Recent photos for your enjoyment…
Santa Fe art in 2024 is as much fun as it was in 2016, the last time I blogged about it. We visit almost every summer, and once in a while we want to share what we have seen. Here’s a personal album for this year, which we hope will encourage you to make your own discoveries!
This summer Nola and I spent 12 days in the city, eating some wonderful food and treating our eyes to a great variety of visual art. I’ll offer art images in this blog and talk about food in a later one. Three performances of Santa Fe Opera were enjoyable; however, those don’t lend themselves to a blog, since photography is forbidden during performances.
Art in the Wild
Simply walking around town, we saw Santa Fe art that surprised and pleased us. Exhibit A is this runner, incongruously hung in the corner of the Malouf jewelry store. Is it Native American? No. Is it locally woven? No. Does it use traditional dyes? Nope. However, it’s really beautiful. It’s a “Tree of Life” runner, ten feet long, woven in Oaxaca, Mexico by artist Hugh Gonzalez.
Around the corner at another shop (Rainbow Man) we found Santa Fe art of another type: cultural collision. In this case, Native American silver jewelry and pottery, surrounded by painted carved wood animals from Mexico. Surmounting these was a lifesize bear head with a trout between its teeth.
Sometimes Santa Fe art borrows traditional themes, then resolutely drives them off the road. Consider these mixed-media sculptures in the window of a gallery (Hecho A Mano). They’re by artist Wesley Anderegg, each about one foot high: I call them “Sunbather with Buzzards” and “Duet with Rabbit”, but you may call them…anything that you wish!
Sometimes there’s not even a pretense toward “art”, as these alpaca toys for sale in our hotel (La Fonda) illustrate:
Art in the Zoo
Santa Fe art we encounter walking through town is “in the wild.” However, there’s also art that has been “captured” and put on permanent display: in museums, of course. Santa Fe has more than a dozen, in a city of only 90,000.
With less than two weeks, we limited ourselves to five museums but found plenty to entertain our eyes, both in the exhibitions and in the accompanying gift shops.
International Folk Art Museum
The International Folk Art Museum is always a treat. Before entering the museum proper we were blown away by a clay tree of life sculpture in the gift shop. This piece came from Metepec, Mexico. It’s several feet tall with thousands of hand-painted clay elements. And yes, it’s for sale. The price is $2400, plus the nightmare of transporting such a fragile object to your desired destination.
Of course, the museum itself also had treasures: piñatas in the shape of seven-pointed stars for the Christmas season; and startling crafts like these beaded high-top sneakers by Kiowa artist Teri Greeves.
Museum of Art
The main Santa Fe Art Museum has mostly traditional art, but we found a newer (2007/2011) work very attractive: “Small Thicket”, a “curtain of eccentrically shaped wires” by artist John Garrett.
Part of this museum’s collection is now in the Vladem Contemporary, a building that gives its art plenty of breathing room. That is, it doesn’t contain many works of art. We liked this wall-sized acrylic mural, “Postcard”, by artist Steve Catron, dated 1977-1978.
As usual in Santa Fe, there’s humor everywhere, as in this tile on sale in the museum shop.
Art in the Hands of the Artist H3
In addition to wild and tame Santa Fe art, we also saw art still in the possession of its creator. Those of you who follow my Facebook page may have seen these next few photos, taken at the Spanish Market preview reception.
Gustavo Victor Goler carved this 11″ tall statue of “St. Columbanus” from wood, then finished it with gesso, watercolor, varnish and wax. Goler says that his research of lesser-known saints inspires his art. Columbanus is a patron saint of motorcyclists and seems to be towing a portable church as he soars through the clouds.
Gilbert J. Montoya carved this 18″ high figure of Doña Sebastiana (aka the Grim Reaper) from jelutong and sugar pine wood, then finished it with piñon varnish, beeswax and natural pigments. Doña is mounted on a wheeled cart, as if to be towed in a village parade.
Some of the most engaging exhibits appear in the section for artists under age 18. We enjoyed the inherent humor in these 9- and 13″ high plaques by 8-year-old Avina Montoya: Saint Kateri Tekekwitha is described as a spiritual person who loves turtles (as does the artist); and this Nativity is the first one we have seen with all participants proudly smiling!
Spanish Colonial art began with Churchly images, and continues to employ traditional materials and techniques. However, as seen above, today it delivers a broad range of messages, both religious and secular.
Art of the Moment
In Santa Fe, we also spotted a few things worth remembering. You might call them “art of the moment”, or perhaps “art in the eye of the beholder.”
In our hotel, La Fonda, was a sign we have seen before at this time of the year. It’s a five-day lecture course that provides continuing medical education for radiographers who interpret medical images of breasts. Its tagline of “Music, Mammograms and Mountains” tells you all you might want to know. (Except, perhaps, why didn’t they choose the Grand Tetons as the locale for this course?)
Last but not least, we purchased some wine at Cliff’s Liquors, and they put it in a paper bag. And on the paper bag was a most interesting image.
By way of explanation, every September the residents of Santa Fe hold a festival at which they burn a fifty-foot tall papier-mâché sculpture known as Zozobra, “Old Man Gloom.” Artist Will Schuster invented this entity in 1924. We cremate it, and it carries away all our troubles and cares. And Santa Fe County has borrowed the Zozobra image to warn that drunk driving causes gloom!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick photo visit of Santa Fe art, and that you’ll have the pleasure of visiting (and re-visiting) the city yourself!
Image Credit: All photos taken by Art Chester using iPhone