: In 1991 he became president of AIA’s Albuquerque chapter, then in 1996 assumed the presidency of AIA New Mexico. In 2001 he was elected vice president of AIA, and has also served as AIA director of the Western Mountain Region, as New Mexico representative to the AIA State Government Network, and as AIA liaison to the Pan-American Federation of Associations of Architects. In addition to his AIA 2016 Edward C. Kemper Award, he is the recipient of the 2004 AIA Whitney M. Young Jr. Award, the only American architect to have won both.

—Nancy Zimmerman

Ceramic and Steel height 73”, 57”, 79” trendmagazineglobal.com

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Flash

news, gossip, and innuendo photo

fabLEs

D

espite its instant accessibility and widespread appeal, photography is rarely seen in outdoor art projects except as advertisement— a commodification of the medium that even commercial photographers struggle against. It makes sense, then, that THE FENCE, a multi-city exhibition opening at The Railyard Art Park in Santa Fe on July 9, was created by United Photo Industries, a gallery and art-presenting organization in Brooklyn, New York, and the professional photography magazine Photo District News.

According to cofounder Sam Barzilay, THE FENCE differs from other juried photo shows not only because it is shown outdoors in five

COURTESY DIANNE YUDLESON AND ADRIEN BROOM

Breaking Boundaries of Photo Art

From Adrien Broom’s series The Color Project, which follows a young girl’s journey as she rediscovers the colors of the rainbow.

Top: From Dianne Yudleson’s series Antique Aviary II, which examines the effects of climate change on our avian population.

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Flash cities (Brooklyn, Boston, Atlanta, Houston, and now Santa Fe), but also because it blurs the distinctions between photographic art, journalism, historical record, and personal journal.

“It’s not about visual art, but stories,” Barzilay explains—which is why entries must consist of six images in a thematic group, rather than a single image. In the media, “not every story is international and makes the news,” he says, and this limits the kinds of images that normally get seen. As remedy, THE FENCE assigns a huge field of 40 to 50 jurors from art, journalism, education, and advertising to look instead for “a distinct point of view,” as Santa Fe photographer Gabriella Marks describes it.

Marks, who heads the state chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers, said Santa Fe makes a natural fit for the project given the state’s prominence in the history of photography. And a number of arts organizations are signing on, she added, providing the instant “hum” of collaborative potential that is a hallmark of THE FENCE in other cities. A regional component, The Fence New Mexico, will be juried separately and shown as part of PhotoSummer 2016, a program of exhibits and events in Albuquerque and Santa Fe focusing on contemporary photography.

The 600-foot exhibit at The Railyard Art Park, tentatively set to run through September or later, should help anchor the district’s status as an art and culture destination—and not only for the gallery-going public. “It brings us into the national conversation,” Marks says, as the westernmost destination for THE FENCE as it expands for a fifth year.

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Blurred Lines

W

e’ve all been there: wandering through a show, maybe slightly tipsy from too much wine, squinting at something hanging on the wall or sitting on a pedestal, and then feeling embarrassed when we ask ourselves, “But is it art?”

Frank Rose doesn’t think the question is embarrassing. In fact, it served as the inspiration for form & concept, a new contemporary gallery located in the former Zane Bennett Contemporary Art space at The Railyard in Santa Fe. Its mission is to explore the boundaries between art, craft, and design, and in so doing encourage viewers to accept the blurring of lines dividing the utilitarian from the purely aesthetic.

“I find it really interesting that these words—art, craft, and design—have such diverse definitions,” says Rose, who graduated from the University of Houston with a degree in photography and digital media before moving with his wife to Santa Fe in 2008. “I’ve been having fun asking people how they define them, and I love hearing their answers.”

Now, thanks to his partnership with Sandy Zane, he can give that conversation a space as well as a voice. In the fall of 2015, Rose was finishing his tenure with the Currents New Media Festival following his directorship of Manitou Galleries and was looking for full-time work. Zane, a pioneer of contemporary art in Santa Fe, had recently closed her gallery and needed someone to help her sell her remaining inventory.

“We discovered we had a lot in common regarding art and craft, and she also really wanted to keep the building alive,” Rose says. “So we came up with the idea to do this crazy venture.”

news, gossip, and innuendo

Contemporary Cross-pollination

Crazy, but also timely, given that traditional definitions—art exists for its own sake, craft is purely functional—are no longer so clear cut.

There are, says Rose, a growing number of artists using traditional craft materials in their work as well as a growing number of crafters beginning to show in the art arena. “That merging and fluidity between the genres is producing some really interesting work.”

Form & concept will focus on showcasing contemporary artists who push the boundaries of art-versus-object, but in a framework that is less traditional commercial gallery and more educational center. While a 500-square-foot space and online presence makes up the retail portion of form & concept, its exhibitions are programmed with an eye toward merit rather than commercial viability. “The pieces will be for sale, but we won’t have price tags on the wall—we want people to engage with the work without wondering about the cost.”

Rose is also planning a series of workshops and artist talks that focus on the intertwining of art, craft, and design and on making the resulting work more understandable to the average viewer. “Art is often placed on a pedestal, so to speak, out of reach,” Rose says. “I think institutions should work to make it more accessible. A lot of art can appear opaque, but given the tools and education, viewers can begin to grasp it.”

You can see for yourself during the gallery’s inaugural exhibitions.

Made in the Desert, a group show running May 27 through August 22, features craft artists from New Mexico and Arizona. Virtual Object, which runs from June 10 through August 11, showcases artwork that is made with or influenced by emerging 3-D printing technologies.

—Rena Distasio

Keeley Haftner, Industrial Compost (2015), light table and 3-D printed PLA plastic.

Left: Jenny Filipetti, Breath Vessels (2015), 3-D printed ceramic. Top: Vanessa Michel, Madruga in Mourning (2014–2015), hand-sewn quilt.

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COURTESY OF FORM & CONCEPT (3)

Flash

ENTREPRENEUR

BY CYNDI WOOD | PORTRAIT BY CAITLYN OTTINGER

Ideum’s cutting-edge interactive technologies transform the traditional museum-going experience

MALIK DANIELS

O

n a rainy autumn day at the Smithsonian, a small crowd gathers around the multitouch table central to a new exhibition, The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire, at the National Museum of the American Indian. These visitors are drawn to condors soaring over a stunning 3-D recreation of the city of Cusco, Peru, circa 1531. Young and old touch the table’s surface to access slideshows and videos,

take in 360-degree panoramas, and explore the city on a series of virtual guided tours.

It’s the kind of innovative design one would expect to come out of an East or West Coast metropolis, but this cuttingedge interactive exhibit was created by Ideum in Corrales, New Mexico.

Museums have come a long way from their 19th-century incarnations as “cabinets of curiosities” with their treasures tucked away behind glass. Exhibitions have evolved to include multimedia and fullsize reconstructions of everything from dinosaurs to Inuit villages in the quest for new ways to bring these subjects to life. Computer-based interactions, such as

those developed by Ideum, are the latest to enrich the visitor experience.

“Multitouch tables are perfect in some ways for museums,” says Ideum CEO and Creative Director Jim Spadaccini, “because museums are really all about bringing people together.” By creating technology that allows people to gather and participate— and even interact within a group—Ideum strives to overcome the limitations of early kiosk-style interactive exhibits.

“One of the problems with early interactives is that they were set up for individuals,” Spadaccini explains, “so the criticism they evoked was justified: they were isolating, they were not terribly trendmagazineglobal.com

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classes on early digital photography and storytelling, always using the computer as a means to an end, not an end in itself.”

In 1995 he joined Exploratorium, the hands-on museum of science, art, and human perception in San Francisco. Creating educational Web resources was initially a small part of his job, but as this field blossomed in the early days of the Internet, he became the museum’s first director of interactive media. “At Exploratorium, I was involved in some electronic exhibits on the floor, and I wanted to do more of them and explore different topics, which was one of the impetuses for starting Ideum.”

Four years later, Spadaccini began the company in Sausalito, California, doing mainly Web design, photography, video production, and some early electronic exhibits. But a project for Chaco Culture National Historical Park ultimately drew him to New Mexico. “On the fifth trip, we thought, ‘Well, maybe we could live here,’ and decided to try it,” Spadaccini says.

Along with his wife and business

partner, Angela Arzave, Spadaccini reestablished Ideum in Corrales in 2005, at first doing similar projects but in an environment with a very different vibe. “We wanted a change of pace and lifestyle,” Spadaccini says, “and we wanted to get a place with some land, so Corrales was perfect. We have since planted an orchard and vineyard, which we couldn’t imagine doing in California.”

Initially there was some trepidation about whether they would be able to find enough creative, technically skilled people in the Albuquerque area, but Ideum now receives resumes from people around the country. Still, says Executive Producer John-Mark Collins, there are challenges. >

Ideum’s interactive wine-tasting experience, created for Jean-Charles Boisset’s JCB Tasting Salon in Napa Valley. Opposite, from left: John-Mark Collins, Angela Arzave, Jim Spadaccini, and Paul Lacey. Previous page: Ideum’s interactive for the Smithsonian’s Great Inka Road exhibition features a 3-D recreation of the ancient city of Cusco, Peru.

MALIK DANIELS

exciting, they were not immersive, not social, or—even worse—were antisocial.

I felt you could tackle some of those issues with larger displays that would allow people to work together and create experiences that were more immersive, collaborative, and social.”

Size and performance are important factors in the quality of the experience: Ideum’s high-resolution touch walls and tables— from a high-definition 42” coffee table to the ultra-high-definition 84” Colossus and panoramic 100” dual display—allow eight to ten people to simultaneously launch media and delve deeper into the subject.

When the viewer more actively engages with the exhibit, the abstract becomes concrete, the impersonal personal, and history begins to seem much more real.

The educational possibilities of technology have fascinated Spadaccini for his entire professional career. The Connecticut native attended college in New York City before landing in California, where he first worked as a special education teacher. “We created

“You can go to Seattle or San Francisco and trip over designers and developers and programmers. If you were doing this type of work, you really wouldn’t stay in New Mexico unless you were working for us.”

Now employing 44 people and continuing to grow, Ideum recently expanded into a third building in their complex.

“We didn’t start with the idea to build this really big business here,” Spadaccini says, “but it pretty quickly evolved once we got interested in the hardware side of things.

We could see how it all fit together.”

Designing and building their own hardware differentiates Ideum. When Spadaccini first met Paul Lacey, now a business partner and Chief Technical Officer, Lacey was constructing a giant multitouch screen by hand in his own garage. “When Jim and I met, we were talking about interactives and how touch Ideum’s interactives for the Crossroads of Civilization exhibition at the Milwaukee Public Museum include a giant touch screen timeline and a virtual journey through an ultra-high resolution 3-D reconstruction of the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III, known as Medinet Habu.

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screens were changing,” Lacey remembers.

“So we decided to open another arm of the company focusing on multitouch interactives seven years ago.”

Now, Ideum’s touch tables and walls are installed around the world in museums, government organizations, universities, and corporations. In fact, Ideum was one of the 11 New Mexico firms to make the 2015 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing

private companies in the US in 2015.

“We make the Cadillac of multitouch tables,” Collins says. “Everything is aircraft-grade aluminum. They’re lockable, they have push-button control, they’re very sturdy. You can beat them up, you can spill a drink on them—and that’s the intent.”

Clients seem to recognize this value.

While it took 18 months to sell the first 30 tables, Ideum sold more than 30 in one

MALIK DANIELS (2)

ENTREPRENEUR

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The JCB interactive wine tasting uses 3-D printed coasters to launch visuals and other content specific to each wine. Top left: At IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, visitors can create textile designs in the style of Lloyd Kiva New as full-size projections. Top right: Explore the electromagnetic spectrum on Ideum’s 100” panoramic multitouch table at the Eureka! Gallery at Science World British Columbia.

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month last October. According to Lacey, “We’re bursting at the seams trying to keep up with demand.”

Ideum’s software is also in high demand as well, and not just by museums. “More and more businesses are looking at interactives as a tool to engage customers,” Collins says. Real estate developers have discovered the power of zooming around 3-D reconstructions of their developments. For one National Hockey League team, Ideum created an interactive, fullsize digital air hockey table for their arena. And for a major coffee company, a table will be able to recognize the coffee cup you set down—and tell you more about the coffee in it.

“What I see as next for our tables and walls is increasingly higher fidelities—we are currently working in 4K resolution and beginning to plan for 8K—and much richer user interactions,” Lacey says. For example, Ideum can now engineer an experience around small, inexpensive, 3-D printed objects that are recognized by the table. These objects could be toy-size ships or buildings, models of insects, or handheld reproductions of sculptures— almost anything you can imagine. “You can give the object to the museumgoer, they can place it on the table, play with it, learn with it, take it from exhibit to exhibit, and then go home with it.”

This object-recognition technology is

central to a groundbreaking interactive wine tasting venture. In a project recently installed at the JCB Tasting Salon in Napa Valley, a simple 3-D printed coaster attached to a Baccarat wine glass guides a 45-minute cinematic experience. Each of the five wines in the tasting flight has a unique coaster that, when placed on the table, will launch animated graphics and display information specific to that wine. Ideum worked closely with vintner Jean-Charles Boisset to create both the interactive tasting experience and the golden metallic and black-crocodile-clad table that was custom-designed to suit the tasting room’s decor. “Boisset is willing to push the boundaries of what that experience is all about,” Spadaccini says, “and that’s the type of partner we look for.”

Ideum’s multidisciplinary teams of content creators, designers, software developers, and hardware technicians work together to develop such experiences, and finding ways to nourish their creative spirit is crucial to the company’s success. “We try to have an open, collaborative culture,” Spadaccini says, “and give people enough guidance but also enough space to do their jobs. We have a lot of good people who are excited about the work we do and are interested in trying to pursue what’s next from a design or technical standpoint—and that energy becomes contagious.” R

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ENTREPRENEUR

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Conscious Building

BY CHRISTINA PROCTER PHOTOS BY CAITLYN OTTINGER

Two far-flung childhood friends join forces to put a character of their own in contemporary furniture design

I

t’s funny how a phone call can change your life. One day after college, Pennsylvania-born Damian Allister Arndt had just gotten home from a shift at his hometown health food store when his mother said: “Someone called you from Hawaii.”

The anthropology major had recently applied for a federal job, and, as it turned out, a new park on the Big Island wanted him to work for a few months. Arndt soon found himself in the quickly emptying airport of Kailua-Kona, assembling his bicycle amidst land more desert-like than expected. A couple of sympathetic women clucked at him like aunties, gave him the number for a hostel, and pointed him toward the miles of highway into town.

Nine years later, after two National Park Service jobs, one moped, and lots of banana-leaf bundling, he managed to help rebuild a temple structure at one of the island’s sacred sites. He also stumbled into an informal apprenticeship with an oldschool furniture maker in the off-the-grid beating heart of the jungle.

If his eager questions sometimes went unanswered by his sarong and flip-flop– clad mentor, in time Arndt was trusted with projects and brought in more. He learned to execute fine joinery with basic tools, creating pieces ranging from handmade window screens to doors for local homes. A small solar generator powered a table saw, but most of the work was done by hand. The two men made a specialized jig system to construct the screens, a fingersaving device that held each piece of wood in place to create lasting joints. Arndt was

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amazed at his mentor’s resourcefulness. “I remember him saying that real craftsmen make the tools they need from the tools they have.”

But as the years passed he grew concerned about the scarcity of local lumber and low price of rare tropical woods shipped over the Pacific. Plus, with his training in the craft, he was curious to see “just how high-end it could get.”

That’s when Arndt got another phone call.

This time it was Jonathan Boyd Katzman, an old friend from Allentown, Pennsylvania, with whom he hadn’t spoken in a decade. Katzman had called just to catch up, explaining to Arndt that he was now in Santa Fe looking to start a furniture company. By the end of the conversation, the two twenty-somethings were partners in the firm that would become Boyd & Allister, the New Mexico-based custom furniture company now supplying handmade beds, tables, credenzas, and the like for clients from New York to Los Angeles.

It happened that while Arndt was putting his degree to use in the lava fields of Hawaii, Katzman found that after his classics training at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, he wanted to work with his hands again. In a way this was no surprise: as a kid his parents would drop him off on weekends at a friend’s farm outside of town, where he learned how to be generally useful. He recalls an early reverence for wood—especially upon noticing work by another friend’s father, who turned the raw material into free-form vases.

Not long after college, he heard about an adobe builder who needed an extra

laborer to sling mud for the weekend, and Katzman showed up. He liked it so much he stayed for the entire project and eventually worked on other green building projects. Just as Arndt had been fortunate to work side-by-side with a master craftsman, Katzman likewise learned the art of being useful with his hands, often living on job sites out of his Volkswagen van and working with his mentor from dawn to dusk.

But after a serious hiking accident, Katzman stopped building and decided to pursue real estate investment. When he had enough funds, he took a year off to learn how to build things, like a roughshod bed and bookshelves for his new house.

“I made things, they failed; I made things, they failed. Then I started learning,” he says. He took a couple of courses at the Santa Fe Community College, where he studied classical methods and made use of the woodshop. It wasn’t long before he thought that what he was making would sell, and he started reaching out to contacts to see who’d buy.

His phone call to Arndt, which had begun as a lark and ended as a business partnership, was his most fortuitous move yet—the juncture of good timing and two young artisans with unconventional training and the instincts to leap. Arndt returned stateside just as the economy Jonathan Boyd Katzman (left) and Damian Allister Arndt of Boyd & Allister work out of a former auto repair shop on Hickox Street, where they’ve now partnered with ceramist Jennie Johnsrud of Modern Folk Ware to open the front area of the shop as a boutique space for handmade contemporary designs by local makers.

CREDIT

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Conscious Building

went bust, and when companies shuffled out of business, the furniture makers hit auctions and bought up machinery at reduced price.

In 2009 they opened shop in Katzman’s garage, first supplying bed frames for Sachi Organics, the Albuquerque-based family-run organic bedding company.

“That kept us alive,” Katzman says. “We could eat beans and rice and pay our rent, ish.” Katzman knew Niccolo Paolinelli, co-owner of Sachi Organics, who grew up with production in his living room and was used to working with artisans. Boyd & Allister’s style, Paolinelli says, is timeless. “You can’t tell if it was made in 1945 or 2005, and it will probably be the same in 50 years.”

Katzman also called on interior designers in Santa Fe, and Michael Violante and Paul Rochford, co-owners of Violante & Rochford Interiors, took the bait. Arndt recalls, “We had them over—we were still in Jonathan’s garage, a pretty unprofessional, dark-looking space—and I’m thinking, ‘these guys are going to get so dirty coming in here.’” Unfazed, Violante and Rochford toured the house, a living gallery of sorts.

When Katzman (pictured) heard about a new cheese shop coming to town, he hatched a plan to make use of leftover maple, cherry, and white ash. Boyd & Allister’s cutting boards, cheese knives, and pie servers are now sold at the Cheesemongers of Santa Fe. Top: Arndt examines a slab of claro walnut from California.

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PETER OGIVLIE

For this custom dining table made of one great slab of black walnut, Boyd & Allister oversaw fabrication of a Jean Prouvé–inspired aluminum base crafted by local sculptor Alex Barrett, with a patina by metal artist Diego Velázquez.

Impressed with the distinctive style and highly skilled craftsmanship, they gave “the boys” one project, which led to a steady business relationship.

What makes their work unique is that the wood itself drives the design. Violante notes that they can take oak, for instance, which one might associate with old file cabinets, “and make it into something gorgeous. Because they’re always incorporating their own sensibility, whether that’s a contemporary line, particular grain, or color.”

While most furniture is produced without discrimination as to what joins where, it is the process of “carrying the grain through something, the little details, that make something harmonious to look at,” explains Arndt. “It’s not just a walnut

dresser. We went to a lumberyard, decided which had the nicest character and grains, picked the boards, planed them, and decided how to match them.”

They find tree burls—the knots on trees that form when grain grows abnormally—often provide the most interesting pieces. Recently commissioned armoires, meanwhile, were fashioned from ambrosia maple, which gets its streaks when ambrosia beetles tunnel through, followed by fungi that add mineral shades of blue and brown.

The two now work out of a former auto repair shop on Hickox Road in Santa Fe in an emerging commercial neighborhood.

Though they will occasionally divide and conquer after initial planning, they make most pieces together. “When two brains

are on the same page, they are definitely better than one,” Arndt says. “Between our two obsessive natures—and I’ll say it for what it is, you kind of have to be to do fine work—sometimes one of us will say that doesn’t matter and the other will say no, it has to be this. Our approaches dovetail well, so everything has a very high standard.”

When left to their own devices their aesthetic does vary. Katzman often carves tiny birds and boxes that must be smashed to find what’s within, but he mostly laughs off the sculptural possibilities of wood, preferring the geometric intricacies of Danish core techniques.

Arndt looks more to nature for aesthetic guidance. He’ll face the raw edges of wood together in a bedframe or table, creating trendmagazineglobal.com

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Clockwise, from top left: Detail of a black walnut side table; black walnut chair with pegged bridle joints in the seat frame and a natural woven rush; black walnut bed frame fortified by basic mortise and tenon and bridle joints; mahogany case with black milk–painted maple base.

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KATE RUSSELL (3), LIZA BAMBENEK (HEADBOARD)

Conscious Building

Conscious Building

a design element with the negative space.

“Nothing in the natural world is straight, you know?” he muses. “It’s also a reminder that we live in a self-made world of angles and lines, and I think the more we exclude natural form, the more schizophrenic we become. Bringing curves and organic freeforms back is a way to reinvigorate the materials and methods I work with.”

Both agree that what’s sculpted by grain and color should last generations.

“You don’t put organic shapes together,” Katzman says. “You start with very geometric assemblies because that’s how you cut stable joinery.” That means leaving an eighth of an inch or more, depending on the type of wood and climate, in a joint.

This allows the furniture to remain stable while the conjoining parts expand and contract with the weather.

“We love our machines,” Arndt says, “but we are both completely competent in the old methods and have the tools to perform them.” This might mean surfacing boards with a hand plane or cutting joinery with a handsaw and chisels. A table saw and router do the first run, but then everything is perfected by hand, eye, and chisel.

When they can, they source their wood locally, and both are concerned about the sustainability of their craft. Though they work strictly with domestic hardwoods and recommend reclaimed materials to clients, the majority of it is shipped from sawyers in the Northeast and Midwest.

Katzman did find a source when he was hiking in the Gila State Forest, where he heard about a man who had a permit to cut standing dead alligator juniper trees. Boyd & Allister became his sole customer and often use the unusually patterned wood.

These solutions are few and far between in an arid climate, but as Arndt points out, making something built to last is another form of recycling.

Meanwhile, the two of them are matching grain like fingerprints, following trails the rest of us might not see. The result is a body of work that gets to the root of a new modern aesthetic: complex, selective, and nature-bound. R TREND Spring 2016 39

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state of the art

Scout’s Honor hen you watch a movie or television show these days, it’s increasingly likely to have been made in or near Albuquerque. Whether for the light or the wide-open skies, the variety of architecture or the general ambiance, for myriad reasons the Duke City has become a hot spot for film and television production in recent years. But shooting on site can be just as challenging as recreating a set in the studio. For each time you recognize a location on screen, a cadre of local location scouts and managers has spent painstaking hours in the quest to commit it to celluloid. Indeed, finding the right spot to shoot a single scene can mean months of hard work and frequent dead ends.

Take the climactic moment in the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, set in a home in which psychopath Anton Chigurh threatens to kill the protagonist’s wife. The Northern New Mexico Victorian has been selected from among dozens of potential candidates for unique qualities that the director, producer, location manager, production designer, and cinematographer have agreed best tell the story—a mix of architecture, logistical possibilities, landscape, and “feel.” The location manager and staff have spent months securing the owner’s permission, alerting neighbors to the upcoming shoot, and modifying and furnishing the property. They’ve negotiated contracts, obtained permits, and arranged to close streets and stage hundreds of cast, crew, vehicles, and equipment.

And then, three days before 300 people commence filming, the location manager’s cell rings. The voice on the other end matter-offactly explains that he had a dream last night.

A dream in which God told him he must not rent his house to the movie people or dire consequences would ensue. A dream that he must respect . . . and a contract he must retract.

And the search begins all over again.

For those who manage locations for film and television, the Duke City holds infinite possibilities to bring stories to life

BY HEIDI UTZ | PHOTOS BY ROBERT RECK

But pursuit is the name of the game for location scouts and managers in the film industry—and the chase can lead to unexpected adventures as well as inevitable disappointments. Veteran location pros like Rebecca Puck Stair, who served as assistant location manager for No Country, find the needle-in-a-haystack quests of the job keep them on their toes.

“I like challenges I’ve never experienced before,” Stair says. “Like two weeks after 9/11, when I needed to get permission to do a fireball on a runway at Kirtland Air Force Base, or when I had to find a way to run horses across a massive plains studded with major cacti.

I always say that movie crews will never get Alzheimer’s because we are asked to use our brains in entirely fresh ways every day.” Stair’s appetite for new challenges has taken her all over the world. Since 2004 she’s been based in Albuquerque, where she’s scouted or locationmanaged 19 films, including Sunshine Cleaning, 2 Guns, We’re the Millers, and Independence Day: Resurgence.

To the D.C. native, the city feels somewhat like a blank canvas—a fact that helped narrow her choice of where to live. “I spent a few days bouncing between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, walking up to total strangers on the street and asking them which city they preferred. I wound up choosing Albuquerque because it had more problems. And I realize now, that was my myopic way of seeing that confused self-identity. There’s more potential in Albuquerque because it’s not a settled question, what kind of city it is.” >

state of the art

Neon lit and architecturally eclectic, downtown Central Avenue attracts location scouts seeking interesting street scenes. 2 Guns, Wild Hogs, and the short-lived Killer Women television series were all shot there, and it even stood in for a street in Berkeley, California, in Transcendence, starring Johnny Depp.

Previous spread: The Albuquerque Rail Yards is one of the most popular spots in the city to shoot sci-fi and action-adventure films, including The Avengers, Transformers, and Terminator Salvation.

“Once directors see the photos that I send them,” Rebecca Stair says, “they will change the script just to be able to shoot there.”

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Feresecab illaceprem coriaturis quisquid quis sundiam que sin earchil isquaepro is enditae quodissite moluptate cus, si consequ aecabor sequia noneseq uiatur?

Its mercurial nature makes Burque a favored location of other managers as well. “Creatively what’s attractive about Albuquerque is that you can get so many different looks in a small geographical area,” says Sam Tischler, another film-crew veteran who’s been scouting New Mexico since 1999. “You can go from Huning Highlands, where you have these old Victorian houses that could be the Midwest or East Coast, and then you run down to Old Town and you’re in the Southwest, or you can go downtown and you’re in pretty much any nondescript city you can think of. You can go up in the mountains and you’re in the pines, which can be Colorado or Wyoming or many other places. Then you go west by To’hajiilee, and all of a sudden, you’re in the desert.”

Tischler especially appreciated this flexibility when he was managing locations for Seasons 2 and 3 of Breaking Bad, in which it wasn’t uncommon for its characters to jump from consorting with a Mexican narco in the high desert to hunkering down for pizza with the family in Northeast Heights suburbia over the span of 15 minutes.

A Santa Fe resident since childhood, Tischler finds shooting in Albuquerque an agreeable experience.

A lot of credit goes to the Albuquerque Film Office

Once upon a time, Albuquerque’s motor lodges were places of refuge for road-weary travelers. One of the few that remain, the Desert Sands Motor Lodge, is enjoying a renaissance as a location for films like No Country For Old Men. Top: Some of Breaking Bad’s most pivotal scenes took place inside Loyola’s Family Restaurant. In Plain Sight also shot several scenes there, as did the recent film Blood Father, starring Mel Gibson. trendmagazineglobal.com

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The lavish 8,500-square-foot “castle” built by Albuquerque jewelry entrepreneur Gertrude Zachary served as her home until her death in 2013.

Today, one of the city’s most hotly debated pieces of architecture has become a sought-after location for films and television shows. Two of the most recent films include Seth Rogen’s new project, Preacher, and the British crime comedy War on Everyone, which is scheduled to come out this year.

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Antoine Predock’s futuristic Aperture Center at Mesa Del Sol has been featured in a number of movies, including the 2013 sci-fi romance The Host, based on the book by Stephenie Meyer of the Twilight series.

trendmagazineglobal.com

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because they do a good job of balancing the needs and demands of production and the needs and demands of the city—they’re not always the same.

Ann Lerner and Carrie Wells in the Film Office have done a really amazing job. They don’t let the productions do everything they want, but they certainly make sure they get what they need.”

Location manager Todd Christensen, who’s worked with such A-list directors as Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Bay, James L. Brooks, and Bennett Miller, also awards high marks to the Film Office—as well as to local crews. “I’m used to the best in the business in Los Angeles, and I’ve hired people in Albuquerque that I would take anywhere.”

One major reason our crews are so skilled is the “Breaking Bad bill,” passed in 2013, which has increased the state’s video production refundable tax credit from 25 to 30 percent and thereby brought more business to the state. This rebate has provided incentives for filmmakers to use local crews and encouraged TV producers to shoot at least six episodes in New Mexico. Now 80 to 90 percent of the crews are local hires, Tischler estimates, noting that the bill presented an air of stability and film-friendliness. “New Mexico was smart in the way they structured the incentives because there’s no incentive for hiring someone from out of state. So the producers would come in and say, ‘We want to hire as many locals as we can get our hands on.’ Because of that, the local crew base got trained. So now we have one of the largest crew bases in the country.”

And it’s interesting to note that crewmembers are often not film school grads. Christensen, who Left and opposite: The back courtyard at Gertrude Zachary Castle.

A Madonna statue, one of many unique antiques that fill the home.

Top: Breaking Bad fans will recognize these panoramas as the view outside the show’s law office windows at 500 Gold Street downtown.

Robert Reck was hired by the show’s producers to take them as stand-ins when shooting off site.

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lived in Taos and hung out with the likes of Dennis Hopper and Larry Bell, came to the trade as a painter. While he enjoyed his cinema classes at the University of New Mexico and hoped his in with Hopper might land him a gig in film, he ended up making art for a time with Ken Price. When he later moved to Venice, California, an acquaintance sussed out his creativity and people skills and invited him to work on the set of As Good As It Gets.

Stair broke into cinema after a stint as a high school English teacher, and says her literature degree helped her grasp storytelling elements like narrative arc, character development, and plot.

Although in her first project, working on a sci-fi flick called Army of the Dead, she was primarily responsible for . . . sand dunes. “I would rub out the footprints and the car prints for the next take. I loved it. Go figure.”

Location scouting involves much more than simply finding spectacular landscapes or a California bungalow with a teal basement. It starts with a script, a discussion with the director, then lots of footwork and photography to narrow down the exact places that will tell the story as the director sees it.

The highly collaborative process means honoring the needs of many, from the producer to the production manager, in an elaborate weaving of creative vision and logistical panache.

It also includes negotiating fees, terms, and permissions, and managing a location during a shoot—planning where to park hundreds of cars, trucks, cranes, scaffolds, and maybe even a few small tanks in an urban residential zone. “It’s not just finding the place, it’s also finding the permissions,” Stair says. “So you need to know what scene you’re scouting for. It’s got to visually work and tell the story, but it’s also got to logistically work. For my position, the challenges I face lie squarely on trendmagazineglobal.com

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Special thanks to Alexander Thorne (talent at Loyola’s Restaurant and The Rail Yard), Mary Elkins for her assistance with the shots, Steve Elkins for flying the drones, Kriston Rutherford (model at Gertrude Zachary Castle), Mary at I Do I Do for the gown, Luke Davis (talent at Desert Sands Motor Hotel), Maurice Sentner for his ’65 GMC truck, Serious Grippage & Light Company for the diffuser, Breaking Bad, and Ketmany Huss at Gertrude Zachary Jewelry.

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Eldorado Dental eldoradodental.com

Another attraction for location scouts is Albuquerque’s quality of light and famously clear blue skies.

Even at dusk, shots retain a crispness and clarity that allows for interesting plays of light and form.

that divide, between the right brain and the left brain.”

In addition, the job requires no small degree of tact and diplomacy. Christensen notes that he unwittingly prepared for his film career with his undergrad education.

“I studied to be a lawyer or a diplomat.

And strangely enough, that’s what the movies get me. I go through contracts and break them down, and I’m a diplomat to the production companies.” It also means knocking on a lot of doors, working long hours, keeping people calm during inconvenient moments—say, when a film crew lights up the neighborhood at 2 a.m.— and sometimes even searching for a very important domicile.

“Just imagine how you would feel if somebody knocked on your door and said, ‘Hi, I’m looking for Batman’s next house,’” Stair relates. “If there are children in the family, the answer is always yes. They convince their parents because they want to be Batman’s house.

Even if the initial answer is no, I try to make sure the children are aware of what the parents are declining. Because I tend to get a call two or three days later, saying, ‘You know, we talked it over as a family and we might . . . talk about it.’” And in

New Mexico house hunts, Stair says she rarely gets no for an answer.

If there’s a motto scouts everywhere embrace, it’s likely this: be prepared for anything. Stair recalls shooting Terminator Salvation in Bernalillo with a handful of Pave Hawks, huge military helicopters on loan from the Department of Defense.

They were setting up to film overnight and were landing the helicopters in the dusk, at the edge of a rural property, next to a neighbor’s house.

“These helicopters have quite a substantial downwash because they’re much heavier than your typical helicopter,” Stair explains. “And a tiny, white, puffy Pomeranian came out on the porch and was having none of this helicopter landing right next to the fence. He started barking at these Hawks. And they’re coming in and have all their lights on. And it’s night and all dramatic. And they start setting down. The dog runs off the porch and dives toward the edge of the property where the helicopters are, then hits the downwash and gets blown back to the porch rolling like a tumbleweed—barking the whole way.”

While it may take a village to raise a child, it obviously takes an alpha dog to manage a film shoot. R trendmagazineglobal.com

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If your smile isn’t becoming of you, you should be coming to me.

- Dr. Haley Ritchey, DDS

505.466.0999 trendmagazineglobal.com

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Midtown Vision

BY GUSSIE FAUNTLEROY | PHOTOS BY DANIEL QUAT

E

very city has its “midtown,” and in Santa Fe it’s St. Michael’s Drive. Originally a bypass highway, it is a vestige of mid-20th-century planning, girding the city’s midsection from Cerrillos Road to the medical district east of St. Francis Drive. It now carries six lanes of heavy traffic, where tens of thousands of vehicles pass along its length daily, and is lined with big-parking-lot commerce. The St. Michael’s Drive corridor is not much of a place to walk or live. But it can be.

St. Michael’s adjoins and connects parts of Midtown Santa Fe that are already morphing into exciting mixed-use communities, including the district defined by San Mateo/Second Street, Pacheco Street and Pacheco Park, and Siler Road and Rufina Street. Also located in this section of town are the Santa Fe

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University of Art and Design, Greer Garson Theatre, and Santa Fe Art Institute. With enlightened planning and a far-reaching vision that reflects the urban revitalization of larger American and European cities, this corridor can become much more than the link connecting the dots of Midtown’s growing urban vitality. St. Michael’s Drive itself can be transformed into a place to live, work, walk, bike, linger, create, and enjoy. Imagine multiuse trails, locally owned businesses, public art, theater, restaurants and cafés, galleries, green space, rooftop gardens, and attractive, eco-friendly high-density residential projects and tiny-house clusters. At the same time, St. Michael’s can become an efficiency corridor for both super-high-speed technology and for public transportation via solar buses or a Z-train—“Z” for the zigzag route it might follow from Pacheco Street to St. Michael’s Drive and Siler Road/Rufina Street—which would connect not only Midtown’s various sections but also Midtown to Downtown, Southside, and outlying parts of Santa Fe. Over the past few years there has been talk, opinion gathering, idea exploration, and the early stages of design vision for an integrated revitalization of the Midtown/St. Michael’s Drive area. (An evolving vision of the future can be seen at the RE:MIKE project, remikeable.com.) Now is the opportunity for Santa Fe’s political leaders, planners, business owners, entrepreneurs, artists, educational institutions, and everyone else who loves this city to build on what has begun.

Trend recently spoke with several people in business and art in Midtown to get their thoughts on Santa Fe’s evolution and what it’s like being located in this rapidly changing part of town.

Kurt Faust, co-owner of Tierra Concepts, Pacheco Park developer, and part of the team behind the proposed El Rio development, which was rejected by the Santa Fe City Council last summer: “Santa Fe is making the transition from a sleepy little burgh, where the downtown Plaza was the only geographic region that people would think of when they thought about Santa Fe. We’re starting to become conscious of the fact that we are more than just the Plaza and five streets surrounding it and Canyon Road. We’ve got other districts that are bursting to come forth, which are, as I see it: the Siler Road district, which has the most momentum right now; St. Michael’s, which from a surface perspective is the most obvious for redevelopment; and then our little Midtown triangle. I think what’s happening is you’ve got these areas where businesses are trying to break out of the egg. There are a lot of really creative businesses located here, and as an area gets more businesses and activity, that generates more of the same. What we’re all hungering for, all of us with any kind of sustainable bone in our body, is density of living. The main pieces are already magnetizing some activity and vitality: Pacheco Park, Second Street Studios, Lena Street Lofts. Those represent an anchor for the possibility of social and neighborhood vitality, in a true mixed sense.

David Eichholtz, principal (along with Richard Barger) of David Richard Gallery, which moved from Lincoln Avenue downtown to the Railyard, and then to Pacheco Street: “We moved to the Railyard because there was a collection of other established contemporary galleries. We loved our space and loved our neighbors, but parking was difficult and rent was really expensive. It seemed like we were a destination gallery anyway, so we wanted someplace more dynamic. This area has a lot of architects, designers, artists’ studios—it’s so vibrant, full of creativity and innovation; there’s so much going on over here. It’s a really interesting area with lots of interesting people—a yoga studio, the stone place, organic food shops, a coffee shop, a couple of really interesting foundations. And lots of free parking.”

Fiona Wong and Soma Franks, co-owners of Sweetwater Harvest Café, Pacheco Park: Fiona: “When we started with this location we knew it was a little off the beaten path, and that’s what we liked about it. We started out with the intention of serving the local community— we like the tourists as well—but this area fits that purpose, of serving the local residents. As the name implies, it’s in the middle, it’s a crossroads, it’s convenient. The vibe here just feels good. This area is also known as the design district, and Second Street has a lot of artists. It felt like the right place.”

Soma: “We have great neighbors and a very synergistic relationship with all the yoga studios in the area. We were able to fill a

A JourneyDance class is held once a month at Studio Nia, and is one of the many forms of dance and other activities that take place there. Founded by Toni Bergins, JourneyDance combines freestyle and structured movements to guide participants on a ritual journey of physical and emotional transformation. Opposite: The oasis at Santa Fe Stoneworks, by the late Burke Denman.

need for healthy yummy food in Midtown.”

Edmund Catanach, co-owner, Midtown Bistro, San Mateo Street: “The Midtown area is getting its legs now, starting to develop more. St. Michael’s Drive had been a skeleton of car dealerships that closed down and moved out. But now you see the economy growing, you see people wanting to invest in the area.

I would like to see the city take that initiative. A lot of owners have already done this, like Burke Denman did here—he took a piece of raw land that was a concrete company and turned it into an oasis, very Zen, very comfortable. That makes it not just a business but a destination, more like a park. I was just in Scottsdale, and there you see roundabouts instead of stoplights, with art in the middle. It slows traffic down a little but it flows, and the street is inviting. Santa Fe tries to do that in some places, but I would like the city to spread their wings and make other business districts more appealing and attractive.”

Kelly Egolf, owner, Verde Juice Company, San Mateo Street: “We wanted to be in this area partly because it’s zoned light industrial and we receive large shipments of fruits and vegetables. But also, there are 16 fitness facilities within one square mile of our location. There are also acupuncturists, chiropractors, body workers, and other wellness practitioners.

There’s a charm and a sense of community here, no big box stores, all locally owned businesses. And it’s a bikable and walkable community. It’s perfect for us.”

Jamie Blosser, Executive Director, Santa Fe Art Institute: “Santa Fe Art Institute is a very committed partner in thinking about the redevelopment of Midtown through the voices of the people who live and work here, to promote pedestrian walkability and neighborhood vibrancy. We want to do it in a way that brings art, culture, and health into the conversation around redevelopment. I think Midtown suffers from being overly car-centric, and the car culture actually severs the ability to connect with each other and create community. We need to start by reflecting on the identity of what is already here. I think we overlook Midtown because of the car, but there are some very exciting things happening that we can celebrate and perhaps use as models on a larger scale.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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BY RICHARD MARTINEZ, AIA, MARTINEZ ARCHITECTURE STUDIO, SANTA FE

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Kristen Starheim of Boston, architectural intern with Barbara Felix Architecture + Design, Santa Fe

Ikonic Coffee Roasters on Lena Street in Santa Fe

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“Finally, it would be a great misfortune if in the emphasis on the purely historic core of Santa Fe you forgot what was happening at the outskirts. If you forgot that some of the main roads entering into Santa Fe are absolutely hideous in every aspect.

They are typical of the very worst American practices from Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, to the Bay Area in California.

One of the things that makes Old Santa Fe so charming is that the street network is composed largely of narrow streets with only an occasional opening. It is built for the pedestrian and on the pedestrian scale. This point you must remember both in preserving the old city and in laying out the new.”

Let us, as a community, make the redevelopment of Midtown Santa Fe happen. As I learned when developing my proposal for the intersection of Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive, the emphasis by the city is on solving its immediate problems rather than celebrating the past and future of Santa Fe. R

CREDIT

It is undeniable that certain urban elements cater to our species’ physical and emotional well-being.

Parks ideal for dogs and peoplewatching, splashes of vibrant flowers along comfortably proportioned pedestrian walkways, the integration of historical gems into surrounding urban fabric, and cafes and shops that pique the curiosity of passerby are all healthy urban elements. Conversely, other facets of the city barrage our senses with unforgiving, unnatural, and anxietyinducing stresses. Litter-infested sidewalks, cacophonic traffic, uninspiring block facades, and a crippled asphalt and metallic color palette are examples of malignant urban elements that not only stunt healthy development of our cities but also wreak havoc on the innate sensitivities and balances of people subjected to them.

DANIEL QUAT

Creating a New Place for Community in Santa Fe

n 1962 Lewis Mumford, the renowned American sociologist known for his study of cities and urban architecture, visited Santa Fe and noted that while an oasis in many ways, the city seemed on the verge of losing its social cohesion and should look to the state’s Pueblo Indian communities for inspiration.

While he neglected to mention that Santa Fe has a long tradition of community life, reflected in the physical pattern of the city and in its plaza, Mumford’s words serve as a reminder that the dictates of modern life require a continual reassessment of what it means to serve the needs of the city that we have become and might be in the future.

This is exactly what has prompted the proposed redevelopment of Midtown Santa Fe. Architect Albert Moore, for instance, has produced a great proposal for reimagining St. Michael’s Drive as a hub of integrated live/ work/play interests. It is one of several studies and proposals for this area, which also include urban designer Roy Wroth’s redevelopment of Second Street and St. Michael’s Drive, and RE:MIKE, a collaboration between the City of Santa Fe, Santa Fe Art Institute, and other interested parties.

Moore’s proposal addresses the bleak street that now exists and envisions in its place an attractive, pedestrian-friendly roadway with landscaping, wider sidewalks, bike trails, retail shops, eateries, offices, and even residential enclaves. The new buildings would be four to six stories tall and built right to the street. The purpose of this increased density is to encourage pedestrian and bike traffic, reenergize the economy, and attract residents to the area. The latter is of particular interest to Moore, and he laid out his plans in a meticulously researched study that advocates for the necessity of building efficient and affordable housing in the area.

Of course, the City of Santa Fe must do its part by approving zoning that allows this density and the building setbacks. And there is historic precedent: the buildings that ring Santa Fe Plaza are multistoried and built right up to the street. It is this very density that gives life to the area.

What has been lost is housing—no one lives downtown anymore.

Once again, the words of Lewis Mumford are worth noting:

1512 Pacheco Street . Suite D101 . Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 . 505.988.4111 . santafebydesign.com

FAU C E T S ,

F I X T U R E S

&

H A R DWA R E

W I T H

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D I F F E R E N C E

business profile

Restaurants

Midtown Bistro

Owner Edmund Catanach and Chef Angel Estrada at Midtown Bistro

901 West San Mateo | Santa Fe, NM (505) 820-3121 | midtownbistrosf.com 56

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JONATHAN SALAZAR

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dmund Catanach pauses in the midst of pre-lunch preparations at the popular Midtown Bistro and looks back over 30-plus years in the restaurant business in his hometown. “I’ve probably fed everybody in Santa Fe at least once in my lifetime,” he says in his friendly, straightforward manner. Having worked in numerous restaurants and owned three over the years, Catanach wasn’t looking to open another—until Chef Angel Estrada, also with more than 30 years in the Santa Fe food world, approached him a few years ago with the idea.

“Because of who Angel is and his work ethic and his fresh vision, that inspired me to do it again,” Catanach says.

“He’s a lot like how I view myself: we get out there and do the work.”

As the two were considering jointly owning and running a new restaurant, they came across a site on West San Mateo near Santa Fe Stone. It was developed 20 years earlier by builder Burke Denman, who had transformed a raw industrial area into a visual oasis with multiple businesses. The structure that became Midtown Bistro contains a blend of light industrial elements and fine Santa Fe touches that make it a “magical place with a very calming, good feeling,” Catanach says. Water features and immense stones provide outdoor dining ambiance, and the large indoor dining space was recently expanded by 1,400 square feet.

The old adage about what’s behind a successful man is true at Midtown Bistro, Catanach says, smiling. His wife, Melissa Salazar Catanach, does accounting and helps with party planning and other tasks, while Estrada’s wife Anna adds two competent hands in the kitchen. Catanach describes the restaurant’s culinary focus as “American with Southwestern flair.” It incorporates locally grown ingredients, innovative twists, and seasonal menu changes. But along with a highly trained, low-turnover staff and excellent service, consistency in the food is paramount, Catanach says. “We want our customers to know that if they have something very good, it will be there the next time they come in. We’re here for the long term.”

Photos: Boncratious

Pink Adobe Productions Suite A106 505-780-8143 lorenhaynes.com

D Maahs Construction, LLC Suite A206 505.992.8382 dmaahsconstruction.com

Design Connection Suite C203 505.982.4536

The Smart Choice

Nedret rugs and textiles LLC Suite C203 505.490.2324

Interior Design

Suite A104 505.983.7055 annieocarroll.com

Counter Intelligence, LLC Suite C204 505.988.4007 ci4usantafe.com

Form + Function Suite C202 505.820.7872 formplusfunction.com

H & S Craftsmen, LLC Suite C204 505.988.4007 handscraftsmen.com

the accessory annex Suite C104

505.988.4111 santafebydesign.com

Ritual Hair, Skin & Nails Suite A201 505.820.9943 ritualhairstyling.com

Santa Fe By Design Suite D101 505.988.4111 santafebydesign.com

Custom Window Coverings, Inc Suite A101 505.820.0511 customwindowcoverings.biz

Tierra Concepts, Inc. Suite D206 505-989-8484 tierraconceptssantafe.com

Southwest Spanish Craftsmen Suite A103 505.988.1229 ernestthompson.com southwestspanishcraftsmen.com

Pacheco Park: Design District At the heart of Santa Fe’s Design District is Pacheco Park, an inspired community of businesses offering a superb array of retail, services and lifestyle options. From the city’s most renowned design shops and providers, to high-end and custom furnishing and fixtures, Pacheco Park offers one-stop access to all your design, new construction, remodeling, and landscaping needs. Including retail and services, you’ll find world-class yoga, local businesses offering unique products and services from hand-made rugs to custom window design, a water treatment company, a fullservice salon and a healthy, innovative eatery. Pacheco Park provides centrally located office, retail and customized space for Santa Fe’s most successful and dedicated businesses and entrepreneurs. Come and discover the Design District for yourself.

1512 Pacheco St, Ste D206 Santa Fe, NM 87505 505.989.8484 or 505.780.1159 Eric@TierraConceptsSantaFe.com

OfficeSpaceSantaFe.com

business profile

builders & Materials

D Maahs Construction

Operations manager Mary CdeBaca, lead supervisor Phil Hindmarch, owner Douglas Maahs, supervisor Francis Gingras, supervisor Kurt Spencer

D

1512 Pacheco Street, Suite A206 | Santa Fe, NM (505) 992-8382 | dmaahsconstruction.com 60

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DANIEL QUAT

ouglas Maahs credits the success of his award-winning home restoration and remodeling business to exceptional staff and subcontractors, evolving Santa Fe demographics—and to the lessons learned in his 30 years in the women’s high fashion shoe business. The firm began life in 1997 as Honey Do Home Repair and expanded into Honey Do Home Repair Kitchens & Closets Too. By 2009, the toolong name no longer reflected the business’s niche and was rebranded as D Maahs Construction. Today DMC offers remodeling and restoration services, from custom cabinetry to kitchen and bath design and installation to whole-home remodels. Ninety-five percent of its clients are referrals or repeat business, which says something about the firm. “The people I surround myself with are what really make this business click,” says Maahs, who has served as past president of the Santa Fe Area Homebuilders Association and past chair of the Santa Fe Remodelers Council. Maahs notes that much of the recent growth has been driven by retiring baby boomers and millennials buying and restoring smaller homes in older neighborhoods. Both groups are drawn to the lower cost of remodeling compared with new construction. DMC’s clients may also be drawn to Maahs’s business philosophy, which intentionally contrasts with that of the cutthroat high fashion world. “I wanted to be surrounded by accountability and integrity. Those are the two key factors,” he says, “and it seems to be working.”

I M AG I N E i m a g i n e

dmaahsconstruction.com Pacheco Park, Suite A-206 505 992 8382

dmaahsconstruction.com Pacheco Park, Suite A-206 505 992 8382

HOME FURNISHINGS, RUGS & ACCENTS

business profile

Nedret Rugs & Textiles

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1512 Pacheco Street, Suite C203 | Santa Fe, NM (505) 490-2324 62

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KIM EVES

n 1986, after emigrating with her family from her native Türkiye to New York City at age 21, Nedret Gürler went to a Turkish-owned wholesale rug import shop where she hoped to find work. She didn’t yet speak English but was strong, athletic, and willing to work, so she told the owner she could lift and move things. “All I need is a Turkish speaker,” the owner said. Then he added, “Once you inhale the scent of wool, the rug business gets into your blood, I warn you.”

He was right. Gürler worked at the shop for seven years, absorbing all she could about the business and about the rich and ancient art of handwoven rugs. She learned textile repair and conservation. She studied color fundamentals and design at Parsons School of Design. She even traveled to her homeland to weave alongside women at their looms. “I wanted to learn, from the beginning, what makes a good rug and not a good rug. It’s fascinating to me,” she says.

In 1993 she moved to Santa Fe, where she worked in local retail rug stores for a few years before opening her own business in 2007. Three years later her shop became one of four related but independent firms located under one roof in Pacheco Park.

When that arrangement dissolved in 2013, Gürler kept the location and opened Nedret Rugs & Textiles.

As Santa Fe homes increasingly Owner Nedret Gürler, at Nedret Rugs & Textiles trend to contemporary, Gürler meets homeowners’ needs through custom contemporary handmade rug lines, including that of Santa Fe designer Robin Gray. She also has long-established connections with importers of antique rugs from Iran, Nepal, India, Turkey, and elsewhere, and she guarantees that every rug is made without child labor. To assist her clients, Gürler visits their homes, carefully determines their needs and interests, and works to educate them about textiles and their care. But she also believes the process of purchasing a rug to last a lifetime should be fun. “It’s almost like finding a mate,” she says. “If you have fun in the process of flirting and picking it, you’ll never get tired of it.”

lighting, fixtures & Accessories

business profile

Form + Function

Owner Lette Birn in her showroom

W

hen Lette Birn started Form + Function in a small downtown Santa Fe retail space in 1984, the business offered a variety of lamps, pendant lights, and chandeliers. Back then, lighting technology still came down to the basic incandescent bulb. It’s a different world today.

“We’re no longer a retail store where we hand over a lamp,” Birn says. By providing one-on-one consultation—including in-home lighting assessments—her firm has gained a reputation as a guiding light in navigating the potentially confusing realm of lumens, watts, LEDs, color temperature, and how lighting affects mood and health, not to mention style and design. As Birn’s longtime motto puts it: good lighting matters. “There are so many choices these days, and lighting makes a huge difference in how we feel about our lives. Often people feel off as a result of bad lighting, but they can’t put their finger on it,” she says. “We work together with the client because we want the lighting to be right in the home.”

Before entering the lighting world, Danish-born Birn spent seven years as a high school teacher in Germany. In 1983, as she and her husband were building their home in Los Alamos, they scoured Northern New Mexico’s retail lighting stores, unable to find a single fixture they liked. So Birn began importing lighting, and Form + Function was born.

Today her interest in education continues through her blog, lightmynest.com, which offers tips and technical information as well as design inspiration for all kinds of lighting needs. In addition, Form + Function’s showroom has evolved into a lighting lab, where hands-on displays test lighting solutions and demonstrate diverse possibilities in everyday settings. Trained by the American Lighting Association, Birn and her staff have established Form + Function as a premier lighting showroom by riding the leading edge of lighting technology and contemporary design. “It’s not more expensive to do it right,” she says, “It’s just a matter of knowing how to do it right.”

1512 Pacheco Street, Suite C202 | Santa Fe, NM (505) 820-7872 | formplusfunction.com

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LIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFESTYLE

1512 PACHECO ST. SUITE C-202 | 505.820.7872 FORMPLUSFUNCTION.COM

business profile

Restaurants

Sweetwater Harvest Kitchen

1512 Pacheco Street, Building B | Santa Fe, NM (505) 795-7383 | sweetwatersf.com 66

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DOUGLAS MERRIAM

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rowing up in Singapore in a traditional Chinese family, Fiona Wong remembers her parents providing beautifully prepared, nutritious meals. “It was their way of expressing love,” she says.

With that in mind, when Wong moved to Santa Fe she set out to open a restaurant that would offer that same nourishing expression of community spirit and joy. But the right location eluded her. Then a friend mentioned that another woman, Soma Franks, was also searching for a site to open a restaurant whose approach sounded almost identical to Wong’s.

The two would-be restaurateurs met. “As soon as we got together everything just clicked and went so smoothly,” Wong says. They found a location in Pacheco Park, and in 2012 Sweetwater Harvest Kitchen was born.

Franks and Wong share a food philosophy focused not only on their customers’ enjoyment and health—organic, local, and seasonal ingredients in vegetarian, vegan, and meat dishes (many gluten free)—but also on the planet’s sustainOwners Soma Franks and Fiona Wong, at Sweetwater Harvest Kitchen ability and health. The kitchen staff grinds fresh buckwheat and spelt flour daily for pancakes and they make their own nutritious coconut nectar. Sweetwater carries all certified SIP (Sustainability in Practice) wines, and is the first New Mexico restaurant to serve wines on tap.

After the tables are cleared, the food scraps are saved and then composted through Reunity Resources in Santa Fe. “Soma and I are both mothers of eight-year-olds, and we want to be more body and Earth conscious in everything we do,” Wong says.

Creating food that is both healthy and delicious is an approach that resonates with Santa Fe diners. “What makes Soma and me really happy is having customers come up to us every day and thank us,” Wong says.

Santa Fe showed its appreciation by honoring Sweetwater at the 2016 Souper Bowl with Best Seafood Soup and Best Overall for Cambodian-born Chef Nath’s tom yum soup. Nath prepares Southeast Asian fare at Sweetwater every Wednesday through Friday night. “We have a global, eclectic menu,” Wong says. “We believe there are no boundaries in food.”

global eclectic cuisine • local and organic ingredients gluten-free + vegan + vegetarian options

global eclectic cuisine • local and organic ingredients gluten-free + vegan + vegetarian options

Sweetwaterbreakfast + lunch In progress sunday brunch thai nights Jeanne p.67

breakfast + lunch sunday brunch thai nights

catering: onsite + offsite

catering: onsite + offsite

stay connected ++ LIKE like US us STAY CONNECTED

www.sweetwatersf.com www.sweetwatersf.com

1512 PACHECO STREET / 505.795.7383 1512 PACHECO STREET / 505.795.7383

Filling in

BY NANCY ZIMMERMAN | PHOTOS BY KIRK GITTINGS

To Thomas Gifford, infill architecture is the key to preserving a city’s character and livability

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ometimes the old ways are still the best. Long before New Mexico’s cities and towns established master plans, building codes, and zoning regulations to manage growth, we had the Laws of the Indies. First enacted in 1573 by the Spanish Crown to regulate social and economic activity in Spain’s colonies, these laws included 148 ordinances to help colonists select sites for their settlements, then build and populate them. The laws are thought to be the first and most comprehensive guidelines for designing and developing communities ever devised, codifying such requirements as erecting buildings of a uniform type and featuring a commons, or plaza, that would remain accessible to residents even if the town experienced rapid expansion.

Remarkably, these laws are still referenced today as an example of how to design communities, and some local architects who know their history find in them a wealth of practical suggestions for dealing with burgeoning populations and unbridled growth.

One such architect is Thomas Gifford, whose groundbreaking work in designing infill projects has garnered him multiple awards and a great deal of personal satisfaction. “I’d like to see us return to the planning guidelines of the Laws of the Indies,” Gifford says. “They show us how to construct a city using infill procedures, and it’s beneficial to remember those early ideas.”

Gifford, a Santa Fe resident who works frequently, but not exclusively, in Albuquerque, is a strong believer in managing urban growth rather than allowing unmitigated sprawl to rob a city of its collective energy. In both Santa Fe and Albuquerque, this means designing residential and commercial projects that embrace the landscape and history of a place while creating a sleek, modern aesthetic that is both visually pleasing and undeniably practical. It also means, Gifford says, allowing building at a higher density. This not only minimizes urban spread but also preserves the vibrancy of a city by promoting its sense of community and creating a live-work interface that’s conducive to personal and professional interaction among the residents.

A prime example is Gifford’s Richmond Street Studios in the heart of Albuquerque’s Nob Hill district, a live-work development designed to be adaptable to changing needs and uses. “We wanted to make the design flexible so the units could be used for all-work or all-live, in addition to live-work,” he says. To enhance these uses, the L-shaped building features ground-floor spaces suitable for retail or offices, with second-floor residences that have floor-to-ceiling sliding glass walls, private patios, and cantilevered balconies made of steel. The eight bright and airy two-story units range from 889 to 1,048 square feet, with

the Blanks

The former Sleepy Hollow Motor Coach Lodge was reworked to provide housing for AIDS patients.

The individual studio apartments were configured to maximize privacy. Some residents say it’s the nicest place they’ve ever lived. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Sleepy Hollow’s courtyard enhances the complex’s sense of community while still providing privacy and dignity. The LEED Platinum–certified project was awarded AIA’s 2015 Honor Award for its adaptive reuse of the site. Opposite: At the Casa Guadalupe Franciscan Friary, Gifford visually extended the grassy courtyard by painting the walls a vivid green.

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ten-foot ceilings and open floor plans that maximize the light and usable square footage.

One of the project’s unique characteristics is a concrete driveway/walkway leading to a courtyard in back that’s covered in gravel and accommodates parking.

Using permeable gravel instead of paving over the area made it possible to plant a canopy of trees to provide shade and natural beauty, and the space is usable for everything from the neighborhood’s regular block parties to private gatherings because it feels more like a small urban park than a typical paved parking lot. The passageway that leads to the parking area is painted a striking terra cotta hue, which provides a subtle pop of color to the building’s street view and gives it a sculptural quality that softens the starkly modern contours. “It’s a true urban space that’s in walking distance to Downtown, the grocery store, and Nob Hill’s attractions,” Gifford says, “and the university is nearby.”

These factors and more made the project a winner not only with residents but also with Gifford’s peers.

In 2007 it won the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Santa Fe Chapter Merit Award and the AIA New Mexico Chapter Special Recognition Award. In 2009 it

was the recipient of the Harner Award for Contemporary Architecture.

Another award-winning live-work building is the Silver Lofts in Albuquerque’s West End neighborhood.

Located between Downtown and the historic Old Town Plaza and Museum District, it received AIA’s 2005 Merit Award and its Santa Fe Design Excellence Award, among others. Each of the three-level units, which range from 900 to 1,600 square feet, has a ground-floor office and retail space that fronts the street, a 17-foothigh second floor with a kitchen and living areas, and a third-floor loft space. A landscaped courtyard includes a fountain and outdoor fireplace, and judicious use of saturated color as an accent adds interest and dimensionality to the clean, contemporary lines.

As with his other projects, Gifford followed principles of sustainability to lighten the carbon footprint of both the building itself and the sourcing of materials, using xeric landscaping and E-Crete, an autoclaved, aerated concrete block known for its durability and energy-saving properties. “We also created a zero-netenergy parking court in kind of a mews plan that hides the cars away,” he explains. “We promote energy efficiency and LEED standards in everything we build.” >

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“There’s a place for modern architecture in the Southwest because it’s reductive, taking things down to their simplest forms, the essentials, with no ostentation.”

—Tom Gifford

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In the design of Casa Guadalupe Franciscan Friary on Albuquerque’s West Mesa, which won the 2008 AIA Santa Fe Chapter Honor Award, Gifford created an oasis of natural beauty in the middle of an urban-suburban area. “The building was intended to be a retirement home for friars,” he says. “The Franciscans came here 400 years ago, traveling up the Camino Real, so we used that rich history in designing a cloister-style building that faces east and surrounds a residential courtyard. It’s a traditional building wrapped in modern architecture, intended to honor the Franciscans’ service to the region.”

The compound enjoys stunning views of the Middle Rio Grande Valley, and its meditative environment provides an unexpected respite from the urban ambience of Albuquerque. “It’s a semirural area, and the courtyard configuration creates shelter, not just from the elements but also from the suburban landscape that surrounds it. We employed color to reflect the Franciscan sensibilities—we color-matched the brown walls to the traditional brown robes the friars wear, and the vibrant pink color of the courtyard echoes the pink rose of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

Back in Albuquerque proper, one of Gifford’s particularly satisfying projects was the conversion of a decaying motel into residential housing for AIDS patients. The decrepit Sleepy Hollow Motor Coach Lodge on Central Avenue, which was built in the 1940s and thrived during the heyday of Route 66, had become an eyesore, with its units falling into disrepair. It was in danger of being demolished when it was purchased by New Mexico AIDS Services to house patients receiving long-term care.

Here Gifford concentrated on creating a net-zeroenergy design that included photovoltaic roof panels, and replaced the double-hung windows with energyefficient versions modeled on the original ones.

Privacy for the residents was ensured by placing the windows so that they did not look into other units.

“The back half of the building was great, a true art deco style,” the says. “We kept that back half and rebuilt a wing that wasn’t historic in a similar fashion. There are 11 studio units, and the leasing office was converted into a community center for support services where the residents can hold informal gatherings and meetings.”

The motor court that once allowed travelers to park

The friary’s indoor living space extends to an outdoor pavilion whose deep portales shelter the monks from the western sun, while low walls shield them from the view of passersby and allow access to the expansive panoramas. Opposite: The friary’s pink walls are a nod to the rose, a symbol of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

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PATRICK COULIE (2)

in front of their rooms was converted to a car-free courtyard, and each resident now has a small private garden space as well. The original white color was retained, with a splash of orange added to bring life to the courtyard.

“The neighbors were concerned at first about having this facility so close,” Gifford says, “but in the end they really liked it because it wasn’t a hospital-type setting—it was adaptive reuse that fit the neighborhood.

While Gifford’s designs are decidedly contemporary, he incorporates a variety of building styles, such that there is no signature style that marks his projects with his own personal identity.

“The buildings are about the people who live and work there and the city they’re in, not about me,” he says. “Modern architecture is all about light, mass, and function stripped down to elementary forms. There’s a place for modern architecture in the Southwest because it’s reductive, taking things down to their simplest forms, the essentials, with no ostentation.”

In Santa Fe, Gifford repurposed a vacant lot near the railroad tracks as infill, creating the Pacheco

Street Lofts, a live-work complex of 15 loft units in three buildings. A departure from Santa Fe’s ubiquitous faux adobe architecture, the project, which won the 2008 AIA Albuquerque Chapter Merit Award and the 2007 AIA Santa Fe Chapter Honor Award, reinvigorated the mixed-use neighborhood through carefully scaled contemporary design.

Gifford doesn’t ignore the much-loved features of traditional Southwestern architecture, but his guiding principle is to create designs that enhance the urban experience and promote interaction and a sense of community among the residents. He finds that Albuquerque is much more amenable to this approach than Santa Fe, whose restrictive building codes and reluctance to accommodate change have slowed the move toward infill building.

“Infill is usually done on land that needs to be adapted and reused for new purposes, and the resulting density creates a more vibrant city,” he says. “New Mexico’s economy used to be a commerce-based one, with trade routes like the Camino Real and later the railroad and Route 66 taking center stage. Now it’s more of an information-based economy, which can be isolating for residents.” >

The Richmond Street Studios in the heart of Nob Hill demonstrate the viability of infill projects as a way to repurpose old sites and promote a vibrant neighborhood.

Opposite: The Franciscans eschew both interior and exterior ostentation. Even inside their chapels, they prefer to focus attention on the cross rather than ornate decoration. Here, the bultos (carved wooden statues), gifts to the friars over the years, replace the customary stained glass.

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PATRICK COULIE

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PATRICK COULIE (2)

Silver Lofts, another infill project, offers stunning views and an urban vibe that gives the streetscape (bottom) a contemporary update without overwhelming the older buildings that surround it. Opposite: A unit at Richmond Street Studios uses dramatic floor-to-ceiling windows to maximize the natural light and visually expand the compact but functional space.

Gifford enjoys working in Albuquerque, he says, because of its openness to new solutions to urban challenges. “Albuquerque is an example, basically, of sprawl gone bad—it’s a small town that’s become overgrown,” he says. “But people there are willing to welcome change if it’s done right. In Santa Fe, people still don’t want it to change, but Albuquerque is more hardscrabble, with no pretension, so you have a little more control over shaping the project.”

It’s not just the client that Gifford designs for, he says, but the entire neighborhood. “Of course we work to meet the clients’ needs and preferences,” he says, “but we also take into consideration the kind of neighborhood it is, what it might need, what features would integrate the building into the larger context.”

Passersby thus see buildings that stand out for their cuttingedge design and multifunctional spaces that are perfectly scaled to their surroundings, but they’re unlikely to imagine that the genesis of these contemporary creations lies in the historic Laws of the Indies—which proves that a well-reasoned plan can remain relevant through centuries of growth and change. R trendmagazineglobal.com

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For over three decades, the Robertson family has advanced the art and science of making beautiful music, together

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hen ten-year-old Don Robertson came home from school and told his parents he wanted to play the cello, their response was, “What’s that?”

“My dad played the radio,” Robertson, now a fit 74 year old, says, smiling.

“Mostly country and western. That was about it.” Yet, from such inauspicious beginnings, that ten-year-old boy went on to become not only a professional musician but also the founder of Robertson & Sons Violin Shop in Albuquerque, one of the biggest onestop sources for bowed string instruments in the country.

Growing up in Amarillo, Texas, Robertson remembers that it was a music teacher at his local school who first inspired him. “He came to our classroom one day to try and get kids excited about signing up for the school orchestra, and he brought a cello with him.

As soon as I heard that sound, I was hooked. I just knew that was what I wanted to do.”

Even though it was unfamiliar territory, his parents were supportive. Young

Robertson was able to rent an instrument from a local music store, and did in fact join the orchestra. Finally, in high school, the music director suggested that he take private lessons. By his senior year, he was good enough to play with the Amarillo Symphony.

“I can’t explain what it is about the cello that resonated with me and drew me in,” Robertson says, “but it’s a passion that’s as real today as it ever was.” In spite of his father’s final, half-hearted attempts to get his son to change course when applying to college (“Music? Really? What about science or math?”) Robertson was awarded a scholarship to Eastern New Mexico University to study performance and become a certified teacher. He was offered a job in Albuquerque before even graduating, and in 1965 he moved to the Duke City to embark on his new career.

For the next six years Robertson taught in public schools, and for ten years he was also a cellist with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, reborn as the musicianowned New Mexico Philharmonic in 2011. “The only problem was, well, to be honest, the pay was really bad, so I started doing repairs out of my garage to supplement my income.” Working with his hands was something that had come naturally to Robertson since early childhood. He would spend hours carving wood and putting together model airplanes—something he still does to this day—and developed exceptionally good hand–eye coordination as a result, so learning the art of instrument repair was a natural progression. He took part in workshops around the country and did some formal training with some of the best experts in New York, who taught him the skills he needed to work on stringed instruments, both large and small.

The little home repair business was moving along nicely until a neighbor, annoyed by people coming and going, reported him to the police for operating an unlawful business out of his home. Following a visit from the local men in uniform, Robertson was issued with a cease and desist order. Undeterred—and with enough of a customer base to support him—he resigned from his teaching job and opened his own repair shop in 1971 on Monte Vista Boulevard near UNM. The business thrived and soon branched out to include sales and accessories.

One of the people who came in to buy a violin was his future wife, Marie, also a professional musician and teacher. She eventually joined her husband in running the shop, and three of their four grown sons would also become active in what is very much a family business today.

The shop on Monte Vista flourished for almost 30 years, during which time Robertson began to attract a more professional clientele and the business expanded to include the sale and restoration of instruments valued at thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of dollars. The classical music world is comparatively small and it didn’t take long for Robertson & Sons to become a familiar name among serious musicians. Soon they were shipping instruments, large and small—for sale or to rent—all over the country, as well as overseas. By 1995 the business was bursting at the seams, and it was time to either sell or move on. Knowing there was virtually no chance of finding a place capable of accommodating their needs, the family decided to go in search of a suitable plot of land on which to build. They found one on Carlisle Boulevard, and in 1997 they opened their striking contemporary 18,000-square-foot building.

Designed by Robertson, the place is a virtual Aladdin’s cave for stringed instrument enthusiasts. In addition to climate-controlled rooms housing a vast array of instruments for sale in every price range, there’s a shipping room, a conference room, several teaching studios, a recital hall, and workshops where craftsmen make, maintain, restore, and repair instruments. And, of course, there’s also the retail shop, offering a range of accessories, strings, bows, and sheet music. But Robertson didn’t only design the building, he was also hands-on in several aspects. The reception desk, special sets of drawers for

Robertson & Sons Violin Shop is a virtual Aladdin’s cave for stringed instrument enthusiasts, with climate-controlled rooms housing a vast array of instruments.

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“I think it’s really important to get children involved with music at an early age. The response when you put an instrument into a child’s hands for the first time is just thrilling.”

—Don Roberston

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storing bows, and acoustic panels in the recital hall are all his creations and a tribute to his exceptional woodworking skills.

Although the building is impressive in both size and scale, the atmosphere is casual and welcoming. Drawings colored by children waiting for parents or siblings adorn the reception desk, and the walls display delightful artworks, all with a musical theme. Particularly impressive is the specially commissioned tile inlay work in the floor depicting a circle of Stradivarius violins. Created by a local master tiler, it was quite a challenge to complete because both the design and the proportions had to be exactly right. “It took a few attempts,” Robertson admits, “but it was worth it.”

Since opening in their new location, business has more than doubled.

Word continues to spread and the customer base continues to grow. “We had a double bass player recently fly in from Scotland to buy an instrument,” Robertson says, “and we’ve supplied instruments to principal orchestral players in Amsterdam, Toronto, and London, as well as international soloists.”

But Robertson & Sons is not just a resource for those seeking high-end instruments—far from it. The shop’s vast inventory, the most extensive of its kind in the country, covers all price ranges, and Robertson draws its line of instruments from a number of different sources—auctions, personal contacts, and established violin makers like Carl Becker & Son Ltd, Ernest Heinrich Roth, and Tetsuo Matsuda. Their bestselling student instruments are made in-house by skilled craftsmen—one of whom came in as an apprentice about 15 years ago and never left—and sell for $10,000 to $15,000.

In addition, Robertson houses a thriving rental department catering to all ages, some as young as three years old. The company also works with a number of teachers and organizations that follow the Suzuki method, based on Japa-

Top: Robertson employs four luthiers (makers of stringed instruments) who specialize in violins, including Chris Pedersen.

It takes about eight weeks of fulltime work to make a single violin.

Bottom: Justin Roberston touching up the varnish on a fine Italian violin. Sales Associate Barbara Barber with Aaron Robertson.

Opposite: All in the family, including Don Robertson, bottom row middle, with wife, Marie, at his right, and son Bryan far right in the photo, holding a bass.

The recital hall is used daily to help clients finetune their instruments and is often the site for master classes and concerts, including Robertson’s annual August benefit event that kicks off Music from Angel Fire’s summer chamber music festival— just one of the ways in which Roberston gives back to the community.

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Three things determine an instrument’s value, says Don Robertson: condition, age, and authenticity. A master like Stradivarius created instruments with flawless precision and workmanship, and only a handful of the precious few that remain are in good enough condition to be played. They have, Don points out, a special, silvery sound that makes it possible for a soloist to play and not be covered up by the orchestra.

Opposite: Aaron with an extremely rare double bass, made in Venice around 1747 by master luthier Domenico Montagnana. It was recently sold to a client in Europe.

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nese violinist Shinichi Suzuki’s theory applying the principles of early childhood language learning to music education.

“I think it’s really important to get children involved with music at an early age,” Robertson says. “The response when you put an instrument into a child’s hands for the first time is just thrilling.” Consequently, the quality of Robertson’s rentals is well above average, a difference that does not go unnoticed by professional teachers. “I have all my students rent their instruments from Robertson,” says Kristin Garson, a violinist and private instructor in Arizona. “Kids can easily be discouraged by the sound of a cheap violin—they think it’s somehow their fault—so it’s really important for them to start out playing a good quality instrument. Robertson hasn’t let me down yet.”

That’s because one supplier specially makes all rental violins for Robertson, to their specifications. They arrive unassembled so that the workshop can complete the job to its own satisfaction. All the instruments are then played before being put out to rent under the name RVS (Robertson Violin Shop).

The company’s reputation continues to grow, and not only through regular advertisements in national specialty magazines. Robertson himself still attends conventions around the country, takes part in exhibitions, and goes to select auctions, both at home and overseas. He attributes his success to quality of products, pricing, honesty, integrity, and service. “Customer service is particularly important, especially for a personal, family business like ours,” he says. “If people don’t like how

they’re treated, they won’t come back, so it’s something we take very seriously.”

Going the extra mile does seem to be par for the course.

Violinist Kristin Garson recalls how she flew in from Arizona to pick up an instrument and was worried about missing her return flight. “Don insisted on giving me a ride to the airport,” she says. “No one does that. It was a few years ago, but I’ve never forgotten it.”

The Robertsons now have 18 employees, including sons Bryan, Justin, and Aaron. Bryan, who apprenticed with his father, is a master of the art of re-hairing and restoring fine bows, something he has done for over 30 years, and is known and respected worldwide. He uses only the finest horsehair, of which there are many different varieties, and while they may not look that different to the untrained eye, the combination of color, coarseness, and flexibility is crucial to the final quality of the sound. Justin, the go-to guy for all things technical, is an expert in non-invasive restoration—an art in itself—and one for which the tools have changed little over the centuries.

Aaron heads up the sales department.

An accomplished double bass player who has performed regularly with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Aaron takes particular pleasure in matching customers with the right instrument.

“Lots of shops don’t even deal with basses,” he says, “because they take up too much room and they’re hard to work on. So I’m glad to be able to work with all kinds of musicians. We’ve really created a new kind of business model and having a recital hall

here, where customers can try out instruments before they buy, is a huge plus.”

It is also, apparently, unique. Although a handful of shops have sprung up around the country in an attempt to emulate what Robertson does, they are all much smaller and none has a recital hall. Aaron is grateful to his parents for passing on their passion for music. “We only heard classical music at home, nothing else,” he says, smiling. “Even now, if we’re driving somewhere and there’s music playing that isn’t classical, Dad will ask to change the station.”

The fact that every member of the Robertson team has musical experience definitely adds to the familial atmosphere. One of them, Barbara Barber, Aaron’s sales associate, is an internationally known violinist, violist, and recording artist. “Don and I had been friends for years before I moved here to work with him,” she says, “and I love being part of this business. Helping artists to choose the right instrument is very gratifying.”

As is helping customers preserve their cherished possessions, even if their value is little more than sentimental. Barbara recalls, in particular, the time when an old man in a wheelchair came into the shop with a violin that was in really bad shape.

“We tried to explain to him that repairing it wasn’t worth the investment, but he insisted, saying it was important to him for sentimental reasons. So we agreed. Though it wasn’t easy, we did manage to restore it. When he came back a couple of months later to pick it up, I played it for him and he was almost in tears.

He apparently passed on not long afterwards, so I’m really glad we were able to give him that experience.”

And, since everyone in the shop plays an instrument, it’s now traditional for all of them to get together once a year to perform a short concert on Christmas Eve. “We play for the last half hour we’re open,” Barber says. “It’s not pretty, but it’s fun and the customers seem to enjoy it. They must, because they keep coming back, which is what really matters.”

Attracting concert audiences out there in the real world, however, is not so easy. “I’d really like to see more young people going to concerts,” Robertson says. “The vast majority of audiences have grey hair. I just wish classical music was more popular than rock in this country—it is in China, believe it or not.”

He clearly has concerns about the impact of technology on the lives and habits of the young. “Everything now is delivered in sound bites,” he says, “and everyone is looking at a screen. So they never learn to concentrate or focus. And now I see kids as young as three or four with iPhones. It’s frightening that it occupies so much time and attention. I thought TV was bad enough.”

But the good news is that the Suzuki method is growing in popularity, and most Albuquerque middle and high schools have thriving youth orchestras. “Learning to play an instrument will keep the art alive,” Robertson says. “Even if they don’t end up as professional musicians, they’re going to be tomorrow’s audience. And music enhances the quality of life for everyone, no matter what their age.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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The Burmeisters in the kitchen of their Downtown Albuquerque loft.

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ART

in Flux

BY KATHRYN M DAVIS

PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL

E

ntering Christopher and Kathleen Burmeister’s loft, you might not think you were in Downtown Albuquerque.

Maybe New York or Los Angeles, given its stripped-down, crisp black-and-white aesthetic. Against that setting, bits of bright red catch your attention, and you’re drawn to a kitchen shelf, wide and bare but for a perfect tomato next to a pair of nail clippers. Sitting at the end of the shelf, a can of Diet Coke.

In the clean-lined neatness of the loft, nail clippers, soda cans, and even single tomatoes seem oddly incongruous. Then Christopher clarifies that Diet Coke is a sculpture by LA-based artist Matt Johnson. The tomato and clippers comprise an artwork by New York artist Darren Bader, and the story of how he finally managed to convince Bader that he was worthy enough to sell to—by insisting Christopher find and present the “perfect” set of clippers—defies common sense.

“Essentially,” Christopher quips. “I bought air; I bought an idea.” He seems pleased with the notion.

Most of us, if we think about art collectors at all, tend to file them away as members of the 1 percent, outrageously wealthy consumers of the accoutrements of culture. The Victorians used to call them the nouveau riche, a term that carried with it not-so-veiled implications of a gauche acquisitiveness for all the trappings of prosperity: chandeliers, crystal, and gold forks—and great, dark paintings of one’s ancestors, often made by well-known artists.

In the 21st century, of course, most of us don’t really care where, when, or how the money came in, but we often wonder if it shouldn’t be shared a tad more equitably. So when a celebrity gazillionaire spends a record million or two or five hundred on a work of art, we shake our heads at the crazy world we live in, and think about how wisely we would spend it if we could get our hands on even a fraction of that amount of cash.

Then there’s the question of where to put all that artwork, but we remember that the opulently wealthy live in sprawling mansions all over the globe with lots of space for all those monolithic paintings and sculptures. Even so, all this gobbling up of artas-commodity is just more silliness.

Well, yes, it is, Christopher agrees. For him, buying art is a deeply personal experience, one that leads to intellectual as well as aesthetic fulfillment.

Ultimately, he says, it’s a matter of opinion, and “I’m a very narrow-minded, opinionated guy.” He despises those who collect on the advice of a private curator or investment counselor, those who price paintings by the square foot just as they would real estate. He finds art fairs on par with car lots, swarming with gallery owners and their assistants who want to push product at you.

This might seem like a harsh judgement coming from a guy who also owns works by blue-chip artists Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Julian Schnabel, and Ellsworth Kelly. Though for the record, he’s been collecting for at least two decades now, and this is

For this savvy young couple, building a collection is an inspirational and intellectual journey

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“I’m not collecting to store, or to hang everything salon-style. The art is more precious to me than that; it deserves more respect.”

— Christopher Burmeister

The Albuquerque loft kitchen/dining area. The Burmeisters keep their design palette simple: black, white, and neutrals form the backdrops against which the artwork and furnishings take center stage. Wood, leather, glass, and steel provide texture without being overwhelming. Top: Christopher Burmeister went through several nail clippers before finding the right one for Darren Bader’s Prototype III L2 (2011–16).

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the art that he resonates with. “I know the art of ’80s,” he says.

But his point is well made: Burmeister doesn’t buy like too many collectors do—to serve an investment portfolio, or to fill a warehouse. In fact, the collection represents an even split, more or less, between emerging artists as much as the big names.

The Burmeisters and their preschool-aged firecracker of a son, Alexander, split their time between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. They live in two modest lofts—one in the renovated Albuquerque High School just off Central Avenue downtown, and the other on Pacheco Street in Santa Fe, a quiet mixed-use neighborhood that claims an auto garage, storage units, a senior-living community, a café, and an upscale design complex. The young family makes frequent use of the New Mexico Rail Runner and love their mobility. In total they are a modern, youngish couple who live well but minimally, their living spaces bordering perhaps on compulsively spare—a thoughtfully planned arrangement that functions like a work of the conceptual art they appreciate. Even with a young son building “food machines” out of paper towel rolls, a visitor would be struck by the uncluttered layout of both homes.

In keeping with their minimalist aesthetic, the Burmeisters are committed to owning no more than 100 pieces at any one time between their two lofts. “When you like a work of art, you give it space, its own environment,” Christopher explains. “I’m not

The entryway to the Albuquerque loft is home to Spenser Finch’s painting Darkness (1993) and Richard Long’s Cornish Circle (1981).

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Just as this collection is not based in the impulse to hoard or preserve, neither is it based on the urgency to invest in for the future; rather, it is a means for continually stimulating intellectual and emotional curiosity.

In keeping with their minimalist aesthetic, the Burmeisters also collect mid-century and other modern furnishings. Hanging in the living room is an untitled series by Agnes Martin from 1990. On top of the Isamu Noguchi table sits Shio Kusaka’s Grid Vase (2011), and small skull and horse sculptures by Fritz Scholder. On the far wall of the dining area hangs Adam Pendleton’s Star Magazine (2007).

collecting to store, or to hang everything salon-style. The art is more precious to me than that; it deserves more respect. There are maybe twelve pieces in my living room, and that’s almost overwhelming to me. They need air. I try this with that, move stuff around.”

And if many art collectors today seem to exhibit some of the frantic impulses of hoarders, the Burmeisters surprise by not having any fixed goals or boundaries in mind—instead their artbuying is always in flux, something Christopher describes as the opposite of “retrospective collecting, filling in the gaps in a collection of works by one artist.” For him, living with art is rather like owning a movie you love and watching it endlessly until you are able to repeat the dialog as it’s spoken. Hopefully, he says, he’s able to look at an artwork endlessly. When that’s no longer the case, it’s time to pass it on. “You have to know how to let something go,” he says, “and to admit when you’ve outgrown something.”

It is hardly surprising that Burmeister would gravitate toward a spare aesthetic with a highly intellectual foundation. He’s been visiting Marfa, Texas, for 20 years now, home of Donald Judd

A simple lamp is the only accessory on a Jasper Morrison bedside table in the Albuquerque loft. Left: Mark Bradford’s The Once and Future King (2011) makes a statement next to the kitchen in the Santa Fe loft.

until his death in 1994. While Judd himself rejected the term commonly used for his art—Minimalism—he is considered to have begun one of the 20th century’s key art movements.

In a 1965 interview with Artforum, Judd said of his work that people conflate its seeming simplicity with a lack of meaning.

But “reductive” art, as he called it, is in fact quite complex and whole—it simply requires close attention.

So much of what we understand (or don’t) about art today springs from this movement called Minimalism and the ideas attached to it—although there are still viewers who, more than 50 years after its advent, fear that its creators are somehow making fun of their audiences. Most viewers, after all, are used to looking at art that presents, in a concrete and pleasing fashion, a visual composition of something familiar. Burmeister, on the other hand, seeks art that challenges him. He buys what he loves, as does Kathleen, but he is also attracted to art that makes him uncomfortable, that represents a puzzle to be worked out. Just as his collection is not based in the impulse to hoard or preserve, neither is it based on the urgency to invest in for the future; rather, it is a means for continually stimulating his intellectual and emotional curiosity. Once he buys a piece by an artist, Christopher immediately launches a campaign to get his hands on everything ever 90

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Above the bed in the Albuquerque loft hangs Richard Serra’s Coltrane (1999). The small piece on the wall at left is Gary Simmons’s Bryce (2014). The sculpture beneath it is by Roxy Paine, a Brooklyn-based sculptor and installation artist who studied at the College of Santa Fe (now Santa Fe University of Art and Design).

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Unlike some couples who only buy artworks they both love, Christopher and Kathleen don’t agree on everything they collect.

Born and raised in Mexico, where her father owned a mine in the colonial city of San Luís Potosí, Kathleen notes that her husband “buys a lot of stuff I hate,” but that they work it out.

Christopher loves that his wife is, like him, “very opinionated.

She stays true to her own taste, her own visceral reaction to art. We don’t have to be connected at the hip. I love when she tells me she doesn’t like something that I do.”

Their collecting also serves as a kind of travelogue. Christopher recalls how his grandparents were always buying things on their adventures, long before they were in vogue. After one trip they came home with a hookah pipe. “I’d never seen one before. It was all about their journeys, what they wanted to remember and live with.” Art collecting is like that for him as well—just a few pieces that remind him of an idea, a place, a juncture in time.

In fact, “access is key,” he states, using his experiences in New Mexico’s art circles to illustrate his point. He recalls running into the painter Ed Ruscha at a local party, talking with the inimitable

Bits of color punctuate the otherwise neutral palate that dominates the Santa Fe loft.

On the wall is an untitled 2015 painting by Alain Biltereyst. Atop the Eero Saarinen table is squash-Memphis (1986) by Maria Sánchez. Right: Marc Newson’s felt chair (2005). Opposite: On the floor of the Santa Fe loft living room sits Carl Andre’s Glarus Copper Sum (2006–7) and, above it, Marty Horwitz’s Art Bar from the 1990s.

written about that individual. He reads it all, too—unlike some collectors who buy, say, a major artist’s catalogue raisonné without ever breaking its plastic seal.

Burmeister, who grew up in Baltimore but has spent most of his life in California and New Mexico, began collecting art while he was in college in San Diego. He had been looking into the window of a gallery that he regularly walked past, idly wondering why a painting displayed there cost what it did. One day, he went inside and started talking to the owner. “He was a very charismatic guy,” Burmeister remembers, “and a lightbulb went off in my head when he suggested I could buy something from him on a payment plan.” He worked summers in California, paying for an art piece that might have ranged from $500 to $800. By the end of the summer, he’d “have something to bring home” for his friends and family to check out. Burmeister relishes those memories—and their lessons: “If I can collect art, anyone can do it.”

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(and controversial) curator Dave Hickey, and going through the state’s Museum of Art with writer Lucy Lippard when they just happened to be there at the same time. The art world is small, and the Burmeisters buy wherever they are, but the immediacy that New Mexico offers is something he treasures. He cites the galleries of Charlotte Jackson, Richard Levy, James Kelly, Laura Carpenter, Dwight Hackett, and Linda Durham as having been invaluable to his knowledge and subsequent collection.

The bottom line, however, is that the art is simply pleasurable to look at. “Beauty has its own meaning,” Christopher says, referencing the art and philosophy of Agnes Martin. Like Judd and Carl Andre, she worked in gridded seriality, an important theme that emerged in the second half of the 20th century. The Burmeisters’ lofts reflect that grid, while the art often disrupts its order. Disrupting order is a chief component of Conceptualism— art that often makes little sense to the uninitiated. Often, the initiated have simply learned to accept that the artwork, like the stuff of human life it reflects, is an enigma.

While there are Martins, Andres, Richard Princes, and Damian Hirsts in their collection, the Burmeisters are also dedicated to championing artists who haven’t yet reached ethereal status.

“There is definitely a difference between creating a museum-esque collection and buying to reflect local artists and our own quirky tastes,” Christopher points out.

Notably, the Burmeister collection served as the impetus for the exhibition Nod Nod Wink Wink: Conceptual Art in New Mexico and Its Influences. Highly acclaimed, it opened in July 2011 at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos and people are still talking about it. It was a perfect showcase for works by New Mexico–born Tony Feher and Peter Sarkisian, as well as artists who’ve called New Mexico home for years, including Bruce Nauman, Richard Tuttle, Ron Davis, Larry Bell, and Richard Artschwager.

The Burmeisters don’t necessarily collect based on where an artist might have been born or chosen to live. Hearkening back to his grandparents, Chris reflected recently that travel is a key component to his collecting. He’s been all over the world to look at Cezanne’s Bathers, Picasso’s Guernica, Van Gogh’s Starry Nights, Monet’s Haystacks, Koons’s Rabbit, and Lichtenstein’s I’m Sorry.

Seeing the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City is on his bucket list.

Still, he ruminates, “I want to see as much as I can; it’s important to me. But I don’t want to live with those major artworks.”

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the RICOCHET project Deeply affecting acrobatic acumen takes circus performance to a whole new level

BY EDIE DILLMAN | PHOTOS BY K ATE RUSSELL

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aura Stokes and Cohdi Harrell do things with ropes and chairs that at first might confound the average theatergoer. Their work is at once dramatic, in a way reminiscent of Houdini’s most breathtaking feats, and at the same time poignant, evoking Twyla Tharp’s most intimate choreography. A combination of dance, contortion, and aerial acrobatics, the duo’s RICOCHET Project has earned them kudos as masters of a relatively new theatrical art form: contemporary circus performance.

The art, also known as nouveau cirque, emerged in Europe and Australia in the 1970s as a way to explore the physical feats of derring-do of the standard three-ring circus but without the usual animal acts. Increasingly, performances took on the quality of theatrical production, using traditional circus skills along with music, plot, and staging to tell a story or convey a theme.

Relatively unknown in the United States, it’s considered a fullblown art form in Europe. In fact, at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe (The Fringe), Stokes and Harrell were awarded the Total Theater Award in Circus for the RICOCHET Project’s stage show Smoke and Mirrors. Considering that The Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world and last year hosted more than 50 thousand performances of over 3,300 shows, it’s clear that this international nod is an extraordinary achievement.

“Cohdi and I have always had a special artistic chemistry,” Stokes says of her decade-long collaboration with Harrell. “I think inherently we are both soloists, meaning that we are very subjective in our art-making and are more tuned to our own creative voices than collaborative energies. This has been successful for us in that our individual expressions have always been very near and complimentary to one another.”

Although both artists continue with their solo work, Stokes believes that the RICOCHET Project brings something unique to audiences. “Human beings want to see relationship, connection, and dynamic tension—which is far more difficult to manufacture with just one person on stage.”

Together, Stokes and Harrell evolved Smoke and Mirrors into a wrenching and beautiful exploration of personal struggle and discovery. Using stark lighting and minimal props—a few chairs, long lengths of rope, a single trapeze—the production explores issues of American capitalism through the struggles of two people battling each other and their own demons. The performance begins with them dressed in business suits, but, as the emotional journey deepens, they eventually strip down to become nearly naked, wrapped with rope. Thus entwined,

their hearts and minds are now presented with the challenge: unbind and dance, or remain forever constrained.

Stokes and Harrell, currently based in Berlin where they are preparing for a European tour of their work during the spring and summer of 2016, discuss the evolution of Smoke and Mirrors as well as their recent collaboration with Santa Fe photographer Kate Russell to interpret the themes in a “real life” setting.

As in the theatrical performance, Russell’s images represent the human struggle for place and intimacy. “All the places we have shot are different, and they come with their own ingredients,” Harrell says. “Space always affects us in different ways, but honestly, more than the space, it is the people we are working with.”

For her photo exploration of the characters developed for the stage, Russell took them away from their usual venue and out into the very real and bright landscape of the Southwest. “I have been seeking out collaborations where people meet me and my energy, and we create something bigger and more exciting together,” Russell says. A professional photographer (and longtime Trend contributor), Russell also has a background as a circus manager and occasional performer. She has built a reputation as a trusted collaborator in the creative world of Santa Fe and she is both fast and accurate—decisive about moving herself and her camera to capture a moment in action, as well as patient and calculating when lighting a subject or waiting for the light to create the right reflection or delineate a certain glow on a building. Most importantly, whether shooting for an assignment or for her own art, she projects a strong work ethic—personal satisfaction must be part of the process and the outcome. Russell’s precise control of the perspective, light, and composition creates a whole new take on RICOCHET’s characters and their inner conflicts.

While influenced by the themes of the theatrical show, these off site images stand alone as something else entirely: a collaboration among artists and the exploration of the role of the photographer as audience, director, and participant. Furthermore, the project offered Stokes and Harrell a new way to think about the themes of struggle and discovery. “I am always grateful to have the opportunity to see how I can respond through movement to the wild and natural world,” Stokes says.

Once RICOCHET finishes its European tour, Stokes and Harrell plan to bring Smoke and Mirrors—and perhaps a new presentation of Russell’s images—to Santa Fe audiences. Harrell, who was born and raised in New Mexico, has created most of his work here for the past 15 years. “Santa Fe is my home and I will always be back,” he says.

And when he and Stokes return, Santa Fe is in for an exceptional theatrical experience. >

Tiptoeing the line from the heart to the head, RICOCHET creates intimate acrobatic performance. Their unique style of contemporary circus bridges jaw-dropping virtuosity with the unnamable experience of what it means to be human. trendmagazineglobal.com

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“Much more than a display of skills or tricks, these bleakly elegant, intensely concentrated solos reveal the psychological rhythms of the silent unnamed characters they’re embodying.”

—Donald Hutera, The Times, London

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“This two-hander by the New Mexico-based RICOCHET Project is a brutal and uncompromising look at how we tie ourselves up in knots; how we contort the body and the spirit in the pursuit of happiness.”

—Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

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“This is contemporary circus at its most richly expressive: a metaphor for the effects of an exploitative economy on our lives and loves.”

—Matt Trueman, Fest

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“High overhead, Stokes and Harrell move slowly through transmutations so intricate, so far removed from what the everyday body can do, that they’re like Renaissance depictions of angels. Extreme distortions and displacements of the figure, initially jarring to this dance fan, eventually provided a whole new language and potential for emotion.” ­—Laura Molzahn, Chicago Tribune

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5 Days 91 Artists 63 Studios Opening Reception Friday June 17 5:00 - 8:00PM at the Santa Fe University of Art & Design Gallery & Studios Open June 18 & 19 10AM - 5PM Studios Open June 25 & 26 10AM - 5PM For more information visit www.santafestudiotour.com Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SantaFeStudioTour/

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HARWOOD MUSEUM OF ART

TAOS, NEW MEXICO

May 22, 2016 – September 11, 2016 MDL&Co. SYMPOSIUM WEEKEND June 17-19, 2016

ALBUQUERQUE MUSEUM

NEW MEXICO

October 29, 2016 – January 22, 2017

BURCHFIELD PENNEY ART CENTER

BUFFALO, NEW YORK

March 10, 2017 – May 28, 2017

mabeldodgeluhan.org

information, lodging packages & programs STEPHANIE BENNETT-SMITH & ORIN R. SMITH HEALY FOUNDATION Nicolai Fechin, Mabel Dodge Luhan, 1927. Oil on canvas.

Courtesy of American Museum for Western Art. The Anschutz Collection, Denver, CO. Photograph by William J. O’Connor.

At right: Mabel Dodge Sterne [Luhan], c. 1918, Taos, NM. Photo courtesy of Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

harwoodmuseum.org 238 Ledoux St | Taos, NM 87571 575.758.9826

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A cadre of contemporary art champions envision Downtown Albuquerque as a vital cultural corridor for the state and the region

The

Pro-Activists of Art

BY KATHRYN M DAVIS | PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL

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pend any time in Albuquerque and one fact stands out above the others: it is the urban center of the state of New Mexico. Boasting all kinds of arts institutions, museums, and galleries, not only is Albuquerque strongly rooted in its own art history, it is a bastion of diversity. Rather than existing off to the side as some sort of elitist “other,” art has over the decades woven itself into the very fabric of the city, intertwined with its vitality as a whole. And not just traditional art; Albuquerque is also quickly emerging as a nexus for galleries that focus on contemporary works. As with all strong points, however, there’s a flip side: the Duke City can seem to be spread out in an unwieldy fashion as visitors drive up and down and back and forth on Lomas and Montaño and San Mateo and, well, you get the picture. The bigger it gets, the greater its need for a centralized arts district.

Where, of course, is the question. Fortunately, it seems Historic Route 66 could provide the answer. Central Avenue, the byway for the University of New Mexico, Nob Hill, and the downtown drag, keeps the kitschy yet vital spirit of America’s Mother Road alive and kicking. Despite a few near-fatal bouts with economic influenza, Central Avenue has been and still is Albuquerque’s lifeline.

Which is why a growing and incorrigibly proactive group of professionals—who happen to be women—have a magnificent and perfectly feasible vision for Burque’s contemporary art future that focuses on this corridor.

Grounding themselves in and expanding upon what’s

Opposite: Suzanne Sbarge at the entrance to 516 ARTS, with Thomas Christopher Haag’s 2010 mural Trinity: (the way things ought to be).

Sbarge, who arrived in Albuquerque over 25 years ago to earn her Master of Arts from UNM, has been instrumental in raising the profile of Albuquerque artists and the downtown arts scene, first as executive director of Magnifico Arts and then as owner of 516 ARTS, which she founded in 2006. This year Sbarge brings the Fulcrum Fund to 516 ARTS, which will function as the Albuquerque arm of the Andy Warhol Foundation’s regional regranting program to support artists and curators.

already transpired so far in the downtown scene, they have farsighted plans for their city, from furthering aspects of the city’s master plan for downtown revitalization, to a statewide program of main-street initiatives, to impressively ambitious schemes that could impact the entire Southwest.

These women’s names will be familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention. The public face and core of the group is composed of Viviette Hunt, director of the anchor-stone Richard Levy Gallery at 514 Central Avenue Southwest; Suzanne Sbarge, founder and executive director of 516 ARTS next door to Levy gallery; and Nancy Zastudil, founder and director of the newly relocated Central Features, now upstairs from Levy’s gallery, a contemporary art gallery that “promotes environmental stewardship, social progress, and the intrinsic value of creative arts.”

Other players integral to Albuquerque’s developing sense of itself as a contemporary art hub include Sheri Crider, founder of SCA Contemporary Art; Kymberly Pinder, Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico; Tey Marianna Nunn, director and chief curator of the art museum at the National Hispanic Cultural Center; and Sherri Brueggemann, manager of the Public Art Urban Enhancement Program in the Cultural Services Department of the City of Albuquerque. Many more are sure to join in as momentum continues to grow.

Speaking with these women, both together in an informal round table discussion, as well as separately over the phone and through e-mails, it becomes apparent that Albuquerque’s urban abandon makes it perfect for the kinds of projects these women envision.

“Unlike Santa Fe, Albuquerque is not so restricted by an imposed aesthetic,” Pinder says. Her remarks are particularly telling given that she is relatively new to the

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Nancy Zastudil at her Central Features Gallery in Downtown Albuquerque. Zastudil arrived in the city in 2010 after working as an associate director at the University of Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. Her formative New Mexico years took place on a mesa just outside of Tres Piedras, 30 miles from water, ice, fuel, and groceries, where she and sisters Nina and Erin Elder founded PLAND, an artistresidency program in a house that was constructed by hand.

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Viviette Hunt, director of Richard Levy Gallery. Hunt originally came to Albuquerque to study alternative healing, establishing her own successful clinic. Her college education in art and its history eventually led to a shift in her professional focus, and she has been with the Richard Levy Gallery for 15 years, where she has proved instrumental at creating contemporary programming in Albuquerque. Hunt networks at several international art fairs every year, as well as curates exhibitions at the gallery.

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city, having relocated to UNM two years ago from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also helped open the CFA Downtown Studio gallery on 4th Street at Copper.

Sbarge, in an earlier Q&A session with Zastudil that covered this very situation, agreed that there is tremendous freedom in this apparent lack of cohesion in Albuquerque, despite the image that tourists may have of Santa Fe. “Albuquerque is a wide-open space. The fact that it doesn’t have a distinct identity has been a really good thing for artists—they have the space to experiment.

You can do a lot with a little here.”

Crider, who recently relocated her gallery to the former Sanitary Tortilla Factory building in Downtown Albuquerque, says, “We are gathering steam; artists are staying here for a variety of reasons. There are more opportunities, more events, and more colleagues and peers to share our visions with.”

Even though funding is a key consideration with New Mexico stuck in the economic underbelly of the US, Zastudil says that can be a plus as well. “When you have little, you have little to lose.” And everything to gain. Economic studies have shown that since the early 2000s, the arts in all their permutations bring millions of badly needed dollars into our state.

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When asked why a contemporary arts district is critical to Downtown Albuquerque’s health and vitality, Brueggemann says that despite the freedom unlimited expectations may offer artists, “All urban centers should have an arts district to provide a public gathering place for dialog and the exchange of cultural ideas. Having such a concentration builds the character of any community and enhances social engagement.

An arts corridor brings together the diverse local practices with others in the world.”

Besides, notes Pinder, “The arts are a main economic and cultural driver. Albuquerque has as many, if not more, engaging artistic histories as a well-known cultural mecca like New Orleans, and needs to see itself that way.”

Since this handful of talented, entrepreneurial professionals surely represents the tip of the iceberg, a lively downtown should seem like a no-brainer for Albuquerque’s near future. And on some levels it is already in motion, with the redevelopment of the Albuquerque Rail Yards and such initiatives as UNM’s Innovate ABQ and a proposed new entertainment district. But for all the progress that has been made toward a revitalized downtown since the arrival of

Nancy Zastudil with the photographer’s dog Bo. Zastudil recently launched an art rental program from her gallery, which allows Albuquerqueans to place art in their offices and homes on a temporary basis. Opposite bottom: Jennifer Nehrbass Redhead 3 (2015), mixed media on wood. Opposite top: Marcelyn McNeil, Missing You (2015), oil pigment on archival paper.

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Magda Biernat, Adrift #3, Antarctica (2013), archival digital pigment print. Opposite top: Xuan Chen Empty and Full #2 (2016), mixed media on panel. Opposite bottom: Sin Huellas Collective (Delilah Montoya, Albuquerque, with Orlando Lara, Deyadira Trevino, Brenda Cruz-Wolf, Hope Sanford, Selene Cortez, and Carlos Carrasco), Selene’s Dream from Detention Nation (2015), cyanotype print on fabric.

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TOP: COURTESY OF RICHARD LEVY GALLERY; BOTTOM: COURTESTY OF 516 ARTS

the 21st century, “Albuquerque has been underfunded in the arts,” Hunt notes. Despite this, she revels in the city’s ability to “optimize what we do have—an arts community that is dedicated to supporting all of us in our endeavors.”

The greatest challenge is, perhaps, one of definition: Just what is contemporary art, anyway? Sbarge says, “The challenge I have found is the need to educate other sectors about what contemporary art is—its scope as well as its accessibility—since people tend to think of art in a traditional, static way.”

No one understands this better than Nunn. As a native Burqueña who received her PhD in Latin American Studies from UNM, she has also worked as a curator at the state’s Museum of International Folk Art and is an award-winning contributor to the scholarship on our region’s historic folk art. “Many gatekeepers and decision makers here still look at arts through a very traditional and limited lens,” she says.

Which is to say that, from an average person’s perspective, art might be seen as something that simply has nothing to do with one’s everyday life—especially contemporary art, that weird stuff that doesn’t make any sense at all. Who wants their tax dollars going to that?

Raychael Stine, Chicklet Jammers (2015), oil and acrylic on canvas. Top: Fitzallan Projects (a collaboration between Nina Dubois and Sheri Crider), detail of Drift #1 (2015), discarded hollow core doors. Drift #1 was included in The Human Drift, an exhibition at SCA Contemporary Art that combined five generations of artists and architects, including Bart Prince and Steve Barry. Opposite: Jenna Kuiper, Daggers Stones (2015), silver gelatin photogram.

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COURTESY OF RICHARD LEVY GALLERY

To move past such outdated notions, we should remember that aside from its aesthetic value, art challenges our ideas about what it means to be human and raises important questions about how we live and interact. As the American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein said, “The point is, art never stopped a war.

That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people . . . Because people are changed by art—enriched, ennobled, encouraged—they then act in a way that may affect the course of events.”

This is the message that is increasingly being broadcast by Duke City art activists: creativity has its own intrinsic value. To further the case in favor of contemporary art as a compelling driver of community, it is helpful to substitute the word “culture” for “art.” Here, culture doesn’t mean snobbiness; rather, as defined by Merriam Webster, culture is “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.”

Throw a good dose of spirit into that mix of intellect, and you’ve got a sense of how contemporary culture can invigorate Downtown Albuquerque. It’s not a matter of art galleries selling expensive work to the few so much as supporting a community of inspired thinkers and creators (of art, jobs, and other good things). The creatives are already here to stay, so why not engage them in making an urban center that rocks? From bankers to construction workers; families and sweethearts and singles; musicians, dancers, and traditional artists of all mediums and styles; everyone benefits from a downtown that’s lively at all

hours of the day and on into the night.

This leads to one of the biggest visions that Hunt, Sbarge, and Zastudil share with so many leading arts advocates: a collecting museum for contemporary art (MoCA). Think of Los Angeles, Denver, New York, Chicago, and many more—all of these cities reap economic gains from their museums of contemporary art. Whether it’s a tourist destination devoted to the visual arts, designed by a world-class architect with an environmentally sustainable landscaping plan, or a major city gallery with an auditorium for all kinds of performative arts and education programming—or both—these women have big ideas for their community.

“A long-term dream of mine is to someday be part of the creation of a major contemporary arts center in Albuquerque, Sbarge says. “One that has both a local and a global scope of programming.”

Zastudil expresses their vision quite succinctly when she states, “I want Albuquerque to be a go-to city for contemporary art. I am a big fan of telling our own story. We need to pressure the local media into covering the growth of businesses and art in the city. So let’s go straight to the city council, to the mayor, to zoning meetings with our visions. I want to see more artists taking over empty spaces downtown, negotiating with property owners, doing pop-up shows, and defying expectations.”

As Hunt asserts, “Art changes the way we see the world.

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BY KEIKO OHNUMA PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM

When

Leis is More

An Albuquerque painter champions the beauty of expression distilled to its minimalist core

OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF MARIETTA PATRICIA LEIS

A

bstract minimalist painting—those huge canShe had chosen the University of New Mexico for graduate vases washed with monochromatic blocks of school because it offered the right mix of natural beauty and discolor—have long been associated with the kind tance from the crowd. After earning her MFA, she got busy showof bohemian artists who infuriate the common ing, teaching, and jumping on opportunities. In the mid-1990s man with their collective nose-thumbing at orshe dove into a multiyear project exploring the forgotten Renaisthodoxy of all kinds. It is not quite the same sance painter Marietta Robusti, culminating in multiple grants thing to encounter monochrome paintings on and a body of work that toured for four years. an intimate scale, paintings that invite peering into, as if standing Leis had married a healthcare consultant, David Vogel, and toat the edge of a deep lake, painted by a woman living quietly in gether they cultivated a two-acre property in Corrales. But someAlbuquerque, New Mexico, in the new century. thing began to shift around 2001, when life in America took a Marietta Patricia Leis is used to defending her choice of abstracturn. Like a lot of artists, Leis turned inward, and determined to tion over what some might consider more stereotypical female follow the threads of a Buddhist practice begun in the 1990s. genres—animal spirits or goddess The couple sold their Corrales figures or ironic feminist collage. spread and divested themselves Embodying the cool economy of of most furniture and belongings, her canvases, she exudes a calm taking a rental in the East acceptance of her oddball place Mountains. An art residency in among New Mexican artists, ever Crater Lake in 2001 proved decisive ready to welcome initiates into the in translating these meditative urges peaceful world of her large, clean, into paint. Encountering the deep white studio. blue of Oregon’s volcanic lake, Leis Her house is likewise large and longed not only to dive into that blue clean and white, the landscaping as caldera, but to offer it to the world as sculptural as a Zen garden, deeply a bridge between the material and hidden from its Nob Hill neighspiritual. borhood. Indeed, the moment you “I wanted the work to reach out step into her world, Leis begins to a person and hover,” she recalls. the subtle conversion process that “With flat painting, they’re on a wall leaves you pining for the purifying and you’re looking at. I wanted it cleanliness of less. in your face, reaching out, or like She did not start out painting you’re going in.” She began mountpiece after piece of multilayered ing her work on angled plywood blues (the Blue series), or greens boxes that could be rearranged in (inspired by Thailand), or whites endless combinations, casting shadLeis in her studio, working on Winter Lyrics (2016), acrylic on wood, (for the current work on Antarctica). ows for effect. These colored boxes with Disturbances in the Field hanging in the background. Opposite: As a young dancer and actress appealed to her sense of architecDisturbances in the Field, detail (2015), Styrofoam, cover stock, medium-density fibreboard, and oil. in 1960s New York, she naturally ture—“man and nature talking.” absorbed the minimalist aesthetic As she delved further into her of the time, but the paintings she herself made in her free time explorations of blue harmonies and allusions—sky and sea and were busy and filled with angst. “They were fractured because my clouds—as figures and lines and edges disappeared and her canlife was fractured,” she says. After moving to Los Angeles to work vases went from large and low to the ground to small and sculpturin the film industry, she painted large canvases made of small secal, Leis knew that she was flirting with public incomprehension. tions that could be finished while caring for two children during The market for her work narrowed. workdays that started at 3 a.m.

“I sometimes think my whole life has been riding a horse in “People would say, ‘Can’t you leave something for the next the wrong direction,” she says of her anachronistic embrace of painting?’ And I would say no, it all has to be there!” But already minimalist abstraction. she was hearing the strong inner voice that would lead her far But while people can be turned off by Minimalism, Leis has from the coasts and their art trends. found that nearly everyone responds to color, because it is so It is this independent streak that has made Leis’s work an evolvevocative of feeling and memory and spirit. Her paintings ining, ever-shifting, wide-ranging diary of her inner life for more vite viewers to access that experience, without dictating any than three decades. If she is considered a Minimalist today, it is content. “I didn’t want to tell a story,” she says. largely because of a conscious decision made about 15 years ago Minimalism here is not a claim to universal truth (a criticism to simplify her life and distill her many expressive urges—poetry, often leveled at modernist abstraction), but rather an invitation to sculpture, photography, filmmaking, not to mention dance and access our own truths by way of sensation, memory, emotion— performance—down to their core. in short, through the experience of beauty. For Leis, it is through trendmagazineglobal.com 119

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Vacuities 3, Antarctic series (2015), watercolor negative print on aluminum. Top: Breathless (2014), oil on wood.

Opposite: Leis in her art-filled Nob Hill home. On the wall behind her is one of her pieces from 2000, Shard #20. A ceramic sculpture by Ric Berkard sits on the table behind the sofa.

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OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF MARIETTA PATRICIA LEIS (2)

absence, rather than presence, that sensory experience touches something pure and true. She mentions her admiration for the 19th-century novelist Jane Austen, whose characters’ silences echo with what is left unsaid. “They don’t spill it all. They don’t use the whole vocabulary, because of the time they lived,” she says.

“There’s something I love about that—the beauty of it. We give away so much, and it’s about what we hold back.”

In 2008, after five years of renting in the East Mountains, Leis and Vogel returned to Albuquerque and purchased a home right in Nob Hill, stripping the dated structure to its foundations but retaining its footprint and mid-century pedigree—the low ceilings and split-level flow. The next year they added her studio across a central courtyard, and in 2010 designed the minimalist landscape, which has served as the outlier in local garden tours.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Leis’s trajectory is how skillfully she has balanced artistic independence and financial survival, heading out into the world and retreating to her studio, through multiple changes of style and media. Since the 1990s she has made a practice of traveling abroad at least one month a year on art residencies to places like Spain, Portugal, Greece, Scotland, and Finland to draw inspiration from the world’s multiplicity of viewpoints—a counterpoint to the unifying abstractions of nature.

A residency in Thailand gave birth to the Green series in 2011, exploring “abundance and scarcity” in the lushness of the environment and the struggle to make a living from it. Most recently, in January she headed to a residency in Iceland to continue her

work on Antarctica—a series of glossy cubes covered in layers of opalescent paint and glaze, sanded and sliced and mounted on the wall like floating glaciers.

The series arose from a 2014 journey she took on a Russian expedition ship that crossed the Drake Passage—to her horror and fascination. “It was phenomenal. It gave me a sense of the incredible power of nature,” she laughs at her idea that she and Vogel should go. The passage took three days, and “the third day we woke up, and the way the sun was coming out on the ice, it was incredible—like being in a Renaissance painting.”

Onboard the ship, fighting seasickness, she shot photos of the dark windows beaded with sea spray. Once home she printed a series of photographs on metal, negatives of watercolors she had painted during the trip. Now she is collaborating with a sound artist on the terrible sound of the waves banging against the hull, the sense of being at the ends of the Earth in the grip of nature.

“That’s what I do—I travel to these places, and it’s the feeling I want to convey.”

It’s no great leap to see here the evolution of Leis’s “quiet work,” offered as a distillation of the world’s clamor, toward an excavation of sensory experiences that are formative, elemental, and pivotal.

“You have to be quiet and see if there’s a transformation that happens,” she says of the resistance to pondering her tonal meditations on a single hue. “You have to slow down. And if you can do that? You don’t have to like it.” R trendmagazineglobal.com 121

ARTIST STuDIO

BY KEIKO OHNUMA PORTRAIT BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM

Grand Illusions

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ou could be excused for taking Scott Greene’s work as yet another example of postmodern pastiche. For here are the grandiose subjects and style of Romanticism— storm-tossed clipper ships, breathtaking canyons, pastoral idylls with grazing sheep—disrupted by the detritus of our post-industrial age, from gas masks to cellphone towers to plastic garden lattice. It might, at first read, be a clever mash-up of our self-imposed exile from an Edenic past. Yet there is more going on here than paradise lost.

Seen from afar, Greene’s often-massive paintings present a panorama of cinematic ruin; up close, they dissolve into loose brushstrokes of masterfully placed shadow and 3-D effects—not realism at all, but illusion. Over his prolific, two-decade career, the intel-

lectual and articulate painter has developed his own language of symbols and stylistic effects that remake Romanticism in a way that leads us to reexamine its motives through the contemporary lens of media and marketing.

“I think it’s interesting that people, when they paint nature, will have no human activity in it. We are essentially painting ourselves out,” Greene told an audience at his recent solo show at 516 Arts, Bewilderness. The romantic image of pristine nature was basically a marketing piece, he elaborated later, which served to justify westward progress as divinely ordained. “You could imagine a primitive landscape, but it’s not real—it didn’t exist like that. It’s an illusion.”

Applying a romantic lens to our 21st-century landscapes, Greene finds sincere beauty in our human constructs, from the satellite

COURTESY OF SCOTT GREENE

Scott Greene casts a wry romantic eye on the contradictions roiling throughout the American landscape

dishes that crowd his hillsides (“like an eye in the landscape”) to cell-phone towers camouflaged as stiff-armed trees (“I wonder what kind of wildlife would live in them?”) to the ubiquitous plastic shopping bags fluttering by on a breeze. His earnest allegiance to romantic sentimentalism and its illusionistic techniques leaves us quite uncertain how to feel. We know that technology, though greeted with optimism, fills the growing trash heap of dashed hopes, so that we no longer see the landscape that surrounds us. If a tower of hi-fi speakers is rendered with the same nostalgic realism as the tumbleweed hurtling past, what exactly is the critique?

Greene readily cops to the “political” reading of his work, the fact that he is commenting on “things I care about deeply and feel compelled to talk about.” But he does not present them as polemic. It helps to know that he never was a painter who began with a message or story, but rather groped toward an effect—the place where style would, in fact, become the subject.

A native of Denver, he studied at what is now the California College of the Arts, then graduated with his BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1981. For more than a decade, Greene painted cars—dreamy impressionistic tableaux of trucks and tires, the landscape of freeway that surrounded him in California. Looking back, the thread he recognizes in those paintings is an attraction to flickering visual activity.

The 1982 experimental film Koyaanisqatsi expressed perfectly what he was trying to capture—a sense of “life speeding up, things wearing down.” In graduate school at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he had moved in 1989 with his wife, Anne, a printmaker, he got a class assignment that led to his first romantic pastiche.

Surprising to the contemporary painter, he Scott Greene in his studio with various works, including, behind him at left, Mobro: High Seas Drifter (2015), oil on canvas on panel. Opposite: Exhaust (1994), oil on canvas. found in the stereotypical genre a home for his long fascination with illusion, and a kind of technical distancing that allowed for the working out of ideas. Through studying the Old Masters, he began household goods and consumer waste. In 1996, the Herculean to learn “how to see.” effort bore fruit when he was accepted into the Roswell Artist-inHis thesis painting marked the turning point, announcing a posiResidence Program, and the founder, oilman Don Anderson, purtion that he would inhabit for the next two decades. Wall-sized at 11 chased Exhaust to hang prominently in his Anderson Museum of by 16 feet and two years in the making, Exhaust reimagines ThéoContemporary Art in Roswell, New Mexico. dore Géricault’s instantly recognizable Raft of the Medusa, but with Since then, Greene has worked full time as an artist, though until the shipwrecked survivors clinging to the cab of a semi-truck spilling recently he and Anne ran a fine-art printmaking business out of the trendmagazineglobal.com 123

ARTIST STuDIO

converted winery that is their Bernalillo home, using industrial-size presses that have become obsolete in the digital age. Here, in a cavernous studio that recalls the winery’s gloom, he works intently on one painting at a time, sometimes for months on end.

He was fortunate in 2003 to gain representation at the Catharine Clark Gallery, one of San Francisco’s most respected venues for contemporary art, where he has sold scores of paintings. He is also represented by Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe. Greene’s work has been featured in Harper’s, McSweeney’s, ZYZZYVA, Artweek, and New American Paintings, but he has remained relatively unknown in New Mexico, where, until this fall, he’d not had a solo exhibition for 20 years. As part of 516 Arts’ project HABITAT: Exploring Climate Change Through the Arts, Greene and Beau Carey were presented as contemporary landscape painters in the gallery’s first-ever solo exhibitions.

“Landscape” is likely not the genre that would come to mind 124 TREND Spring 2016

for this catalog of paintings and prints. Greene’s five-panel series for the show helped make the lineage more explicit. His Course of Empire riffs on the series of the same name by Hudson River School founder Thomas Cole, who represented the rise and fall of civilization in five allegorical scenes.

In Greene’s version, the time “before” is a land of dinosaurs oblivious to the arrival of warships with guns blazing; 9/11 is referenced in one quiet scene of a condominium tower with a red plastic bag fluttering by; and the final painting shows a land of ice, with a cell-phone palm tree toppled within view. “I wanted to do a piece that felt large and told a story, but not in a narrative way,” he explains.

This refusal of narrative authority is characteristic of how Greene works, and prevents his paintings from being too easily read. Despite being steeped in art-historical awareness and contemporary political savvy, he seems to set all that aside and let his

COURTESY OF SCOTT GREENE (2)

Bear Market (2015), oil on canvas on panel. Opposite: Ship Shape (2010), oil on canvas.

subconscious take over when he paints. Working in layers, from an initial sketch to increasing complexity, he sometimes ends up taking most of it back out. “One thing suggests another until everything finds its place. That’s my process—I have to ‘find’ the painting,” he says. Occasionally he might change the entire composition halfway through. “I can obsess about them, and the paint-

ing could change forever. But that’s always part of it: the willingness to allow the thing to organically shift.”

Struck by something incongruous in the landscape—giant satellite dishes, water towers painted with smiley faces, or the inflatable “air dancer” puppets used for parking lot promotions—Greene will carefully introduce the new element into his dystopian utopia. “It has to sort of disappear,” he says.

As it reappears in painting after painting, Greene begins to understand where it’s coming from. “All these things take on meaning over time, and it informs the work and I take it to the next piece. I drop it when it starts to seem too pat.”

In other words, although (or maybe because) it is not intentional, the iconography “does end up being kind of, sort of, what you wanted to do,” he grins. Casting about for sublime inspiration in our altered landscape, he queries our man-made icons for their possible divinity—the airdancer puppet as a modern-day crucifix, the plastic bag aloft as the cosmic dance of Shiva announcing the demise of a weary universe, all colored by that most romantic of moods: a sense of loss.

His paintings seem to announce that Romanticism never died out in America, but still animates our hopes and dreams as it continuously reappears as the driving spirit of the counterculture, from the Beat Generation to the hippies to the current fascination with urban farming, DIY, sustainability, and the anti-authoritarian ethic of the hacker subculture.

Of his exhibit Bewilderness, Greene wrote in the catalog that it “is located somewhere between Arcadia and dystopia, and where the past and present collide. It is a refuge with no shelter, a place of spiritual certainty, utter confusion, and blissful ignorance”—a place, in other words, much like our contemporary American landscape.

A style that cops to our persistent sentimentalism may offer the artist a more pertinent role than postmodern irony as we watch the forests shrink, the garbage pile up, and civilization sprawl into the wilderness. The undying romantic will still remain standing with his illusionistic bag of tricks, brimming with hope and sadness, documenting it all as beauty. R trendmagazineglobal.com 125

Passion of the Palate

Green Jeans Farmery

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CREDIT

NEW MEXICO’S CULINARY INSPIRATION

Passion of the Palate

TOP LEFT: SERGIO SALVADOR; TOP RIGHT: NELLE BAUER; OPPOSITE: SERGIO SALVADOR CREDIT

Fine Dining in the Q— No Jacket Required hat exactly do we mean by the term fine dining?

Apparently, even prominent restaurateurs have their unique interpretations. In the past it referred mainly to formal restaurants featuring posh interiors, a menu that was fancier than average, a sommelier to advise on the choice of wine, and even, occasionally, a dress code.

But tastes have changed dramatically over the years, with enterprising chefs now fusing intriguing ingredients from around the world and elevating what was once workaday fare to the level of haute cuisine. Today, fine dining is less about chateaubriand and lobster thermidor and more about subtle combinations of flavors and textures, imaginative preparation, and a creative approach to familiar favorites. Interior spaces have evolved from the formality of thick carpets and ornate chandeliers to a sleeker, hipper, less formal atmosphere, allowing diners to enjoy a sense of camaraderie with their fellow foodies as they sample menu items that would have left their grandparents scratching their heads in bewilderment back in the day.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in Albuquerque, a city where the menus traditionally have tended more to the utilitarian than the innovative. But as with most things in the Duke City, there’s more here than meets the eye. The food scene has

emerged as a key component of the increasing sophistication and growing urban vibe of what was once a rural village.

Chile-based cuisine is our claim to fame, of course, and no amount of gentrification will ever preclude the tried-and-true traditions that put New Mexico on the culinary map in the first place. But even the hard-working chile pepper has been reborn as a subtle but powerful partner in the world of fine dining, adding its flavorful punch to everything from Caesar salad to chocolate mousse. And today’s chefs take things well beyond merely dressing up old standbys; whether you’re sampling red drum fish in carrot-vanilla purée at Elaine’s, gorging on grilled Spanish octopus with potato-jalapeño hash at Jennifer James 101, or chowing down on kalua pork at a gourmet food truck, you’ll find fresh, imaginative fare in every corner of the city.

It’s Albuquerque’s open-minded, unpretentious attitude that keeps things real, even as local palates become more adventurous and discriminating. So head out to one of Albuquerque’s many casual but chic hot spots. Tucked away in strip malls, lining busy thoroughfares, or parked in vacant lots, these establishments offer exciting menu options that blend ethereal flavors with the downto-earth qualities of a big city that has no intention of losing its small-town ambience. Fine dining, indeed. —Nancy Zimmerman

Top: Guests flock to Jennifer James 101 to enjoy its inventive rustic fare, like this dish of of sauteed Pacific Northwest halibut with carrots, celery, and black garlic. Opposite: A Saturday night at Green Jeans Farmery, Albuquerque’s newest hangout.

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Q in

Conscious

BY MEGAN KAMERICK | PHOTOS BY BuildingKATE RUSSELL AND SERGIO SALVADOR

e th

Containment Strategy Cleverly crafted from repurposed materials, a Midtown hotspot gives Burqueños a new reason to eat, drink, and be healthy 128

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oy Solomon had one guiding tenet throughout his career in food and restaurants: show customers you care.

So when he began planning Green Jeans Farmery, his commercial project in Albuquerque, that’s what he wanted to see from potential tenants—even more than their financial statements.

“I wanted to find people who had a passion for their product,” he says.

The thoughtful 62-year-old Solomon has himself

built a career out of passion projects, having left an indelible mark on Albuquerque’s bar and restaurant scene since he arrived from his native Long Island in the 1970s to try out for the ski team at UNM. Not only did he make the team, he bought the popular nightclub Friar’s Pub and would go on to establish Sunset Grille, Hungry Bear, and, most recently, Bailey’s on the Beach. And those jars of 505 Southwestern salsa you see on grocery shelves?

That was Solomon’s venture as well.

Of course, the first clue that this latest project

KATE RUSSELL; OPPOSITE: SERGIO SALVADOR

McClain + Yu Architecture & Design designed Green Jeans using containers purchased from Fincham Mobile Storage in Albuquerque, whose welders did the cutting and structural steel work. Above: At the bar inside Santa Fe Brewing Co.

would also be something special was the shipping containers. The re-purposed boxes, now brightly painted in purple, red, yellow, green, and teal, are wedged onto an oddly shaped one-and-a-half-acre piece of land that he purchased at the northeast corner of Carlisle Boulevard and Interstate 40.

Multicolored bicycles snake up a pole at one corner, a nod to the nearby bike path.

The shipping containers appealed to Solomon from a re-use as well as architectural perspective (he was inspired in part by the Proxy Project in San Francisco, where the city leased out pad sites and people used containers for pop-up businesses). But neither was the main impetus.

“The front end of this deal was about creating physical uniqueness, but the driving force was to create some kind of enclave of local, quality-driven

And the nearby bike path makes it an enticing twowheel commute—another aspect of the green ethos that Solomon wanted to establish amid the miles of surrounding asphalt.

Brian Lock, owner of Santa Fe Brewing Company, had been looking for a place to open a taproom in Albuquerque for four years when he met Solomon.

“It was largely due to demand by customers, and Albuquerque’s just a great craft beer town,” Lock says.

He also wanted to find an ideal location where he could host food trucks, but the project layout took care of that. His customers can get food from the community’s restaurants while imbibing his lagers and ales. He was also able to build out his own space to accommodate his specific needs, and the patios on two levels were another selling point, given that

entrepreneurial businesses,” he says.

Come for the containers, stay for the beer. And coffee. And great food. And lively atmosphere.

Green Jeans opened in late 2015 and is now fully leased with 12 tenants that include Santa Fe Brewing Company’s first taproom in Albuquerque; FIT Studio, a boutique gym; Fashion Locker fitness apparel; Zeus’ Juice & Nutrition; and a variety of local restaurants. On-site parking is often tight, but a classic canvas-topped Volkswagen Thing has been cleverly repurposed as a shuttle to ancillary parking.

Albuquerque boasts over 300 days of sunshine a year and the weather is usually warm enough to sit outside year round. There are even plans for live music on the rooftop as the weather warms.

Gabriel Amador, another tenant, had a successful location in Nob Hill for his Amore Neapolitan Pizzeria, but the community aspect of Green Jeans prompted his move. The tenants cross-promote one another, he says, and even use one another’s products, such as when Rustic on the Green used Amore’s mozzarella on their burgers or created trendmagazineglobal.com

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a queso burger special using queso and chips from Chumlys Southwestern. The design makes this kind of collaboration easy.

The vendors are clustered around a courtyard with tables and seating, and there is also seating inside a shared space known as the food hall. You can order food from any vendor and they will deliver to wherever you want to sit, outside or inside.

“There’s nothing else like this,” Amador says. “It’s like a food court, but with really good food.”

Kelly Adams, owner of Rustic, agrees. “There are no hacks here.”

Adams made his Angus burgers in a food truck for more than three years before moving into Green Jeans, so the 480 square feet of his shipping container feels pretty spacious compared to the 84 square feet he used to have. And the common area seating removes another potential headache. “Basically I have a bigger food truck that doesn’t have wheels on it,” he quips.

Other tenants, like the sandwich shop Bocadillos New Mexico, used Green Jeans to launch a second location. For some, however, this is their first entrepreneurial venture.

“He picked us mostly because of our attitude,” says Eric Garcia, who co-owns Epiphany Espresso with his partner, Tony Lopez.

Garcia worked in hospitality for years and Lopez worked for Starbucks and other coffee companies, but they hankered to do their own thing. When they met Solomon while doing social

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media marketing for Green Jeans Farmery, they decided it was time to take the plunge.

“Roy handpicked everybody,” he says of the vendors. “It’s a great mix. Great synergy.”

For Jamie Young, Green Jeans presented an opportunity to jump back into the restaurant world. At one time Young ran two East Mountain restaurants, including Sandia Crest Pizza Company, which came to what he calls a “tragic end” after he moved to a parcel that apparently had covenants from 1948 restricting the sale of alcohol. That was four years ago. His new concept, Rockin’ Taco, is a mix of traditional street tacos and some with unusual twists like tuna tartare and Maine lobster.

“I really admire Roy Solomon,” Young says. “He’s a genius.

Anything he’s part of I’m interested in.”

A longtime collaborator, Jesse Zimmermann, agrees. He worked with Solomon at 505 Southwestern and Bailey’s on the Beach, and Green Jeans offered him the first opportunity to launch his own venture, Chumlys Southwestern, which features pasta, quesadillas, Caesar salads, homemade soups, and gourmet hot dogs.

Next to his space, Chill’N Ice Cream uses liquid nitrogen to make fresh ice cream on demand. Co-owner Vickie Fellows, who also has three Squeezed Juice Bars in Albuquerque, was

KATE RUSSELL (2); OPPOSITE: KATE RUSSELL

attracted to the environmental ethos of Green Jeans because it fits with her own vision for Chill’N, which uses compostable service ware and organic, locally sourced ingredients. She, too, mines her fellow tenants’ offerings: the affogato dessert is topped with Epiphany’s espresso, and she has used almonds and cherries soaked in rum created by tenant Distillery 365.

One of the few non-food tenants, FIT Studio, offers small group training classes and yoga. Co-owner Justin Tafoya says having a brewery nearby is actually a good fit. “A lot of people who are into fitness go to breweries,” he says.

That the community has come together perhaps makes it easier to forget the challenges. Solomon was not able to create the hydroponic farm he envisioned without investing more than he’d anticipated. Opening for the tenants was delayed for weeks by unexpected permitting issues with the city. That presented a serious hardship for many of them, particularly if they’d closed other locations and had bills to pay on idle equipment or had employees in limbo.

Using the containers didn’t save money and actually presented difficulties, in particular when it came to putting

Bocadillos, whose original operation is located at Indian School Northwest, specializes in slow-roasted meat sandwiches and burritos. Left: FIT Studio offers instruction in yoga and functional fitness for groups and individuals.

Opposite: the central courtyard offers plenty of space for al fresco dining and people watching.

in electrical lines, insulation, and plumbing. “I liked the look of them­—the way they can be put together almost like building blocks, like Legos,” Solomon says. “But it’s not an easy way to go, honestly.”

However, putting the tenants in fairly small spaces with one common area and one set of bathrooms also made the project work financially. And Solomon certainly got an education.

“My knowledge base from this type of development is huge at this point,” he says, “and I may put it to good use by helping others who may go down that road.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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High End, Homegrown

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anta Fe is considered a shopper’s paradise for a variety of reasons, but one of the biggest is the fact that so many of the businesses here are one-of-a-kind, locally owned concerns offering Local landmarks find new a unique array of products and services. That life in a new setting was the big draw at Sanbusco Center near The Railyard, a quintessentially Santa Fean mall whose long-term tenants built a large following over the decades with their unique, upscale wares and personalized service.

But the past few years have been a struggle for these businesses: they’ve had to cope with a flailing economy generally as well as with the uncertainty of operating in a venue that was in foreclosure. The final blow came in 2015 when they learned that the shopping center would be closing to make way for New Mexico School for the Arts.

Faced with a daunting and expensive move coming on the heels of these financial challenges, many of the discouraged storeowners considered closing up shop. “I thought about it seriously,” says Barbara Lenihan of Pandora, whose artisan-crafted textiles for bed, bath, and home have attracted discriminating shoppers for 15 years.

It wasn’t until Katy Fitzgerald, the senior project manager for DeVargas Center on the north side of town, stepped in with a plan for the Sanbusco tenants that Lenihan, and others, began to believe it would be possible to stay in business.

“I thought these stores would be a great fit for DeVargas,” Fitzgerald says. “Our higher-end tenants have been around for a long time, and we felt the Sanbusco businesses would be a great addition. Energy is a very real thing in the world of retail, and when Borders left Sanbusco, it took a lot of energy out of the place. When we heard the mall would be closing, we saw an opportunity to offer these stores a fresh start while filling our retail spaces.”

It was a simple enough proposition, but making room for eight shops proved to be an enormous undertaking that required shifting existing tenants to new spaces and refurbishing old ones to meet the needs of the newcomers. “It was a logistical nightmare,” Fitzgerald says, laughing. “But our longtime tenants were very cooperative, and they’ve have found that their new spaces suit them very well, so everyone is happy.”

In addition to making room to accommodate the new arrivals, DeVargas Center hired local designer David Naylor of David Naylor Interiors to help them adapt their new digs, providing a design budget for each to help offset the costs of the move.

Naylor’s enthusiasm for working with local artisans and mixing colors, textures, and furnishings to create a cohesive look was a good match for owners used to trading on their uniqueness, and what began as an intimidating undertaking quickly turned into an exciting new opportunity to reimagine their businesses in a new environment.

“In a way it’s like starting over” says Rosalie Rosenberg, whose Bodhi Bazaar has been providing women with chic designer apparel and accessories for 27 years. “I was actually ready for a change after all that time, and this feels like an adventure. There’s a real buzz about the new stores, and it’s so much easier having moved with the others, so I didn’t have to do it all by myself.”

While her cherished customers of long standing will of course follow her to DeVargas, Rosenberg also enjoys getting to know a new clientele. “Santa Fe is interesting in that although it’s a relatively small town, the different areas are frequented by different people. I’m looking forward to learning about the north side customers, so I can do my buying with them in mind as well.”

Linda Prager of Kioti, whose elegant wearable art includes distinctive textiles, accessories, and handmade creations from around the world, was initially devastated when she learned she’d have to move, but has concluded it was ultimately a good

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Mixing textiles from around the world with the work of Santa Fe artisans

David Marlow

Missoni • Home Treasures • Libeco • Bellora • Gretel Underwood Sergio Martinez • Minh of Hanoi

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thing. “It’s turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to the store,” Prager says. “Sales are way up, my new location is very nice, and the DeVargas management is extremely supportive and helpful. It’s all been much better than we thought it would be.”

“I’m very happy that our Sanbusco community has remained intact,” adds Laurie Wilson of Teca Tu, whose shop caters to pet owners with high-quality products and services. “The new stores all look beautiful, and there’s much more foot traffic here.”

Other tenants who made the move to DeVargas are op. cit. books, Rock Paper Scissor Salonspa, Dell Fox Jewelry, and Santa Fe Pens, which managed to pull off its annual pen fair in its new digs despite having moved shortly before the event.

The two individuals most cited by the newcomers as instrumental to making it all work were Katy Fitzgerald and David Naylor. “Katy stayed on top of the details and managed the logistics, so it was much easier than it would have been otherwise,” Prager says. “I could never have moved to a shop this grand without David Naylor and the DeVargas management,” Lenihan adds. “David is the one who encouraged us to hang in there and try the new location when we were all uncertain about what to do next. He’s been a great backup and morale-booster.”

Indeed, Naylor’s artistic eye for proportion and perspective led to gratifyingly successful collaborations with the shop owners. He kept their costs down by making the facades simple and using a lot of glass so visitors are able to see into the stores, letting the merchandise do the talking. Good lighting and attention to efficient flow were also part of his plan. “We basically processed their fear about the move and turned it into a positive, creating a Main Street within a mall,” he says. “The energy is better now, and it’s an exciting new phase for good old DeVargas. These are local brands we should all support—the kind of homegrown, one-of-a-kind businesses that make Santa Fe special.”

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business profile

restaurants

Counter Culture Cafe and Pizza Centro

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ome restaurants aspire to be world-renowned destinations; others find pride in being discovered by visitors as “the place where locals eat.” Jason Aufrichtig, trained at the New York Restaurant School in Manhattan and owner of Counter Culture Cafe for the past 20 years, is more interested in knowing his customers’ names than being known around the globe. With his brother, Nathan, he also owns Pizza Centro, whose three Santa Fe locations specialize in hand-tossed New York–style pizzas made with handcrafted dough.

Nathan apprenticed with three top pizzerias in New York City and New England before the Aufrichtig brothers opened Pizza Centro seven years ago. The key to the brothers’ success, Jason says, lies in “ingredients, consistency, passion, and drive.”

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The Patio Garduño’s at Old Town

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Gastronomica

THE LITTLE ENGINES THAT COULD Albuquerque’s food truck fascination is about more than just the food

BY NANCY ZIMMERMAN PHOTOS BY SERGIO SALVADOR

L

ike the chuck wagons of the Old West that provided nourishment to far-flung cattle ranchers as they roamed the range tending their herds, their modern-day counterparts—food trucks—offer a similar convenience, but with a lot more flair. Morphing first into down-market “roach coaches” that brought their cheap, basic fare to construction sites and factories, the most recent incarnations attract everyone from laborers to executives to medical personnel and students with their affordably priced, creative offerings. And their economic clout is growing: IBISWorld, a publisher of business intelligence, reports that in 2015 food truck businesses nationally generated $1.2 billion, an increase of 12.4 percent over the past five years, and they’re projected to post approximately $2.7 billion in annual revenue by 2017.

These trucks are an affordable way to launch a new business, and they provide a shot in the arm to local economies still struggling to shake off the recession. Albuquerque has been enthusiastically riding the food truck wave for several years now, and what began as a cautious foray into the business by a few intrepid entrepreneurs has mushroomed into a cottage industry, one whose reach extends beyond mere economics. > trendmagazineglobal.com 137

Gastronomica

“Food trucks represent the democratization of good food,” says Tina Garcia-Shams, community relations director for the Albuquerque-based Street Food Institute (SFI), a nonprofit organization that promotes the state’s local-food economy by supporting the development of small businesses. “You’ll find people from all walks of life and economic levels mingling at the trucks—the scene is becoming a new industry. In the past, food trucks were seen as low-brow, but now we have gourmet trucks serving amazing food at good prices. It’s an alternative to fast food that uses wholesome, local ingredients without a huge difference in price. That makes it possible for those who might not be able to afford fine dining to try some exciting new foods.”

Among the other benefits of the increasing popularity of food trucks are the revitalization of marginalized

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communities and the emergence of a lively, hip new street life—particularly important in Albuquerque, where urban sprawl tends to isolate people and neighborhoods, and the prevalence of fast-food drive-through outlets means diners never have to leave their cars.

“Food trucks are the easiest way to revive a depressed area,” maintains Patrick Humpf, owner of Gedunk Food Truck and founder of ABQ Food Trucks, a co-op that assists truck owners in navigating the logistics, regulations, and practical concerns of operating their mobile businesses.

“They attract people to congregate at the truck, and other trucks join the scene as well. They work with local growers, and Right and previous spread: Street Food Institute students receive hands-on training at SFI Food Trucks, learning to make delicious and healthy food using sustainable business practices. Top: Street Food Sensations owner Lorenzo Garcia.

they create economic activity where there wasn’t any before.”

Pop Fizz, which specializes in paletas, or Mexican popsicles, as well as ice cream and other snacks and desserts, is a familyowned venture that set up shop in 2013 in the South Valley with a pushcart and a freestanding building before later acquiring a truck. “There are plenty of trucks around town, so we wanted to take our business to an underserved population,” says Carlos Álvarez, who works with his father and brother to make the frozen treats that they all loved while growing up in the El Paso area. “The South Valley gets a bad rap, but it’s actually a much calmer, safer place than its reputation would have you believe. It’s a good place to do business.”

Álvarez says that theirs is a simple formula. “A paleta is basically a smoothie on a stick. We use all-natural, whole foods with no artificial flavors or preservatives, and we try to use locally sourced food as much as possible. For example, we make a cucumber-chile-lime pop using local cucumbers, or a blackberry-and-rosewater pop. Our carrot cake is made with locally grown carrots.”

Humpf points out that, as with the paletas, food trucks can introduce unfamiliar dishes to a larger population, with ethnic cuisines enjoying new popularity because of the unprecedented accessibility offered by these mobile kitchens. “People might hesitate to try a new kind of cuisine at a sit-down restaurant, but at a food truck they can sample new foods without spending

too much. You’ll find everything from Salvadoran specialties to Greek food to Korean barbecue, Hawaiian, Filipino, and Thai dishes. There’s a huge variety out there.”

One ubiquitous menu item is the everpopular taco, which most trucks offer in one form or another, but these are a far cry from the fast-food versions. “You have to be innovative to survive in this business,” Humpf says, “otherwise people will just go to the drive-through.” He thus adds a gourmet touch to otherwise simple fare, like his duck confit taco with green apple– white truffle slaw, pommes purées with duck cracklings, and lobster rolls. “People will come for good food,” he says. “It costs a bit more than fast food, but less than at a bricks-and-mortar restaurant.”

As more entrepreneurs hop on the

Patrick Humpf, owner of Gedunk Food Truck and founder of ABQ Food Trucks.

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Gastronomica

bandwagon, new partnerships are emerging to take advantage of the growing trend.

Breweries in particular have recognized the potential for synergy, and popular spots like Marble Brewery and Tractor Brewery now book food trucks on a regular basis to pair craft brews and tasty food in a casual, fun atmosphere. At the Great New Mexico Food Truck and Craft Beer Festival held each April, some 20 trucks fill as many as 100 orders an hour, and beer sales are brisk. The annual New Mexico Brew Fest, held during the second weekend of Balloon Fiesta, features live music and many of the top food trucks.

“Beer and street food are a natural pairing. It brings people together and creates a hip street scene that didn’t exist before,” says Garcia-Shams, who reports that SFI has partnered with Central New Mexico 140

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Community College to provide a curriculum for students interested in working in the food industry. SFI, which has its own truck, also created a monthly event, Salud y Sabor, in which they team up with the University of New Mexico Hospitals to offer health screenings, flu shots, and talks on specific health concerns. In addition to the food truck, the event includes tastings, food demonstrations, a produce giveaway, art, music, and a kids’ corner featuring activities to encourage healthy eating.

“We’re also involved in the Kids Cook! nonprofit, and we’re looking at ways we can use food trucks to bring a mobile farmers market to food deserts to provide local produce, tastings, and recipes that show people how to use food they may not be used to cooking,” Garcia-Shams says. “We’re interested in developing food

hubs, or pods, that would build on our reputation as a food destination to attract more of that kind of tourism.”

Albuquerque’s downtown Civic Plaza is the site for Truckin’ Tuesdays, a project of Mayor Richard J. Berry that brings together a variety of food trucks to serve up lunch every week. “Bringing the trucks to Civic Plaza is a great way to connect city and downtown employees with these culinary establishments,” Berry says. He also launched First Friday Food Trucks, where up to 15 trucks congregate in the parking lot on the northeast corner of First and Central from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. on the

Chewing is for suckers, as fans of Green Growler Smoothies will tell you. Owners Stephanie Pier and Tanya Jones (above) are a regular feature at Food Truck Wednesday at Talin Market (opposite).

first Friday of the month, creating a kind of festival ambience.

At Hyder Park in Nob Hill, food trucks gather each week for Tasty Tuesdays, which takes place from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m.

The street-party vibe is bolstered not only by great food but also live music, face painting, and yoga classes. “It’s a fun, family atmosphere,” Álvarez says.

Despite the rapid growth and popularity of the food trucks, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. The ordinances that govern mobile food businesses were designed in the 1950s to regulate ice cream trucks and hot dog stands, and cities around the country are scrambling to update them to ensure that the public’s health and safety are protected. Brick-and-mortar restaurants have also weighed in with all their political might to influence the revamping of the regulations with an eye to minimizing this new competition.

had rezoned specifically to allow access to the trucks in the face of the new ordinance—for Food Truck Wednesday from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. each week “We charge a nominal fee for food trucks to be on site, and we go through a selection process so we can keep the number of trucks to seven,” says Victor Limary, Talin’s director of operations. “Trucks can’t serve food items that compete with our restaurants inside the market, so the offerings are complementary rather than competitive.

And by letting the trucks gather here, it makes it easier for the health inspectors to come directly here rather than having to track trucks down all over town.”

Many food trucks have also branched into catering weddings, birthday parties, and other special events, providing a fun, affordable way for party planners to offer a variety of foods rather than a limited, one-size-fits-all menu.

In September 2015 Albuquerque’s City Council passed a new ordinance with strict new rules that require, among other things, that food trucks park at least 100 feet away from any restaurant. But it does allow food trucks to do business on private commercial property with permission of the owners, which Talin Market has found to be a boon to its business. Trucks gather in Talin’s parking lot—which the owner

With their variety, convenience, and well-prepared dishes, food trucks are likely to continue growing and innovating, adding to New Mexico’s already broad culinary appeal. We’ve come a long way from the days when hungry cowboys gathered ’round the wagon for their daily ration of chile con carne and hardtack, and the industry is well placed to keep on truckin’ for years to come. R

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