Santa Fe -- The City Different
This July I was
fortunate enough to spend 9 jam-packed fun-filled days in Santa Fe with fellow
MFA Associate and good buddy Betsy Davis, who spends at least a week in Santa Fe
every year, staying at the Don Gaspar
Inn. Betsy knows the City Different inside and out and was tireless (not to
mention extremely patient) in showing her manic friend as much as possible of
the city and its environs, all the while giving a crash course in New Mexican
pottery, jewelry, kachinas, fetishes, painting, sculpture, geography, flora,
fauna, architecture, etc. etc. – you name it. Not an easy task, as Santa Fe has
so very much to offer! Truly a paradise for art lovers, nature lovers, and
history buffs alike.
I completely fell in
love with Santa Fe. The charming pueblo-style houses are all surrounded by
magnificent gardens. I’ve never seen such hollyhocks or trumpet vines. The
landscape is nothing short of spectacular. Mountains are always in the distance,
if not up close. There are amazing buttes, mesas, chimneys, and hoodoos in
brilliant shades of yellow, cream, and red. Lush green valleys, jagged canyons,
eerie red-rock scapes. And the sky is a deep blue I’ve seen nowhere else,
sometimes clear, sometimes dotted with puffy clouds of the purest white,
sometimes filled with threatening thunderheads. Distant storms appear as
tangible grey curtains descending from cloud to land – an astonishing sight.
Santa Fe itself is
filled with museums, and we got to them all (and their excellent gift shops):
The New Mexico Museum of Art, Palace of the
Governors, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Institute of American Indian Arts
Museum, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Museum of International Folk Art,
Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.
The contemporary collection on display at the State Capitol is not to be missed
– every major New Mexican artist is represented. The galleries are too numerous
to enumerate; some of our favorites were La
Mesa, Ventana, Meyer, Andrea Fisher, Michael Smith, Gerald Peters, Nedra Matteucci, Owings, Blue Rain, and Tai Gallery. Friday nights on Canyon Road are
especially fun, as many of the galleries have opening receptions then.
Our visit was planned
to coincide with Spanish Market: over 300 artists, traditional (mostly
religious) and contemporary, display their wares around the plaza while a
variety of Spanish music is performed on stage. The artists are all too
delighted to talk to you and display the intricacies of their art. We saw many
wonderful paintings and carvings of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Sorrows,
San Rafael, San Isidro, and San Pasquale (always with a cat). We got up early
Sunday morning in order to attend high mass at the Cathedral. The archbishop
blessed the artists’ works, which were carried in in a procession by the artists
themselves and displayed on tables near the altar to the musical accompaniment
of mariachi hymns.
We stopped at many
churches in our extensive travels, and each affected me with the simplicity of
their adobe construction and from-the-heart feel of the appointments. The
oft-painted and photographed San Francisco de Asis Church in Taos and the
churches in Las Trampas, Golden, and the pueblos all have enchanting wooden
statuary, painted stations of the cross and altar screens executed in the
traditional New Mexican Hispanic style. Colorful cemeteries with graves marked
by wooden crosses sprawl outside the front doors of these churches. El Sanctuario de Chimayo, source of
miraculous healing dirt, has become a huge complex filled with testimonies to
its success.
Many Native American
sites, both ancient and contemporary, were on our itinerary. Petroglyph National
Monument, on the outskirts of Albuquerque, is well worth the stop as you can
view over 200 petroglyphs in a short 45 minute walk. Bandelier National Monument
has dwellings built right into the canyon wall; Pecos NP the foundations of a
prehistoric village, the ruins of a Spanish mission, and a kiva you can climb
down into. We mistimed things and the annual corn dance at Taos Pueblo didn't
start until the afternoon (We had to get back to SF for a tour of the extensive
storerooms of the School for Advanced Research; 2:00 on Fridays and incredible.)
The upside was that the pueblo was open. It is the classic pueblo, consisting of
large multi-storied apartment buildings with varying roof levels connected by
ladders. Another upside was that we had time to see the quirky Millicent Rogers
Museum. I can’t wait to come back to Taos in the winter – looks like the skiing
will be great.
Acoma Pueblo, “Sky
City,” is high up on a steep-sided mesa, surrounded by a plain filled with
remarkable rock formations. We also made short side trips to San Ildefonso and
Santa Clara Pueblos. These inhabited pueblos are all known for their long
tradition of creating beautiful pottery, each with its own distinct style.
One day was dedicated
to Georgia O’Keeffe. We drove out to Abiquiu for a tour of her house, a classic
example of pueblo-style architecture. It was an amazing feeling to be in the
space she inhabited. Quite fortuitously, we discovered that there were tours of
Ghost Ranch, and we immediately signed up. A bus drove us through the
dramatic landscape, stopping so the guide could hold up pictures of her
paintings at the spots from which she painted them. The view of the Pedernal
alone would have been worth the tour.
Another
not-to-be-missed experience is the Saturday afternoon pourings at Shidoni Bronze Foundry in
Tesuque. Without seeing this process, one can not possibly appreciate how very
dangerous and very complicated it is to make a bronze statue. Next door you can
watch glass-blowing at the Tesuque Glass Works. Plus, the famed Tesuque Village Market is close
by for lunch. The tortilla soup is to die for.
We dined at many other
fabulous restaurants -- Pranzo, Geronimo, La Boca (tapas), Pasqual’s, Aqua Santa, and the Coyote Café. All were outstanding, but the
dish I’ll remember is the artichoke appetizer at La Boca. The
Sleeping Dog Tavern is a real find – casual, inexpensive, and close to the
Lensic Center. In addition to the vibrant art scene, there is a wide variety of
live music. Betsy is an opera aficionado, so attending the opera was high on our
list of priorities. We saw Radamisto, a seldom-performed Handel opera, and
Falstaff. The operas are performed on an outdoor stage and the views, be it
sunset or thunderstorm, are magnificent.
We tailgated dinner on opera nights, so as not to miss the informative pre-opera lectures.
Santa Fe is home to the Juan Siddi Flamenco Company (Maria Benitez has retired and passed on the torch), which performs at The Lodge. The show was nothing short of dazzling -- we were completely exhausted by the end. Another evening we went to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (part of the Santa Fe Jazz Festival) at the beautiful newly-renovated Lensic Theater. As you can see, Betsy and I were on the go constantly. But there’s lots more to see and do and I hope to get back to Santa Fe sometime in the not-too-distant future.
We tailgated dinner on opera nights, so as not to miss the informative pre-opera lectures.
Santa Fe is home to the Juan Siddi Flamenco Company (Maria Benitez has retired and passed on the torch), which performs at The Lodge. The show was nothing short of dazzling -- we were completely exhausted by the end. Another evening we went to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (part of the Santa Fe Jazz Festival) at the beautiful newly-renovated Lensic Theater. As you can see, Betsy and I were on the go constantly. But there’s lots more to see and do and I hope to get back to Santa Fe sometime in the not-too-distant future.
Mimi Santini-Ritt 2008