santa fe trend - summer - fall 2008

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22 Trend » Summer/Fall 2008 santafetrend.com

CONTENTS

Now, Forever, ThenErika got a Nikon. And then she began documenting the domestic

life of a boy in 1950s Los Alamos, New Mexico, for this artist

project. Erika’s photo collages and text give cause for alarm—and

hope for repair. They also reveal her process of exhibition-making

for The Science Club: The Boy’s Room, Now, Forever, Then, part 1.

BY ERIKA WANENMACHER

[Summer/Fall 2008]

O Bioneers!A small nonprofit in Lamy, New Mexico, has made

conversations flourish between people working

on green agendas across disciplines. What do

next-generation ecologists look like, and how is

design making a bridge for them and their objects

to stand on?

BY NANCY ZIMMERMAN

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American PragmatistArchitect Laban Wingert believes that “the program,” through

which all questions about a building’s use get asked and

answered, is the architect’s mission. He has designed a church,

international housing plans, and residences for art collectors

that all ref lect an unerring sense of the right detail. One of his

projects, Dwan Light Sanctuary in Montezuma, New Mexico,

blends art, aura, and a geometry of the number 12.

BY ELLEN BERKOVITCH | PHOTOS BY CHAS MCGRATH

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Features “We only care about results.”—Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers

26 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

28 CONTRIBUTORS

34 LETTERS

36 FLASHVillains Live in Modernist Houses; New Baritone on the Block; Mirth of the Cool; Is That a Frown?

44 ART MATTERST.C. Cannon, Allan Houser, and FritzScholder in the summer of ’76 and beyond

54 OUTLOOKRafael Moneo’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, in Los Angeles, is the third-largest Catholic cathedral in the world.

58 COLLECTOR’S CACHEBoyz and their toyz. Seven Santa Fe car collectors share what’s inside their garages.

110 ARTIST’S STUDIOTextile artist Olga de Amaral of Bogotá,Colombia, makes celestial weavings—on an architectural scale.

119 LIVINGGini Gentry first saw the Garden ofthe Gods in 1990. It became the Garden of the Goddess, renamed for her and her funky and fabulous retreat center that takes in guests.

126 FINISH LINESTwo playgrounds in Santa Fe reflect how a change has come to designs for and by children.

132 BUSINESS PROFILESSense; Santé; Body of Santa Fe

136 THE Q FILEAlbuquerque’s restaurant scene refreshes with the addition of Jennifer James’s 101.

147 TRENDSOURCEA focus on design in an advertising section

188 RESOURCES

192 END QUOTE

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Departments


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A bout the cover : Spectrums in Dw anL ight Sanctuary, a space conceptualized byV irginia Dw an, artist C harles R oss, andarchitect L aban W ingert. PHOTO BY CHAS MCGRATH.

[Summer/Fall 2008]

Left: Fritz Scholder, Hollywood Cowboy in RomaAbove: Adobe Airstream at the Garden of the Goddess

Grant Hayunga Tree Skeletons

Linda Durham Contemporary Art 1101 Paseo de Peralta Santa Fe, NM 87501 505.466.6600 www.lindadurham.com

One night in the recent past, Iencountered a Smart car in aSanta Fe pizza shop parkinglot. I saw one in New York afew weeks later. It’s an eye-catching design, all the more

so because once a consumer learns the logo andknows “smart” means energy wise, liking it isinstinctual—good because it’s good, and goodbecause it’s good for you. Design is increasinglybeing asked to do both of these things, be goodfor one and for many. But the ramifications canbe hard to sort out. Back in 1950, the year of collector Jack Krietz-

burg’s first Buick (Automotive Hall of FamerDenise McCluggage gives us the stories of sevenSanta Fe car collectors on page 58), the notion ofconserving energy didn’t cross anyone’s mind. Postwar affluence meant hitting theopen road with a full tank and several packs of smokes. The 1950 Buick is still a terrificdesign, but it ain’t mileage-efficient. And so what? Sometimes the two categories of“good for me” and “good for us” are easy to distinguish and choose between; othertimes, the notion that good design has to go to bed with social consciousness seemssuperfluous to loving design in a single bed. Yet one wouldn’t be out of line to ask anydesigner today to visualize a context of smaller and cleaner—or to urge the rest of us tokeep envisioning a world in which good looks and deeds are more congruent.On another note, two old friends of mine called me skeptical, on successive days in

May. I didn’t know how to take that. But on reflection, it turns out this is probably theeditorial sine qua non, the reason for being of any magazine that asks its writers to turnout challenging journalism.In that spirit, I’m thrilled in this issue that our excellent writers asking questions about

good design and the new size of the American dream include Nancy Zimmerman on theBioneers. Keiko Ohnuma—formerly of Honolulu; now Corrales, New Mexico—writesabout adobe Airstreams in a garden off Highway 14. And Erika Wanenmacher’s artproject this issue blows me away, because it is about just what we’ve been talkingabout—how making art can reflect the urge to repair.For anyone who wonders about design in its U.S. capital of Manhattan, well, my old

neighborhood is full of $8 million condo lofts (check out 40bond.com, website of theonly Herzog & de Meuron residential building in New York) that telegraph features(green glass imported from Italy) but fail to be interesting for their real design qualities.Skeptical? If when reading an ad you see the word “prewar” applied to a building southof 14th Street, chances are it’s pre–World War I. And I could really live without theJohn Varvatos store in the old CBGB.

Ellen BerkovitchEditor

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IsDesign Good?

Trend » Summer/Fall 2008 santafetrend.com

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LENA HAKIM (“The Ice-Cream Charrette”)is an environmental scientist who specializesin environmental management systems, pollution prevention, and due diligence. Hertrue interests lie in environmental planningand human ecology, and she often researchesand writes on sustainable systems, greendesigns, and human behavior changes nec-essary for a sustainable future. Hakim’s lovefor Native American culture, outside-the-boxthinking, and high-desert ecosystems havekept her tied to New Mexico.

KEIKOOHNUMA(“Knocking on Heaven’sDoor” and Business Profiles) recently escapedfrom more than a decade of “Polynesian para-lysis” in Honolulu, where she worked variouslyas newspaper copy editor, columnist, art critic,and food writer while taking “forever” to finishgraduate degrees in ceramics and cultural stud-ies. She writes for publications including NewMexico and Albuquerque Arts. Ohnuma and herhusband live in Corrales, New Mexico, whichlacks nothing on Hawaii, she says, exceptdecent waves.

DENISE McCLUGGAGE (“How Douce the Coupe”) has owned a number ofcars—MG, Jaguar, Alfa Romeo, Porsche, Lancia, Ferrari—that later became col-lectible. She has raced and rallied with some success on three continents, drivingcars belonging to others (an arrangement she recommends). In 1978, recalling thelogo on train boxcars she saw in childhood, she moved to Santa Fe. McCluggagecurrently writes about cars for AutoWeek and The Santa Fe New Mexican. So far sheis the only journalist in the Automotive Hall of Fame.

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CHAS McGRATH (“American Pragmatist”)has been photographing architecture and inte-riors for more than 30 years. He has been pub-lished extensively, nationally and internationally,and loves making beautiful images of beautifuldesign. He is also a painter (chasmcgrathfineart.com) and lover of birds and otherwildlife. Born in Panama, McGrath lived also inMexico City before moving to the U.S. at age10. He and his wife, Laurie, now live and workin Santa Fe. R

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QUENTIN NARDI,Trend ’s photog-raphy coordinator, was a full-timephoto editor for magazines likeOutsideand Ski for about a decade. After start-ing her family and her freelance busi-ness three years ago, Quentin beganfinding photos and producing shootsfor publications as varied as BonAppétit, AARP the Magazine, and Men’sJournal. She collaborates with dozensof photographers, sending them onexciting assignments, but mainly sheenjoys hanging out at home with herkids and cooking with her husband.

SARA STATHAS (“OBioneers!”andBusiness Profiles) says, “Making por-traits is like collecting moments of life.I see myself as a cultural anthropolo-gist when I approach an assignment,and my job is a hugely addictive chal-lenge every time.” Stathas was recentlyselected to be part of the Aurora inter-national photo agency and continuesto work for many editorial clients. Inher free time she enjoys cake decorat-ing, bass fishing, and tumbleweedtossing.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Photos:DaveM

arlow/SantaFeCatalouge

PUBLISHERCynthia Marie Canyon

EDITOREllen Berkovitch

ART DIRECTORJanine Lehmann

COPY CHIEFHeidi Ernst

PHOTOGRAPHY COORDINATORQuentin Nardi

ADVERTISING DESIGN AND PRODUCTIONJeri Lee JodiceLisa Graff

ADVERTISING DESIGN Kate Marburger

PUBLISHER’S ASSISTANTNicole Tipton

OFFICE MANAGERBen Malley

PREPRESSFire Dragon Color, Santa Fe, New Mexico 505-699-0850

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSWendy Aaker, Stephen Beili, David D’Arcy, Dawn DelVecchio, Heidi Ernst, Gussie Fauntleroy, Lena Hakim, Denise McCluggage, Betsy Model, Keiko Ohnuma, Nancy Zimmerman

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS & ARTISTSChas McGrath, Peter Ogilvie, Kate Russell, Sara Stathas, Erika Wanenmacher

ADVERTISING SALES & MARKETING DIRECTORSusan Crowe, OnQ Marketing, 505-603-0933

REGIONAL SALES DIRECTORJudith Leyba, 505-820-6798

ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVESheri Mann, 505-988-5007 (ext. 2)

NORTH AMERICAN DISTRIBUTIONDisticor Magazine Distribution Services905-619-6565, www.disticor.com

NEW MEXICO DISTRIBUTIONJim McClure, 505-988-5007 (ext. 3)

ACCOUNTINGDanna Cooper

SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER AND BOOKKEEPERMarta Macbeth

PRINTINGPublication Printers, Denver, Colorado

Manufactured and printed in the United States.Copyright ©2008 by 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 send a fax to 505-983-1233.

Trend (circulation 35,000) is published three times in 2008, with spring/summer, summer/fall, and fall/winter issues. To subscribe, send $12.99 for one year toTrend,P.O.Box 1951,Santa Fe, NM 87504-1951.

Direct editorial inquiries to [email protected].


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ASSERTIVELY MODERN CITYI write as an architect who is a longtimepartisan of Santa Fe. My first employmentwhen I was fresh out of Texas Tech in 1960was here, in the office of the late—andmuch missed—Philippe Register.However, this relatively sleepy commu-

nity was not the place for an ambitious professional trained as a “modernist,” asgenuinely contemporary architecture wasnot practiced widely, or easily, here back inthat era. Accordingly, I decided to moveeast. But Santa Fe never lost its appeal, so

last year my wife and I returned to find avery different professional ambience andcommunity. While the flavor of muchbuilding in the city had not changed sig-nificantly, there was a freshness afoot dueto a sizeable local community of highlyskilled and energetic architects who nowemploy what might be called a “regionalcontemporary” kind of design. Publications are always a bellwether of

transformation as well, and Trend is cur-rently the clearest voice and most powerfullocal catalyst of this refreshing change.

PAUL STEVENSON OLES, FAIA SANTA FE

THANKS GLOBALLY, ART LOCALLYI would love to compliment you on thetremendous transformation you haveaccomplished with Trend. [Spring/Summer2008] is the first issue I have been compelledto read from cover to cover. The mix ofnational and local stories is great, and theimplications of the local in relation toregional and national concerns is so verywelcome. Bravo!

SYDNEY COOPERCHIMAYÓ, NEW MEXICO

CREATIVELY CLASSYCongratulations on a great edition[Spring/Summer 2008]! I found the edito-rial content timely, important, and engag-ing. To pick up Richard Florida’s thesisand develop it across several articles tookthe discussion to a different level. Thephotos, as usual, captured the architec-tural and design work beautifully. Keep upthe good work.

MARILYNN THOMACHICAGO AND SANTA FE


LETTERS

SPRING/SUMMER 2008 ISSUE:Clarifications Heidi Britt ([email protected]) isthe interior designer who designed Spandarama yogastudio (“Styled for Serenity,” right). * The Barelas backshops (shown in the photograph illustrating “What Next,Albuquerque?”) are not under management by Albu-querque Studios. Rather, they were purchased by theCity of Albuquerque in November 2007 to become amixed-use project anchored by the Wheels Museum oftransportation (wheelsmuseum.org).

Corrections The Love Armor project (“LandRover, Land Rover…”) will be at the Centerfor Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe fromSeptember 5 to October 5, 2008. * KateRussell photographed “The Proud Region-alist: Suby Bowden in Context” (left). R

KATE RUSSELL (2)

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FLASH n e w s , g o s s i p , a n d i n n u e n d o f r om a r t / d e s i g n / a r c h i t e c t u r e

JOSHUA WHITE/COURTESY OF THE HAMMER MUSEUM

Villains Live in Modernist Houses

Whether he was designing a residence with a panoramic Pacific view or a carport,John Lautner could turn metal and concrete into majestic sculpture with acurve or two. A true engineer, this architect, who died in 1994 after working inSouthern California for six decades, created uninterrupted interior spaces

bathed in light that were discrete in size, dramatic in scale, and oriented to ecstatic views ofthe mountains, the sea, and the weather of Los Angeles. The Hammer Museum in L.A. calls its Lautner retrospective Between Earth and Heaven

(July 13 to October 12). The title refers to the seeming antigravity of a Lautner building, perchedat the edge of a cliff or balanced on an apparently flimsy platform. The physics-defying MalinResidence(1960), also known as the Chemosphere House, showed how an airy support structure

A round 1 960, some ofJ ohn L autner’ s build-ings— like theC hemosphere House—won him a reputationfor space-age architec-ture. B ut his w ork reallystood betw een boxymidcentury modernismand sw ooping technoforms.


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could actually bear a house’s weight.Often pigeonholed as a space-age

architect, precisely for that house-cum-flying-saucer effect, Lautner offered muchmore than his extraterrestrial labeldescribed. He understood the warmth ofwood as much as any architect and used it inside and out. He also understood how to site a building in nature, with the small-est possible footprint. The ensuing spatialbreadth took people’s breath away. It’s nothyperbole to call Lautner a prophet. He was surely that for current-day L.A.

architect-superstars like Thom Mayne andFrank Gehry; furthermore, Lautner wasthe pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright’s whocould jettison the master’s bombast anddesign buildings with a lightness thatWright never fully achieved. Look carefully

at a Lautner building, and you can seecurves that prefigure Gehry’s work. Gehrywould be the first to agree.Visitors to the show can delve deeply

into Lautner’s process through scale mod-els, as well as digital animations andarchival renderings and construction pho-tographs. Short documentary films attemptto convey the “vitality within repose” sen-sation that Lautner sought for his buildingsto express. And, once you leave the gal-leries, you can also catch a tour of some of the houses themselves (hammer.ucla.edu), on one Sunday a month through theexhibit’s duration. Lautner, the streamlinedfuturist, is a deserved cult hero of 20th-century architectural history. He made itlook easy, and it was almost always easy to appreciate. —David D’Arcy JO

SHUA WHITE/COURTESY OF HAMMER MUSEUM (2)

To characterize J ohnL autner, think of a sculptor and an engi-neer. E v ident in theB ey er R esidence(above and right),L autner alw ay s builthis houses out ofmaterials that refreshthe human spirit. L osA ngeles is one of thew orld’ s great muse-ums of 20th-centuryarchitecture; B etw eenE arth and Heavenmakes it all seem new


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Billy Budd, Sailor was a novella left unfinished at HermanMelville’s death in 1891. The opera of the book—with libretto by Benjamin Britten—was first performed at Covent Garden in1951. And through the various ports of call and inland harborswhere Billy Budd has set down, the opera has established a fine role for the baritone. “What I like most about this character, about Billy, is his inno-

cence. He’s naive, he’s gentle, and he absolutely believes thateveryone is like him…that innocent, that sweet, and that gentle.”If there’s an irony that the New Zealand–native baritone

speaking these words, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, stands 6'4'' and hasthe shoulder span of a football player, it’s an irony that he seems aware of, as hefidgets through a fitting in the purposefully raggedy garb that the costumeshop has sewn for his tall frame. Rhodes, eager to return outside to the blue sky,seems to feel still slightly giddy—just a few days after first arriving in Santa Fe in June—about being here, on the floor of an inland sea so high.

Teddy Tahu Rhodes has been filling operahouses internationally.He stars in sevenevening performancesof Billy Budd betweenJuly 12 and August 21($26 to $170; santafeopera.org).

In a place where even water can be intoxi-cating when consumed under a vermilionNew Mexico dusk, it can sometimes be hardto know whether venue or menu makes asummer cocktail outstanding. Apple margaritas on the patio at Rancho

de Chimayó? Sangrias under the cotton-woods in the courtyard at La Casa Sena?Copasetic.But the summer concoctions at two

spots in Santa Fe put to rest any question of“Is this the best drink I’ve had in my life, oram I looking at the world through sunset-tinged shades?” For even though Inn of theAnasazi and Coyote Café are among the topplaces to imbibe alfresco, their new drinkmenus illustrate why the men behind themare helping to make mixology one of thetown’s burgeoning art forms. At Inn of the Anasazi, James Reis’s spicy

mango margarita, a brilliant orange, provesthat a colorful fruit-based alcoholic bever-age doesn’t have to be frivolous or saccha-

rine. The head bartender was inspired by alocally found salsa to create his drink,which gets its tickling kick from hot sauce.Likewise, Quinn Stephenson’s Manhat-

tan sorbet walks the dessert/cocktail linewithout a chocolate liqueur in sight. CoyoteCafé’s mixologist/sommelier/co-owner notonly discovered a way to freeze the classicingredients of bourbon, vermouth, and bit-ters, but he also serves each burgundy-colored scoop with what he calls “blackcherry caviar,” tiny balls of the fruit’s juice.So this isn’t Tom Cruise in Cocktail; Reis

and Stephenson contentedly spend hourupon hour behind the scenes creating eachseasonal drink list. For his latest specialty,Reis landed on the final recipe after variousexperiments with infusions and flavorsover a few weeks, copious notes in hand.His twist on the margarita isn’t “too far outof the mainstream,” he says, “but I wantpeople to say, ‘Oh, that’s different.’ ”

—Heidi Ernst

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“People all over the world—other per-formers, professionals, opera-goers—talkabout the location of the Santa Fe Opera, theopen back of the stage with the mountainviews, the natural light, and the acoustics,”notes Rhodes. Standing in front of the stage after a

reprieve from the fitting, he gestures towardthe mountains that cast an azure silhouetteand admits that he’s still knocked out by thesiting of the Opera House. “With our setbeing a ship on the sea, those mountains will

make it look like we’re anchored offshore.Spectacular.”Initially written as a poem, then later as a

novella, Billy Budd, Sailor tells of a youngman’s fate upon the sea, a theme that wasMelville’s literary preoccupation and haschallenged the world’s best baritones. Thisproduction will be led by the Santa FeOpera’s newly appointed chief conductor,Edo de Waart, in collaboration with directorPaul Curran (who staged Santa Fe’s memo-rable Peter Grimes, also composed byBritten, in 2005 and La Bohème last year).It’s sure to offer a new sextant to the starsin the form of the tallest yeoman on stage.

—Betsy Model

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Squarish and austere, the Mezcala figures from what is now the Guerrero

State in Mexico were collected by sculptor Henry Moore in the 1930s. He

arranged them on low shelves in his studio and considered them inspiration

for his own work. In the 1950s, André Emmerich, one of a triumvirate of leading

New York dealers of Abstract Expressionism, “discovered” these objects anew

and displayed them alongside paintings by Pollock and the boys. Look closely at

the figures carved of porphyry, serpentine, basalt, and green heart stone, and the

standing mute figures seem anything but abstract. Moreover, they resemble mys-

terious, ur-human Cycladic sculptures from the islands south of Greece. Oh, well.

It’s not that the AbEx crowd was wrong in citing these ancient figures as abstrac-

tions in their own image; they were just self-absorbed. On view at Throckmorton

Fine Art in Manhattan this spring, some of the objects will be among those Spencer

Throckmorton brings with him to the Ethnographic Art Show in Santa Fe from

August 15 to 17 at El Museo Cultural (whitehawkshows.com). Abstract or Cycladic,

it’s not the name but the affinities that matter, as with all art.—D.D’A.

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When Santa Fe rocked with personalities, leading Native American artists became pop stars

o look back 32 years to the summer of 1976 is to reconsider a time when oilmoney was being minted in the Southwest, Santa Fe was abuzz with develop-ments in contemporary art, and several generations of Native American artistsloosely grouped into a movement were winning accolades and deep-pocketedadmirers. Even as Operation Sail sent tall ships to New York Harbor to celebratethe U.S. bicentennial under a lavish fireworks show, the tall hats were gathering inSanta Fe to explode the local economy, in the form of eager spending on the new tal-ent in Native America that was constellating here.Allan Houser in 1976 had retired from teaching to focus full-time on his sculpture

career. Painter T.C. Cannon, age 29 at the time, had a local show in July 1976 at theMuseum of Navajo Ceremonial Art (now the Wheelwright) and another with his NewYork dealer, Aberbach Fine Arts. And Fritz Scholder sold out a show of paintings thatwas Elaine Horwitch’s first Indian Market exhibit in the brand-new Santa Fe satellite of her Scottsdale gallery hub.These were the go-go years for contemporary Native American art, and a time when

Santa Fe and money for new art were synonymous. Recalls appraiser Joan Caballero,

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“Back in the ’70s and ’80s, this town was rocking with personalities. Take Elaine Horwitch: People went there just to be able to say that they’d bought [art] from Elaine.When you went into the gallery, you knew you were going to have an experience.”And that experience was likely to be in the form of initiation into a movement known

at first simply as postmodernism—and, with some derision later on, as “identity poli-tics.” That phrase basically meant that the defining label separating the words “con-temporary” and “art” involved establishing the gender or ethnicity of the maker. Inother words, “contemporary Native American art,” like “contemporary Hispanic art”or “contemporary feminist art,” helped compartmentalize the artists as working insidea field of regional, not international, interest. Today, 32 years hence, it remains interesting if perplexing to assess the evolution

of these artists through their lifetimes and after their deaths. Did the Native Americanartists who came to tower over their peers by dint of reputation and timing in 1976prove to have staying power in the public eye?

“T his ar t business w as pretty simple.”

urator David Rettig met T.C. Cannon when Cannon was the 1975artist in residence at Dartmouth College and Rettig the work-studyundergraduate who built his stretcher bars. In 1976, Rettig was 22,and Cannon encouraged him to come to Santa Fe, where the artisthad settled. Rettig’s first Friday night in town, the two of them visited Cannon’s own show of paintings and drawings at the Museum of NavajoCeremonial Art, then made a stop at Jameson Gallery, across from La

Fonda, to see a show by Allan Houser. Houser had gone to elementary school withCannon’s dad, Walter “Bubby” Cannon, in Boone, Oklahoma; he had also taught theyounger Cannon during his year of studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts(IAIA) in 1965–66, where Houser started as a founding instructor in ’62. Cannon and Rettig landed finally at an opening at Horwitch that July Friday. Two

weeks later, Horwitch hired Rettig; he worked for her until 1978. One of his tasksCLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: KAY WEIST/COURTESY OF GLENN GREEN GALLERIES; COURTESY OF THE WHEELWRIGHT MUSEUM; JOHN GUERNSEY


Top: Allan Houser (left) and T.C. Cannon(right) were at the height of their celebrity in 1976. Bottom: Elaine Horwitch opened her Santa Fe gallery that summer and helpedmake Fritz Scholder’s inaugural show a sellout. Opposite: Scholder’s AmericanLandscape, 1976, shows George ArmstrongCuster as the lone white figure defeated byIndian strength at Battle of the Little Bighorn.

C

was to recruit Houser to her ranks; he didso, albeit for one year, in 1977. Rettigremembers placing the first two cast-bronze maquettes, for $8,000 apiece, ofOffering of the Sacred Pipe, the sculpturethat in a monumental size was installed atthe U.S. Mission to the United Nations in1985. Over the years, Rettig worked forother galleries and had his own (Rettig-Martinez); in 1995, he became curator ofcorporate collections at Allan Houser Inc.Over two conversations this spring,

Rettig remembered the atmosphere offrenzy that accompanied Fritz Scholder’sshow during Indian Market weekend in1976. Rettig relays: “By the time the doorsactually opened, the floodgates opened upand we sold everything on the walls; wesold everything [by Scholder] in the store-room. I thought this art business waspretty simple. All you had to do was throw

the doors open and people would come,just flooding in with money.” In the following two years, however,

Scholder attempted to flex aesthetic wingsand got rebuffed by the dealer, Rettigrecalls. About a year after that, “Fritz said[to Elaine], ‘I’ve painted my last Indian,’”says Rettig. Scholder in 1978 painted anew show for Horwitch, Ten AmericanPortraits, which Rettig describes asScholder in a Francis Bacon mode of mak-ing figures in dark poses. Rettig recallsthat Horwitch complained bitterly shecouldn’t sell the work. Lisa MarkgrafScholder remembers Horwitch, however,as consistently supportive of the artist. The artist’s widow relates that Horwitchpaid for the Concorde ticket that tookScholder to Rome and the intaglio press 2 RC Editrice in May 1978 (see opposite). Cannon, who was a decade younger than

Scholder, had appeared alongside him inthe 1973 exhibit Two American Painters atthe Smithsonian’s National Collection ofFine Arts (now the National Museum ofAmerican Art). Cannon had served twotours of duty in Vietnam and been awardeda Bronze Star; by 1976, he was mining hisKiowa/Caddo/Choctaw history for worksthat mixed a pop palette and slightly stonedsensibility with the poetics of a symbolist.His stark, often revelatory line was sugges-tive of Austrian artist Egon Schiele. At the National Collection, Manhattan artdealer Joachim Jean Aberbach approached Cannon, asking what was for sale. Learn-ing that everything was, Aberbach boughtall of Cannon’s works in the show andbecame his representative. So an art starwas born, but one who confided to hissketchbooks an artistic vision at oncebrightly hued and darkly political, asking C

OURTESY OF T.C. CANNON ESTATE/TCCANNON.COM


“WE are the EMBODIMENTof tradition at this verymoment. Thru our presentwork will evolve thoseinevitable nuances and mannerisms that the far future will praise or abolish.”

—T.C. Cannon

ARTMATTERS

questions about tradition, history, and thelimitations of labels: “Nobody calls Picassoa Spanish artist,” he wrote. Yet Cannon had a presentiment of early

death. In May 1978, he died, at 32, in a carwreck in Santa Fe—two years older, saysRettig, than the age he had predicted hewould become. Cannon had penned averse about his death for his friends (“Youwill all be far away when I die…”). Othersthat revealed his inner self, such as “Mydetermined eye/My resolute heart/Mysingular searching soul…,” were publishedin a memorial catalog by Aberbach FineArt of New York 18 months after theartist’s death. Thirty-two paintings in this1979 memorial show coexisted alongsideanother two dozen or so drawings—inkand pencil on paper, a few charcoals.Pages of the catalog are glossy black, andthe first reproductions are a portrait of

47

T.C. Cannon was considered a genius and a rebel in the Rimbaud mode. Left: Man, I’d Really Like that Pinto Pony (study), ink on paper, 11'' x 14'',1971. Above: Tosca, woodcut, 191/4'' x 15'', was print-ed after Cannon’s 1978 painting A RememberedMuse. The image became the cover of the 1978Santa Fe Opera program.

TOP: COURTESY OF ZAPLIN LAMPERT GALLERY (2); BOTTOM: ©FRITZ SCHOLDER ESTATE/COURTESY OF IAIA MUSEUM

During a three-week invitational residency at 2 RC Editrice in 1978,Scholder created nine intaglio prints—four giant ones (62'' x 44''), likeIndian Portrait in Roma (lithograph, etching, and aquatint on copperplate, above), and five smaller ones (20'' x 25''). Horwitch premieredthese in Scottsdale, Arizona. Sales were “monumental,” according toScholder’s widow, who worked for Horwitch in Scottsdale for 17 years.

santafetrend.com Summer/Fall 2008 » Trend


Scholder in 1972 and Cannon’s 1973 self-portrait in a pop mien: Wearing a cowboyhat, dark aviator glasses, and a stripedshirt, he holds a flèche of three paint-brushes and sits in front of ominouslyblank sheets of paper. War images and poems appear inter-

spersed in the 1975 Untitled #6 showing a bare-chested GI with his arm around abloodied figure wearing a death skulltopped by a military helmet. The versescrawled over the image reads: “I haveseen unhonest death/and it breathed ayellow smoke into my memory.” According to Rettig, who packed up

Cannon’s studio after his death and sentthe works to Aberbach, most of the piecesin this show were sold even before itopened. And much of 1977, for the artist,had been occupied with an epic paintingcommission for Seattle’s Daybreak StarCultural Center. Epochs in Plains History:Mother Earth, Father Sun, The ChildrenThemselves took him into a gigantic newscale at 96'' x 240''. The mural depicts the

beginning of man through the spiritualawakening including the Spirit’s gift ofthe white buffalo and the pipe ceremonyto the Plains Indians. Jean Aberbach died in 1992; his son,

David, who died in Santa Fe later on,helped Mark Zaplin and Richard Lampertorganize a 2002 Cannon retrospective theyheld at Zaplin Lampert Gallery. It includedclose to 50 works, some from sketchbooks,about which Mark Zaplin has said that he had placed all but a few. Glenn GreenGalleries of Tesuque recently passed alongto Zaplin Lampert the 1978 painting Abbiof Bacabi, which had belonged to a Con-necticut collector since the late ’70s, forresale. It is being offered at $50,000.According to Rettig, Cannon created

probably 50 to 60 major paintings thatwould have sold during the artist’s life for$20,000 to $40,000. Cannon’s vision was prescient. In Tosca,

for example, an Indian couple listens raptto opera playing on a gramophone in aroom that has a framed portrait of Martin

ARTMATTERS

“It was a point of pride of Allan’s to be a Chiricahua Apache and to understand his place in history.”

—Glenn Green

COURTESY OF ALLAN HOUSER INC. (2)

TOP RIGHT: WENDY MCEAHERN; COURTESY OF ALLAN HOUSER INC. (4)

Above, left: Allan Houser, Sacred Rain Arrow, bronze (edition of eight), 941/2'' x 58'' x 32'', 1988. Center: Spirit of the Wind, bronze (edition of six), 126'' x 96'' x 72'', 1992, was also executed as a charcoal-on-paper drawing. Right: The Visitor is a unique alabaster (15'' x 10'' x 10'', 1980). Opposite: The forms of the hills inspired (at left) Cerrillos, bronze (edition of six), 111'' x 1461/4'' x 60'', 1993. Sacred Rain Arrow (at right), a 1968 unique ebony sculpture (28'' x 6'' x 6''), was Houser’s first carving of this seminal symbolic expression.

Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy hang-ing on the wall. Thirty years posthu-mously, his effect can still be seen clearlyin the work of other prominent NativeAmerican artists, especially David Bradley.It is a legacy that has stuck resiliently towhat, because of the artist’s brief life, wasa slim artistic output. Writes Cannon’sbiographer Joan Frederick, young Indianstudents are still saying about the artist,“He is our God.”

“T he most famous guyaround.”

omplex curves and arcstouching the bright skycall out the forms of theAllan Houser abstract sculp-ture garden—and the problem

of typecasting. Houser tends to besummed up as a sculptor of Apache fig-ures, although abstraction occupied himfor five decades. Anasazi (1987), a bronzecast in an edition of three, looks from a dis-

tance to have hatch marks in themetal that augment its stolid massand contrast with the more undulantform of Spirit of the Wind, a 1992bronze with an edition of six. Onecan see a hint of modernist TonySmith’s cubic forms in Houser’sOptions (1992), and of HenryMoore’s recumbent figures in thepair of white plasters that Housercalled, simply, “bone forms,” evok-ing calcification and absence. Thenthere are the figures: the iconicApache chanter of Morning Prayer;mother and child.This place on Haozous Road off

Route 14—named for the ChiricahuaApache name of the artist—was Houser’slast studio, built in 1990. He and a visitorin that year might have sat on wickerchairs under the portal and discussedabstraction, pausing to take in the unob-structed views of the Ortiz to the south and the mining scars in the Cerrillos Hills. Cerrillos, Houser’s sculpture of swooping

triangular forms meeting at points whosetension evokes taut sails—and the piece hechose to represent his oeuvre for a sculp-ture garden at IAIA—was of a body of workhe made from fabricated sheet bronzewhile working with Ryon Rich during thelast five years of his life. Houser died, atage 80, in 1994. Today, the roar of the blast


CThe artist at work in 1975 on his unique sculptureNavajo Runner, one of 46 Housers in the collection of the Heard Museum in Phoenix.


furnaces at Allan Houser Foundry, alongwith birdsong, generates a low hum in thewarm afternoon air. “In 1976, Allan Houser was the most

famous guy around,” remarks Rettig. Con-sidering the artist’s level of fame, hislegacy is at once apparently clear—thefamily corporation, Allan Houser Inc.,controls the estate—while a full historymust involve the artist’s former dealer,Glenn Green Galleries. Green’s Scottsdalegallery, the Gallery Wall, began showingHouser in the mid-1970s. Green’s exclu-sive worldwide sales contract with the artistlasted from 1979 to 1991. A lawsuitbetween the parties was settled out of courtin 1999.Green and his wife, Sandy, met Houser

in 1974. “When I first met Allan, I said tohim, ‘Mr. Houser, you’re an Apache,’ ”recalls Glenn. “Allan said, ‘I’m ChiricahuaApache.’ ” Houser’s father had surren-dered with Geronimo in 1886 and spent 30

years as an Apache prisoner of war—finally, at Fort Sill, in Oklahoma. Greennotes that the artist’s experience of beingthe first Apache born to freedom outsideFort Sill, as well as having been“imprinted” on warpath stories—tales ofthe final wars waged by the Apache againstthe encroaching U.S. government in thelate 19th century—made Houserextremely determined in his vision. Yet overcoming identity-based labels

proved difficult for this artist even early on,notes Green, who says that in the 1970s,when the Greens were based only in Scotts-dale, the Heard Museum and the PhoenixArt Museum were open about having agentleman’s agreement whereby the Heardwould collect Houser’s work (it holds some46 pieces) while the art museum would not.Green says, “Fine-arts museums just shutthe doors against us. It was a prejudicialattitude. They wanted to send us to natural-history or Indian-arts museums.”

ARTMATTERS

The founding of Institute of American Indian Arts in 1962 was a boon to developing Native American voices. Left to right: John Gritts, Johnny Romero, Bill Soza, and Boye Ladd. In back, Fritz Scholder in sunglasses.

KAY WEIST/COURTESY OF IAIA MUSEUM


The Greens and Houser thereforedecided to send his work abroad. A 1981show at Paris’s Salon d’Automne was fol-lowed by a three-year tour of Houser’sworks in Berlin, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria,Romania, and Yugoslavia, ending at Kün-stlerhaus in Vienna. Museum placementsat Le Centre Pompidou in Paris and theMuseum Berlin-Dahlem followed. Since 1995, Rettig has worked at the

family corporation that administers theartist’s legacy, lends work to museums,and makes sales. The curator estimatesthat during Houser’s lifetime, some 8,000pieces went into the art market. Theinventory includes some 500 uniquesculptures; 450 “limited lifetime editions”of bronze sculptures, often in editions of20; as well as watercolors, illustrations forchildren’s books, and unique drawings.Rettig says that of this number of objects,the family corporation probably now pos-sesses 650, along with another 250 in thepersonal collection of Houser’s widow,Anna Marie. Allan Houser Inc. has 239still-intact artists’ sketchbooks, which willnot be dismantled, the curator says. Just as Rettig recalled selling two

maquettes of Houser’s first casts of Offer-ing of the Sacred Pipe for $8,000 apiece,Green likewise recalls that one ofHouser’s early collectors paid $7,000apiece for three or four sculptures in the1970s. Those collectors astute enough tohave bought work at pre-1985 prices,before the dedication of Offering of theSacred Pipe at the U.S. Mission to theU.N. upped market values, made an excel-lent investment, says Rettig. He estimatesthat fair market values have increased onsome of these works exponentially—from$7,000 to $750,000 or more. According toRettig, a Massachusetts couple recentlybought a pair of sculptures cast as editionsin 1992 that illustrate a vignette of Houser-collecting. One, May We Have Peace, soldout an edition of eight, and that Bostoncollector paid just south of $1 million forit. The other, The Offering, has sold onlythree of an edition of seven, for half the

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price of Peace. The artist estab-lished edition sizes on all hisbronzes during his lifetime, and the family corpora-tion reserves the right to cast thoseuntil the edition sizes are full. Thisphenomenon of posthumous cast-ings, typically associated with theFrench sculptor Rodin, makeswhat are called post-casts. Roughlyhalf a year after the artist’s death,Allan Houser Inc. took the artist’sestate management back into family control, picking up all ofHouser’s sculpture molds fromShidoni Foundry and Art Foundry,both of which had cast his workduring his lifetime, and took the productionin-house.“The family felt they had lost control

over the process,” says Rettig. As to the market today, it is, predictably,

highly diverse. A set of four Spirit Dancerswere on offer at Glenn Green—part of a cast the artist made in an edition of 129at Nambé Mills for $12,000 for the set. Meanwhile, at the nosebleed end of

things is a unique Indiana limestone, EarthMother, being offered by Green for $7 mil-lion, a number, the dealer says, arrived atby a Bernard Ewell appraisal. Rettig con-tends, however, that fair market value forHouser sculptures tops out currentlyaround $1 million, and that other prices arenot bolstered by the market. But Green con-tends, “Earth Mother is an American treas-ure and reasonable at this price.”Even so, with retrospective Houser

exhibits at the Smithsonian (2004–2005)and sculptural acquisitions by Salt LakeCity for the 2002 Winter Olympics bring-ing Houser’s audience numbers well upinto the millions—and new sculptureshows planned all the time, such as onescheduled for October at the Grounds forSculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey—artmuseum placements have proven elusive. For Green’s part, he remembers when

Chicago and Aspen collectors wanted todonate a major Houser piece to the Art

Institute of Chicago in the mid-’80s. Agroup met, including the collectors, theirattorney, the director and curator of the ArtInstitute, and Green. “We kept hearing,‘You want to talk to the parks system,’ ”says the dealer.Rettig acknowledges also that this atti-

tude has been frustrating but was part ofthe mixed bag for artists who derivedopportunities from postmodern identitypolitics.“In the 1970s,” he says, “there was a

strong identification with these artistsbeing a contemporary Indian art move-ment.” For all of Houser’s expressivevocabularies in abstraction as well as rep-resentation, his work is not in theMuseum of Modern Art nor the WhitneyMuseum of American Art nor the ChicagoArt Institute nor the Los Angeles CountyMuseum of Art. Notes Rettig, with a smallsmile, nor is a Houser at the Beaux Artsmuseum branch of the Museum of NewMexico. “It’s the same thing here [asnationally],” he says. “There is a BeauxArts museum on the Plaza, and then [onCamino Lejo] an Indian arts museum [theWheelwright] next to a Mexican museum[the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art] nextto the Folk Art Museum. That feeds intowhat’s often referred to as institutionalracism.”Green asserts that during his experience,

Fritz Scholder’s Galloping Indian After Leigh, lithograph, 44'' x 63'', 1978

©FRITZ SCHOLDER ESTATE/COURTESY OF IAIA MUSEUM

the Houser collector base numbered sev-eral hundred people, many of them fromthe East Coast. But, he also avers, the post-casts reflect a phenomenon whereby anartist’s reputation can be diminished byhis work becoming seen as a sort of trophydecoration for big houses. Even so, Greenhelped place a garden of 11 Houser sculp-tures at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdalein 1989—reflecting, in a sense, that conun-drum of how travel posters and zip codescan assign artists to a regional status thatis very hard to escape.According to Rettig, however, efforts

proceed manfully to have Houser’sabstraction seen on a parallel with his figuration and to perpetuate the artist’shefty legacy. While the family’s recent bidfailed to place an abstract Houser, SpiritHouse III, on the plaza of the new SantaFe convention center, Rettig points outhow even the most noteworthy names inmodernism—such as Herman Miller ofthe modernist design and furniture enter-prise—have been Houser collectors. Andthroughout, he observes, the artistsremained true to their school.“There’s no separating Allan or T.C.

505-992-0441

T.C. Cannon’s Abbi of Bacabi (oil on canvas, 66'' x52'', 1978) has come onto the secondary marketthis year, offered by Zaplin Lampert Gallery.

COURTESY OF GLENN GREEN GALLERIES


OUTLOOK BY STEPHEN BEILI

JULIUS SHULMAN/COURTESY OF CATHEDRAL OF OUR LADY OF THE ANGELS

A Questionof MassWith design intervention, Our Lady of the Angels offers a fresh look at sanctuary

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: STEPHEN BEILI; FRANTISEK SVARDON; JULIUS SHULMAN/COURTESY OF CATHEDRAL OF OUR LADY OF THE ANGELS (2) L

ight and stone have been marshaled to awesome presence in buildingssuch as the 12th-century Gothic cathedral at Chartres, France, and LouisKahn’s Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (1972). More recently,in Los Angeles, Spanish architect and Pritzker Prize winner Rafael

Moneo has made sure that light and stone are closely paired in a cathedral, thethird largest in the world, that also required design intervention to protect itagainst the calamity of earthquakes.The city’s tremulous history had led L.A.’s primary Catholic cathedral, St. Vib-

iana’s, to be condemned because of earthquake damage in the late 1990s. Onemajor requirement when Moneo was tapped to design the new Cathedral of OurLady of the Angels (OLA), which opened downtown in 2002, was that the sanctuaryneeded to fare better during catastrophe. Moneo designed a massive building ofpoured-in-place concrete; it weighs 151 million pounds and sits on a foundationthat can “float” up to 27 inches during a magnitude–8.0 earthquake, according to OLA’s Web site (olacathedral.org). Yet OLA’s overt qualities, rather than its

Clockwise from top left: The gardenwithin the cathedral complex offers a respite from the frenetic L.A. streets.The Hollywood Freeway runs past the cathedral compound. Mass is thechurch’s principal motif: The buildingweighs 151 million pounds and wasmade of poured-in-place concrete. Analternating rhythm of solid and void is created by small side chapels that,atypically, have their backs to the nave.

Opposite: L.A. artist Robert Grahamdesigned the 30' x 30' bronze doorsthat involved some 150 artists workingover almost five years.


JULIUS SHULMAN/COURTESY OF CATHEDRAL OF OUR LADY OF THE ANGELS

unseen structural ones, are what draw meback for several visits. >My first time there, I travel on foot

along Grand Avenue to the Temple Streetpedestrian entrance. Although the cathe-dral’s large, blank concrete walls have acertain bulkiness when seen from theapproaching streets, and the rectangularwindows are of dull brown glass, individ-ual elements of the architecture are par-ticularly beautiful. The campanile has asleek verticality as it rises 150 feet overthe throbbing Hollywood Freeway—theroute by which Spanish missionaries gotto L.A. in the 18th century. Moneo pushed the new cathedral to the

western boundary of the 5.6-acre site,making the building’s eastern facade andtall outdoor cross dominate the gardenthrough which a visitor enters the com-pound. The garden offers an enticing viewfrom the street, while it screens the

church complex from within. Standinghere, I first see the cathedral reveal itsasymmetry, loosen, and breathe. But thetrue splendor of the building is reallyexperienced from the inside, whereMoneo disavows a typical cathedral planfor a thrilling effect. In a traditional church entry, evident in

basilicas from Paris’s Notre-Dame toSanta Fe’s own St. Francis Cathedral, themain doors sit on an axis with the crossand altar straight ahead. Congregants pro-ceed up and down the nave to approachthe altar or return to the pews after takingcommunion. This typically symmetricalcathedral plan often includes smallchapels or stations of the cross lining theside aisles.But at OLA, such orthodoxy is history.

The entry door is actually next to the altar(which remains unseen). A long, wide hallrunning parallel to the nave paves a walk-

way along and through aseries of small chapels.These face into the hall.While some are perma-nently dedicated to a saintor piece of religious art,others are for changing artexhibits. Continuing downthis hall to the very rear ofthe cathedral, a worshipercan finally turn 180degrees, face the cross, gen-uflect, and then find a seatin the sanctuary, whichholds up to 3,000 faithfuland 400 priests. I ramble between two of

the small chapels, a paththat ends in a visual rewardwhen I come to the side ofthe altar. Its unusual geom-etry creates a play of anglesthat emphasizes Moneo’suse of materials. I take inthe otherworldly interplayof surfaces: the mass of the

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concrete walls, the floating wood ceilings,and the windows made of thin slabs ofSpanish alabaster. (These windows areshielded on the exterior of the church bythe brown glass, which prevents the stonefrom turning opaque as it heats up.) On the January morning when I first

enter the cathedral, in time for seveno’clock mass, the sun has not yet risen.The first words of the priest’s sermon,“Bring to mind our sinfulness,” seem spo-ken literally out of darkness. But when theorganist begins to play, the sun emerges,silhouettes the cross, and teasingly illumi-nates the nave. As the world continues toturn, the sun floods the south windows as well, igniting the alabaster’s subtle veining and filling the entire space with amagnificent glow. I am undoubtedly biased against the

rigidity of churches that convey devotionas a singular path. Moneo’s fresh approachto cathedral circulation emphasizes that avisitor can choose to meander rather thantread a deliberate line. And, while the useof ethereal light through magnificent win-dows has been a church mainstay for mil-lennia, Moneo’s design is especiallyinventive even inside of that tradition. If the rose window at Chartres, for

example, represents the pinnacle of cathe-dral builders’ efforts to reduce the stoneto such a degree that the walls effectivelybecome more glass than stone, Moneo atOLA has made a building that for all itsapparent mass principally communicateslight playing on surfaces. North lightreflected from the building’s southernwindows uses the concrete walls as ascrim. Awed by this light on raw concrete,I am struck by Moneo’s success inrephrasing sanctuary as a respite from theoutside world, offering the possibility fortranscendence within. R

Stephen Beili spent 12 years in Santa Fe andwas a founding member of FREE, an archi-tects� and designers� cooperative. Since 2004,

COLLECTOR’S CACHE How Douce the Coupe


Sculptural, certainly; aesthetically compelling, often. But are cars art? Perhaps it is their utilitarian aspect that raises the question. Cars are meant to move, and not like Alexander

Calder mobiles stirred by breezes, but self-powered and over distances. They tote people and stuff to and fro—to the bank, the dry cleaner, Home Depot. Yet such usefulness is suspect in art. Venus de Milo from herParisian perch would certainly pass the aesthetics test, but a reproduction with a clock in her belly? Kitsch! Yet ultimately, such debates—art or not?—turn meaningless if one looks at the contexts that have demon-

strated cars artfully. Eight Automobiles at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art in 1951 launched the museumshow of the car. The Guggenheim 47 years later, under the sponsorship banner of Hugo Boss and the pro-motional flair of museum director Thomas Krens, drew opprobrium for trailing two-wheelers down FrankLloyd Wright’s ramps. Still, The Art of the Motorcycle was the most popular in the museum’s history.Okay, then consider cars nontraditional art—and also consider how many people respond to the

Giacometti-like sparseness of a Miller racing car or the Rubenesque curves of between-the-wars Frenchcoachwork. Cars are collected as fervently as sculpture or paintings, despite what they ask of their owners. A Matisse

need not be removed from the wall and run about the neighborhood to keep its fluids fluid. Nor does rustthreaten the Frank Stella stripe—though artist Stella, for that matter, was one of the first to paint not a pictureof a BMW, but on a BMW. Other noted artists who have swelled the BMW Art Cars collection over the yearsby using production cars as their canvas include Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, JennyHolzer, and David Hockney. But we speak here of collectors.Collectors of cars vary as widely as collectors of paintings, pens, watches, Fabergé eggs, or Princess Diana

memorabilia. Some are mere amassers, buying anything that gets bid up at an auction. I’m reminded of a strip-mall developer from Dallas who wore plaid pants and a cowboy hat (among other vestments) at a sale of thelate Bill Harrah’s vast car collection in Sparks, Nevada. He was in quest of anything Duesenberg as long as itcost at least a million dollars. For some, money to be real needs demonstration.More serious collectors may specialize in a type of car, a particular era, a style, a theme, or a single producer.

Harrah was, indeed, trying to acquire a sample of every Ford model ever built. After his death several auctionsscattered the Fords again. Santa Fe boasts its own collection of collectors. Some have cars like Imelda Marcos had shoes; some pos-

sess an ever-changing handful of machines; some cling to one special example. The collectors here are uniquebut representative. >

BY DENISE McCLUGGAGEPHOTOS BY PETER OGILVIE

RIGHT: COURTESY OF SERIOUSWHEELS.COM

Artist Frank Stella created this Op BMW 3.0 CSL in 1976,the second of the Art Cars Series.Opposite: “It’s the shape,” says Dennis Little to explain hisattraction to his E-Type Jag.


COLLECTOR’S CACHE

Tom Mittler is drawn to sport and speed in his cars. The FordGT40 (see page 61), now on the block for $1.8 million, is one of seven built for road use that were based on the race car that terminated Ferrari’s hold on the Le Mans race, in 1966.Mittler continues to race many of his vintage favorites in suchinternationally esteemed events as the Porsche Rennsport atDaytona and the Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races at Laguna Seca, in California. He has assembled an importantthematic collection of sports/racing cars, each one uniquelysymbolizing the country of its origin. The U.S. is representedby an iconic 1951 Cunningham C-2R; Great Britain by a “Queen’sgreen” 1958 Jaguar D-Type; and France by a feisty, rasping 1959Deutsch-Bonnet Le Mans prototype. Mittler’s book-worthy collection (literally: See Art of the

National Sports Car with photos by son T.G. Mittler) is housedlargely in Indiana with a changing handful kept in Santa Fe,where he keeps a second home. The enthusiast also has a taste for the one-off oddity mani-

fested in his affection for the monster Wisconsin Special, which

Tom Mittler’s car collection is housedmainly in Indiana. But he garages five of his cars in Santa Fe, includingthis 1958 Devin SS with a Chevy V-8engine, one of 12 surviving. But SS? Road & Track called it “Super Shillelagh”—the chassis, like all great movers, was Irish.


Left and below: Mittler’s Mark III Ford GT40 is one of seven built for road use (all are basedon the race car that won Le Mans in 1966).Above: A look at GT40s lined up at Le Mans.

was outfitted by Sig Haugdahl, its imaginativeand daring creator, with a modified aircraftengine. Mittler displayed the car in March at theAmelia Island Concours in Florida alongsideother historic machines that had in their dayripped at speed along the sands near DaytonaBeach. The Wisconsin Special topped anastounding 180 miles per hour there in 1922. Last year the Wisconsin Special was taken to

England, where Mittler blasted it up the famoushill at Goodwood to whoops and applause. >

LOCATIONS: CAPITAL AVIATION AND COLLECTOR CARS OF SANTA FE; MODEL: SARA STATHAS; SUIT: DUST & GLITTER


COLLECTOR’S CACHE

Dennis Littlemoved to Santa Fe nearly a decade ago, afterretiring from General Motors as head of the Cadillac DesignStudio. In his 30-year career he was responsible for severalpresidential limousines (but could never convince the pow-ers that be to specify anything other than dark blue uphol-stery), as well as the Oldsmobile Aurora, and he came up withthat neat red strip of light across the rear deck-lid of a Cadillacthat answered the decree for higher brake lights in 1986. His early taste for cars was stirred by watching a childhood

neighbor every day lovingly soap and steam a VW Beetle he’dbrought home from Europe. Little, as a teenager, won a FisherBody Craftsman’s Guild competition for designing and build-ing a model concept car. In college his distaste for math turned him away from the

engineering career he had anticipated and directed himtoward art classes. As for his attraction to the E-Type Jaguar:“It’s the shape.” And such a shape—the used-soap smooth-ness of it, the way the wind whittles at it, its spidery eyes—finds designers walking around an E-Type in a trance. Littlebought his in the late 1970s and used it in instructing hisapprentice designers at GM.

Dennis Little bought his XKE in the late 1970s and used it in instructing apprentice car designers at GM. He also took itdown to bare metal and replaced the red-leather interior withblack. Neither he nor his wife, Beverly, can imagine beingwithout it—or joining it with any other collector car.

Jack Krietzburgwas living in Las Vegas, Nevada, and operating a commercialprinting business when the car bug bit him. And that took him to Pomona,California, in 1990 and its famous hot rod show. Though his friends seemed intent on buying fancy bits and pieces to put

together rods of their own, he wanted something he could “drive and enjoy”right away. His wife, Sharon, fell for one. Krietzburg was dubious: “A Buick?”She pulled him along to have a look.The upshot: They drove back to Vegas in a black 1950 Buick Special

Sedanette. Its grille represented the chrome mania that marked Harley Earle’s flamboyant tastes. He had been the creator of outré vehicles forHollywood stars before he came to General Motors. Earle, a big man, thoughtbig. He brought to the automobile industry the very concept of a “stylingdepartment.” Before then it didn’t exist; now it’s called “the design studio.” Krietzburg has had as many as 15 to 17 Buicks at one time. Now it’s only

six in his garage just south of Santa Fe. (He retired here in 1997.) TodayKrietzburg isn’t looking for more old Buicks (though he is open to more) somuch as old Buick parts. He has grown fond of working on his cars as well as driving them. >

The grille of Jack Krietzburg’s 1950 Buick has adistinctive mouthful of chrome in great verticalbars, sometimes referred to as a waterfall grille.This Buick styling cue was first seen in 1939 and reappeared in variations thereafter. Actually, the 1950 version was an excess of excesses—the vertical bars spilled out over the bumper, thusprompting the sobriquet “the Bucktooth Buick.”Alas, the grille was subject to outsize repair bills and lasted only that model year.



Joe Valdes works daily at his Valdes Paint & Glass shop and wasmayor of Santa Fe from 1972 to 1976, but he is probably bestknown as owner of the red-and-white 1959 Ford Skyliner that swal-lows its hard top to become a roadster. It’s among the cars on dis-play on the Plaza every Fourth of July, and it’s a crowd favorite. “Either everyone used to have one, wished they’d had one, or

would like to get one,” Valdes says. He was attracted to the car’s“uniqueness” at an auction in Albuquerque 18 years ago, and heand his wife, Bernadette, drove it home. Joe was 25 years old and married by the time he acquired his

first car, a 1948 demo from the Chevy dealer—despite his familybeing more Ford-oriented. His older brother Gene once ownedthe Ford Parts Obsolete business in Los Angeles after working forFord dealers in Santa Fe and Springer, New Mexico. The mechanical marvel that is the Skyliner was built on a sta-

tion wagon platform to make room for maneuvering the top. Now that modern engineering, assisted by computers and

lighter materials, has put ingestible hard tops in a number ofrecent cars, the ’59 Skyliner—the first one to work, after reportedlyfield-tested with 10,000 operations—might not drop so manyjaws. Just what does Valdes think about the new cars withretractable hard tops?“What took them so long?” >

The 1957 and 1958 swallowing tops of the Ford Skyliner were subject to bothersome failure, but the 1959 model—the year of Joe Valdes’s vehicle—was said to have been field-tested with 10,000 operations to make sure the top worked. On any given July Fourth, when Valdes flaunts the car on the Plaza, he doesn’t get that many requests for demonstrations of how the car swallows its top, but over time they mount up, he says.

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John Schaefer’s head-snapping blue pillarless coupe is one of the last of BMW’s 8 Seriesand likely the only one in North America. Certainly it is the only one that saw its originalprice of $125,000 increased by $75,000 in Schaefer’s high-performance fiddling.

One would expect the raffish owner of Santa Fe’s PeytonWright Gallery to utter the word “sculpture” about cars sooneror later. No disappointment: “Cars are sculpture that’s func-tional,” declares John Schaefer. Cars—“the way they smelled, the noise”—captivated

Schaefer from the time he was 4 or 5, and from 7 he couldidentify any car on the road from its silhouette. It helped thathe was a child in North Dakota, where everything then waseither a Chevy or a Ford. “But I could tell whether a ’57 Fordwas a 312 or a 292” (i.e., which engine it came with), he boasts. Kids in the Midwest get licenses early. At 14, Schaefer was

already an experienced go-kart racer. His first car was a 1948 Plymouth Business coupe—“three on the column.” He hot-rodded it until “it sounded like a tractor.” He bought—at the PX, no less—another memorable car while

serving in Vietnam. For maybe $100 over cost, servicemen couldorder the car of their dreams, checking the option boxes, to bedelivered when they got home. Schaefer’s checked boxes “built”a muscle car from American Motors, a hot 1969 AMX image-booster. “Two-door, midnight-blue metallic, four-barrel, four-speed,” he remembers.Today German cars win Schaefer’s favor. And they all—

some ten cars are with him at any time—are personalized withtricked-out engines, special features. The1997BMW 850, one ofthe last of the 8 Series, has 500 horsepower that can kick it to60 in around four seconds. Schaefer calls that “remarkable.” Certainly for a piece of sculpture. >

COLLECTOR’S CACHE

COLLECTOR’S CACHE

Bill Agnew grew up in Southern California, wherebreathing the air was enough to waken car con-sciousness. A neighbor of his had a Triumph TR3.Car clubs for everything from classics to Europeansports cars abounded.As a Santa Fe architect (the Bradbury Science

Museum in Los Alamos is his most visible workin the area) married to Flo Perkins, a glass artist,Agnew is interested in the structural elements ofa car. But function is also important to him. Fromthat information a car buff could well surmise thatPorsches fuel the Agnew passion. (Though hewouldn’t mind owning an Audi R8. Or, in a dream,a Ford GT.) Agnew acquired his 1995 “collector” Porsche

911 in 2000, drawn to its rare, though factory-standard, Riviera Blue color. So the paint isn’tstructural; it’s pretty. >

The car Bill Agnew has is known inPorsche parlance as a 993. Translated,that is a 1995 Porsche 911. Its particularclaim to fame stems from its having thelast of the air-cooled engines, the wayFerry Porsche made them from the start.

COLLECTOR’S CACHE

Racer history has been written by Tom Linton himself, driving in vintage races and making appearances at Rennsport—a historic gathering of Porsches now scheduled for every third year. This 1974 Carrera is Linton’s current car.



Tom Linton got into cars through model build-ing and into racing through go-karts. As anadult he discovered a way to use cars to financehis business. To do that, a collector must bewilling to locate a car with provenance, wait out the owner’s reluctance to sell, restore it to reflect its history, and then liquidate theequity after it has appreciated. That’s what Linton did with an RSR Porsche

(fortunately, vintage Porsches are apt toincrease in value), a factory team car thatboasted eight Daytona 24-hour races and nineSebring 12-hour races in an active past. Whatit brought when sold in 1998 financed the startof his new business—a secure storage facilitynear Airport Road to house other people’s cars.The handsome garages-cum-clubhouse weredesigned by Albuquerque architect Don Dudley. Linton’s next Porsche project was the 1974

Carrera RSR that Peter Revson drove at Riversidein the inauguration of IROC (International Raceof Champions). The series was designed to pitdrivers against each other—skill to skill—by pro-viding them with interchangeable, mechanicallyidentical cars. Years after that race, Linton discovered the

car “disguised in new paint” in the Californiagarage of Vasek Polak, a noted Porschemechanic-dealer. Linton “de-flared” the fendersto their original silhouette and returned the carto the yellow it wore before it was paintedwhite. He had in mind an avid Porsche collec-tor who would appreciate the car and con-tacted the collector’s “scout,” whom he hadknown for 25 years. That’s how Jerry Seinfeldcame to own the IROC RSR. R

Go-kart racing, inches above the road at 80 milesper hour, is a driver’s baptism, says Linton.

Listento the rousing cheers that fill

the auditorium as Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons take the stage

to launch the annual Bioneers conference in San Rafael, Califor-

nia, and you might assume that the gathering is just another con-

clave of do-gooders preaching peace, love, and eco-activism to the

converted. But Ausubel and Simons—whose Lamy, New Mexico,

organization convenes pioneering scientists, business-

people, farmers, artists, and assorted activists to share success sto-

ries about solving global problems—are decidedly not gurus.

Plainspoken and pragmatic, they eschew the platitudes often asso-

ciated with a goal as high-minded as saving the world, and they take

pains to avoid turning Bioneers into a cult of personality.

“It’s easy to slip into New Age jargon when you’re talking about

things like the interconnectivity of all living beings,” concedes

Ausubel, “but we’re really not interested in trendy rhetoric. We

only care about results.”

By “results,” Ausubel means the many ways that individuals and

groups the world over are finding workable solutions to the prob-

lems threatening our planet: climate change, food shortages, social

injustice, dwindling energy resources, environmental toxins, eco-

nomic decay. “People struggling to make a difference often feel

discouraged by the magnitude of the problems we face, which can

seem insurmountable,” adds Simons. “But in fact, there are count-

less people around the world working to devise solutions. They’re

just not necessarily aware that they’re part of a larger movement.”

The couple co-founded Bioneers in 1990 to bring form and

cohesion to that larger movement by providing a platform for

disseminating information about all the work being done and

breakthroughs being achieved. “The key is connectivity,

whether you’re talking about individual organisms, ecosystems,

economics, or even society and humanity in general,” says Ausubel.

Bioneers began as an outgrowth of Seeds of Change, the com-

pany Ausubel co-founded with botanist and master gardener

Gabriel Howearth. That company, he says, “was dedicated to

bringing back biodiversity through the preservation and distribu-

t i o n

of native and heirloom seeds. I was inspired to work with

nature to heal nature, putting the earth’s innate healing

capacity to work to restore itself.”

Ausubel believes that ecology is really the art of relationships.

“As in nature, so with people,” he says. “Connectivity is what

builds resilience, which ensures survival. Building that connectiv-


Connecting a new model of ecology, design, and activism

Bioneers!OBY NANCY ZIMMERMAN

DYM

AXION “2” 4D TRANSPORT COURTESY OF TH

E NATIONAL AUTO

MOBILE MUSEUM (TH

E HARRAH COLLEC

TION), REN

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OThe Dymaxion “2” 4D transport got 30 miles per gallon, could carry 11 passengers at 120 milesper hour, and was intended to fly. Background: The Dymaxion house (designed in 1934) by visionary Buckminster Fuller was a commercial flop but a precocious idea for mass-produced,green housing whose circular metal structure, anchored by a vertical stainless-steel strut, naturally heated and cooled. Dymaxion houses theoretically could be moved anywhere, droppedby helicopter, and were to be priced like cars—for consumers to pay off over five years. Fuller builtonly one Dymaxion house, in Wichita, Kansas, in 1946. Buckminster Fuller: Starting with theUniverse can be seen at the Whitney Museum of American Art through September 21.

ity among people is part of the Bioneers mission.” >Another key to finding enduringsolutions, says Simons,

is mindfulness. “So much of the way we live is based on the sto-

ries we tell ourselves and how we frame our situation based on

those stories,” she explains. “Innovation requires us to go against

the messaging of our culture. We’re hardwired for storytelling—

so, change the story and you can change everything.”

Restaurateur Judy Wicks, owner of the White Dog Cafe in

Philadelphia and a frequent speaker at Bioneers conferences, set out

to change the narrative that says to be successful, a business must

focus on profit margins rather than on human values. In 1983 she

founded the restaurant, which was committed to paying employees

a living wage and serving nutritious, organic food sourced from

local suppliers who practiced sustainable farming. Proba-

bly the world’s only restaurant with its own foreign policy, the White

Dog Cafe has initiated educational and community-building pro-

grams. A mentoring program provides inner-city high school stu-

dents with internships at the cafe. White Dog also pursues issues

like economic justice, global fair trade, and social change through

the arts, among other avenues, and has spearheaded specific cam-

paigns, such as Businesses for Ethical Trade and Human Rights

in Chiapas, Mexico. Wicks’s Table for Six Billion, Please! is her ini-

tiative to promote better understanding by forming alliances with

half a dozen restaurants around the world, from Cuba to Lithuania to

Vietnam, to spread the philosophy of sustainability. She employs

more than 100 people and grosses approximately $5 million annu-

ally, ably exemplifying the concept of “doing well by doing good.”

The samemindfulness and appreciation of connec-

tivity that led Wicks to manifest a better way of doing business

also have a role in functions of industrial design and architecture

that are being reimagined around the world. “These disciplines

are not separate from nature,” points out Ausubel, “and by look-

ing to nature for inspiration, [their creators] can deliver meaningful

innovations.”He cites the bullet train in Japan, whose initial aerodynamic

design, while whimsically futuristic, produced sonic booms each

time the train entered a tunnel. Engineers looked for a creature that

similarly moved from a lighter environment to a denser one to

model a new approach; they found the kingfisher, a bird that makes

lightning-quick dives into the water to nab its prey. By redesigning

the train’s nose to more closely resemble that of the kingfisher, the

scientists were able to eliminate the sonic boom while retaining

the train’s capacity for high speed.

Also outstanding in the area of industrial design is the work of

Jay Harman, president and CEO of PAX Scientific, a San Rafael

engineering, research, and development firm specializing in

solving industrial problems. The PAX Streamlining Principle

translates nature’s flow efficiencies into streamlined design

geometries that can improve the performance, output, and energy

use of a number of technologies. The company’s “Lily impeller,”

for instance, is a new kind of propeller that lowers energyrequirements in fans and other rotors by 10

percent to 85 percent while reducing noise


“If you want to look for things to be done in a better way, you’ve got to look for who’s the best teacher, who’s done it best. Well, nature’s done it best.”

—Jay Harman, PAX Scientific

continued on page 82


CLO

CKWISE FROM TOP: SARA STATH

AS; GETTY IMAGES; STU

DIO LIBERTINY

OClockwise from top: Nina Simons (at left) and KennyAusubel formed Bioneers in 1990 to provide a platform forproblem-solvers involved in conceptualizing how solutionsfound in nature can be models for society. The first designsin Japan for the time- and energy-saving bullet train createdsonic booms; Japanese engineers redesigned the nose toresemble that of a kingfisher and eliminated the problem.Bees sculpted this vase-shaped hive, With a Little Help ofthe Bees prototype, shown by Studio Libertiny, theNetherlands, at MOMA’s Design and the Elastic Mindexhibit earlier this year. Tomás Gabzdil Libertiny considersbees’ work of hive-building akin to making a scaffolding,layer by layer, and hails the bees’ method as “slow proto-typing,” an antidote to rapid manufacturing processes.

Critics, artists, and viewers tend to get hotlydivided about whether art can (or should)really try to change minds or save lives.Yet a new movement has arisen in recentyears toward, for want of a better term,“ecological art,” a practice that sees art

as an arena for interconnectedness to beexplored, experimented with, and refined. Ifmuch art of the late 20th century grew detachedand interiorized, today’s eco-artists are challeng-ing the notion that detachment is desirable in art.As they integrate their work with political action and social issues, they broaden ecological art to include an overtly activist component.

Some examples are public art projects that use

an artistic approach tosolving environmentaland economic prob-lems, such as MajoraCarter’s work throughher nonprofit, Sustain-

able South Bronx. Thatgroup transformed a toxic

dumping ground into a sus-tainable waterfront park built

in part by formerly disenfran-chised young people who had a

stake in reviving their communityand learning a trade in the process.

Environmental artist BetsyDamon founded Keepers of the

Waters, an organization whose missionis “to inspire and promote projects that com-

bine art, science, and community involvement torestore, preserve, and remediate water sources.”Her Living Water Garden, a public park inChengdu, China, is centered by a water featureof sculptural flow forms made of black marbleand cement that lets visitors observe the cleaningof polluted river water (the sculpture is an artisti-cally designed system of ponds and filters).Damon also brought together students from theda Vinci Arts Middle School in Portland, Oregon,and the nonprofit Urban Water Works to createthe da Vinci Water Garden in an abandoned tennis court from storm water redirected fromrooftops and a parking lot.Some artworks are designed to raise aware-

ness of specific problems and to direct attentionto potential solutions, such as Melting Ice—AHot Topic: Envisioning Change, an international traveling exhibit presented in partnership by San Francisco’s Natural World Museum and the


BAS HELBERS/COURTESY OF JORIS LAARMAN

Art andMinds

United Nations Environment Programme (on display throughSeptember 1 at the FieldMuseum in Chicago). The 23pieces, including photographs,paintings, sculpture, and videoinstallations, illustrate the

challenges and opportunitiesinherent in global warmingby examining how themelting of ice and per-mafrost affects theworld’s living creatures.

In New Mexico, where the inspiration of the natu-

ral world is particularlyaccessible, artists find abun-

dant opportunities to makesocial statements and influence

social change. In 2004, internation-ally known artists Helen Mayer Harri-

son and Newton Harrison of GreatBritain embarked on a project, in collabo-

ration with the Santa Fe Art Institute, toexplore the relationship between ecology andart. Called Santa Fe Watershed: Lessons from theGenius of Place, the installation combinedlarge-scale maps of the past, present, andfuture terrain of the river with video, photo-graphic images, cultural narratives, and

personal recollections to reveal the dire condition of the Santa Fe River and to propose a self-renewing process that wouldrestore the river to vibrancy.

Another enterprise, The Land/An Art Site, is an Albuquerque-based nonprofitorganization that provides environmentalartists with opportunities to work and exhibitin New Mexico. The group maintains a galleryspace in the city and a 40-acre site 80 milessoutheast, in the foothills of the ManzanoMountains. There, artists can pursue low-impact, land-based art projects; participantshave included installation artists, sculptors,painters, video and sound artists, musicians,dancers, architects, engineers, and writers.One such undertaking by composer andsound artist Steve Peters, titled Here�ings: A Sonic Geohistory, involved recording soundsat the site each hour of the day and night over the course of a year to demonstrate thecomplexity of the habitat through an acousticecology; it was produced as a CD with anaccompanying booklet.

Although art might not be able to save theplanet, it can interact with other disciplines to further our mindful understanding, inspirecreative solutions to ecological problems, andunderscore the beauty of the natural world.

�N.Z.


TOP: SUSANA SOARES/COURTESY OF MOMA; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF PA

X SCIENTIFIC

Susana Soares’s Face Object is part of herNew Organs of Perception project that proposes training bees’ odor-perception abilities to create an alternative diagnostictool for Western medicine. Bees trained to target specific odors or markers of a givencondition will fly into the smaller chambershown if they sense it. Below: Jay Harman’sPAX Streamlining Principle helped create the “Lily impeller”—a fan rotor that achievesphenomenal energy savings for industry.Opposite: Joris Laarman’s Bone Chair is an aluminum chair developed through 3-D optimization software that mimics growth patterns in nature and applies their rules to objects of all kinds.

82

by up to 75 percent. The impeller was inspired by the three-dimen-

sional logarithmic spiral found in the shells of mollusks and the

spiraling of tidal-washed kelp fronds, as well as by the shape of our

skin pores, through which perspiration escapes. The resulting

design, elegant in its simplicity, was featured in Design and the Elas-

tic Mind, a recent exhibit at New York’s Museum of Modern Art that

explored the relationship between new design and science.

The underlying concept, biomimicry—a fusion of

design and biology that derives industrial-design and environmen-

tal solutions from the efficiency and inherent beauty of organisms

in nature—has been introduced to about 2,000 people every

autumn through the Bioneers’ annual conference. One featured

speaker on the topic, Janine Benyus, heads the Biomimicry Insti-

tute, of Missoula, Montana, whose stated mission is to “nurture

and grow a global community of people who are learning from,

emulating, and conserving life’s genius to create a healthier, more

sustainable planet.”

Her institute lauds a number of innovations that

successfully exemplify the realization of that mission, such as a

mid-rise building in Harare, Zimbabwe, designed by architect

Mick Pearce and the engineers at Arup Associates. The building

uses only 10 percent of the energy of a conventional building its

size, cooling itself without air-conditioning by a ventilation system

modeled on termite mounds, which are self-cooling.

At Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico,

a study of ways to combine hard and elastic layers of calcium

carbonate and protein found in mother-of-pearl inspired a process

that produces an ultrathin coating that strengthens windshields,

bodies of solar cars, and airplanes.

According to Benyus, architects, designers, and scientists aren’t

alone in finding biomimicry useful; the business community is

also beginning to derive inspiration from the natural world to

become more efficient and sustainable: “Right now, we humans

are acting like the weeds in a newly turned farmer’s field. These

weeds move into a sun-filled space and use nutrients and water

as quickly as they can. They don’t bother to put down winter roots

or recycle, because their moment in the sun is short. Then they’re

on to the next sun-drenched horn of plenty.

“These days,” Benyus adds, “when we’ve gone everywhere

there is to go, we have to forget about colonizing and learn to

emulate the natural communities that know how to stay

put without consuming their ecological capital.” Becoming

masterful at optimization (Benyus cites a mature ecosystem like an

oak-hickory forest) makes a community cooperative and integrated

with its habitat, according to Benyus. “The newest business con-

sultants in this field [of industrial ecology] are people fresh from

gorilla counts and butterfly surveys. I never thought I’d see the day,

but it’s true—the Birkenstocks are teaching the suits.”

What unites all of these lofty initiatives and theories, along with

the scientific discoveries that have used these principles, is their

“We must draw our standards from the natural world. We must honor with the humility of the wise the bounds of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them, admitting that there is something in the order of being which evidently exceeds all our competence.”

—Václav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic


continued from page 78

COURTESY OF ANDREW

SMITH GALLERY


OJoan Myers, Geothermal Walkway, Iceland, Epson pigmentprint, 2008. Geothermal energy is a major resource forIcelandic society. The word comes from the Greek geo (earth)and therme (heat). For Brimstone, her new exhibition atAndrew Smith Gallery, Myers chronicled the destructive andprogenitive forces of volcanoes around the world.


LOOP.PH

/COURTESY OF MOMA

ORachel Wingfield and Mathias Gmachl, Sonumbra, electroluminescent lace, camera, speakers, and software, 9'10" high x16'47/8" diameter, 2006. Sonumbra is “a sonic shade of light,” as the designers call it, an exploration on the roles ofnew textiles and how they can respond to global ecological concerns. An architectural textile with embedded solarcells is stretched into “an umbrella-like structure fabricated from electroluminescent wires that form an animated lacelike membrane.” By day, it offers shelter from the sun; by night, it sheds light using the energy collected during thedaylight hours. Shown at Design and the Elastic Mind, Sonumbra had a camera installed in the mast to capture the surrounding activity in the galleries, translating each person’s location into sound and light.

85

LEFT: SUSANA SOARES; RIGHT: BEN

FRY (BOTH

COURTESY OF MOMA)

shared focus on solutions, as well as an under-

standing of the interconnectedness of individual disci-

plines. Bioneers continues to embark on new projects

to spread the message of positive change. Ausubel was a

consultant for and featured participant in Leonardo

DiCaprio’s 2007 film The 11th Hour, and it was his

influence that shifted the movie’s emphasis from doom

and gloom about climate change to the potential for a

positive outcome. The organization is also pursuing two

strategic goals for the next decade: to further popular-

ize the message of change and bring it mainstream, and

to grow social capital to effect change locally.

One ongoing initiative includes Dreaming New

Mexico, which offers workshops, lectures, and

networking opportunities for local activists and con-

cerned citizens to share their visionfor bringing

about sustainable economic, agricultural, and social

structures for the state. As part of that initiative

Bioneers is creating “future maps” of the Age of

Renewable Energy in New Mexico and of a more

localized, ecological food system. The group is adapt-

ing one “story” from the Age of Renewables map that

shows how to replace significant amounts of coal-

fired electricity from the Four Corners with solar and

wind power.

Ausubel believes a growing awareness of a shared

social responsibility for recognizing problems and

devising solutions underlies a widespread shift in

consciousness that he propounds can

eventually heal the world. “The silver lining in all of

this is that the next industrial revolution will be about

the designing of green products and technologies,

which is exactly what the economy needs,” says

Ausubel. “It’s no longer uneconomical to be green.”

Simons agrees: “What’s so exciting is that we have

this opportunity to reinvent ourselves. At its core, this

is a design issue, one that requires all our creativity

and ingenuity.” R

santafetrend.com Summer/Fall 2008 » Trend

OLeft: Some of the most cyborg of new designs pose perplexing questions about the shape of future society. Susana Soares’sGenetic Trace imagines a future in which people will have specially designed sensing organs that allow for genetic informa-tion exchange on encounter with others. This work—made of acrylic nails, white feathers, and whiskers—for the DesignInteractions department of the Royal College of Art (England) is seen as a potential aid to “selective mating.” So: Is this life-enhancing, or eugenics? Right: Ben Fry’s Human vs. Chimps follows on a gene-sequencing project through which scientists compared the human genome with that of chimps and found that 98.77 percent of our genetic information is iden-tical. Fry represents the 1.23 percent distinction with red dots superimposed on a photographic image of a chimp’s head.

Museum of New Mexico Foundation

new mexico creates

by JUNE PINO

by LAWRENCE NAMOKI by GLENN GOMEZ

AT THE

Colleen Cloney Duncan Museum Shop at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture

ON THE PLAZA:

Museum of Fine Arts Shop

Palace of the Governors Shop

ON MUSEUM HILL:

Museum of International Folk Art Shop

Colleen Cloney Duncan Museum Shopat the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture

ON THE WEB:

www.shopmuseum.com

www.newmexicocreates.org

www.worldfolkart.org


Vrrroom! with a view. Weight-shift aircraft fly high enough to ignore roads and low enough to avoid competition from commercial flights. But where to park? Sky Gypsies has it covered: The group is

creating a network of hangars and fuel stations across southern New Mexico and Arizona.


BY ELLEN BERKOVITCH PHOTOS BY CHAS MCGRATH

LabanWingert’s Architecture

“My whole demeanor is really one of realism and the facts,” says Laban Wingert. “The facts,”

which he pronounces with a terse gulp, makes a listener flash on Karl Malden, but substitute

Malden’s raincoat and porkpie hat with the sporty vest and bright mouchoir Wingert’s got on.

He pops a CD of show tunes into the car stereo and zooms his black Volvo uphill, fast. The

vernacular of our Mora County surroundings, as we race through the sere hills, pleases him: a few adobe

ruins, old barns, pitched northern New Mexico roofs. “One more white picket fence, I was going to scream,” is

how he describes a drive through another countryside, in Brewster, New York, where a friend lives. Luckily,

when he got to her house, “she didn’t have one,” he says. Shout of laughter.

The architect loves his Volvos, is fond of watching sailing races in the south of France, and is an inveterate

storyteller. The subjects for an afternoon’s ramble might include novelist Henry James and the civilizing

nature of architecture, Danish modernism and the social programs behind it, or the minor scandals of insti-

tutions and boards. With a slightly mischievous glint—the Red Baron behind the wheel—Wingert manages

to be small-c catholic in his interests, with a grand sense of humor. But he’s dead serious on one point above

all: that architecture exists, first and foremost, to answer human needs.

Wingert thus identifies himself as an architect-programmer. When he studied architecture at the University of

Texas at Austin in the late ’50s (graduating in ’63), “the professors pushed Mies.” He says he wasn’t buying. > ILLU

STRATION BY AARON BOHRER


His pragmatist self sat uneasy with the hypothetical

nature of much architecture. As a thesis project he

designed a Presbyterian church—and had to immerse

himself in the theology in the process. Although the

church was never built, this initiation was useful later on,

he notes, when art patron Virginia Dwan asked him to be

the architect of Dwan Light Sanctuary in Montezuma,

New Mexico (see page 96).

Wingert’s career as a programmer first gained steam

in Houston in 1965. “Caudill Rowlett Scott was the first

architecture firm that codified programming as a process,

which caught my pragmatic attention,” he says. Working

for CRS for nearly six years (1965–1970), Wingert gained

experience that led to international consulting work in the

1970s. He planned new housing communities in Kuwait

and Saudi Arabia, in response to the doubling of oil

production. Wingert also had begun to live in Santa Fe, to

which artist Forrest Moses had introduced him in 1969.

Wingert’s first major Southwestern institutional client

was the National Center for Atmospheric Research in

Boulder, Colorado—exemplary, he says, of a think tank

that wanted a new building but didn’t think about what

was really needed. A bigwig of the organization told the

architect, “I want this building so complex that you cannot

find my office.” That remark’s results proved “disastrous,”

says Wingert, never one to mince words about buildings

gone bad. “After eight years, they threw their hands up in

exasperation at the building’s dysfunction,” he says. His

role was in part the diplomat, reconciling competing inter-

ests; in part the researcher, bearing notepads and ques-

tions—a process of architectural information-gathering

that makes a programmer march.

In addition to institutional work, he began some 25 years

ago to design and remodel houses for art collectors, whose

programs, he relays cheerfully, often tend to start with

the line, “I just bought this awful house.” Today his client

roster includes an esteemed list of patrons and collectors—

JoAnn and Gifford Phillips and Dwan, among others—

some of whom commission art galleries in the public

realm and also frequently change houses.

The stables (above) and foreman’squarters were in the first phase of theTwin Willows Ranch development inMora County, about 100 miles northof Santa Fe. Wingert took his colorcue from an existing red barn at theroadside (pictured on page 89). Saysthe architect-programmer, “I wanted toavoid the Anglo coming in, totallymodifying what’s there, which tells thelocals, ‘We don’t like it the way it is.’ ”

This high-valley ranch, a quarter horsefacility, sits on 3,000 acres. The tallwalls of the stables and working areasbreak the wind that blows across theplains. The foreman’s quarters (notshown) nearby connects to green-houses that grow winter vegetables.


Wingert acknowledges that the estimable art-collecting crowd became his bread

and butter in part through luck and timing. But he is also manifestly proud of the

work he did in 1977 for New Mexico’s Legislative Finance Committee, when a study

he had worked on recommended buying the land on which the current expansion of

the downtown History Museum is taking place. Relates Wingert: A good program-

mer must be attuned to the present and anticipate the future.

So don’t get lost in reverie as you soak in the red of these ranch buildings that

seem to borrow the sedge fields from an Andrew Wyeth painting. Wingert wants to

be sure you understand that this is not just affectation: “Looking for the detail is the

programming part of site analysis,” he observes. At Twin Willows Ranch, that detail

was an existing barn along the property’s boundary with the road. Its iron-rich-blood

color and corrugated patina make it venerable with character. Often Anglos lack rev-

erence for the rural New Mexico past, notes Wingert, which he finds lamentable.

Ultimately, through the three projects shown in this photo essay—Dwan Light

Sanctuary, Twin Willows Ranch, and a residence—it is apparent that programming

leads to a self-assurance for this architect that has been true since his first big

job, in 1964, working on the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum for

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. “Architecture really is a bit of sociology,” Wingert

says. “And as a programmer, I can have confidence that everything I’ve designed is

there for a reason.” >


Above: An existing “modest ranch house,” says Wingert, was also on the property when his client bought it. Like the red barn,that house too provided a sense of history for the expansion that Wingert designed and had built of Rastra blocks. He envi-sioned the house’s gardens confined inside stone walls. An extrawide front door (opposite, top left and right) and spaciousportal (bottom), along with the house’s more puritan lines, speak to context and shelter in the open landscape. The housewraps around an interior courtyard that permits dogs to go outside at night without exposure to the frontier.

“Architecture really is a bit of sociology,”Wingert says. “And as a programmer, I can have confidence that everythingI’ve designed is there for a reason.”


A windswept pastoral: Hand-crank French casement windows (above) open out to the fields from the master bath. Opposite: The kitchen and diningarea (top) extend to the great room (bottom), which houses the owner’s stellar photography collection. Wingert also acts as interior designer—he chose French matelassé coverlets in a Provençal village for the house’s beds and is shopping for a “gypsy tent” that is made only in the south ofFrance. The pale blue-gray of these tongue-and-groove ceiling planks imitates the subtle gradations of daylight on a summer afternoon.

The sun, remarks Virginia Dwan, is the driver of all life on earth,the essential giver.

“I was daydreaming,” says the art patron about the conceptual origins of Dwan Light Sanctuary. From her “sitting one day quietlymusing on the seeming universality of the number 12” emerged a collaboration between Dwan, artist Charles Ross, and Wingert.

The three of them created a circular building with white plasterwalls scored by quadrant lines, prism-shot windows, and a squareaperture that frames the North Star. Ross created the prisms, whichstud the windows like jewels and break daylight into spectral anglesthat play phenomenally on the white bancos and gray concretefloors. Units of 12 are integral to the sanctuary. There are three win-dows. Two in the walls, each with six prisms, face southwest and

southeast, respectively. The ceiling aperture has 12 prisms. Atnight, a visitor can contemplate the North Star through the squareglass panel high in the wall by sitting cross-legged inside a circleinscribed on the floor.

“Christ in his halo always wears eight stars; the virgin always has12,” observes Dwan, noting her interest in the virgin’s associationwith a more expansive numerology. “There are 12 tribes of Israel,12 spokes in the Wheel of Life.”

The Light Sanctuary, however, is a nondenominational space forcontemplation. The recurrence of 12 across religious and symbolictraditions all informed Dwan’s fascination with the number—yetin envisioning the sanctuary she came to feel conviction that thespace should eschew any concrete representation, like the names


Dwan Light Sanctuary: The Universality of 12


The process of imagining the sanctuary andfinding the site of United World College–USAin Montezuma, New Mexico, took five years.At the 1996 dedication seven religions wererepresented, Dwan says. Cornmeal offeringswere made, a shofar was blown, petals werestrewn, and blessings were heard from aMuslim Pop artist, the abbot from Abiquiu’sMonastery of Christ in the Desert, a Tibetanmonk, a Catholic priest, the rabbi who wroteThe Way of Flame, a Hindu, and a Navajomedicine man. “Laban made the whole thing work,” says

Dwan about the process of designing DwanLight Sanctuary with artist Charles Ross andarchitect-programmer Wingert.

of the 12 apostles. The sanctuary is plain yet spectacular, a unityin action of light and the body perceiving. Dwan says, “I’ve cometo believe that in essence, all religions are the same.”Dwan Light Sanctuary was dedicated in 1996 and held a con-

cert by Philip Glass (piano) and Jon Gibson (flute). Two Tibetanmandalas have been created inside it. And when women fromSerbia and Croatia held peace talks during the Balkan conflictsat United World College–USA (on whose campus the LightSanctuary is), Dwan discussed with them the notion of univer-sality. “They didn’t really want to communicate with eachother,” she says. To that conundrum, among others, the LightSanctuary came to seem essential, she expresses, as “a countermove to all the horrors going on in the world.” —E.B.

Downstairs, upstairs: Tasked with designing a residence for an artist, Wingert converted a

Tesuque barn into a clean, two-story loft space. Above: In the loft bedroom, white walls and clean

lines draw the eye out to the tree canopies of the neighboring ranch. Opposite: The living room

doubles as a working studio for the artist, who makes photography-based mixed media. R


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Popayan Edinburgh Bologna Seville

NOW, FOREVER, THEN

On a shelf in the church up at Ed’s, (the Black Hole in Los Alamos)I found some slides. They had been long buried in the stuff thatfilled the building, unearthed as he finally let people buy his accu-mulated cold-war artifacts. They were magic-lantern sized black andwhite glass negatives, in envelopes marked with file numbers andmagnification. I recognized them as images of tissue or bone, biolog-ical samples anyway. I also knew that they had the worst resonanceof anything that I had ever touched. I took a few home, and everytime that I went back, I got a few more. I pretty much ended up withthe whole pile. I felt as if I was supposed to be the caretaker orguardian of them. I put them on a table in my stu-dio and just let them... off gas. They led meto this story...

In , Eileen Welsome, areporter at the Albuquerque Trib-une, published a series of arti-cles that exposed the U.S.government’s secret radia-tion experiments on hu-mans that occurred fromthe s into the sand were overseen bythe U.S. military. Twoweeks later, HazelO’Leary, Clinton’s firstDepartment of Energyhead, made public dis-closures of the govern-ment’s testings on unwit-ting citizens. These victimswere some of society’s mostvulnerable: poor pregnant wo-men, re-tarded children, sick people,as well as thousands of America’s ranch-ers and farmers.

When I make things, it’s a way of ordering myuniverse. Sometimes I make things to amuse myself, sometimes it’sto pass along a story, many times it’s to clarify and sort out some-thing that I just can’t get a handle on any other way. These radiationexperiments are the latter. Many of them were just too awful to grok.The first one that kept me awake at night and gave the title to myoverall project was undertaken at an institution for “feeble-minded”children in Massachusetts, known as the Fernald School. At thisinstitution, and many other state-run institutions all over the coun-try, children were placed, sometimes removed from their families asa system of eugenics. There were children at this institution whowere average and above average intelligence, but for reasons of eco-nomics or behavior they were sent or taken to the Fernald School. Atthis institution, scientists from M.I.T., along with Quaker Oats con-ducted experiments to determine the efficacy of adding vitamins to

cereal and milk. To measure this, they used radio-isotopic calciumtracers in milk and cereal that was given to the boys who signed up.Their stool and urine was collected and the radioactive contentcounted. As incentive to get them to sign up for “The Science Club,”it was pointed out that they were to be given extra portions of milkand cereal. The scientists also occasionally took the boys out on fieldtrips to the zoo or ball games. Understand, these were children who,for the most part, had no one. No one ever visited them, and theywere essentially incarcerated for life. If they did have family, in manycases the consent form for the experiment never reached them, and itnever mentioned the nature of the experiment, just the “extra por-tions”. The scientists befriended these boys to use them as guinea-

pigs.Once in a while, a tarot card presents

itself to me over and over again. I figure it’sthen time for some deep study. When I

first started working on my projectabout the Human Radiation Ex-

periments, every time I did atarot reading for myself, thetwo of swords card wouldshow up. This card depicts ablind-folded woman sittingwith her back to water,holding two swords crossedin front of her heart. Thewoman could put theswords down at any time

and remove the blindfold,but she knows that some-

thing is out there, and it’s dan-gerous, and she doesn’t really

want to see it. In tarot, water rep-resents emotion, swords represent air

and the characteristics associated withit, including conflict, anger and also mental

activity and the use of intellect to understandthe truth. The dark feeling of dread, of something omi-

nous out there, is one that I felt every time I returned to this projectover the course of about eight years. I made a life-size setup of thetwo of swords with me as the sitting woman, and videotaped it atCochiti Lake. It was really, really nice. Then I “accidently” taped overit with the total eclipse of the moon. Uh huh. That is one honkin’dense piece of tape. I avoided it for a while, but when I finallyresearched the magical symbolism of what I had inadvertently putinto play, I found this out: a spell worked during a lunar eclipse hasthe attributes of all phases of the moon. The moon being thestrongest possible ally in magical work, an eclipse represents anuncovering of deep truths, and one best be VERY careful andrespectful, with clear intent, when summoning her powers.

One of the things that my work has taught me is to pay attentionto synchronicity. To look for synchronicity. It’s the zone where we’re


ARTIST PROJECT: ERIKA WANENMACHER

one about the radiation experiments and my project about it, theytell me a story about their uncle who was an atomic veteran inNevada, or that their dad worked at the Lab, or about their friendwho grew up in Utah downwind of the atmospheric testing and justdied of cancer. I was researching a story at the state library, readingpages as they came out of the microfiche printer that involved doc-tors at Los Alamos using their children in radiation experiments, andI realized that the doctor being interviewed was the father of some-one I knew. I’ve decided that these aren’t synchronicities, they’recommonalities. Because of the cold war, these things were secret,now they are being uncovered and spoken of. Our atomic heritage iswaaaaay more common than we know and would like to believe.

I have a pile of books that keeps growing as Iresearch this project. I refer to it as my “stackof heinous reading”. This is an aspect ofthe dread — the dread of knowing.Sometimes I just read and cry.Mostly, I have that bad feelingin the pit of my stomach.That area, not coincidently,is known as the thirdchakra, your core andsource of personal power.It is also the area onephysically protects whenunder occult, psychicattack. The Human Rad-iation Experiments wereoverseen by the military,and most of them involvedtesting for atomic weaponsand their effects. Basically, theywere about power and killing.After all the research, I’ve decidedthat the people who were the mainperpetrators of these experiments were trulyleft-hand path sorcerers. Dark Energy Magicians.Bad Men. Because of this conclusion, I think that weneed a spell of protection. Here goes:

We are about to cast the circle. The circle is a sacred space thatexists outside of “normal” space and time. It is a place where positiveenergy is generated, and negative energy cannot enter. It is a place ofprotection.

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Visualize energy flow-ing up from the earth on your inhale, through your feet, up throughyour entire body and out the crown of your head on your exhale, toreturn to the earth. Open your eyes.

Face the directions as you call them. Watchtowers of the East, Guardians of Air, Powers of intellect

and wisdom, the wind that blows through our hair, the breath thatmoves in our bodies, our voices that speak truths, we call upon youto join our circle to witness and guard our work.

Watchtowers of the South, Guardians of Fire, Powers of will andcourage, the sun that warms us, that ripens the fruits of summer, thefire of daring that burns in us, we call upon you to join our circle towitness and guard our work.

Watchtowers of the West, Guardians of Water, Powers of emotionand change, the blood that flows in our veins, the tears that we cry,the deep intuition that guides us, we call upon you to join our circleto witness and guard our work.

Watchtowers of the North, Guardians of the Earth, Powers ofgrowth and strength, our bodies that carry us, the plants and animalswe share this world with, the objects we manifest, we call upon youto join our circle to witness and guard our work.

Center, Our circle is woven, we now lie betweenworlds. As above, so below, Spirit unites the

whole.Powers we have summoned, we

ask that you assist us in uncovering the deep truths that have long

lain hidden, and that give usthe courage to bring them intothe light. Give us the strengthto repel the darkness, and tobend it towards the light.Grant us the wisdom toperceive these truths andguide our intuition to rec-ognize each other. Assist usin provoking change and

manifesting action. Help toprotect us as we go about this

work in our daily lives.Oh Moon, watch over us and

guide our actions with your femi-nine influence — softening and per-

sistent, vital and life-affirming. As youwax and wane, remind us that we too are

temporal and fluid, and have the power to moveoceans.

By the energies and attributes called today, we bind all powersin this circle into this spell!

Watchtowers, Guardians — North, West, South, East, Powers vis-ible and invisible, thanks and blessing for assisting us. Depart if youmust, stay if you will. The circle is open, yet ever remains a circle,never broken. Around us and through us always flows its power.


ARTIST’S STUDIO BY GUSSIE FAUNTLEROY PHOTOS BY DIEGO AMARAL

Olga de Amaral’s dazzlingweavings, potent and physical,make the cosmos tangible

TheSunQueen


Colombian artist Olga de Amaral’s sumptuous textiles communicate in

tantalizing mixed messages: “Come!” they seem to sing out from across the

room. But, as when approaching royalty, you know you dare get only so

close. Elaborated in gold leaf, the textiles read as visually warm yet emo-

tionally cool; inviting yet reserved; shiny and new—with a hint of the futuristic in their

glinting threads—yet rooted in ancient traditions of textile arts.

No straight line leads from the formative impressions in de Amaral’s life to final

manifestations in her art. Many see Colombian gold and its history as embedded

deeply into de Amaral’s textiles. Gold’s burnished hues shine, refract, dazzle. Gold

embellishes the thrones and robes of gods and kings. But if de Amaral’s work speaks

of these cultural associations, it also intuits from personal history. From her childhood

excursions into the lush, green countryside of Andean rivers and mountain heights,

to her adult life in Bogotá, a city teeming with crowded streets and rich with gilded

churches, de Amaral has relied on her own tangible experience, the visual and the

emotional, to sustain her work.

Reflections on water, constantly moving and changing: moonlit silver, sunset gold.

Bright, saturated colors: vegetables, fruit, and woven garments hanging in outdoor

markets.

“I think in impressions and concepts. It is very abstract,” the 75-year-old artist

remarks in a phone conversation from her apartment in Bogotá. Yet she acknowledges

a diversity of influences informing her practice as an international textile artist, work-

ing often on an architectural scale.


De Amaral says that gold as an integralelement of her country’s past entered fullyinto her consciousness only after shereturned home from studying weaving fortwo years (1954–55) at Cranbrook Academyof Art in Michigan and spent time wander-ing through and absorbing objects inBogotá’s art museums. The fields of herchildhood produced an even deeper well ofvisual and emotional impressions. “I had awonderful childhood,” she relates. “Ienjoyed the landscape, the whitewashedtowns, all those things that were part of avery wonderful Colombia at the time.”

Dark, regal colors�contours of hills and val-leys, seen from above.In her work today, de Amaral employs

shimmering effects that can be suggestive offorces of the cosmos as well as experiments

with color fields—a prevailing painting stylewhen she studied art in the 1950s. With suchan intricacy of experimentation in her work,de Amaral’s expression is foremost contem-porary. Majestic, it is also earthly.

Shadow and candles in the depths of Catholicchurches; light flickering on plaster walls.

A young girl�s experience of sacred mystery.

De Amaral was born into a family ofengineers. After high school shestudied architectural drafting fortwo years at Colegio Mayor de

Cundinamarca in Bogotá. It wasn’t archi-tecture itself that interested her, however,but color, design, and the arrangement offorms in space. Then at Cranbrook shefound herself immersed in an intensive

period of creative “awakening,” as she putsit, that introduced her to both the loom andan American art scene in which narrowartistic categories were already beginning tooverlap and break down. Since then, hercreative vision has transcended the fibermedium and incorporates elements ofpainting, sculpture, and installation alongwith weaving techniques.“Her work is both personal and universal

at the same time. If you think of Bogotá andthe Colombian countryside, you see whereshe’s coming from, yet her art makes thesame impact even if you haven’t seen that,”notes Jane Adlin, associate curator at theMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York.Adlin places de Amaral with a handful ofimportant fiber artists—among themLenore Tawney, Claire Zeisler, and Sheila

The upright forms of Olga de Amaral’s Stelae series of textiles echo the stelae that appear at her country house.

ARTIST’S STUDIO

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Hicks—who, beginning in the 1960s,helped liberate textile art from the confinesof a loom-based, utilitarian focus to merge,in particular, with sculptural and three-dimensional fine art.Since then, de Amaral’s work has been

showcased in museum exhibitions world-wide and is in the permanent collections ofthe Metropolitan Museum of Art, theMuseum of Modern Art, and the Museumof Arts and Design in New York; the ArtInstitute of Chicago; and the Musée nationald’Art moderne in Paris, among others. Andas a striking component of interior design,especially in contemporary architecture, herart is in dozens of corporate and private col-lections around the globe. Among these:three 10-by-8-foot tapestries that shimmeragainst the pale marble of a soaring atrium

wall in the Four Seasons hotel in HongKong, and a grouping of irregularly shapedpieces called Stelae, gold on one side anddark silver on the other, that hang in theLondon lobby of the investment-bankingconcern Cantor Fitzgerald.Jack Lenor Larsen, an internationally

known textile designer, author, collector, andcurator, has known de Amaral for almost 50years. He observes, “She’s thoughtful, experi-mental, humble. Her work keeps evolving.”One driving force in that evolution for a num-ber of years is what the artist has describedas a long search for “how I could turn textileinto golden surfaces of light.” Her use of goldleaf began in the early 1970s as highlights ona series of small, strongly textural piecescalled Complete Fragments. Gradually it cov-ered more of the surface in her works. >

“The house of my imagination,” as de Amaral calls this abandoned house in the Colombian countryside,grabbed hold of her creative life years ago. Elements of the house’s architecture, along with its emotionalresonance for her, underlie patterns, shapes, and motifs that recur in de Amaral’s work.

Aviewer approaching a series of new de Amaral works atBellas Artes Gallery in Santa Fe (her exclusive representative

for more than 20 years) encounters thepotent physical presence of these weavings.No single visual perspective contains the

complete experience of standing beforepieces such as Imagen Paisaje I. Viewed atan angle from the right, the tapestry’s entiresurface appears as burnished gold. Step tothe left of the piece and the gold virtually dis-appears, replaced by wide horizontal bandsof saturated color: blue, purple, brown,orange, and green. Then move back to themiddle and look at the piece straight on.Now you see both: deep hues and rippling,irregular vertical patterns of gold. There is asense of extraordinary richness that comesnot only from the gold but also from anabundance of woven material. The thicklyoverlapping strands of fiber conjure animage of digging into a treasure chest withboth hands, booty spilling out extravagantly.Such an artwork, after a few moments,

demands that you step even closer to try

and make sense of its structure and parts.Here you understand that this was the workof deft hands over hours and days. Younotice in this piece that all the woven rectan-gles are covered with gold leaf; it is only theirbacks and edges, and the threads betweenthem, that contain other colors. The artist’sarrangement of the woven components, onprecise angles, produces a chameleon effect.During the past 20 years, the material foun-

dation of de Amaral’s art has largely beensmall rectangles of tightly woven linen and

cotton, which she calls elements. Theseelements, linked together in strands, arecovered with white gesso and then goldor silver leaf. Frequently the oppositeside and connecting threads are paintedusing rich, natural pigments. Finally, inmany variations, elements and strandsare joined, plaited, and woven into tapes-tries whose visual qualities are as muta-ble as energy and light. In many cases


ARTIST’S STUDIO

Above: Olga de Amaral’s finished weavings are frequently placed in architectural settings for their scale—and ability to pack a visual wallop through the majesty of their forms.

Left: Works in progress use squares of wovenlinen and cotton (near left) that have been prepared with gesso and rice paper for the application of gold leaf (far left).

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closely set elements appear either darker ormore brightly reflective, like scales on a fish,depending on their angle of placement andthe angle of view.

Doors and windows�some shuttered, someopen to the day�in a large, abandoned house inthe Colombian countryside.

Light to darkness, darkness to light.

In order to accomplish her oeuvre, deAmaral adopted what Larsen refers to as“an older tradition” more common inEurope and other parts of the world

than North America, in which the artist con-ceives the vision and directs skilled artisansto carry out much of the labor-intensiveprocess. In de Amaral’s studio, consisting ofa number of rooms in a house not far fromher apartment in Bogotá, the same sevenwomen have worked with her for 30 years.De Amaral oversees their work and createssome parts of the weaving, while her corpsdoes others. For the artist, intimate familiar-ity with materials and technique is akin toplaying a piano; once it is mastered, creativitycan freely flow. “In every kind of art, processis what takes you. It’s a tool, not an end,” shemaintains, adding that the environment ofwomen working together in her studio is“wonderful, peaceful. It’s like an orchestra.”In her studio these days de Amaral con-

tinues to explore the possibilities of goldand silver for expressing concepts such asumbra, which she describes as the “specialmysterious shadow that [holds] the moonin eclipse.” She also is returning to ideasshe began forming in the past few years but didn’t take to completion. As in all herwork, these ideas are undefined until theymeet the tangible materials of her art in aprocess guided by intuition, experimenta-tion, and decades of experience. As she putsit, “I know what I’m doing and I know whatI’m looking for—without knowing.”Stepping in close to de Amaral’s tapestries,

one encounters a rhythm like that of life: Patterns of infinite repetition, pleasant andtedious moments, materials both earthboundand ethereal, the work is a compass, a gestalt. Shining odes to humanness and infinity.R


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LIVING BY KEIKO OHNUMA PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL

You’ve driven Highway 14 dozens of times between Santa Fe andMadrid, New Mexico, each timespeeding in ignorance past heaven’sgate. In haste, you may have caught

only a glimpse of the pink sandstone towersmarking a private garden that no one seems to have the key to enter.Well, let us enlighten you now. Through

an unmarked cattle gate north of the village of Cerrillos lives the goddess of the garden, la Doña, whose spot nested deep in a view iswhat others know as the rumored Garden of theGods. Drive up the gravel lane, and sheemerges from her adobe haven wearing a cotton caftan and broad smile, waving you into her hidden oasis.The Garden of the Goddess Retreat Center,

“a place of physical, emotional, spiritual, andmental integration,” houses not just Gini Gen-try, your hostess today, but unseen acolytes ofthe feminine. They take up residence in twoguesthouses, two yurts, and two vintageAirstream trailers plastered over in brownstucco with red-and-blue trim. There are god-dess statues—Kuan-yin and others—and apost engraved with an ode to the sun, all taste-ful touches of latter-day hippiedom. Fountainstinkle. Christmas lights shimmer around theswaying cottonwoods. Hollyhock stalks shootup eight feet.The owner and designer of this unlikely

Shangri-la herself exudes some otherworldlyqualities. Tossing her luxuriant head of jet-black hair that, with green eyes, gives her LizTaylor divadom, she says, “I can’t tell you why

Knocking onHeaven’s Door


Garden of the Goddess

Gini Gentry

this place has a certain energetic reso-nance—but it does,” adding with a laughthat such sentiments are sure to brand heras some kind of New Age nut.Still, when she bought the place in 1990,

Gentry had a dream about where to find a new source of water, and this prophecyhas allowed her to stay. The quartz bed on which the 30-acre compound sits haslong been a Native pilgrimage site, andwhenever people come for workshops orretreats, they are affected “by a sense ofwell-being and wonder,” Gentry says. “It’sa ‘Holy Toledo!’ kind of thing.” For Gentry, the flowering of the Garden

is more than just an 18-year labor of love; it is the physical manifestation of a spiritualawakening—her Taj Mahal, her Teoti-huacán. The story of how she transformed adilapidated (she prefers “rustic”) chicken

ranch into a heavenly oasis is intertwinedwith her own evolution from university exec-utive in midlife crisis to the Nagual Womanin the Toltec Eagle Knight lineage and for-mer teaching partner of Don Miguel Ruiz.One of the yurts on the property

belonged to Miguel himself, until his book The Four Agreements made him sofamous he no longer needed to sleep inyurts. It was in large part Ruiz who ledGentry to where she is today, physically and spiritually. But it was in equal measureGentry who led Ruiz to where he is—rocketed to fame by Oprah and EllenDeGeneres—though it has been manyyears since she has even spoken with him.“When fame came calling, he had other

obligations,” she says of her former busi-ness partner. They met in Peru in 1988,during the period of her midlife crisis. A

lifelong political activist, Gentry had alwaysworked to “save the world”; now she real-ized that she had to “save herself first,” andthis meant “dismantling” her identity. Shequit her job in organizational developmentat the University of California at Davis, soldher house and designer wardrobe, andvowed to start over.This led her, naturally, to New Mexico,

where she ended up staying a mile from theGarden of the Gods in 1990. Spying thesandstone formations from a hill, Gentrydeclared it the most beautiful place she hadever seen, one that she would gladly buy ifshe could. “It took a while to talk myself into it,”

she says, “but there was no place else Icould be. I came to feel I was to keep thisland available for spiritual practices.” Hermission: to build a retreat center to access


LIVING

the Toltec wisdom taught by Ruiz. Meanwhile, Ruiz’s then-wife, Gaia, had

a dream that Gentry would make himfamous, which led him to hire her as hismanager. Gentry began booking his work-shops and talks, and by 1996 she had risento become his teaching partner. “I would say I was the least likely person

to ‘wake up,’” she says of his followers, citing her innocence to his philosophicalmessage—and yet she admits also to astrong sense of obligation because of Gaia’s dream. When it came time for Ruizto choose a book topic, for example, Gentryhad a dream of her own.“Do it on the Four Agreements,” she told

him.By this time, her progress on the ranch

had gone from retrofitting one trailer totearing down walls and digging up linoleumflooring. An old photo shows how the prop-erty looked before she bought it from “theEgg Man,” as he was known throughoutSanta Fe: floors and roofs made of dirt, elec-trical wires snaking across walls, a chicken

Above and opposite: Two yurts in the garden areentered through a gate inscribed with a blessing tothe sun. The entire garden property belonged to alegendary chicken farmer known as the Egg Manbefore Gentry acquired it. The original chickencoop, converted to guest quarters, is the lowdwelling at left foreground, against the rocks.



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coop built against sandstone rock. >Over the next two decades, the site

evolved from rustic to Santa Fe seraphic, asGentry preserved such gems as the slantedchicken coop ceiling, sandstone back wall,and vintage adobe Airstreams. It wasimportant to preserve the integrity of theplace, she says, and to respect its history. She calls the resulting work of art “a liv-

ing example of surrender” that reflects herunderstanding of how to give up control. Toan outsider, though, it all looks perfectlydeliberate, immaculately refurbished, andpeacefully empty of guests on a recentweekday—the perfect retreat for its owner,who is just now finishing writing two booksabout her own spiritual journey. The garden may yet present her with the

ultimate exercise in surrender, however, asGentry believes a degenerating spinal disc

will force her to sell the placebefore long. “I have never hadany plans, but I’m not sure howlong my stewardship here willbe,” she says wistfully. “And Ihad to work very hard, becauseI held it so tenaciously! But Ican’t keep it from its naturalevolution.”As to her remaining connection to Ruiz,

Toltec wisdom, and Teotihuacán (the pyra-mid complex of what was once the largestcity in the Americas, north of Mexico City),Gentry thinks a long time about how toexplain, picking her words as carefully asflowers. It has to do with silent knowledge,she says, which is available to everyone asuniversal consciousness, though we inter-pret it differently. She continues to teachthe central truth held by all mystery tradi-

tions—that we are much more than theattributes that make up our identity—ongroup pilgrimages to Teotihuacán.She designed the Garden of the Goddess

to be a northern outpost of Teotihuacán, infact—a monument not only to the landscapebut also to what it awakened in her. “I havetried to be in harmony with it, rather thanhave it be in harmony with me,” Gentry saysof her renovation philosophy. “The physicalbeauty of this place is a reflection of a partic-


Left: “Someone might ask, ‘Why would you ever cover over an Airstream?’ I’d say this is the only reason,” is how a tourist responded to the adobe Airstreams on Gentry’s property. The intimate scale of place takes its characterfrom individual dwellings nested into the rocks.Below: The hoodoos provide a spectacular context and are part of the spiritual history of this 30-acre site bedded on quartz.

LIVING


FINISH LINES BY LENA HAKIM PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM

If children are one of the world’s most overlooked populations, then play—that activity mostoften associated with childhood—is arguably a practice in need of some visionary new design.Playgrounds, which many adults associate with the metal monkey bars and hard concrete surfaces of their own childhood, are being re-envisioned as organic and changeable spacesfor children to romp and roam. And two outdoor playgrounds in Santa Fe are demonstrating

specifically how children’s voices can be brought into the creative process.The Santa Fe Children’s Museum’s outdoor playground started life in 1992, when the newly

built museum leased an acre of land on East Barcelona Road. Earthworks, the “learning landscape”division of the museum, worked with Cerrillos landscape architect Anne Nelson on her design,which was guided by the book Permaculture and its ideas. Beginning in the 1970s, Bill Mollisonand David Holmgren documented and published approaches to designing human settlements integrated with agriculture in ways that mimic natural ecosystems. Their book, Permaculture, shortfor “permanent agriculture,” draws from such approaches, relating the human habitat to the localindigenous ecology, sometimes involving land restoration. Community volunteers cleaned uptrash and prepared the Children’s Museum site. Then builders and more volunteers helped createinfrastructure: They installed water-catchment elements, solar features, an educational green-house, and an observation deck overlooking the grounds. The landscape also hosts indigenousflowerbeds and edible plants, along with planting areas for children to tend. A notion informing the children’s museum model the world over was interactivity—getting

kids to participate. Yet even conceptually, this outdoor space in 1992 was far ahead of its time in

Santa Fe models a next generation of the playground

The Ice-CreamCharrette

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The Pueblos del Sol playground in Santa Fe happened under the rubric of Design Week2005. Children from the neighborhood drew pictures of the ideal playground and engaged in consensus meetings with other members ofthe community. Opposite: Some 200 volunteersbuilt the playground entirely by hand.

embracing children as visionaries andbuilders of their outdoor environs.

It was the museum’s goal not only to cre-ate environmental educational programsbut also to design elements of an adventureplayground, to be dictated by childrenthemselves. Adventure playgrounds (a1960s term) emerged in postwar Europe,when dilapidated urban spaces filled withtrash and debris became the preferred play-ground choice of children. Parents noticedthat kids were obsessed with fort buildings,tunnels, and construction projects. TheChildren’s Museum playground in SantaFe borrows these same design principles byincorporating natural forts made of bushes,mud, and cement water tubes; many of theplay structures are biodegradable. If children are not using a space, Earth-

works informally consults kids and par-ents on alternatives. In 2007, two largeadobe-and-wood fort structures, laddersincluded, were built on a formerly unusedcorner of the lot. An outdoor kitchen isbeing planned for 2009. Last year theAssociation of Children’s Museums rec-ognized the Santa Fe Children’s Museumas one of the nation’s most innovative out-door spaces for children.Not so seamless, however, was a more

recent neighborhood project in Santa Fethat put city clout into the community-building aspect of designing and building aplayground. In 2005, the Santa Fe DesignWeek conference adopted a project to haveSanta Fe children design a local play-ground. “We wanted to, of course, featureall the design industries and talent in ourregion but to have a community project thatillustrated the real potential of design incommunity,” remarks Michelle Mosser ofGrace Communications, which ran the2005 Design Week. The City of Santa Fealso contracted Grace to coordinate volun-teers for the playground effort. The SantaFe Area Home Builders Association hadraised roughly $40,000 for the playgroundand also was city-contracted, to organize thebuilding process and act as liaison between


The outdoor play spaces at the Santa Fe Children’sMuseum have transformeddramatically in 16 years.This dynamic playgroundnow boasts a stage made of wood stumps, an enormous sandbox, six forts, a solar-powered pond and fountain, whisper dishes, a Pueblooven, and two bridges.Community volunteers and high-school interns(organized by Earthworks)maintain the propertythroughout the year, and local artists created and donated many of the signs.

FINISH LINES

involved organizations and the city, whichfunded the bulk of the $153,000 project.Interested in modeling a design process

considered sustainable—developing build-ing plans with tangible directives from thegrassroots—the team called on landscapearchitecture firm Leathers and Associates,based in Ithaca, New York, which special-izes in designing and directing play-grounds with help from kids. Bob Leathers,the firm founder, “wants community tocome together around the ground of play-ground and park,” says Mosser.

Leathers’s firm (run now by his sonMarc) has designed a charrette process—an architecture brainstorm—that lets kidsdream on paper (“You have kids saying, ‘Iwant a roller coaster that goes to themoon!’ ” Mosser relates). Once the childrenof the community have done the pictorial-izing, the next task is for them to come toconsensus over what they have dreamedup. The Leathers’s charrette process, saysMosser, has worked in India and the GazaStrip; another Leathers-directed playgroundin New Mexico is in Eunice.


Monkey bars, a princess tower, a cave, climbing walls, and slides were all part of the dream designsdrawn by Santa Fe children for the Pueblos del Solplayground. Below: Children’s drawings kicked off the charrette process.

BOTTOM: PETER ELLZEY


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For this Santa Fe project, the cityselected the burgeoning community ofPueblos del Sol, off Governor Miles Drivenear Richards Avenue. Leathers sent teamleaders to run the charrette who aided the community in driving the “kids’ con-sensus” process. At an ice-cream social, parents and other neighbors were invited to help organize the kids’ pictures into themes: caves, trains and tracks, “aprincess tower,” swings, climbing areas,dinosaurs, and a picnicking spot. Theplanning process involved recruiting andorganizing volunteers—no easy task, aversMosser—training them as builders, assur-ing proper permits were obtained, anddealing with community concerns aboutcosts, land use, property values, fears ofvandalism and vagrants, and other issues. The neighborhood playground is a day-

time space that locals are meant to walk to.A handful of parking spaces limit outside

traffic. Common to contemporary play-ground design, there are neither night-lights nor restrooms, which eliminateshiding places for deviants. The notion ofhow playground design essentially istasked with compartmentalizing the needsof children—while also attending to com-munity issues like preservation of propertyvalues and traffic safety—can make forinteresting debates within a neighborhood.Several vocal opponents, acknowledgesMosser, felt the money could have beenspent simply on buying playground gearand calling it a day.Because this was a community-building

project, everything had to be built by hand,restricting the building materials to woodand recycled plastic logs. After eightmonths of planning, the two-week build-ing project began in September 2006 andwas completed in time for unveiling at the October 2006 Santa Fe Design Week

conference. During the building processcommunity volunteers delivered food, setup water stations, and shared tools. Whenthe barn-raising work began, some 200volunteers had been marshaled, and thehumble wood playground took shape. The central design element is a large

gazebo for picnics, shade, and sitting,donated by Gibbs-Carleton Quality Homes.It serves as a connection between the traintracks and sandbox, near the climbing walland princess tower. Several wooden pathsleading to the tower structure let kidsaccess the playground in more than oneway. Mosser was recently stopped by awoman to say that she drives across townto use this playground because it is herchildren’s favorite in all of the city. And the neighbors can say they saw their chil-dren’s dreams come true. R

Santa Fe Children’s Museum is located at 1050 Old Pecos

Trail. Earthworks, the museum’s outdoor “learning land-

scape” division, which serves as an extension of the

museum’s indoor environment, manages the playground.

The land was acquired in 1989 and is leased from the

State of New Mexico. The museum’s annual outdoor

budget is approximately $90,000, which includes all edu-

cation programs and greenhouses.

Pueblos del Sol Community Park is located in Santa Fe

between Nizhoni and Governor Miles drives in the

Pueblos del Sol neighborhood. Organized by Leathers and

Associates, the City of Santa Fe, Grace Communications,

and the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association, the

project cost $153,000 to develop and build.

You Gotta Have Park

At the Santa Fe Children’s Museum


Jackie Camborde, Santé Studio

Robin Beachner (left) and Kathy Mahone, Sense

BUSINESS PROFILES BY KEIKO OHNUMA PHOTOS BY SARA STATHAS

Clothes That GoWhat do women want? Robin Beachner thinks she knows the answer. They want clothes that are classical, comfortable, forgiving, flatter-

ing, and easy to dress up or down, that won’t shrink or fade, and thatmatch everything in the closet.When Beachner was laid off as a sales rep for an Australian line of

dancewear in 2004, she saw a chance to make sense out of those newfacts of life that find women craving flexible togs that they might acquirefrom their pilates or yoga studio, as well as from a boutique. Beachnerand retail veteran Kathy Mahone of J. Crew launched the new clothingline out of a Santa Fe industrial warehouse, and the partners do every-thing from designing the clothes to packing and shipping them to some200 vendors nationwide.Sense garb is deceptively simple, made of a proprietary blend of

Modal and Lycra that is equally suitable for yoga class or dinner, Beach-ner relays. Each piece is the result of multiple go-rounds with a patterncutter in Albuquerque, then final production by a woman-owned sewingfactory in San Diego.Beachner says she started Sense knowing little about fashion design

but much about a new type of customer: a woman for whom the spa,the gym, and the airplane are interchangeable locations, and whoseclothing must be versatile and look good through a multifaceted day.Sales were slow at first, then doubled every year after 2006. “People still

want to shop,” says Beachner, “just not in department stores.”

900 West San Mateo Road, #300, 505-988-5534, senseclothing.com

Fit for AllJackie Camborde traces her fitness philosophy to 1994, when shewas an overweight fund-raiser for nonprofits who dared to try astrength-training class at a local gym. She remembers that theinstructor asked her to please stand in back next time—a com-ment that still gets her fuming today.“I got in her face about it,” says Camborde. “I thought, If I were

ever in that position….”Fifty pounds slimmer today and a trained fitness instructor,

Camborde got her chance to demonstrate equal-time fitnesswhen she opened Santé fitness studio in Eldorado in January2001. At Santé she can reflect her orientation toward a mind-bodyapproach to health—her true passion. Even so, she says she neverforgets how much courage it takes for many women to step footinside a gym. Her studio, a small, cheerful room with bright orange walls and

unusual props in the Agora Shopping Center, draws women in arange of descriptions—many 50 years old and fit enough to “kickyour butt,” Camborde says with a laugh—but who warmly opentheir circle to newcomers. “We’ve made a point of making it areally accepting space,” she says.Santé’s seven instructors offer a half-dozen classes a day in

yoga, pilates, NIA, cardio, strength, and unusual workouts such ascore Gliding and ROLLogic, which Camborde created. Member-ship of about 150 has hardly wavered in seven years, even after alarge fitness center opened across the street in 2006, she says.

Ask your local newsstand to order Trend magazine,

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Camborde believes that’s because Santé is about more than getting fit. Her instruc-tors are trained not to think in terms of levels of ability but to focus on foundations—to “be where you are,” a yoga maxim that she offers to both beginners and longtimepatrons.“I really stress that it’s so much better to be the smartest instructor than the hard-

est,” she continues, “because those students will be with you forever.”

Agora Shopping Center, Eldorado, 505-466-7674, santestudio.com

Healing CornucopiaWalk into Body of Santa Fe and, look-ing around the serene but hummingenvironment, you may see a market-place or a meditation space. Bodyseems to portend a new category ofbusiness, one that gracefully blendspublic and private space into a newhybrid. Founder Lorin Parrish insists itis not a yoga studio—although that isprecisely why many patrons come—nor is it a restaurant, boutique, body-work center, or event presenter. It is,rather, all of the above: a carnival ofconscious living that Parrish calls anexperiment in community ownership. “None of the ideas has been mine.

Not one,” she demurs. The caféevolved as customers first asked thatthe juice bar sell oatmeal or sand-wiches, and Parrish ran out to buy hotplates. A holistic child-care center isnow being expanded to include artactivities for kids, while a trained chil-dren’s chef offers what Parrish con-siders “a healthy [version of] Chuck E.Cheese’s.” And so the business has grown.Since its inception in June 2004 as a one-room studio for massage students, Body

has mushroomed from three employees to 130. It is now expanding from 9,000 squarefeet to 22,000, adding a line of housewares and raw-food cooking classes, plus the grow-ing “children’s kingdom.” Parrish, who estimates that the business now grosses $3 million a year, made her

first fortune early, selling surfwear with her brother on the beach in Hawaii. That led to adecade of retreat in Asian monasteries and a period of voluntary poverty.“That catapulted me into somany amazing experiences,” she says, her eyes wide with

surfer-girl delight. “It’s also given me values. I learned what is really fun.”For Parrish, that means starting the day at 6 A.M. in the kitchen laughing with her

chefs, or floating around Body engaging everyone on her creative vision.“Every time someone has an idea,” Parrish exults, “the business just morphs.”R

333 Cordova Road, 505-986-0362, bodyofsantafe.com

Lorin Parrish, Body of Santa Fe


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THEQFILE BYWENDY AAKER PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL

Jennifer James and I meet for tacosat El Paisa on Bridge between theRio Grande and Isleta. I am intro-ducing James to my secret favorite

place for devouring tacos, so I take the liberty of suggesting what to order. Sheorders one barbacoa and one pastor. I ordertwo barbacoa. We share three salsas; myfavorite is the green. Honestly, I don’tknow which chile goes in with thetomatillo, but it bites my tongue everytime. While I pour piquante onto my tacoswith enthusiasm, James shows a little reti-cence. She also orders horchata, a deliciousrice milk concoction with cinnamon thatsoothes a spicy mouth.El Paisa was a small taco van 12 years

ago, when I first ate there. Today it is a cinderblock restaurant painted electric saf-fron yellow. When I ask James where shelikes to eat, she says with a grin, “Placeslike this.” Where she works is another story.James’s new restaurant, named Jennifer

James 101, is a long hot car ride from SouthValley taco stands. Located midcity in a burgeoning block of Menaul Boulevard, thesquare orange-and-black room shows only the bones of the spot’s strip-mall sur-roundings. Tom Ford and Carl Latino, co-owners of the city’s modern housewaresstore Hey Jhonny, crafted the interiors witha command from the chef to make the space“really about food,” says Ford. The colorscheme gets lit from beneath oval shades

Chef Jennifer James (center) opened Jennifer James 101 in April in partnership with her sister, Kelly Burton(left), and friend Nelle Bauer. Top right: The mirror pattern and ’50s lampshades create a low-key yet chic feel.

Albuquerque gets a great new bistro

Culinary Cabal


of ’50s-style chandeliers—and the plate-glass windows in front keep the metonymyof the streets on view. Bone-white cappuc-cino cups lined up in rows awaiting dessertmake the visual experience streamlinedand modern. “Everything I put on the plate is there

for a reason,” says James. A product of Illinois farming grandparents, she isinspired by farmers. She reports she oftentakes cues from fresh vegetables; a springpea sauce condites prosciutto-wrappedhalibut. “I’m not necessarily someone whorelates to healthy eating or being a vege-tarian,” she says, “but there’s somethingabout a vegetable fresh from the garden.”

THEQFILE

Above, left: James and Bauer in the kitchen. Right: Burton doubles as pastry chef and maîtresse d’. James and Burton’s grandparents were Illinois farmers, a history that contributes to the chef ’s thinking first about vegetables when planning her plates.

The kitchen occupies the soul of place, from which James watches diners enjoying their meals and conversations.

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SANTA FE DESIGN WEEKEND 9.18–21

Eli from Chispas Farms came into therestaurant with fresh leeks in mid-June,relates James, musing on that week’spicks: “They were the most beautiful leeks,but he was so much in love with his leeksthat he did not want to give them up. I said to him, ‘Eli, you are going to have togive me some of those leeks.’ ”First she might have had to bribe him

with a bebida, a summer drink of orange-blossom cream ale with salted rim andfresh orange garnish. The drink’s aro-matics pair well with a first course of pissaladiere, a tart with Niçoise olives andanchovies. The tart is the doing of James’ssister, Kelly Burton, who contributes toevery meal a deliciously snappy hard rollserved pre-course. The roundel comes witha daily flavored butter on the side (bal-samic vinegar on my visit), which dis-solves into the toothsome center. James says she did not start out know-

ing she could cook for a living. She turnedan apprenticeship at Chef du Jour underConnie Allgood (2000–03) into a tenure atGraze (2004–06) that really put her in cir-culation as a chef whom diners could trustto prepare exquisite food. James opened 101 in April with her sis-

ter, Burton, and her friend Nelle Bauer.The top chef adds new selections to themenu daily to reflect seasonal ingredientsand the day’s hankering; Bauer, who alsocooks, plays to James’s nose for pairingsand flavors. The beer-and-wine list is manageable,

well priced, and full of choices that offersurprise. As an aperitif, a Spanish sparkling(cava) split is served in a flute with a freshstrawberry and effervescing mound of rawsugar in the base. Wine is divided into “oldschool glasses” and “new school glasses”(all $8 to $12). Bottles at $30 and $45 reflectAlbuquerque’s excellent pricing in therestaurant market. New-school bottles include a sauvignon

blanc–semillon from Cortez, Colorado, as well as the more predictable RussianRiver Valley chardonnay. “Special bottles”


THEQFILE

Above: Prosciutto-wrapped halibut on pea shoots on a risotto cake with a spring pea sauce. Left: Garbanzo cakes with a trio of salads:Sunflower sprouts with walnuts, roasted peppers with olives, and spiced carrot.



($34 to $86) hail from Bordeaux, France;Paso Robles, California; and Langhe, Italy.Choosing the vintners, just like choosingthe food, appears to be a process small andwell understood enough to make you trustthe chef. That’s what James seems to beafter: a menu both inventive and reassuring.Servers brought courses to our corner

table like a carefully planned sequence ofgifts. Butter lettuce came dressed with“green goddess” dressing: hints of tarragon,garlic, parsley, and pepper; a sweet, win-some beet emerged beneath the greens. Cherries winked from a bed of arugula

accenting a seared plank of salty foie gras.The filet of beef was a succulent cut,accented classically with asparagus, mush-rooms, and potatoes au gratin. A chickenpaillard was pounded so flat that its brieftime on the grill made it a textural counter-weight to the schmaltz-roasted potatoes thatbaked in the oven with the rest of the bird. And dessert’s whimsical choices included

a jelly roll, hand-rolled by Burton with acake so light it should have been made atsea level—but, no, was done right here bythe good coven of the kitchen. James avowsthat she loves to feed people (101 could bethe Q’s best bistro), to watch her commu-nity of customers in “the living room” sheconsiders her restaurant, with the kitchenoccupying soul of place. “There’s nothingbetter,” says James, “than watching peopleget up from their meals and go to othertables where they’ve seen someone theyknow, to talk about their lives and the food.” If you’re wondering, it’s not hard to spot

which one is James. She’s wearing her sig-nature graphic cap. A longtime customercreated this hat, which she deems essential:“I can’t even begin to think about cookinguntil I am wearing my apron and my hat.” But I’m far from wondering about the

whys of cooking now. A bowl of vanilla ice cream arrives soaked in rooibos, amahogany-red tea harvested from SouthAfrica’s Cedarberg Mountains. Honeyedundertones slip across my lips. I revel intrusting the chef. R

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Santa Fe architects, designers, and merchants share their inspiration

CreativeMusings

COVER Interior design by David Naylor, Visions Design Group. PHOTO BY Kate Russell. ABOVE AND OPPOSITE The outdoor fireplaceis a prime feature of many New Mexico residences. This torreón takes the celebration of fireside sitting and viewing to a new level. Thetorreón is a stone helix with a staircase spiraling around the exterior. Upon reaching the top, a large seating area by the stone fireplaceprovides an area of solitude with panoramic views of two mountain ranges. DESIGN BY Duty & Germanas. PHOTOS BY Dustin Duty.

BY Dawn DelVecchio

Phenomenal taste is a common denominator among a large percent-age of the population of Santa Fe. Of course, we expect this of art anddesign professionals, but the bar is raised in a city with a history ofattracting artists that stretches back a century. Although each eye isdifferent, the way area architects, designers, and product providerscollaborate and combine elements that cross lines of time, culture,texture, and color is viscerally pronounced here.

“Santa Fe is unique in its acceptance of diversity and itsartfulness,” says Gary Coles-Christensen of G. Coles-Christensen RugMerchants. “I came for the atmosphere and the quality of light in NewMexico, but I stay because exciting, original people are here who canappreciate our authentic vision.”>

New Mexico, and Santa Fe in particular, is a source of inspiration for many. Like the ancient

Greek muses, nature here calls to some people, who create lifestyles and homes that capture

the magnificent light and wide-open landscapes. Other people find inspiration from tradition,

whether the indigenous native customs, the area’s Spanish-colonial heritage, or the plethora

of ethnic offerings. And there are those whose creative fires are sparked by the vibrant,

collaborative process shared with area artisans.

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Inspired by NatureNature, in her Southwest guise, is a strong draw for many acreative soul. The desert climate, deep blue skies, and high-altitude light illuminating dramatic mountainscapes are qual-ities hard to find elsewhere.

ROOMS WITH A VIEWKevin Sarr of Brother Sun has long recognized the value andbounty of New Mexico’s views. His many clients seeking thesame thing sustains enthusiasm in his work. “Our primaryinspiration is threefold,” says Sarr. “First is our customersand their dreams; second, the landscape and the views; andthird, the light of New Mexico.” As a custom window spe-cialist, Sarr knows whereof he speaks. “When you’ve gotthese expansive views to work with, it is particularlyexciting to help customers frame them. There is so muchbeauty to see here in New Mexico, and we thrive on helpingour customers see their surroundings.”

Framing views is but one way to extend a home’s interioroutward and into the landscape. “We are inspired by prod-ucts that reflect, juxtapose, or interact with the environment,”says David Cole of Moss Outdoor. The outdoor furnishings ofKenneth Cobonpue, featured at Moss, are a perfect exampleof interior design stepping out to interact. In his effort toreiterate the play of light and shadow through the greeneryhe enjoyed in his youth, this native Filipino designer usescurvilinear shapes and open weaves to create ever-changingart in the shadows of the high-altitude sun.

EARTHLY SUSTENANCEFor some, it is the earth itself that inspires. “Dried mud is myfirst love,” says Natalie Fitz-Gerald of Casa Nova by Natalie,a showroom of interior accents sourced primarily from Africanartisans. Her South African roots, now transplanted in theAmerican Southwest, have thrived amidst dried-mud-brickhomes and earth-centered native traditions.

Shades of white evoke calm and serenity; Kris Lajeskie’s signature Venetian plaster wall finishes include sand and mica for texture and sparkle,mixed and applied by master François Pascal and Urszula Bolimowski. Organic metal sconces imported from Belgium. PAINTING BY Udo Noger,Gebert Contemporary. DESIGN BY Kris Lajeskie Design Group. PHOTO BY Kate Russell.


divineDesignTRENDsource: ADVERTISING SECTION

An earthly connection can also bring succor. For KrisLajeskie of Kris Lajeskie Design Group, Santa Fe offers aplace for her to ground herself amidst a dynamic internationalcareer. With bases in Santa Fe and Manhattan, this highlysought-after designer needs a place to recharge. “New YorkCity is a very intense, competitive environment. In order toperform at the level I need to perform there, I need to beconnected to the earth,” she explains. “In order to create,I need the grounding that living here provides.”

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTSSequoia Madan of Sequoia Santa Fe says he gains much ofhis design inspiration from nature and his desire to “helpbridge the gap between outdoor and indoor in a fun way.”Using reclaimed and environmentally low-impact materials inhis work, Sequoia creates functional designs or home fur-nishings that are not only nature-inspired but also eco-conscious. Whether it’s iron, which is abundant; twigs har-vested from prunings; paper made from the outer strips ofmulberry bark; or reclaimed woods, the materials in Se-quoia's designs provide both beauty and sustainability, witha low carbon footprint in the manufacturing process.> The clean contemporary lines and warm furnishings of this

living space demonstrate the way David Naylor of Visions DesignGroup combines color, texture, and light to create inviting spaces.PHOTO BY Kate Russell.

Custom Tibetan carpet made of silk and wool from the G. Coles-Christensen Private Label. PHOTO BYCorbin Sees, Sees Design.


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Leonel Capparelli of Hands of America is blessed with aprofession whose very nature is one of earth-friendly sustain-ability. As a restorer of antiques and fabricator of furnishingsmade from reclaimed woods, Capparelli finds that the green as-pect of restoration both inspires him and brings satisfaction tohis work. “Ninety-nine percent of our items have been rescuedfrom the past to be preserved for the future,” he says.

Diane Fish of Dahl Plumbing approaches green designfrom a different angle. With an entire department devoted torenewable resources, Dahl carries products that work withsystems such as solar and geothermal heating and waterharvesting. “What inspires me is a healthy approach to

living,” Fish says. “This means utilizing products designedwith sustainability as a priority.”

Bob Kreger of Kreger Design/Build says, “As much as 90percent of sustainability occurs in the design process.” For himand his wife and design collaborator, Nancy, the earth isnot just a plot of land on which to construct a house; it is ourcollective home and something we are responsible for main-taining for future generations. As dutiful earth-stewards, theKregers are passionate about low-carbon-footprint, sustainableconstruction. “We are building for 20, 30, 50 years from now,”says Bob. The Kregers exemplify an inspired consciousness thatis growing across the planet, one particularly evident in a placelike Santa Fe, where delicate, dry ecosystems demand long-term, sustainable planning as expanding populations increasedemands on limited resources.

Custom-color bubble Sierra glass accentuates the curved showerentry wall and vanity edge of this teen’s bath. Vanity top andshower walls are tiled in quartz-and-glass Stardust, with SuspenseSconce lighting of crushed blue glass. INTERIOR DESIGN BY JeffFenton, IM Design Studios. TILE LAYOUT DESIGN BY Kim White, State-ments In Tile/Lighting/Kitchens/Flooring. PHOTO BY Chris Martinez,IM Design Studios.

The Antilia™ Wading Pool® lavatory embraces symmetry and cleanlines to create a substantial centerpiece. From Kohler’s Nature’sChemistry line. Available at Dahl.



Inspired by TraditionFrom the earliest Pueblo Indian designs for functional items

such as pots and blankets rich in symbolic meaning, or re-

fined adornments in silver and stone, New Mexico has a long

tradition of inspired, creative work. Today that tradition ex-

pands well beyond local, indigenous arts; the city of Santa Fe

also hosts designers and merchandisers offering an eclectic

array of handcrafted items from cultures around the world.

RESPECT FOR THE PASTPreserving and enjoying traditional arts of earlier times is the

purpose of Leonel Capparelli’s restoration work: “We are not

just preserving articles at Hands of America; we are pre-

serving the tradition behind those pieces.” Capparelli speaks

with respect for the handcraftsmanship of each item in his

showroom. He believes that everything in his shop has a

story. “This is something I appreciate,” he says, “because

you need to understand the culture behind a piece.”

Many Santa Fe artisans and merchandisers share that

respect and appreciation for tradition. With a creativity deeply

rooted in his Berber origins, for instance, Karim Rifi Saidi of

Santa Kilim has a particular fondness for the traditional arts

of North Africa: carvings, plasters, wood carvings, and rugs.

“My inspiration comes from my love of handwoven and hand-

The Fountainhead VibrAcoustic™ bath by Kohler introduces sound vibration, chromotherapy, and music. Drawing on the science of soundtherapy, the bath will also show your breathing and heart rate, gently resonating throughout your body. Available at Dahl.

made products from tribal people and from seeing the unique

beauty in each piece,” he says. “It gives me a feeling of com-

fort to be surrounded by these fine objects that demonstrate

people’s great respect for their craft.” Santa Kilim features,

of course, kilim rugs, plus architectural pieces and home ac-

cents of very high workmanship. According to Rifi Saidi, the

intentional, inspired work of generations of artisans is a her-

itage “leaving us something from the past to enjoy today.”Darby McQuade’s Jackalope also reflects a respect and

appreciation for indigenous traditions. The sprawling complexoffers visitors a veritable world tour of craftsmanship, in fact.Hand-hewn furnishings from Indonesia are a current sourceof inspiration for McQuade: “We are really just getting startedthere, but it is an incredible source for beautiful objects,décor, and furnishings.”

Southeast Asia is a source of inspiration for JohnBosshard of Bosshard Gallery as well. A man with a great lovefor Asian culture—both classical and tribal—his eye for finedesign is evident at his art and furnishings store. Bosshardcontends that the region is “a rich source of diversity of cul-tures that also produce amazing art and architecture. It isone of the last places left in the world where people take thetime to make beautiful objects even for ordinary use.”>


For Fidelia Kirk of Asian Adobe, the Far East’s awakeningdragon—China—was not initially a source of inspiration. Infact, her first years living there in the early 1990s proved sodifficult that she left, returning only periodically. “I didn’t likeChina at first because I was lonely,” says Kirk, “and backthen they didn’t treat foreigners well.” Just emerging fromthe Cultural Revolution, mainland Chinese were wary, at best.“But over time,” she explains, “I grew to admire their cultureand the people and all that they had been through.” After ex-tensive research on life during the Cultural Revolution, Kirksays she gained insight and compassion for the people’shardships during that time, opening the door to friendshipsand her own “revolution”—an inspired combination of Chi-nese antiques and Southwest designs in art and furnishings.

ABOVE Barcelona Collection by Dedon available at Moss. PHOTO BYTheo Bott. RIGHT Whimsical sculpted figures “play” in the lush gardenthat leads into the home’s entryway. DESIGN BY Wiseman & Gale &Duncan. PHOTO BY ChasMcGrath.



BRIDGING STYLESThe blending of traditional and contemporary is a trendamong many Santa Fe artists, designers, and merchandis-ers. John Bosshard’s key phrase, “ancient cultures, moderndesigns,” mirrors the local sentiment among creators whodraw inspiration from both old and new.

“Santa Fe has evolved a lot as a market,” says Bosshard,explaining that the original Native and Spanish-colonial artmarkets first expanded with the introduction of South Ameri-can arts. That expansion has continued to what we havetoday, which he refers to as an “international Santa Fe style.”It includes both vintage and contemporary elements whoseboundaries continue to blur as artisans’ visions expand.

The dynamic tension of old and new that is evident every-where in Santa Fe is itself a source of inspiration. “Thejuxtaposition of ancient culture and cutting-edge design ismind-boggling,” says Kris Lajeskie. “It is a constant influenceon my work.”

Lajeskie is not alone in her enthusiasm for this creativedynamic. “There is an amalgam of influences here thatmakes for a distinctive style,” says Victoria Price of VictoriaPrice Art & Design. Her interior design shop and gallery is anexcellent example of the intersection of classic elements andcontemporary eclecticism. “I believe that true Santa Fe stylewas born of necessity. This place became a repository forpeople’s ideas, inspiration, and sometimes junk, which wereeventually transformed into somethingnew.” Price argues that a kind of fusionhappens over time—a chronologicalblending “that changes an item, sym-bol, or concept, infusing it with new cre-ative elements.”

Combining heritage with modern-daycraftsmanship is elemental to the cre-ations of Visions Design Group’s DavidNaylor. “When designing a space thatcalls for a timeless, continental aura,

many designers go straight to antiques,” he says. “But ourapproach is to honor the same spirit that inspired artisansof long ago by commissioning custom creations from mod-ern craftspeople.” Naylor’s appreciation for the inspiredworks of area artisans is evident in his designs. “We’refortunate in New Mexico to have so many heirs to genera-tions of woodworkers, furniture makers, stoneworkers, andtile artists,” he adds. In collaboration with these artisans,Naylor designs furnishings and architectural elements that,he says, “capture the warm, traditional ambience of statelyEuropean homes or rustic country retreats while introducingcontemporary sensibilities.”

The heirs to inspired, artistic traditions are the soleartisans from whom Debbie Funfer of Heart of the LotusInteriors draws upon for her custom Sacred Space designs.“Artisans whose work is a devotional practice put all of theirlove and their souls into these pieces,” she explains. ForDebbie, her gallery of sacred Asian statuary, furnishings, anddécor, along with her expanding interior design services, is away of literally bringing divinely inspired creativity home.

“Living in spaces infused with sacred imagery changesthe way we interact with the world and allows us to cultivatean altered, internal experience,” Debbie believes. “When wesurround ourselves with these inspirational pieces, they notonly create serene spaces but actually mirror back ourhighest human qualities.” >

Cabo San Lucas corner unit from Weiland Sliding Doors and Windows. Availableat Brother Sun.


Artistically InspiredWhether it is personal creativity demanding an outlet or it is col-laboration with other artisans, there are those in Santa Fewhose works are fired by artistic expression in its purest sense.

CREATIVE FLUIDITYDavid Naylor understands well the nature of inspiration: “Youhave to stay fluid throughout the process of design, and themuses of inspiration will speak to you."

For Ira and Sylvia Seret of Seret & Sons, inspiration is anevolving thing. “It began with designing our home, where webrought Eastern influences to blend with Santa Fe style,”Sylvia says. This blending continues to expand, branching inmany directions. “By playing with elements at home thiswould feed our business, offering new concepts and designs.

Through this design process, everything gets better and all ofit further feeds our creativity,” she says.

For Judith and Arthur Reeder, owners of Allbright & Lock-wood, a showroom for lighting, hardware, tile, and acces-sories, it is the abundance of creative designs that inspire.“There are so many new materials in lighting and tile,” saysArthur. “Artisans are rethinking fixtures in exciting ways.”

“My artists are my inspiration,” says Mary Larson, ownerof La Mesa of Santa Fe, an interiors and furnishings show-room featuring at least 40 artisans’ works at any given time.Larson has watched the evolution of many artisans over theyears. As they stretch their own creative edges, her enthusi-asm for her work, she says, is continually fed.

DRAWN TOGETHERThrough working with customers for nearly a quarter-century,Danish-born Lette Birn, owner of Form+Function, understandsthe every-day questions people have about lighting. Thoseyears of one-on-one collaboration inspired her to design a newkind of lighting outlet that is part laboratory, part multimediainstruction facility, and all showroom. Form+Function bringsrelationships with customers to the present. “It’s a new lo-cation with new ideas and new concepts,” explains Birn. “Nowanyone who walks in our door will enter a kind of learning cen-ter, with hands-on activities, vignettes for every room in thehouse, and ongoing slide shows, all demonstrating ideas and‘how-to’ techniques in lighting.”

ABOVE Contemporary leather couchesfrom China stand behind a century-old,Mongolian altar table with a Balinesehand-carved Buddha image. Circular dis-play cases flanking the mantle hold acollection of 24kt-gilded statues byNepalese artisans. Available at Heart ofthe Lotus. RIGHT Casa Nova’s CulturalFusion display includes an AfricanBamileke table with Kuba cushions, Ju-lian Keyser dinnerware, contemporaryJapanese screens, Red Zulu hats, andSudanese Bogo totems. Available atCasa Nova. PHOTO BY Casa Nova. OPPO-SITE Original antique painted Bali-stylebench from Java shown with custommade cushions and pillows, and wovenikat throw from Bali. Handpainted carvedscreens made of Shesham wood fromIndia. Available at Jackalope. PHOTO BYMary Tambornino.


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Collaboration with clients is a great motivator for KimWhite, owner of Statements In Tile/Lighting/Kitchens/Floor-ing. “We get a lot of our design inspiration from our clients,”she says.

Jeanné Sei of Kitchens by Jeanné concurs. “Much of myinspiration comes from my clients, definitely,” says Sei,whose designs run from rustic, traditional Southwestern tounquestioningly contemporary.

Inspired synergy is palpable at the showroom of Wiseman& Gale & Duncan Interiors (WGD). Creative support and feed-back among the six designers, as well as collaboration withclients, all nourish the enthusiasm and creative dynamismhere. “The camaraderie is fantastic,” says Pam Duncan, for-mer owner and lead interior designer. Other WGD designersagree. “It’s easier and more interesting to work with a groupbecause it helps my energy,” says Deborah Anderson. “Work-ing with others keeps the ideas flowing,” adds Janet Di Luzio.

Creative collaboration with artists is core to the work ofdesigner Kris Lajeskie: “From the very beginning, I havedrawn inspiration from collaborating with artisans. This isone of the greatest benchmarks of my designs.” In theprocess, Lajeskie says, she and the artisan must first learnhow to “dance” together. “Whether we are working with


Venetian plaster walls, iron, or upholstery,” she explains,once this dance is fluid, unexpected design ideas appear.“When two artisans are working together, it can be a beauti-ful, organic process and an extraordinary blessing when newcreations emerge.”

Kathy Fennema and Bob Schwarz of Santa Fe By Designrecognize the value of synergistic teamwork. “We enjoy col-laborating with designers and architects,” says Schwarz.“There is a certain alchemy that can happen when you put to-gether the right client, builder, product, attitude, and timing.When this happens, the creative process unfolds in a waythat keeps us engaged and inspired.”

Whether nature’s color ful backdrops, the multiculturalheritage of fine craftsmanship, collaborative synergy, or thedirect and fluid song of the muse herself, inspired creativityoverflows in the city of Santa Fe. Cliché among locals, thereis indeed an enchantment to this place—and, by extension,New Mexico and the entire Southwest. A land of penetratingsunlight and wide vistas, the area has been drawing thosewho seek the touch of the muse for centuries. The result isa city of innovative bounty, rich diversity, and inspired designsthat speak to the heart and breathe life into those whocreate here. >


Designers, Architects,Builders, and Materials


Whether for interior or exterior, Santa Fe designers,

architects, builders, and material suppliers have an

eye for beauty.With a spectrumof styles ranging from

traditional Southwestern to über-contemporary, they

provide many choices for home and office design.

Visions Design Group“I reach into both the future and the past forinspiration,” says David Naylor, owner of VisionsDesign Group. “I’ll take an ancient object and fash-ion it into something contemporary.” Visions of-fers the full spectrum of interior design services,spearheaded by Naylor’s integrated aesthetic.

This is a man who operates totally in the flow ofcreativity. He trusts his instincts even when theyseem contrary to what is planned. With a trackrecord of good results, he has learned to stickwith his gut above all else, once he has clarifiedwhat it is his clients seek.

Visions’ latest project, the Blackstone RanchInstitute in Taos, pushed Naylor’s design edgesto the next level. The handsome interiors of this170-acre ranch demonstrate his well-honed eyeand broad vision, perfectly illustrating his inte-gration of past and future by creating designsthat work in the now.

111 North St. Francis Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.988.3170 | visionsdesigngroup.com

PREVIOUS SPREAD This contemporary kitchen, including three islands, was designedfor entertaining and family. The space has plenty of texture, with oak, eggplant-colored doors, stainless accents, granite tops, and glass tile. Flanking the kitchen area cookbook room and bar. DESIGN BY Kitchens by Jeanné. PHOTO BY Kate Russell.ABOVE A pitched roof with exposed beams and large windows bring plenty of light intothe living spaces of this New Mexican–style home. David Naylor ties the spacetogether with interior solutions such as an antique chair with Chris Galusha suedepillow and antique Chinese pots on the fireplace hearth. PHOTO BY Kate Russell.



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Wiseman & Gale & DuncanInteriors

“It’s kind of like herding cats,” muses Debo-rah Anderson, one of the designers with theWiseman & Gale & Duncan design group(WGD). Unlike a party of indifferent felines,however, this lively collection of women andmen engage in a collaborative dynamic aseach develops designs for individual clients.

There is an organic flow to the feedbackprocess at WGD. Although each of the sixdesigners works individually, the friendly andtrusting nature of all promotes continualcreative exploration. By sharing space,designers are able to offer insight and inspi-ration to each other.

150 South St. Francis Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.984.8544 | wgdinteriors.com

Kris Lajeskie Design Group, Inc.“My source of inspiration is very straightfor-ward,” says interior designer Kris Lajeskie, whohas bases in New York and Santa Fe. “There isno question that the earth here in the Southwestinspires me. I come back here to refuel myself.”

She feeds her earthy, edgy designs with an inter-national host of colors and concepts. “I also drawinspiration from collaborating with artisans,” sheexplains. “This is one of the greatest benchmarksof my designs.” Lajeskie’s work has been fea-tured in Spectacular Homes of Metro New York—for which her design was awarded the cover—andDream Homes of the Desert. Both books werelaunched in New York City this spring.

Her current project, the 2,300-square-foot pent-house suite at Pojoaque Pueblo’s new BuffaloThunder Resort and Casino, is another exercisein inspired collaboration—with both area arti-sans and Pueblo Governor George Rivera. “Thegovernor has an incredible eye for art and de-sign,” says Lajeskie. “We share a commitmentto using local artisans, particularly engagingmany of the Pueblo artisans.”

1012 Marquez Place, #304A, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.986.1551 | krislajeskiedesign.com

This home was remodeled for a couple from Texas seeking a restful yet elegantambience. Pam Duncan created this aura through monochromatic and soothing hues.Custom chenille carpet and Spanish- and French-colonial furnishings add warmth.PHOTO BY Clay Ellis.

A double-sided fireplace creates a wonderful backdrop for this casual seating area.Textured Venetian plaster walls, custom KLDG velvet ottoman, and custom felt rugby Paolo Lenti complete the space. PHOTO BY © Francis Dzikowski/Esto.


HVL InteriorsHeather Van Luchene, ASID, and partner Steffany Hollingsworth,ASID, have built their interior design business and reputations ontheir progressive aesthetic, exceptional client service, and passionfor contemporary design.

Their attention to detail brings simplicity and clarity to the spacesthey create. They craft distinctive designs with a tailored andsophisticated appearance by using varying textures, complex colorpalettes, and natural, organic elements.

HVL Interiors was established in 2001 and designs residential andcommercial projects throughout the U.S. They specialize in residentialconstruction and remodeling, space planning, and hospitality design.

1012 Marquez Place, #205A, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.983.3601 | hvlinteriors.com

This contemporary kitchen sitting area of muted hues,designed by HVL Interiors, includes two hand-tooled metalspot tables with galvanized bronze finish atop a SouthPersian vegetable-dyed rug. Sofa fabric and cherry endtable designed by HVL Interiors.


Dahl“As a lifelong resident of the northern New Mexicocommunity, I have long been personally inspired bythe native architecture and landscapes,” says LucyLujan, manager of Dahl Premier Showroom. Similarly,she explains, “at Dahl we try to integrate productsthat are inspired by nature. Many are made of naturalmaterials, with simple, clean lines that are designedto enhance our client’s well-being.”

An excellent example of that is Dahl’s steam and bathspa systems, which combines sound vibrations andwater to promote relaxation.

Since 1971, the Dahl showroom has come a long way,evolving into a gallery of interactive, state-of-the-artbath and kitchen displays. Today the company is ded-icated to offering sustainable, ecologically friendly andwater-conservation products. This includes geother-mal systems, solar-water heating and cooling, pluswater conservation, harvesting, and reclamation.

1000 Siler Park Lane, Santa Fe, NM 87507505.216.0093 | destinationdahl.com

Duty & Germanas ArchitectsMichael Duty has practiced architecture in Santa Fe since1976. With his partner, Kestutis Germanas, he has builta firm devoted to personalized service and private projects,garnering accolades such as the National AIA Honor Award,the Old Santa Fe Association Orchid Award, and Best Build-ings of Santa Fe Award. From multimillion-dollar residencesto large commercial projects, he creates designs that strivefor elegance, which for Duty means achieving a balance ofcost, functionality, and inventiveness that assures success.

“Practicing architecture in Santa Fe is exciting because ofthe unique challenges involved in charting a course throughthe maze of influences and requirements,” says Duty. “Anarchitect must be a little bit attorney, real estate profes-sional, artist, financial consultant, and construction special-ist to truly orchestrate the symphony of building.”

1323 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.989.8882 | dutyandgermanas.com

The entrance hall in this La Tierra residence provides a promenadefrom the foyer to the master bedroom. Along the way it reveals all theinterior spaces of the house and opens on its entire length to anoutdoor courtyard with pool and spa. PHOTO BY Dustin Duty.

This Kohler Botticelli vessel with extended, rolled rim is hand-formed from asingle piece of Classix Carrara marble. A Kohler Purist Lavatory faucet withlever handle completes the simple, clean design.


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Kreger Design/Build“Performance first” is what Bob Kreger of Kreger Design/Build has to say about priorities in home design and con-struction. This AIA-licensed architect and New Mexico–licensed contractor puts sustainability above all else inhis projects. He is ardent about the responsibility of ar-chitects and builders to think long term about what theyare creating now. “We establish sustainability budgetsfirst, then we focus on sustainable design and construc-tion. These are our highest priorities,” he elaborates. ForKreger, building the systems that offer energy, water, andmaterial conservation—as well as planning for indoorand outdoor environmental quality—are a priority: “Theconfiguration for energy efficiency is a part of the processand must be planned into the design phase.”

The firm’s latest project, a LEED (Leadership in Energyand Environmental Design) Gold-certified home, demon-strates verifiable sustainability integrated with other de-sign priorities. For Kreger, building the systems that offerenergy, water, and material conservation—as well as plan-ning for indoor and outdoor environmental quality—are apriori: “The configuration for energy efficiency is a part ofthe process and must be planned into the design phase.”

P.O. Box 9503, Santa Fe, NM 87504505.660.9391 | kregerdesignbuild.com

FirebirdFounded in 1977 during the energy crunch of the late ’70s,the Firebird could not have opened at a better time. Func-tional wood heating and beautiful designs were core seg-ments of the business then—and still are today.

But long gone are the days of dir ty little black stoves. AsGene Butler, the store’s owner, says, “You may heat with itfor six months, but you have to look at it year-round.” For thepast few years his customers have shown a strong interestin contemporary designs. The Firebird meets that growingneed with stoves and fireplaces featuring clean, smooth sur-faces and interesting visual elements that make thesehearths a design focal point of a room.

1808 Espinacitas Street, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.983.5264 | thefirebird.com

Vision is the North American version of this gas fireplace by noteddesigner Gavin Scott of England. PHOTO BY European Home.

The Cles/Thompson residence—designed by Steve Oles, FAIA, andKreger Design/Build (W. Robert Kreger, AIA)—shows a TPO Cool RoofCouncil–rated high-tech roofing solution with rainwater-catchmentpipes leading to a 5,000-gallon cistern. Real Stone (from Arizona)chimney. PHOTO BY Kate Johnson.



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Kitchens by Jeanné“I am a designer that looks at function first,” says Jeanné Sei,founder of Kitchens by Jeanné. “Clients guide me, then I createdesigns and help them make choices that meet the overallatmosphere they wish to achieve.”

Sei has been in the kitchen business a long time, from herearly years as a nationwide consultant in cuisine and menudevelopment to 27 successful years with Kitchens byJeanné, but this native New Mexican remains enthusiasticabout her work.

Although kitchens are her mainstay, her company offersmuch more. “We will design and build cabinetry for any room,be they kitchens, bathrooms, outdoor areas, game rooms, oreven laundry rooms,” she explains.

Sei’s designs have won client accolades and internationalawards. In this year’s Sub-Zero/Wolf kitchen design contest,a caterer’s kitchen that she customized took first prize in theregion and was one of 48 finalists out of 1,600 entries inthe international competition.

631 Old Santa Fe Trail, No. 1, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.988.4594 | kitchensbyjeanne.com

AllBright & LockWoodThe name says it all for this lighting and hardware show-room housed in a 150-year-old historic adobe. Judith andArthur Reeder purchased the business from an architectwhose inspiration clearly went beyond lighting and doorlocks, and into wordplay.

Offering products from 60 to 80 lighting companies, 12door-hardware manufacturers, and 15 to 20 cabinet-hard-ware businesses, AllBright & LockWood has a lot to offer.It also carries bath accessories and fans, and is “burstingat the seams” with tile, says Judith.

The couple is particularly excited about trends in lightingthey call Santa Fe Contemporary, designs which, Arthurexplains, are “derived from regional history but have beentaken to a new level with new materials.” Excellent exam-ples are their fixtures of stacked travertine and glass—amodern interpretation of the ancient designs found atChaco Canyon.

621 Old Santa Fe Trail, Suite 5, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.986.1715

Tech Lighting’s natural shell panels were used to create theselustrous Playa pendants. Available in three shades, natural(pictured), rich brown, and white, from Allbright & Lockwood. PHOTOBY Tech Lighting.

This caterer’s kitchen has all the equipment necessary to facilitate evena large soiree. Stainless cabinets, granite tops, and ribbed-glassaccents add texture and warmth. PHOTO BY Kate Russell.


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Form+FunctionDanish-born Lette Birn has made Santa Fe her homefor more than 25 years. She opened Form+Function in1984 when she could not find lighting suitable for hernewly built house. Importing from Europe initially, overthe years Birn has established great ties with a num-ber of U.S. lighting manufacturers, providing herclients with a broad scope of illuminating possibilities.

Birn’s early background in teaching dovetails withForm+Function’s latest transformation: With vignettesfor every room of the house and hands-on activities toexplore countless lighting concepts, the new show-room in Pacheco Park is interactive by design. It alsooffers customers the opportunity to discover for them-selves the answers to both common questions andtheir own lighting needs.

It’s the culmination of her knowledge, experience, anddreams. Says Birn: “This is what I always wanted to do.”

1512 Pacheco Street, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.820.7872 | formplusfunction.com

Santa Fe By DesignSanta Fe By Design is the brainchild of Robert Schwarzand Kathy anne Fennema. Longtime Santa Fe residentsinvolved in the building trade, the couple have keenlyobserved the increase in complexity and specializationin home design over the course of 20 years. In 2001,recognizing a growing need in the market, they openedtheir showroom, offering high-end faucets, fixtures, andhardware for kitchen and bath.

“What you see here in this showroom are not just fix-tures; they are fashion,” explains Schwarz. Santa FeBy Design displays some of the most pioneeringconcepts in sinks, cabinetry, and hardware. The cou-ple is particularly excited about the cutting-edge useof domestic concrete for basins and countertops.Bold, monochromatic, contemporary designs offercreative and flexible alternatives to more traditionalmaterials. Schwarz and Fennema also carry a specialline of crystalline glazed-porcelain basins. Each one-of-a-kind piece appears iridescent, with bursts of em-bedded fossilized lichen.

1512 Pacheco Street, Suite D101, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.988.4111 | santafebydesign.com

A perfect example of fully functional and visually stimulating lighting, thishand-folded sculptural lamp by Le Klint casts an awe-inspiring glow when lit.All Le Klint shades are made from a color-stabilized white PVC, which iscompletely washable. PHOTO BY Form+Function.

This Italian-made Branchetti vanity, with white glass top and lacqueredBordeaux cabinetry, is just one of the many choices available for order throughthe Accessory Annex/Santa Fe By Design. Individual sections can beremoved as desired.


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Statements In Tile/Lighting/Kitchens/FlooringA tile extravaganza is one way to describe the showroom ofStatements In Tile/Lighting/Kitchens/Flooring. “We have ahuge range of products,” explains owner Kim White. Suchselection offers plenty of flexibility for designers seeking anunexpected look or customized product. The tile collectionscome from all over the world, including several local artists.

“Often a client comes to us with a personal item from theirhome,” White says. “Their vocabulary is very different thanours, and clients cannot always describe what it is theyare seeking. It is our job to translate what they want intotangible solutions.”

White is in increasing demand for tile with textures, patterns,and unusual finishes, such as carved and handpainted tiles,those with petroglyph designs, and even bejeweled tiles.

1441 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.988.4440

Brother Sun Windows and Natural Light“We’re lucky because we are involved in the design andexecution of something people are very emotionally attachedto when building their home: the views,” says Kevin Sarr,current owner of Brother Sun Windows. Working with endusers as well as architects and builders, Brother Sun hasbeen customizing high-quality glazing designs for Santa Fehomeowners for more than 30 years.

“Meeting customers’ needs by using multiple sources formaterials is something we are willing and able to do,” heexplains. “What differentiates us from others in the field isthat when you walk in here, we won’t try to fit you into acookie-cutter mold. If this means customizing windows andsourcing materials from a number of different manufacturers,then that is what we will do.”

2907 Agua Fria Street, Santa Fe, NM 87507505.471.5157 | brother-sun.com

This customized, 90-degree double pocketing door by BrotherSun brings the outdoors in with seamless elegance. PHOTO BYCraig Shanklin.

Prairie School tile, inspired by the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, is oneof many designs by Syzygy. This New Mexico–based companyproduces mosaics, field tiles, moldings, and hand-carved decorativetiles in more than a hundred custom glazes. PHOTO BY Lori Neely.


www.heatnglo.comA brand of Hearth & Home Technologies, Inc.

1808 Espinacitas StreetSanta Fe, NM 87505505 983-5264www.thefirebird.com

Paloma The beauty of modern design meets the intelligence of advanced engineering.

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ABOVE A rare 19th-century Suzani silk-on-silk, hand-embroidered tapestry from Uzbekistan hangs above a 16th-century Tibetan chest, an8th-century B.C. Phoenician amphora, and Seret & Sons custom-upholstered chairs. PHOTO BY Kate Russell. OPPOSITE This study features largecustom bookshelves commissioned by Visions Design Group and fabricated by Vida Design. The leather chairs were made in Visions’ customstudio. Pillows covered in Jim Thompson fabric. The 19th-century Foo dogs are from Visions Design Group. PHOTO BY Kate Russell.



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Home Furnishings,Rugs, and Accents


SequoiaSequoia, the showroom namesake for this designer/merchant, is a stunning example of refined interior eclecti-cism. Sequoia the man is a creative visionary with an eye forthe unique and a heart for the earth. Inspired by nature, hisintent is to “create a lot of beauty with as much reclaimedand low-impact material as possible, while keeping designscontemporary and cutting-edge.”

The two-story showroom of one-of-a-kind items achieves justthis, with a mix of sustainable, natural materials that onlyenhance these stunning vignettes and home décor items.Whether it is his original wrought-iron lamps and bed frames,coffee tables made from massive, gnarled tree roots, ordelicate parchment bowls fabricated from vegetable scraps,Sequoia’s furnishings are unique. Green and Sienna, his newline, is made of recycled sawdust and reclaimed wood withspecially formulated, non- and low-toxic finishes. Green andSienna will be available in late summer.

201 Galisteo Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.982.7000 | sequoiacollections.com

No house is a home without personalized accoutrements.

Santa Fe–area merchants offer some of the most stunning

one-of-a-kind furnishings, rugs, and accessories from around

the world. Whether you are after Hermès crystal or Berber

rugs, reclaimed-Brazilian-wood tables or Asian antiques, this

city has no small selection from which to choose.

Sequoia’s showroom features spectacular vignettes such as this. The bed frame is made of reclaimed woods and harvested mahogany.Exclusive linens in pure silk are by a Seattle textile designer. ART BY Bulgarian Joro Petkov (above bed) and Marti Sommers (above table).PHOTO BY Sequoia P. Madan.



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Hands of AmericaLeonel Capparelli is a man with a joie de vivrethat reflects someone pursuing his passion. Hisexpertise in restoration is evident at his work-shop and gallery, Hands of America. Whether itis rebuilding a piece of furniture or removing 200years of smoke soot from a religious painting,Capparelli has the knowledge, skills, and expe-rience to take aged or damaged artifacts and re-turn them to their original condition.

His appreciation for each piece is evident as heguides visitors through his shop, where angelson canvas share space with bronze conquista-dors or wood-hewn saints, rough timber benches,and thick tabletops in regional woods.

“Country furniture and folk art are similar allover the world,” Capparelli explains. “All havesome type of love and passion in the work.”It’s a passion that clearly extends across cen-turies through the hands of this second-generation restorer.

401 Rodeo Road, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.983.5550

Shiprock Trading CompanySince 1894, Shiprock Trading Company hasbeen dealing in traditional Native Americanrugs, pottery, and jewelry under the helms-manship of the Foutz family. Today, Jed Foutz’ssuccessful Santa Fe gallery and showroom—one of three in the state—offers what he calls“an inspired and unexpected twist to what youwould normally find in Santa Fe.” The com-pany’s unrivaled collection of pre-1950sNavajo rugs, polychrome pots from variouspueblos dating to the turn of the century, andturquoise jewelry now shares space with sev-eral lines of contemporary furnishings, includ-ing the furniture creations of Mira Nakashima.

53 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.982.8478 | shiprocktrading.com

Shiprock Santa Fe’s Zen room features an eclectic mix of modern and rustic furnish-ings against a backdrop of classic Navajo weavings, including selected polychromePueblo pottery. PHOTO BY Josedgardo Granados/Shiprock, Santa Fe.

A selection of original works, all restored by Hands of America, including 18th- and19th-century cabinetry, statuary, an 18th-century Oaxacan silver box, candleholders,and paintings from Mexico. PHOTO BY Ben Tremper.



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Victoria Price Art & DesignColorful, eclectic, refreshingly quirky—these are a few wordsto describe the showroom of Victoria Price. “I offer an unusualmix,” explains Price of her services, which combine interiordesign, custom furniture, and hand-selected merchandise.

This mix extends to the range of items on hand. Powder-coated-steel coffee tables and Leroy Archuleta chairs, Price’sline of punct pillows, and geometric- and floral-print rugs insassy colors all share space with Navajo textiles, Zen-inspiredtableware, and Flower Power T-shirts. Together, these ele-ments demonstrate an intersection that Price believes is in-dicative of contemporary Santa Fe. “I’m not one who thinkspeople should live with a single style,” she says. “This is whyI like Santa Fe—it is an amalgam of tastes and aesthetics.”

Price is joining forces with a new business partner, MargaritaWaxman, who brings with her 25 years of experience in NewYork City’s high-end retail market. Along with this, Price is ex-panding her line of offerings to include more than 20 table-ware and houseware lines and “the fantastic Finnish lifestyleline Marimekko.”

1512 Pacheco Street, Building B, Suite 102, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.982.8632 | victoriaprice.com

Casa Nova“Approximately 50 percent of the lines we have are from ruralAfrican cooperatives,” explains Natalie Fitz-Gerald, owner andvisionary behind Casa Nova. Motivated to help strugglingartisans, and inspired by creative reinterpretations offunctional art, this South African native has brought heruncanny eye to bear at her Santa Fe Railyard shop. Her linesinclude works by a young Zimbabwean artist, GilbertKhumalo, who had been living in exile on the streets of SouthAfrica. Khumalo creates beaded animal heads for wall hang-ings. The first time she found them, she bought every piecehe had. Through her support and the subsequent popularityof his work, Khumalo now has his own shop and is trainingten artisans. “This is what really turns me on,” she says,“helping others through my work.”

530 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.983.8558 | casanovagallery.com

Witness the thought-provoking mix of regional and internationalart and design at Victoria Price Art & Design. The work of localartists and designers blends with cutting-edge European designfor a new take on Santa Fe style. PHOTO BY Eric Swanson for SantaFe Catalogue®.

This “New Africa” vignette from Casa Nova includes both traditionalforms from old Africa such as Coptic crosses, with the energeticnew forms of Carroll Boye tableware. PHOTO BY Tony Carlson.



www.heartofthelotusinteriors.com

Call for an Appointment

505-988-4594631 Old Santa Fe Trail, #1

Santa Fe, NM 87505 www.kitchensbyjeanne.com

Photoby

JohnW

itham


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Moss Outdoor“Santa Fe is reinventing its own iconic image,” says DavidCole, of Moss Outdoor, a luxury garden-furniture boutique.“The new Santa Fe style evokes the natural beauty anddramatic landscape of the Southwest,” he explains. With thisin mind, Cole and owner Gloria Moss set out to create ashowroom that offers products that extend interior design tothe outdoors.

Moss’s showroom features world-class design and hand-woven furnishings from indigenous cultures throughout theworld. It is one of the few flagship showrooms in the U.S. forthe Janus et Cie collection, including the earthy, light-inspiredcreations of award-winning furniture designer Kenneth Cobon-pue and the hot, tropic-inspired works of furniture designgroup Dedon.

530 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.989.7300 | mossoutdoor.com

Asian Adobe“I love my furniture!” says Fidelia Kirk, owner and singularselector for Asian Adobe. Kirk’s gentle demeanor belies afocused businesswoman with an eye for Asian items that fita Southwestern landscape.

For those seeking home furnishings and accents beyond theregional vernacular, Asian Adobe offers a careful selectionof Ming-style pieces. With their fine lines and simple finishes,these pieces are never too ornate. “I buy things that will fitin any home,” she explains.

Asian Adobe is also the only place in the United States thatfeatures works by Asia’s hottest artist, Guo Ming Fu. “He’s abreath of fresh air,” says Kirk of this Beijing native. Hiscolorful works cover a gamut of themes but illustrate a linkbetween Chinese classicism and Western modernism. AsianAdobe has hosted a number of openings for Ming Fu, thelatest in mid-May, where visitors enjoyed an added treatbeyond meeting the artist as they watched him paint.

310 Johnson Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.992.6846 | asianadobe.com

Barcelona collection by outdoor furniture design group Dedon. PHOTOBY Theo Bott.

A house on the Santa Fe Parade of Homes tour showcases howwell Asian Adobe furnishings meld with local architecture anddesign. PHOTO BY David O. Marlow / The Santa Fe Catalogue®.


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JackalopeA well-known establishment among Santa Feans, Jackalopehas been a fixture on Cerrillos Road for 32 years. Thebusiness’s continual expansion of space and internationalofferings reflects its owner, Darby McQuade. His taste forthe rustic and antique, as well as his passion for travel, haveestablished a unique vision that continues to feed thissuccessful operation.

Jackalope’s trade in furniture began at a Saturday market out-side Mexico City. McQuade walked into a furniture workshopwhere a shaft of light was pouring in from a crack in the build-ing. The light illuminated a natural wood chair, revealing itsincredible patina. The beauty stopped him in his tracks: “Thatshaft of light completely started our furniture business.”

What McQuade continues to look for when selecting a line ofproducts is that feeling he had in Mexico. “I got it again withour new line of Ming and Qing dynasty furniture reproductionsI’ve recently found in the Beijing area,” he says.

2820 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe, NM 87507505.471.8539 | jackalope.com

G. Coles-ChristensenTwice nominated for Oriental Rug Retailer of the Year by theOriental Rug Retailers of America, Gary Coles-Christensen hasbuilt a business based on high-quality rugs that’s backed bysound moral convictions. His efforts have promoted arenaissance in new weaving production around the world.Coles-Christensen believes high design would be somewhatirrelevant without an associated human component. His workon the board of directors at RugMark Foundation—an inter-national nonprofit devoted to building schools and programswhile ending child labor in the South Asian handmade-carpetindustry—has helped him balance the store’s success withhis desire to help others. When RugMark was organized tenyears ago, a million children worked in the carpet industry; acensus last year estimates that number to be under 300,000.

Because of Coles-Christensen’s discriminating eye and uniquevision, clients come to his shop from all over the world.Recently he developed new designs that are the next step inthe shop’s evolution. In addition, the G. Coles-Christensenprivate label can weave almost anything in bespoke carpets.

125 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.986.6089 | therugmerchants.com

Custom Tibetan carpet made of silk and wool from the G. Coles-Christensen Private Label. PHOTO BY Corbin Sees, Sees Design.

These “ladies of the evening” papier-mâché dolls are handmadeand hand-painted by Mexican folk artisans. PHOTO BY Corbin Sees,Sees Design.


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Sachi OrganicsIn 1981, with just a modest knowledge of sewing, Lois SachikoHamamoto, founder of Sachi Organics, began designing andcreating natural and organic pillows and bedding. Hamamoto’svision was not only to create products that provide satisfactionand joy, but also “to create a market for products that sustainand enrich this planet and the people who inhabit it,” she says.

A quarter-century later, Sachi Organics is still committed to thatvision. Working with the finest certified-organic raw materials inthe country is a choice that Hamamoto says assures quality,reduces energy consumption, and, most of all, supports theAmerican farmer.

This year Sachi Organics has expanded into interior designingservices, creating healthy living spaces that combine eco-consciousness with quiet elegance. The company’s newprojects incorporate natural latex, organic-cotton batting andfabrics, and sustainably harvested hardwoods.

523 West Cordova Road, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.982.3938 | sachiorganics.com

Seret & SonsIra and Sylvia Seret have spent decades in an ever-expandingdance of creativity. “We’ve always been busy beavers,”explains Sylvia. Ira’s passion for supporting cottage indus-tries and his eye for creative design inspired him to found aweaving school and factory in Balkh, Afghanistan, in 1975.Decades later, the couple and their grown sons now collab-orate with the likes of Disney Imagineers and some of themost famed designers worldwide.

Their showrooms house furnishings, architectural pieces,and home décor items from more than two dozen countriesat any given time. They also offer one of the most extensiveselections of Tibetan antique furniture in the world. But theirservices stretch well beyond interior offerings.

The Serets have long since bridged the gap into the designworld. In addition to the Inn of the Five Graces in Santa Fe,which was conceived of and designed by the couple, theycollaborate on interiors that run from ethnic to contemporary.Their most recent project combined interior elements includ-ing Tibetan-theme ceilings, Moghul stone screens, contem-porary water walls, and locally crafted woodwork.

224 Galisteo Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.988.9151 | seretandsons.com

A sitting space defined by quiet elegance: a natural-latex cushionatop tatami, accentuated by a bolster and pillow.

Custom-upholstered chairs surround this ornate, hand-inlaid tableof semiprecious stones. Contemporary carved doors were madewith traditional designs and techniques at Seret & Sons’ overseasworkshops. PHOTO BY Kate Russell.



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CieloGallery owner and avid art collector, Ursula Gebert is also the moving forcebehind Santa Fe’s Cielo, a trio of luxury boutique stores that focus on bed-ding and bath, tableware, and home furnishings. “I am inspired by manythings; my surroundings, landscapes, the sky, and the nonstop search forexciting new talent,” says Gebert. Cielo reflects these inspirations and thedesign sensibilities of the artisans represented in the various boutiques.

With a carefully chosen selection of the finest products made throughout theworld, the Cielo boutiques explore the intersection of harmonious living andprovocative contrast though color, texture, and design. Cielo Tabletop is anexclusive source for the finest selection of dinnerware, table linens, andbarware, including Hermès, Le Jacquard Francais, William Yeoward, and thedesigns of some of the nation’s finest artisans. Featuring linens fromAnichini and Signoria, and soothing soaps and fragrances from Apothia andDana Decker, Cielo Bedding can help you turn your intimate spaces intoyour own luxurious retreat to pamper the soul. Cielo Home, located onhistoric Gypsy Alley, rounds out the trio with a collection of furnishings, gifts,and accessories to make your home a truly heavenly space.

Cielo Bedding322 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.820.2151 | cielohome.comCielo Home Furnishings7021/2 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.995.8008 | cielohome.comCielo Tabletop316 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.992.1960 | cielohome.com

Heart of the LotusJack and Debbie Funfer, owners of Heart of the Lotus Interi-ors, are inspired by the sacred. This fine Asian furniture andsacred art gallery houses one of the largest collections ofEastern sacred art in Santa Fe, including 24kt-gildedTibetan Buddhist statues, sacred Tibetan paintings andThankas, as well as wood carvings, handwoven fabrics. andart pieces from Laos, Thailand, Tibet, and China.

Debbie has been traveling to Asia for 28 years and hasdeveloped an eye for refined and high-quality furniture, homeaccessories, sacred art, and jewelry. She has now turnedher expertise into a living passion. Working with both interiordesigners and many other clients, Debbie creates spacesof peace and beauty, incorporating furnishings and sacredAsian objects.

322 Montezuma Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.989.1779

A 20th-century, hand-carved, wooden Chinese Kuan Yin on a lion sitsatop a 125-year-old Mongolian chest in front of the Tibetan tangkaof Manjushri the Buddha of wisdom.

Alexis cocktail shaker and martini glass by WilliamYeoward. PHOTO BY Martine Tremblay.


F. 505.471.5437 www. brother-sun.com

House: #19, La MiradaBuilder: Hurlocker HomesDesigner: Robert Zachry, AIAWindows and Doors: Brother Sun

Distributing Windows, Doors and Natural Light

Visit our showroom at 2907 Agua Fria, Santa Fe

P. 505.471.5157 F. 505.471.5437 www. brother-sun.com

Santa Kilim“Every single thing here is made with love and passion,” ex-plains Karim Rifi Saidi, owner of Santa Kilim. With a passionfor the fine craftsmanship of his Berber heritage, this Fez na-tive has expanded well beyond Moroccan kilims over hismany years in Santa Fe.

Nontoxic, handmade items such as antique furnishings, ar-chitectural pieces, patina lamps, mosaic tiles, ceramic ves-sels, and an amazing collection of Tuareg articles all sharethe space with stacks of kilims, carpets, and multihued tex-tiles from Morocco, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India andall over the Caucasus mountains covering the walls.

“Mixing the past and present” is a key phrase for Rifi Saidi,as he explores work with monochrome tones and contempo-rary aesthetics, incorporating them into traditional furnitureor textile designs. Collaborating with designers and individualclients, the Santa Kilim team has worked in leather, copper,wood, and vintage fabrics to create customized furnishingsand architectural features from their extended inventory.

2900B Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe, NM 87507505.986.0340 | santakilim.com

Bosshard“This gallery exists because of the convergence of mymost passionate interests: travel, the arts, and homeinteriors,” says John Bosshard of Bosshard Gallery.Bosshard’s love for travel and Asian culture has blos-somed into a life’s work. Dabbling first in a career as atour guide, then building his portfolio as a travel writerand photographer, he eventually delved into the exportbusiness, beginning with tribal, ethnographic art fromSouth America. Following a photo assignment in Nepal,Bosshard says, he “fell in love with Asia.”

As he explored the region, he made his way to South-east Asia, where the bulk of his business remains. Theworks of several contemporary artists are added tothe Asian mix offered at this gallery. Bosshard is excitedabout the addition of paintings by local artist NoëlBennett, whose work, the gallery owner says, “has acontemporary Zen quality to it.”

340 Read Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.989.9150 | johnbosshard.com

This 20th-century massive slab table from Java, Indonesia, is hand-crafted from old teak. Paired with colonial-style teak chairs. PHOTO BYBosshard Gallery.

This comfortable living-room setting, using a mixture of Moroccanstyles, is affordable and simple to create. Draped on this cedarMocharabi latticework base is a Berber wedding shawl fromthe 19th century. A jute-and-leather rug and leather pillows by theTuareg of Niger and Morocco, and colored glasses from Morocco,finish this beautiful look.


La Mesa of Santa FeThe vibrant showroom of La Mesa of Santa Fe hasgone through many evolutions. As the city’s very firsthigh-design home-interiors shop, La Mesa has fea-tured the works of a long list of local and interna-tional artisans for more than 25 years. Begun as the“tabletop store” for its predominance of tablewareitems, La Mesa’s offerings have expanded to includeat least 40 artisans at any one time. From Hopiartist Gregory Lomayesva’s wood figures and masksto Melissa Haid’s fused-glass wall sculptures, thereis a lot to see at La Mesa.

Owner Mary Larson is excited to offer a new line ofcustom furnishings by Santa Fe’s Rahli Design. One-of-a-kind nightstands, consoles, tables, doors, andeven mirrors come and go at La Mesa as buyerssnatch up these distinctive pieces.

225 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501505.984.1688 | lamesaofsantafe.com

This La Mesa vignette includes a fused-glass wall sculpture by Melissa Haid,walnut-and-poplar hall table by Steve Foster for Rahli Designs, steel-and-leather chair by Jennifer Gilbert, and a kiln-formed glass platter by Kim Pence.PHOTO BY Tim Squires.

Melia Gallery CollectionsRoberta “Bobbie” Melia and Lorenz “Larry” Ng are among the lat-est additions to the Santa Fe arts scene, having returned to theUnited States after living in Shanghai for the past decade. Theirlove for collecting dates back to the ’70s, when they lived in Wash-ington, D.C. At that time, they combed New England, Pennsylva-nia, and the surrounding countryside for Americana and OutsiderArt to exhibit at their Back Country Antiques Gallery. With Chinaas a base (where Larry was an executive in R&D for a multina-tional company), they continued their collecting throughout Asia,including such locales as Indonesia, Borneo, Thailand, Myanmar,and Sri Lanka. Melia Gallery Collections is a work in progress, “anexperiment with forms, materials, and designs from East andWest, ancient and contemporary,” says Bobbie. “We work with de-signers and artists who share this aesthetic to place unusual orrare works of art and design into projects or homes.”

901 West San Mateo Road, Santa Fe, NM 87505505.984.9984

Unique Japanese display cabinet, early-20th-century interiorhand-carved with white-gold overlay and brass hardware. The redenamel exterior features brass locks and large storage drawers.


divineDesign


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R.I.P. SUMMER OF ’76page 44

Fritz Scholder: An Intimate LookJuly 18, 2008, through February 15, 2009Institute of American Indian ArtsMuseum505-983-8900iaia.edu/museum

A QUESTION OF MASSpage 54

Cathedral of Our Lady of the AngelsLos Angeles, California213-680-5200olacathedral.org

HOW DOUCE THE COUPEpage 58

Collector Cars of Santa FeOwnerTom Linton505-660-3039

ArchitectG. Donald Dudley Albuquerque505-243-8100dondudleydesign.com

Capital Aviation505-471-2700

Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance August 17, 2008pebblebeachconcours.net

Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance March 13–15, 2009ameliaconcours.org

Santa Fe Concorso September 27, 2009santafeconcorso.com(online September 1)

Sara Stathas’s plaid suitDust & Glitter (vintage and DIY fashion)Truth or Consequences, New Mexico505-894-3613dustandglitter.com

RESOURCES

O BIONEERS!page 76

Bioneers505-986-0366877-246-6337bioneers.org

The Biomimicry Institute406-728-4134 biomimicryinstitute.org

PAX Scientific415-256-9900 paxscientific.com

White Dog Cafe215-386-9224whitedog.com

Melting Ice—A Hot Topic:Envisioning ChangeThrough September 1The Field MuseumChicago312-922-9410fieldmuseum.org

Keepers of the WatersPortland, Oregonkeepersofthewaters.org

The Land/An Art SiteAlbuquerque505-242-1501landartsite.org

Sustainable South Bronx The Bronx, New York718-617-4668ssbx.org

AMERICAN PRAGMATIST page 88

ArchitectLaban [email protected]

Twin Willows RanchGeneral contractorWolf Corp505-983-5511wolf-corp.com

Santa Fe residence General contractorAnderson & AssociatesJerry Trujillo Jr., foreman505-988-5737

Dwan Light SanctuaryUnited World College-USALas Vegas, New Mexicouwc-usa.org

ConceptVirginia Dwan

Prism art and design Charles [email protected] staraxis.org

General contractorFranken ConstructionLas Vegas, New Mexico505-425-7578frankenconstruction.com

Tesuque residence General contractorTony Ivey & AssociatesDan Woodward, foreman505-986-9195tonyivey.com

NOW, FOREVER, THENpage 102

Erika Wanenmacher erikawanenmacher.com Erika shows at Linda DurhamContemporary Art505-466-6600 lindadurham.comErika also shows at Claire Oliver Gallery New York City212-929-5949claireoliver.com

The Science Club: The Boy’s Room,Now, Forever, Then, part 1September 26 through December 27Boulder Museum of Contemporary ArtBoulder, Colorado303-443-2122bmoca.org

THE SUN QUEENpage 110

Olga de Amaral shows at Bellas Artes Gallery 505-983-2745 bellasartesgallery.com

KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOORpage 119

Garden of the Goddess Retreat Center505-473-5329nagualwoman.com

THE ICE-CREAM CHARRETTEpage 126

Santa Fe Children’s Museum505-989-8359 santafechildrensmuseum.org

Permaculture: Principles & PathwaysBeyond Sustainability, by David Holmgren, is available at seedsofchange.com

Pueblos del Sol Community ParkCity of Santa Fe Parks505-955-6949santafenm.gov/index.asp?nid=548

Landscape architectLeathers and AssociatesIthaca, New York607-277-1650leathersassociates.com

Coordinator of volunteersGrace Communications505-438-8735gracecom.ws

Building organizerSanta Fe Area Home BuildersAssociation505-982-1774sfahba.com

CULINARY CABALpage 136

Jennifer James 101Albuquerque505-884-3860

InteriorsHey JhonnyAlbuquerque505-256-9244heyjhonny.com

™

™ulti

Lesa Fraker MD PhD FACEP

Board Certified Emergency Medicine P hysician

Anti-Aging Specialist

10:56:31 AM

ANTIQUES, HOME FURNISHINGS,RUGS & ACCENTSThe Accessory Annex505-983-3007 .................................139

Asian Adobe505-992-6846 ...................................27

Bosshard505-989-9150 ...................................28

Casa Nova505-983-8558 .............................14–15

Foreign Traders505-983-6441 ...................................21

G. Coles-Christensen, Rug Merchants505-986-6089 .....................Back Cover

Hands of America505-983-5550 ...................................43

Heart of the Lotus Interiors505-989-1779 .................................177

Jackalope505-471-8539, Santa Fe .................169

La Mesa of Santa Fe505-984-1688..................................123

La Puerta Originals505-984-8164 ...................................57

Moss505-989-7300...........Inside Front Cover

Santa Kilim505-986-0340 .................................146

Sachi Organics505-982-3938 ...................................42

Sequoia Santa Fe505-982-7000 .............................30–31

Seret & Sons505-988-9151 ...................................35

Sherry Garrett Collection214-663-9623 .................................181

Victoria Price Art & Design505-982-8632...........Inside Back Cover

Visions Design Group505-988-3170 .....................................7

Wiseman & Gale & Duncan Interiors505-984-8544 ...................................20

ARCHITECTS, DESIGNERS &LANDSCAPE COMPANIESADC Referral Network505-474-8388 .................................118

Archiscape Architecture & Planning505-989-1613....................................65

Clemens & Associates505-982-4005 ...................................71

Design with Nature Ltd. Co.505-983-5633 ...................................38

Duty & Germanas Architects505-989-8882 ...................................18

HVL Interiors505-983-3601 .................................143

IM Design Studios505-989-7538 .................................164

Kreger Design/Build LLC505-660-9391 .................................123

Kris Lajeskie Design Group505-986-1551 ...................................41

Native Bloom Landscapes505-466-4658 ...................................50


Visions Design Group505-988-3170 .....................................7

ARTISTS & GALLERIESBlue Rain Gallery505-954-9902..............................12–13

Casa Contemporary Fine Art505-995-8600 .................................137

Chalk Farm Gallery505-983-7125....................................71

Charlotte Jackson Fine Art505-989-8688 .....................................4

Chas McGrath Photography505-670-2808 .................................145

Glenn Green Galleries505-820-0008 .............................72–75

Houshang Gallery505-988-3322 ...................................33

Ira Lujan505-629-2630 ...................................52

La Mesa of Santa Fe505-984-1688 .................................123

Linda Durham Contemporary Art505-466-6600 ...................................25

Manitou Galleries505-986-0440 .................................8–9

Melia Gallery Collections505-984-9984 ...................................86

Niman Fine Art505-988-5091 .....................................2

Patina Gallery505-986-3432 ...................................51

Pippin Meikle Fine Art505-992-0400 .................................121

Seven-O-Seven Contemporary505-983-3707 .....................................6

Sherry Garrett Collection214-663-9623 .................................181

Shiprock Gallery505-982-8478 ...................................16

Tai Gallery505-984-1387 ...................................17

The Torres Gallery505-986-8914..................................116

Todd Scalise505-577-7637 .................................183

Traders’ Collection505-992-0441 ...................................53

Veilleux Fine Art505-982-1117 ...................................19


William Siegal Gallery505-820-3300 ...................................23

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art505-982-8111 .............................10–11

BUILDERS, DEVELOPERS, HOME SERVICES & MATERIALSADC Referral Network505-474-8388 .................................118

Brother Sun505-471-5157..................................185

The Firebird505-983-5264 .................................171

Graham’s Custom Window Tinting505-984-1731 ...................................51

Iron & Stone Decorative Metals505-424-0626, Santa Fe505-873-2611, Albuquerque ...........125

Kitchens by Jeanné505-988-4594 .................................177

Kreger Design/Build LLC505-660-9391 .................................123

The Lofts/Art Yard505-474-3600 ...................................32

Pace Iron Works Inc.505-424-0626, Santa Fe505-873-2611, Albuquerque............125

Rancho Viejo505-473-7700..................................131

Santa Fe Summit505-983-2521 .....................................1

EVENTS & RADIOBlu 102.9505-471-1067 .................................191

Conference on Creative Tourism505-699-7227 .........................100–101

Creativity Radio575-586-1996 .................................117

Design Weekend/Santa Fe InteriorDesigners

505-988-4111 .........................158–159

FASHION & JEWELRYThe Golden Eye505-984-0040 ...................................26

Museum of NM Foundation Shops505-982-3016 ...................................86

Spirit of the Earth505-988-9558 ...................................39

Stump/Rippel505-986-9115 ....................................29

HEALTH & BEAUTYBlue Cross Blue Shield800-672-9700 .................................134

Estrellas Moroccan Spa505-995-0100 .................................137

Ultimed505-989-8707 .................................189

Ultiskin505-995-8584 .................................189

KITCHENS, TILE, LIGHTING &HARDWAREAllbright & Lockwood505-986-1715....................................37

Dahl Premier Showroom505-438-5096 .....................................5

Ferguson505-474-8300, Santa Fe .................179

Form + Function505-820-7872 ................................183

Santa Fe By Design505-988-4111 .....................................3

Sierra West Appliances505-471-6742 ...................................67

Statements505-988-4440 ...................................87

Wharram Chandelier Installations212-242-2525 ...................................56

MUSEUMSPoeh Cultural Center and Museum505-455-5041..........................108–109

REAL ESTATE, BANKS & MORTGAGE COMPANIESDougherty Real Estate Co. LLC505-989-7741 .................................113

Duty Real Estate Services505-986-9811 ...................................18

Los Alamos National Bank505-954-5400, Santa Fe505-662-5171, Los Alamos...............69

Rancho Viejo505-473-7700 .................................131

RESTAURANTS, CATERERS &LODGINGBuffalo Thunder Casino & Resort505-455-5555 .................................135

Casa de Estrellas505-795-0278 .................................137

Coyote Café505-983-1615 .................................143

El Monte Sagrado575-758-3502..................................115

Encantado505-988-9986 ...................................65

Jennifer James 101505-884-3860..................................142

O Eating House505-455-5065..................................144

Osteria D'Assisi505-986-5858 .................................142

Ristra505-982-8608 ...................................34

Saveur505-989-4200 .................................143

Walter Burke Catering505-473-9600 .................................141

AD INDEX


END QUOTE

�We must build dikes of courage to

hold back the flood of fear.�

—MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

JAN

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LEH

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12:27:41 PM

santa fe trend - summer - fall 2008

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