Santa Fe

Mom and I touched down in San Francisco last night after our five days in the city of “holy faith”, tired and full. Tired because we walked ourselves to exhaustion nearly every day through the web of little streets that make up the heart of town. Full from the sheer generosity of color, art, texture, architecture, culture and history our eyes absorbed in the singular high atmospheric light (not to mention all the food we ate). So we arrived sated on brown adobe walls, hot chilies, blue corn, chocolate, sopapillas, pinon smoke, turquoise, silver jewelry, clay vessels, woven rugs and art, art, art.

We lucked out on the weather since the winter there has been long and cold, ending with bitter winds on, well…Tuesday. We arrived Wednesday to find crabapples and gorse in full bloom, cottonwoods budding in a chartreuse haze and the sun high and warm. It couldn’t have been more conducive to browsing shops, gallery hopping and café idling.

We went to relax and explore and shop. We’d each brought a small bundle of cash in anticipation. It began to loom a little inadequate the more we saw. Awesome silver and stone jewelry, hand tooled boots, Navajo rugs, pueblo pottery. All of it tempted until we tipped the tag. Such a small white snip, such a big number! $500 seemed the to be the average low, quickly rising into the thousands (even tens of thousands). Oh, well. We soon fell back on simple pining and just enjoyed the beauty. I did “splurge” on a few modest pieces of hand built Black Chamba burnished earthen cookware from Columbia since I know I will get years of pleasure out of them and they didn’t cost so much (under $50). So much for buying local. I am pleased, actually, that the Native American arts of the Southwest can fetch such high prices. I like to see artists well compensated and traditions encouraged.

The galleries of Santa Fe were a primary draw for me. There are over 250 of them tucked here and there though most line the two-mile stretch of Canyon Road. This little town (pop. 65,000) supposedly ranks as the third largest art market in the US, trailing only NYC and LA and has attracted international recognition as an art center so I was curious. Besides, Rob had breezed through with the girls a few years back and was persistent I should see it. So we spent a day winding up the road, popping in and out of space after space.

There sure is a full spectrum of art represented. There are at least two foundries in the area so there is a substantial sculpture population-bronzes aplenty. Of course, paintings rule supreme and there is a multitude. Everything from skillful color saturated landscapes to naïf scribbles, Native American and Wild West scenes to whimsical, even weird, visionary styles, precise still life realism to dynamic abstract expressionism. It was all there.

One thing I felt pretty keenly was the general receptivity for art that expresses a spiritual feeling. Chalk it up to the deep Native American connection to the earth or maybe the strong thread of Mexican Catholicism that stitches through from the past but there is a palpable sense of appreciation for work expressing deep sentiment, ritual and the sacred that sat well with me. I resonated with the symbols and patterns decorating the Native American art as well as the Old Mexico influenced silver repousse, milagros and retablos altarpieces. I just had a sense that the images I make would be immediately embraced there, unlike wine-obsessed Sonoma County or urban edgy San Fran. It was a good feeling and a change.

Needless to say, I returned encouraged and inspired. Oh, and happy Beltane.