Trend Summer 2020 Digital Preview

2020 Digital Issue

CANDYCE GARRETT

Freedom Strikes Left: Candyce with Heart and Soul

Santa Fe Botanical Garden Exhibit July 2020 at Museum Hill

candycegarrett.com | 575.937.1486 | Taos New Mexico | Sonora Texas | cjggranite@gmail.com

PHOTOS: © WENDY MCEAHERN

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Photography by Patrick Coulie

Photography by Patrick Coulie

Levitated Toy Factory

Photography by Robert Reck

Renal Medicine Associates

Shoofly Pie, Baca Railyard Photography by Patrick Coulie

Shoofly Pie in the Baca Railyard 924 Shoofly Street, Santa Fe A mixed-use project developed by Thull Railyard llc home of dnca architects’ new Santa Fe office.

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DAVID PEARSON carlislefa.com

| 50 W. Marcy Street, Suite 103, Santa Fe, NM | 505.820.0596

F

igurative bronzes date back to the ancient Greek practice of melting weaponry and transforming it into images of gods and goddesses.

Yet David Pearson’s work at Patricia Carlisle Fine Art does not illustrate the adventures of the undead, evoking instead living presences with abstracted, figurative expressionism.

In a piece like Silent Desert, a fully shrouded lifesize female figure, the results are mysteriously poetic.

Pearson often places stylized images of winged women in intimate interaction with flowers and birds. In Song of Songs, a woman holds a short piece of clothesline miraculously strung with white doves. When these pieces work, it is because they draw the viewer into a world where the small, subtle, and simple become monumental.

When does pathos pass over into sentiment, and why? Sentiment panders and attempts to please. When genuine pathos is produced it is because the artist has gone deeper, has turned from the viewer’s assumed needs to satisfy the demands of the sculpture itself and face more truly the inner enigmas of bringing being into existence. When Pearson does this, his work becomes worthy of the traditions—ancient and expressive—that seek honor. —Jon Carver

Blue Shadow, bronze, 65" Left: Silent Desert, bronze, 5' 2" Opposite: Delfina, bronze, 27" trendmagazineglobal.com 17

KEVIN BOX

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UNDEREXPOSED STUDIOS

rigami presents a simple metaphor: we all start with a blank page. What we do with it is up to us, and the possibilities are endless,” says sculptor Kevin Box. Box begins each origamiinspired metal sculpture with a simple piece of white paper folded into a sculptural form and then proceeds to cast these shapes in metal.

With an aesthetic of delicate strength, he offers a refreshing way of viewing our complex world from the perspective of connection.

Fascinated with ancient ideas and symbols from art makers and historians, he offers a contemporary vision of beauty and wonder that carries forth techniques of old.

With a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and now based in Santa Fe, Box creates a myriad of enchanting subjects in various scales. He collaborates with worldrenowned origami masters to create cranes in flight, brilliant metallic winged horses, and shimmering bison, unicorn, and squirrel pieces. His themes are always evolving around the ever-changing cycles of life.

The majority of Box’s artwork is created employing the lost-wax casting technique.

It involves many makers participating in this classical, artistic process, and the foundry is essential to bringing his origami visions to life in metal. In this way, impermanent paper transforms into long-lasting metal sculptures.

“Inside each and every origami form is a beautiful star—a design beneath the surface that reminds me of the complexity going on inside each and every one of us,” he says.

Both inside the home and in the garden environment, this artist’s work enlivens its surroundings. Currently, this visionary artist is creating works in a monumental scale, up to 24feet tall, for garden settings. Box’s sculptures are now on view at Kay Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Nesting Pair #31 (left), stainless steel & bronze, 64" high, Duet Series (right), stainless steel & bronze, 72" high; Opposite: Rising Cranes #8, stainless steel on stone, 60" high (left); Folding Planes Monument, ed. of 8, bronze on steel, 84" high (right)

kaycontemporaryart.com

600 Canyon Road Santa Fe 505.365.3992 trendmagazineglobal.com 19

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CHARLOTTE SHROYER charlotteshroyer.com

| Studio: 704 Zuni Street, Taos, NM 87571 | 575-751-0375

Trevisan International Art | trevisanarte.com

jackiestradingpost.com | 129 North Plaza, Taos, NM

A

painter inspired by history, literature, and imagination, Charlotte Shroyer grew up in a rural area of central Ohio, where neither her family nor her school system placed much value on art. She chanced upon her future passion when she first took a paintbrush in hand during an elementary education methods class at The Ohio State University. She went on to earn a bachelor’s in French and became a teacher and later a college professor after receiving a PhD in language and learning disorders. She took art classes at various universities along the way, but it was not until a serendipitous trip to Taos, New Mexico, that the “art seed” took hold. “I am inspired by the world—its people, archaeology, and cultures,” says Shroyer. “My favorite authors—among them Orhan Pamuk, Lawrence Durrell, Thomas Pynchon, Mario Vargas Llosa—all explore duality of personality. What the individual shows to the world and what remains hidden influences what appears on my canvas. Through painting, I tap into and expand the depths of my unconscious and a global unconscious that I believe transcends individual and cultural boundaries.”

Shroyer remains impacted by her work with children and adults who have limited language skills, and she’s developed visual systems that convey information more symbolically. She cites the early cubism of Pablo Picasso and later work by Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín as influences. “In my work, facial features take on exaggerated planes, colors, and lines, often leading to a final result unanticipated at the start,” she says.

Shroyer’s work has earned numerous national and international awards. She is represented in Taos by Jackies Trading Post and in Europe by Trevisan International Art.

Over Our Shoulders (2017), oil on canvas, 36" x 18" Left: A Motley Crew (2020), oil on canvas, 36" x 36" Opposite: Into The Future (2018), oil on canvas, 36" x 36"

trendmagazineglobal.com 21

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B

BETTE RIDGEWAY

ette Ridgeway’s oeuvre of vivid artistry and her signature technique of “layering light” stems from the unorthodox process of paint pouring that creates gem-like veils of transparent color. She has employed this style since the mid-1970s, placing her among the second generation of Abstract Expressionists in the US. Her mastery of details, play with paint density, and regulation of paint flow and color harmonies allow for serendipity while she skillfully maneuvers the canvas angle and surface tautness to move the paint and shape and layer the color.

Ridgeway strives for dynamism and beauty. It is important to her that the viewer find something personally meaningful in her work, whether it be a feeling of calm, a sense of reviving the spirit, or any other emotional connection. Recently, Ridgeway completed her largest work to date, a 15-foot by 21-foot commission. Given full artistic freedom by The Meridian

ridgewaystudio.com

Group, Rockefeller Group, and Gensler architects, she created a masterwork for the new Boro Tower in Tysons Corner, Virginia—a stunning, highly visible poured painting on canvas.

Ridgeway enjoys international recognition, exhibiting globally in over 80 museums, universities, and galleries, including the Palais-Royale in Paris and the Embassy of Madagascar. Prestigious awards include Top 60 Masters of Contemporary Art, Leonardo da Vinci Prize, and Oxford University Alumni in Tuscany Prize at Chianciano Art Museum, Tuscany, Italy.

The Mayo Clinic and the Federal Reserve Bank are among Ridgeway’s permanent public placements, in addition to being in numerous private collections.

Many books and fine art publications have featured her work, including International Contemporary Masters and 100 Famous Contemporary Artists. Ridgeway has also penned several books about her art and process.

| 1142 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM | By appointment

VIEW BETTE’S WORK: Naples, FL: Gallery One Fort Lauderdale and Jupiter, FL: MAC Fine Art Gallery Sausalito, CA: Hanson Gallery Fine Arts Palm Desert & Carmel, CA: Jones & Terwilliger Galleries Cincinnati, OH: ADC Fine Art Scottsdale, AZ: Anticus Atlanta, GA: R. Alexander Fine Art Richmond, VA: Chasen Galleries East Lansing, MI: Saper Galleries London, UK: Gagliardi Gallery

A Great Day for Sky Diving, 96' x 52' Opposite: Night Jungle, 64' x 52'

trendmagazineglobal.com 23

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MARK WHITE Mark White is an artist who is keen to follow his muse wherever he's led. From his gently moving Kinetic Sculptures that greet visitors at his eponymous gallery to vibrant patinas on engraved aluminum to oil landscapes on canvas, he expertly crafts his visions in various media to convey feelings and stories. The desire to find the perfect form for each of his works drives White to consistently push his boundaries and expand his repertoire.

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A born Renaissance man, White has always embraced a range of media in his art, having studied under sculptors, patina artists, and painters in college. This diversity in skills translates seamlessly throughout his works. His wind sculptures made of bright colors and engraved aluminum panels shine under patinas applied as expertly as any oil paint. Viewers can even see the effects of sculpting in his oil paintings as he guides the paint to create movement along the canvas.

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White's drive to expand his experimentation through different media is ongoing, and with a wealth of new ideas, he's eager to showcase both his latest inspirations and the skills needed to bring them to life. "I see 'new growth' as referring to the expansion of artistic vision," he says. How these explorations will manifest in White's work remains to be seen, and the keen collector will be able to observe them revealed in new and interesting ways across the spectrum of his work.

As his techniques develop and diversify, he brings a broadening vision to life.

409 Canyon Road I Santa Fe, NM 87501 I 505.982.2073 I www.markwhitefineart.com I info@markwhitefineart.com

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CHRISTOPHER OWEN NELSON Mark White Fine Art

409 Canyon Road Santa Fe, NM 87501

505.982.2073 | markwhitefineart.com | info@markwhitefineart.com

D

eriving inspiration from the natural world, sculptor and painter Christopher Owen Nelson is interested in the paradox of its infinite complexity and finite simplicity. Driven to achieve a similar state of harmony in the dichotomous elements of his work, he also seeks a balance between refined and unrefined textures, which he feels deepens his relationships with his subjects and himself.

With large-scale works in cast glass, concrete, metals, and synthetics, Nelson often makes sitespecific sculptures on commission. In relentless pursuit of new approaches to medium and technique, he’s been making art full-time ever since he quit a job building retaining walls in the mountains of Colorado. A graduate of painting and sculpture at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, his work now exhibits in galleries, museums, and permanent collections across the globe.

Skyland (2020), reverse carved and painted plexiglass, 24" x 18" x 2". Right: Firefly (2020), reversed painting on carved plexiglass, 19" x 16" x 2". Opposite: Glowing Vision (2020), reversed painting on carved plexiglass, 24" x 18" x 2"

PHOTO: WENDY MCEAHERN

EMILY BENOIST RUFFIN

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estellaloretto07@gmail.com | 505-660-0901

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ESTELL A LORE T TO E

stella Loretto, currently the only Native American woman working in monumental bronze sculpting, is recognized internationally as one of the finest sculptors living today. She creates sculptures with the essence of strength, grace, and serenity. Her genuine spiritual nature defines her commitment to integrity and authenticity in her art and in her life.

Loretto was born in the Pueblo of Jemez and into a world of artistic tradition. Leaving the Pueblo at the age of 15, she spread her wings to explore other cultures around the world. Her curiosity and desire for adventure took her to Europe, Nepal, Japan, and Australia, among other places.

She has studied and trained with many mentors, including her mother and, most notably, sculptor Allen Houser, who encouraged her artistic endeavors and led her to working on monumental sculptures.

Today, Loretto is sculpting on a smaller scale, making exquisite, wearable art. She is creating a new beautiful line of jewelry, Realignment 2020.

Kateri, bronze, 36" x 36" x 7' 6"

Earth Mother, bronze, 36" x 36" x 7' 6", base 36"

Prayer of the Peace Warrior “The Peace Warrior’s Prayer is a healing prayer for the global community. It’s about living in harmony upon mother earth, and reuniting the spiritual circle of the human family.

It reminds us all of the sacredness of life, and invites us to walk gently with dignity, and integrity, respecting one another and our differences.”

Peaceful Warrior, bronze, 5' diameter x12' tall

estellaloretto.com

estellaloretto07@gmail.com | 505-660-0901 trendmagazineglobal.com 31

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TRACY COLLINS SPIRIT OF ECSTASY EMBODIED

ANTHONY CARLSON

E

arth Elegance by Tracy Collins is a luxurious, wearable art line that celebrates a womanʼs inherent sensual connection with the Earth.

“When we respect the body as the temple of spirit, Earth consciousness and the sacred feminine are one,” says Collins. Her adornments and clothing designs are crafted with hand-painted silks, natural fiber knits, leather, velvet, and feathers as well as gemstones, shells, pods, fossils, and vintage objets dʼart. Collins also creates interior functional art, including lamps, mask sconces, window treatments, land-based installations, and ceremonial tools.

Since 2000, she has brought her artistry to costume design for the New Mexico film union, aging and dyeing materials to create authentic patinas as well as craft specialty pieces for various feature films. As a life-long dancer she pioneered a conscious dance community in Santa Fe, Embodydance, which continues to thrive after more than 20 years.

Collinsʼ wearable art, adornments, signature pieces, and interior functional art embody the nature-based power for which she’s known. “I harvest locally in the surrounding wilds,” says Collins, who also integrates treasures collected from her travels. “My intention is to heal the separation of spirit and matter and restore sacredness to our collective being.” Collins lives in Tesuque, where she is nourished, fortified, and sustained by the ancient lands of New Mexico.

She adds, “Mother Earth is a sentient being. With the gift of life comes the responsibility to respect, honor, and protect precious life on this planet.”

earthelegance.net

505.988.3760 | Facebook: Earth Elegance trendmagazineglobal.com 33

TEAM TREND

Made in

Trend magazine was born and raised in New Mexico. In print for over two decades, it’s a product of synchronicity, conceived by publisher Cynthia Canyon and raised by the profound arts and culture in this diverse state. Trend belongs to you, our reader, as much as it is a labor of love for our team during this challenging time.

Trend magazine is a young adult—we’ve learned many lessons as we’ve matured into our sophisticated look. We’re still growing, though, and there’s more to come. That’s why we’re releasing this digital preview of our Summer 2020 print magazine, which will include the articles you see here, plus more. You’ll find that, even in trying times, our local businesses and cultural centers are alive, well, and adapting. As you enjoy this issue, we hope you also poke around our revamped website, trendmagazineglobal.com, which we have worked to make more accessible and engaging. Sign up for a free, 60-day trial, and then enjoy content curated from decades of thoughtful editorial for just $1 a year!

The articles in this issue were sown in the cold of winter and tended with care over the spring. What emerges is

Christina Procter

Jeanne Lambert Kidd

the result of profound collaboration between our writers, photographers, and subjects. At our helm is publisher Cynthia Canyon, an L.A. transplant who fell in love with New Mexico 35 years ago and has made it her home. She is the spark of energy that pushes us to excellence every step of the way. At her side for decades has been art director Janine Lehmann. A New Yorker who once studied fine art photography and designed books for years, Lehmann’s natural minimalism and grace has crafted Trend’s very identity. Contributing to graphic design and managing our production with efficiency and eternal patience is Jeanne Lambert, a cohesive presence on our team. Working on words are editor Christina Procter, also a NYC transplant, and copyeditor Cyndi Wood, whose dedication to accuracy has ensured our quality for years.

We hope the work we do will rise out of the digital stream and move you, and we can’t wait for you to read the full print issue in August. If you wish, we can mail this directly to your home—just click to order on our website, or send a check for $14.99 made out to Santa Fe Trend, LLC to PO Box 1951, Santa Fe, NM 87504. Stay tuned and enjoy!

Cynthia Canyon

Cyndi Wood

Janine Lehmann

On the cover: Nichole Salazar performs in Dancing Earth’s first major eco-production, Of Bodies and Elements. Photo by Alejandro Quintana

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TREND art + design + architecture + cuisine 2020

FROM LEFT: ASH HAYWOOD; NO CREDIT; ORION CANYON; LLOYD MOIOLA; KATE RUSSELL

NEW MEXICO

Traces of Me, Portugal

Because You Were Born Cool

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CONTRIBUTORS Audrey Derell’s lifelong journey in the arts began as a child in Finland. She lived and studied performing and visual arts in the Philippines, Belgium, France, Spain, and finally New Mexico. After a 20-year career in dance arts, Audrey transitioned into photography. Twelve years ago a pollen-laden bee in the heart of a desert bloom captivated her mind and heart. Derell specializes in macro-botanical studies and dance imagery, and she enjoys meeting the fascinating artists whose portraits and oeuvre she captures for Trend magazine.

Rick Romancito recently retired from The Taos News.

During his 30 years at the paper he covered the arts, Native American topics, veterans, and breaking news in award-winning articles and photographs. He is also an accomplished movie actor, artist, and filmmaker.

He is of Taos and Zuni Pueblo heritage.

Jade Whaanga is an Aotearoa (New Zealand)–based Indigenous dance artist who hails from Ngāti Kahungunu. Holding a master’s degree in dance studies at the University of Auckland, Jade’s research focuses on reclaiming and healing Indigenous femininity through dance. She facilitates workshops and spaces for women to develop and embrace sisterhood.

Rena Distasio has worked as a writer and freelance editor for numerous online and print publications for nearly 20 years. In addition to serving as a member of Team Trend in various capacities since 2011, she also works as a freelance content editor, helping new and established writers craft compelling stories, both fiction and nonfiction. When not pushing words around, she enjoys recreating in the great outdoors surrounding her Tijeras, New Mexico, home, with her husband and dog.

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TREND art + design + architecture + cuisine 2020

AUDREY DERELL; KATHARINE EGLI; LINDA CARFAGNO; BRAEDON BRYERS; KENNETH KINLAW

Cyndy Tanner loves nothing more than being in bed with a stack of literary, cuisine, and design magazines and a cup of Earl Grey. She is a consummate interpreter of people and places, weaving stories of depth and truth. Entertaining at home in Tesuque as well as producing events and photo styling for her company, Parasol Productions, she aims to bring happiness, wit, and delight. Tanner works as a creative director and has recently completed two major book projects.

JUDY CHICAGO. FRITZ SCHOLDER. BILLY AL BENGSTON. These are just three of the high-profile artists who have passed through the Tamarind Institute’s doors over the past 60 years. In 2020, the illustrious printmaking workshop is marking its diamond anniversary, albeit amid the emergence of COVID-19. Tamarind, however, is no stranger to reinvention or putting heads together for a better solution.

In 1960, founding director June Wayne created the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles to rescue the dying art of lithography. The name hailed from the street Wayne lived on in Hollywood. Current director Diana Gaston says Wayne was fond of saying, “If we’re successful in our undertaking, the name Tamarind will come to mean something. If we’re not successful in this venture, it will just be my address.” Tamarind has indeed come to mean something in the world of lithography. After its LA birth in 1970, it moved to Albuquerque, where it has since been under the umbrella of the University of New Mexico. At UNM, Clinton Adams, the first associate director, and Garo Antreasian, the first technical director, established a rich ecosystem of Contemporary artists, printers, and an engaged public. Since its beginnings, Tamarind has amassed a thousands-strong print inventory housed at the UNM Art Museum and trained a fleet of master printers from around the globe, some of whom have returned home to establish their own workshops, including influential printers such as Ken Tyler, Irwin Hollander, and Judith Solodkin.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s Coyote Made Me Do It! (1993) is a monoprint she made at Smith College Print Workshop. Top: Tamarind Printer Training Program participant Alice Gauthier (right), from France, collaborates with artists from UNM’s College of Fine Arts in 2015.

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TREND art + design + architecture 2020

COURTESY OF JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH; TOP: COURTESY OF TAMARIND INSTITUTE

The Art of Collaboration

NEAL AMBROSE SMITH; TOP: COURTESY OF JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH

“Lithography is the medium we use, but the approach we take is one of collaboration,” Gaston says. “Artist and printer come to the project together, with the printer offering technical expertise and guidance, and serving as a conceptual sounding board. And the artist bringing ideas and imagery.”

Corrales, New Mexico–based painter Jaune Quick-to-See Smith has been printing with Tamarind since the 1970s. “They make suggestions. You can use them or not, often I do because that’s the medium they work in,” she says. “It’s making art by committee. It’s teamwork, and that process either appeals or not. I like it.” Usually working elbow-toelbow with the master printers and students in the workshop, Quick-to-See Smith drew on a stone delivered to her doorstep and proofed remotely in early summer 2020.

Quick-to-See Smith’s work represents a trend Tamarind hopes to cement moving forward. “Tamarind has a great history of working with international artists,” Gaston says.

“We’ve also in the last few years been focusing on artists here in New Mexico. Native American and Latinx artists here are a priority for us. I want to maintain our original focus around diversity—of artists, printers, and stylistic approaches.”

Gaston also observes that Quick-to-See Smith’s work-from-home approach may become more common as the workshop finds new ways to produce amid social distancing concerns—and considers how it can reinvent the gallery experience for collectors, a key support for the nonprofit organization. “We trying to transform how we show art and communicate about it online,” Gaston says.

Recipient of a 2020 Frederick Hammersley Artist Residency, Ellen Lesperance will be working in-house most of July and August. The Portland, Oregon–based artist says, “Tamarind is an incredible printmaking facility. I jumped at the chance to do the artist residency.” She’ll be making lithographs for the first time and hopes to create a matrix of the textile-inspired mark-making. “I’m hoping it allows me space to experiment with color in a way I can’t do in my own practice,” she says.

Although COVID-19 waylaid some of Tamarind’s 2020 celebratory plans, it’s moving ahead with a retrospective show, Land of Mañana: 60 Years of Innovation at Tamarind Institute, running August 11 to December 12. The title plays off a common New Mexican saying suggesting that everything can be delayed, however, in Tamarind’s case, it nods to the institute’s spirit of innovation as it reinvents itself for the next decades.

—Ashley M. Biggers Quick-to-See Smith, Browning of America (2000), oil and mixed media on canvas, Crocker Art Museum collection, Sacramento, California. Right: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

ocated 12 feet below ground, in a room about the size of a single-car garage, its walls constructed from dozens of tire bells weighing 1.5 tons each and plastered over with adobe, is the only repository in the United States dedicated to preserving heirloom seeds of Indigenous origin. Corn, beans, and squash seeds are in the majority, encased in glass jars and burlap sacks, but there are also boxes holding packets of various vegetables and culinary and medicinal herbs. Upstairs at ground level are even more seeds—dozens of tins on the floor, hundreds of packets in boxes—all awaiting planting, cataloging, and storage.

This is the Tesuque Pueblo seed bank, established in 2011 under the leadership of the Pueblo’s Agricultural Resources Director Emigdio Ballon. Born and raised in Bolivia,

Ballon (Quechua) has been thinking about how to ensure food security for the human race for most of his life. He received his master’s degree in plant genetics in neighboring Columbia and, while pursuing a PhD at Colorado State University in the early 1980s, assisted with research on the viability of quinoa as a cash crop. A few years later he moved to New Mexico, where he helped found the organic seed and food company Seeds of Change and worked with Marsha Mason on her farm in Abiquiu.

In 2005 the Pueblo of Tesuque hired Ballon to reestablish their farming operations.

Although individuals had long cultivated small home gardens, the Pueblo had not had a bona fide agricultural program in years.

“The people wanted to get back to that,” says Gailey Morgan, the farm’s foreman. “They wanted to bring back edible crops and, of

course, our traditional sacred crops—the three sisters of corn, beans, and squash.”

It was a position that suited Ballon’s heart as well as his head. Here, he could put to use not only his decades of scientific knowledge but also a lifelong belief in the interdependence of all life-forms. “In science, we don’t believe in the emotional connection between things,” he says. “But here we have our ceremonies—we pray, we plant, we pray. We are very much in touch with the spiritual.”

It’s an approach that has proved fruitful. The 73 acres currently under cultivation include a wide variety of vegetables, beans, and herbs, as well as apple, apricot, and peach orchards. The food produced is distributed first to the Pueblo’s elders, then to the school, and some of it is used to make fruit preserves, and chile and garlic powders are packaged and sold to visitors.

Plants grow in the greenhouse before their seeds are gathered for preservation.

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TREND art + design + architecture 2020

CHRISTINA PROCTER

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A Safe Spot for Rare Seeds

CHRISTINA PROCTER; TOP: COURTESY OF TESUQUE PUEBLO SEED BANK

The seed bank was the next step to ensure the Pueblo’s agricultural independence. “Seeds are life,” Ballon says. But not just any seed, and certainly not the kinds of seed found in most catalogs and garden centers, which are genetically engineered to produce plants whose seeds are sterile and will not germinate.

people in my country, they actually farm on dry land, with no water.”

Ballon and Gailey, along with their two helpers, keep busy with farm duties and with performing germination tests on the seeds before they are stored and labeled with their name, acquisition date, origin, planting date, and germination percentage. With careful storage and regular tests, the seed should keep indefinitely— available for planting on the farm or to Pueblo residents for a small fee.

Ballon believes local agricultural independence is the best way to foster and ensure global food security. “We should have a small collection of seeds in every community,” he says, “because tomorrow might be a problem.

We need to start asking, ‘How are people going to survive?’

‘What is our food future?’ ‘What happens when we go to the grocery store and the shelves are empty?’”

The answer, he says, is in the seeds we save.

—Rena Distasio

Ballon set about instead to collect non-genetically modified heirloom seeds from Native American tribes and other Indigenous people. “For thousands of years, they have worked with these seeds, making selection after selection,” he says.

These include, among the many hundreds of varieties stored at the bank, Hopi corn and tobacco, Navajo watermelon, Kickapoo tepary beans, and herbs from Africa. All battle hardened, if you will, and containing the genetic material needed to germinate, grow, and sustain life regardless of soil and climate.

Or the availability of technology, which Ballon believes fosters a dangerous dependence on machines and insecticides. “I don’t want to say that technology is not good,” he says, “but, look how certain people live. The Hopi, for instance, and the

Emigdio Ballon in his underground repository in 2014. Top: The seed bank is home to a catalog of heirloom seeds from Indigenous peoples.

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Moving Arts

BY JADE WHAANGA

Seeding Stars nurtures new generations of leadership and creativity

PAM TAYLOR AUDREY DERELL

DANCING EARTH

S

PAM TAYLOR

anta Fe–based Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations not only performs internationally, but also brings powerful programs to local communities, pueblos, and reservations.

Artistic director Rulan Tangen founded the organization in 2004. It has since recruited many members, who in turn influence younger generations with dance programs that are grounded in culture. What makes these programs successful are the individuals—the dancers, activists, and teachers—who bring unique perspectives to Indigenous contemporary dance.

Anne Pesata is one such force. She identifies with her Jicarilla Apache heritage and is also of Puerto Rican and Filipino ancestry. Having grown up dancing in powwows, Pesata first met Tangen while participating in the National Dance Insti-

tute when she was in elementary school.

Arriving in Santa Fe from San Francisco via New York, Tangen comes from a multitude of ancestral waters, including Pampangan, Norwegian, Spanish, Chinese, French Canadian, Negrito, Scottish, and Irish. She is also adopted (hunka) by Lakota Tiyospaye of Kul Wicasa Oyate and claimed by families of Kanai and of Anishinaabeg/ Métis people. She’s interested in how culture shapes a person as a dancer, and she saw something special in Pesata early on.

Within a decade, Pesata says she was “enthusiastically attending everything” that Dancing Earth offered, including summer intensives and productions. “The whole reason I wanted to be a part of Dancing Earth was I saw an image of myself,” she says. “It was the first time I felt like I could be something more than just an outlier.”

By 2014 she was a core dancer with the company. Drawn to its eco-conscious and culturally informed work, Pesata explains, “When the motivation comes from a deeper place, a more real place, I think it resonates deeper. We give the audience an opportunity to participate and be inspired to create change.”

As the company’s name implies, its productions often address the integral part we play with nonhuman existence.

With transformative contemporary dance rooted in various backgrounds and techniques, performances aim to educate audiences about our relationship with the environment and generally involve ecofriendly costumes and stage design with a low carbon footprint. On stage, earth, water, sky, and the cosmos are inseparable from human bodies. As Tangen says,

Dancing Earth artists whisper invocations to the audience during a 2020 performance of Between Underground and Skyworld. From left: Ciera Budge, Rulan Tangen, Kayla Banks, Natalia Aceves-Ghezzi, Trey Pickett, Justin Giehm, and Raven Bright, in costumes by Connie WindWalker and Tangen made from repurposed materials, with set pieces by Kayo Muller and Drew Van Brahn. Opposite: Rulan Tangen, founding director and choreographer of Dancing Earth. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Moving Arts

Pesata will collaborate with Diné hip-hop artist Def-i on a music video. Pesata says that training with Dancing Earth has developed and strengthened her body, unlocking its potential. “They want to see you succeed,” she says.

Another dancer, Deollo Johnson of XiAmaru Aboriginal Indigenous American heritage, spent most of his life training in martial arts and has a background in West African, capoeira, modern, jazz, aerial, and classical Thai dance. In 2007, Tangen saw Johnson perform West African dance, and she shared her vision for the company. Johnson went on to tour with Bodies of Elements, Walking on the Edge of Water, Seeds, and Seeds: Re Generation productions.

The company is engaged in healing and unlocking cultural knowledge, and this is one of the many reasons Johnson became involved in Dancing Earth. He says Tangen cultivates a safe space for deep exploration of one’s own culture. He’s since been involved in touring and teaching, most recently with the cultural creative movement program at Cochiti Pueblo where he works with elementary school children. He’s also

“The heartbeat of the Earth is the drum— the pulse of the dance.”

With a focus on health and wellness as well as Native representation in the arts, Pesata recently performed at her home community in Jicarilla Apache. She’s into free44

TREND art + design + architecture + cuisine 2020

style and spirit dance and recently accompanied another member, Raven Bright, in the 18th Annual Breakin’ Hearts hip-hop event in Albuquerque. Both were also selected as representatives for the Albuquerque episode of KQED’s If Cities Could Dance series. Next,

PAULO ROCHA-TAVARES (2)

Anne Pesata performs in Seeds: Re Generation, a land-based production at Ghost Ranch Education Center, in a costume by Cheryl Odom with fabric by Israel Haros Lopez. Right: Deollo Johnson during his residency at Santa Fe Art Institute in 2012, preparing for Walking At The Edge of Water, an intertribal contemporary dance expression of Indigenous water perspectives.

PAULO ROCHA-TAVARES

Teaching artist Xeric Tlaloc Meraz leads a Dancing Earth youth workshop at a Montana public school during a company tour several years ago.

been delivering virtual qigong classes during the coronavirus pandemic. Someday, he hopes, Dancing Earth will have a physical facility dedicated to rehearsal, classes, and workshops. He’s also been delivering virtual qigong classes during the pandemic. Someday, he hopes, Dancing Earth will have a physical facility dedicated to rehearsal, classes, and workshops.

It’s a dream Tangen shares. The company now rents studio space and she hopes to secure a permanent space to host multidisciplinary Indigenous collaborations, bringing together those working in food, wellness, architecture, and research, with the aim of re-storying Indigenous identities. Tangen believes that Indigenous perspectives can promote healthier human relations worldwide.

As future goals loom, the dancers keep evolving, and the programs more far-

reaching. Natalie Benally, assistant and rehearsal director with Dancing Earth, began focusing more on community work when she was also hired as an Indigenous program manager at Girls Inc. of Santa Fe. Of Diné, Zuni Pueblo, Southern Ute, and Mexican heritage, Benally was introduced to Dancing Earth in 2005 at the Native Wellness Institute in San Diego when she was only 16. She went on to get a bachelor’s degree in theater and a teaching degree at Fort Lewis College, and then joined Dancing Earth full time. “I wanted to do work that honored my artistic self and that is able to encompass everything I am culturally,” she says.

“I am a person of two worlds and it’s a dance in itself,” she laughs. She speaks to navigating a traditional world rooted in Diné culture and a contemporary world of technology and social structures. She acknowledges

Dancing Earth has provided her with tools and skills to address the dualities.

“We are people of the future,” Benally says. When asked about the large body of Indigenous works that focus on historical trauma, she notes “that’s not all we are.” She points out that for many audiences, Dancing Earth productions are their first experience with Indigenous dance. “That’s a critical opportunity,” she says.

This year Benally is mentoring with Tangen, who is guiding her in leading online classes, which the company launched in March. “All our live programs for the foreseeable future have been canceled,” reports Tangen. “Yet the gifts carried by the teaching artists seem to be what people need at this time: to connect body, mind, spirit, memory, imagination, intuition, and hope.” trendmagazineglobal.com

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Moving Arts

Benally recently taught a Hózhó In Motion class, which incorporates Diné philosophy. “It means balance and harmony in all aspects of life,” she says. “The class is centered around finding hózhó in our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits.” Through the class, she guides participants in a core Dancing Earth exercise called the medicine wheel. This involves grounding one’s feet and shifting one leg toward the cardinal directions and back to the center. “In our daily lives, we are so busy going in many directions, that we often forget to come back to our center to regroup,” she says. Acknowledging the wisdom that is held in the body, in movement, and in cultural practices, one can begin to appreciate that infinite potential to unlock knowledge within each person. That has ripple effects in communities.

In addition to classes, Dancing Earth has started facilitating collaborative virtual productions, inviting artists around the world to participate. Among their recent live productions was Between Underground and Skyworld, which premiered at Arizona State University Gammage performing arts cen46

TREND art + design + architecture + cuisine 2020

ter in Phoenix. Tangen explains, “The show considered Indigenous futurities from the perspective of a new generation of young leaders searching for ancestral wisdom and remembering their powers as eco-warrior superheroes—to dream and embody a way forward for seven generations ahead.”

This year, Dancing Earth is focused on training its dancers in high-integrity teaching methodologies with the goal to engage more Native youth. “Our intention is to uplift and support our communities, bringing movement practices that help us collectively move through fear, grief, sadness, and disconnection into an experience of culture and collective,” says Tangen. “This gives the teaching artists a chance to embody their purpose on Earth.”

As the organization moves online, Tangen says: “This feels like an expression of global artistic collaboration for the reclamation of cyberspace as a realm of liberation, where we can reimagine and animate a reIndigenized future.” As the next generation of Indigenous dancers prepare to take the stage, we are reminded of how important our songs, stories, and dances truly are. R

AUDREY DERELL

Deollo Johnson instructs youth at Keres Children’s Learning Center, a nonprofit Indigenous Montessori Institute serving Cochiti Pueblo. Johnson, who teaches acrobatics, capoeira, and movement practices, guides students in cross-lateral movements, part of an Educational Kinesiology methodology that prepares the brain for learning.

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TAOS Trends

STORY AND PORTRAITS BY RICK ROMANCITO

Water, Earth, Stone, Flesh

RIMA KRISST

Currents of tradition flow through generations of Taos Pueblo artists

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trendmagazineglobal.com

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TAOS Trends

water originated at Blue Lake, high in the mountains above their village.

The lake’s sacred significance is ever present, especially this summer, as tribal members commemorate the 50th anniversary of its return from federal government control in 1970.

“Back when Theodore Roosevelt took our land in 1906 and made it a national forest, our people couldn’t hunt up there anymore and go up for religious doings,” renowned sculptor John Suazo says. “My grandfather, Jim Suazo, used to say the men used to go up there to hunt, hiding from the rangers. And they would hide during Blue Lake ceremonies, waiting until the tourists were done fishing.”

Blue Lake was revered for centuries before Spanish contact in the 16th century.

The ceremonies conducted there are so sacred that the tribe prohibits sharing any information about them with outsiders.

So, when President Roosevelt established the Carson National Forest in 1906—with-

out informing the tribe that it included Blue Lake—this was an epic offense. Jim Suazo, in fact, was beaten over the head with a pistol by rangers who caught him hunting in the area, as chronicled in Frank Waters’ seminal novel The Man Who Killed the Deer.

Like the river connects the villagers with the lake, there are currents that connect the village with its artists, stemming from longpracticed traditions and beliefs, of which the Blue Lake is an integral part. These traditions and beliefs have influenced generations of Taos Pueblo artists, past and present, such as John Suazo, DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo, Dawning Pollen Shorty, and Jonathan Warm Day Coming.

The stone sculptures of John Suazo have a mythic grace, and much of his work stems from his love of stories, typified by imagery that often depicts women and children. He says his works are inspired in part by his late uncle Ralph Suazo, whose sculptures reflected the people and nature

Sculptor John Suazo talks about his work in his studio near the village. When he finishes a piece, he says he hopes it will give the viewer a sense of it “being alive.”

Previous pages: Water in the Rio Pueblo flows from Blue Lake, a site sacred to the people of Taos Pueblo in Northern New Mexico.

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PREVIOUS PAGES: RIMA KRISST

I

n the winter not too long ago, Taos Pueblo kids would bundle up to carry metal buckets down to the Rio Pueblo from their adobe homes in the village.

Sometimes they’d have hatchets in hand, which they’d use to hack holes in the ice. Armed with cold, clear water, they’d stagger back to their houses, where the heavy buckets would be placed on wood stoves to warm for use as wash water.

Taos Pueblo artist Jonathan Warm Day Coming says this is what he often did to get ready for school.

It’s easy to romanticize this as a cultural snapshot of a time past, but the tribal council decided long ago to never have plumbing or electricity in the central pueblo area. So, if you need water for washing or drinking or cooking, you go down to the river to get it. In the mind of a Taos Native, there has always been something holy about it. Back when the people collected water in micaceous clay ollas, they did so knowing that this

COURTESY OF JOHN SUAZO (2)

John Suazo’s Raven Man (2020), New Mexico alabaster, embodies a shared consciousness between human and animal. Right: Mother and Child (2020), Moroccan selenite, glows when a light is placed within.

around the Taos Pueblo, and also credits his experience working with renowned Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser.

While Ralph worked primarily in cedar wood, John works in alabaster, limestone, and granite, which he may travel hundreds of miles to locate. Although now in his late 60s, Suazo says he is fighting the years as much as the weight of his medium. He feels that his efforts to forge ahead are always done with the shadow of his ancestors looking over his shoulder— and in the knowledge that his grandfather might approve.

DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo, a much younger artist, takes a turn from convention, drawing from Native traditions along with the aesthetics of Japanese anime. Her multimedia paintings, rendered in India ink, colored markers and pencils, and acrylic paint, have made patrons at Santa Fe Indian Market step back and reevaluate their ideas of what Native art really is.

The daughter of well-known artists Gary David Suazo and Geraldine Tso, Suazo began making art at an early age. One of

her fondest memories is from the time she attended the Taos Pueblo Head Start as a young child. “We were drawing on the floor with crayons and I remember one of the teachers was like, ‘Oh wow, DeAnna, you put a neck on your person!’ And, for some reason, that memory always stuck.

Why wouldn’t you put a neck on a human figure?”

This past spring, Suazo exhibited with the 63rd Annual Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market in Phoenix. It was the first week of March and signs of the coronavirus emergency were already evidenced by diminished crowds. Suazo’s work, though, did not fail to impress, especially those works recalling the style of Plains Indian ledger art for which she has gained quite a following.

“My art now is about Indigenous women present today, so what I’m doing is incorporating traditional attire—of course, it’s pre-contact attire,” she says. Ledger art, created by Plains Indians, is rooted in pictographic imagery created on buffalo skins and other materials. Around the 1860s, this imagery was transitioned to the discarded ledger books of accountants. The lined and numbered pages notwithstanding, these drawings create an indelible account of life ways before the advent of photography. “The stories of ledger art, how these warriors and prisoners put down their stories on ledgers given to them while imprisoned, that’s what I do,” she says.

“We’re deep into our traditions. I’m Taos Pueblo and Navajo, but we’re also very modern and know how to balance the two … For our tribe to be one of the first to get our land back from the US government was monumental. For so many Indigenous communities, their land was taken and they’re no longer able to do their ceremonies.”

Meanwhile, ceramics artist and teacher Dawning Pollen Shorty initially tried not to become an artist. She was born into a family steeped in the arts; her late grandmother Geri Track was a model for Taos Society of Artists painters and other family members, including her uncle, John Suazo, are well known. Still, as a teen, Pollen Shorty bristled at the idea that trendmagazineglobal.com

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TAOS Trends

COURTESY OF DEANNA AUTUMN LEAF SUAZO (3)

DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo used to hang around bookstores, poring over art books like Fruits, with photography of Japanese Harajuku girls dressed in vivid clothing. “Some of their clothing reminded me of the corn dances at the Pueblo. The colors blended together like there’s a palette going on. Those are the colors I use in my work.” Top: Untitled (2019), Prismacolor marker, black India ink, colored pencil, and acrylic paint on canvas. Bottom from left: Waiting Maiden (2020), Prismacolor marker, black India ink, colored pencil, and acrylic on 1907 ledger paper; Spring Dances (2018), acrylic on canvas

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RICK ROMANCITO (3)

people would have “these preconceived ideas about who I was based on who my parents or my grandparents or my uncles are, you know, and I just thought like, hey, ‘Know me before you think about me!

Maybe I want to be a scientist or I might want to be a veterinarian.’ I just felt like put into this box. I didn’t like it.”

She delved into archaeology and photography instead and now tells stories with clay. “I’m always looking to the past,”

Dawning Pollen Shorty in her classroom at Taos Academy, where she teaches a new generation of artists. Top: Yeibichai Sunset (2018), micaceous clay, feathers, and mixed media. Bottom: Winter Dance (2018), micaceous clay and mixed media

she says. “You just see this continuation of patterns that started a long time ago and are still being used today. And then you have a connection.”

The ceramic tradition at Taos Pueblo is primarily utilitarian, including the widemouthed olla used to collect water from the Rio Pueblo and small bean pots used for cooking, both made from local micaceous clay. It wasn’t until the 20th century when the tourist trade popularized the decorative pottery of other Pueblo tribes that Taos artists began incorporating figurative designs into pots made only as works of art.

“When I was developing my style, I was doing it from a purely aesthetic point of

view,” Shorty says. “I just want to show people beauty and simplicity.” Always an innovator, Pollen Shorty’s work is becoming more satirical and political. “I don’t really show those pieces,” she says, “because the public isn’t ready. It’s from life. It’s from what happens. They’re too controversial.”

Jonathan Warm Day Coming also hails from an honored lineage that includes the Taos Pueblo painter Eah-Ha-Wa (Eva Mirabal), whose gouache and watercolor cartoons famously depicted World War II as well as pastoral Pueblo scenes. Works by both were shown together in a special exhibition at the Harwood in 2013.

Warm Day Coming grew up at the Pueblo, unlike many members today who trendmagazineglobal.com

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TAOS Trends

COURTESY OF JONATHAN WARM DAY COMING (3)

Jonathan Warm Day Coming, The Tastiest Plums (2014), acrylic on canvas. Bottom from left: New Buffalo American (2015), acrylic on canvas, is the artist’s take on Taos hippies, referencing the iconic Grant Wood painting; Cacique (2018), acrylic on canvas, refers to a small group of men who oversee the spiritual life of tribal members while caring for the San Geronimo Chapel on the village plaza.

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TREND art + design + architecture + cuisine 2020

LEFT: COURTESY OF JONATHAN WARM DAY COMING

Jonathan Warm Day Coming. Left: The Plum Harvest (1996), embossed paper, is a tribute to the annual harvesting of wild plums, part of late summer life at Taos Pueblo.

live outside of the village, and that experience informed his personal vision. Within his artwork, one can glimpse an ideal image of Taos Pueblo life: women in traditional attire picking chokecherries and men singing at night on the middle bridge in the village, harvesting corn, and gathering water from the river. He works primarily in acrylic on canvas with a representational, illustrative style. In each of his paintings, there is an attention to detail without the hard-edged adherence of an academic’s approach. That’s because these are memories, and when fellow

tribal members see his work, they nod in assent, for these moments are shared, part of the village community.

As Warm Day Coming began to develop his signature style, made famous by his painting Night for Songs and Stories that was used to promote the now-defunct Taos Talking Pictures in the 1990s, he was also writing. For many years he’s been working on a novel rich with personal insights from his upbringing. Another book nearing completion, written in collaboration with Lois Rudnick, is Eva Mirabal: Three Generations of Tradition and Modernity,

the first comprehensive book about her art and life.

The contemporary art of Taos Pueblo flows from water, stone, earth, and the deep traditions of its people. During the fight for Blue Lake in 1969, tribal elder Severino Martinez said, “The Blue Lake is the lifeline of this country. This is what has been told by our forefathers and their elders. This Blue Lake is not only a lake, but the blessing that we get from that lake belongs to everybody.”

Western culture often has a need to understand by full disclosure, even if that admission may ultimately be discarded because it doesn’t fit a preconceived idea.

In some respects, it would rather hold to a stereotype than a simpler truth. Martinez said as much when he stated, “We know this is true, although we do not know how to explain it or prove it to you who are not Indians.”

John Suazo puts it more directly. “We were here first. This is our land.” As is the Blue Lake.

A Blue Lake commemorative show at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, to be rescheduled to 2021, will exhibit works by local artists as part of a citywide initiative to acknowledge the fraught—yet ultimately triumphant—history of the neighboring Pueblo. R trendmagazineglobal.com

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RON LARIMORE larimore.faso.com

| 135 N. Plaza, Taos, NM 87571 | 575-770-4462

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A

fter 38 years of collecting art in Taos with his wife, Carol, and most of the past 21 years working in a very small studio with a leaking roof, Ron Larimore finally moved into a studio/gallery space just off the Taos Plaza with visibility, traffic, and a dry roof. He finds the opportunity to talk with visitors to be rewarding and inspirational. Primarily a landscape painter in oils, he likes to tell people, “I paint what I see, or at least what I think I saw.”

Having spent most of his working life in the investment business, Larimore always had a watercolor set at hand wherever he traveled.

About six years ago he switched to oils and has never looked back. Drawing inspiration from Taos artists Walt Gonske, Rod Goebel, and Robert Daughters, color permeates most of his paintings.

He’s also motivated by the expressionistic works of Russian painter Vitaly Makarov. Recent paintings based on the Arizona desert seem to be softening his palette, but he still finds Northern New Mexico his favorite landscape.

Larimore likes to paint en plein air, but can generally be found at his studio/gallery, along with his two dogs, Chester and Molly.

Right: Blaze of Fall, oil on canvas, 16" x 12" Below: Morada Y Calvario, oil on panel, 12" x 24" Opposite: Arizona Dry Wash, oil on panel, 12" x 12"

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MARY STRAT TON

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TREND Fall/Winter 2019/Spring 2020

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Fire & Ice 39/40, diptych, cold wax and oil, 60" x 40" Opposite page: Fire & Ice 38 (Inset image: Fire & Ice 42), cold wax and oil, 36" x 48"

ADDISON DOTY

M

ary Stratton’s studies at the Pasadena/Seattle School of Interior Design and the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle in the 1980s included classes in color, painting, and design. These experiences helped shape and guide her artistic pursuits in encaustic and, more recently, cold wax and oil painting. But having spent most of her early career in the corporate world of magazine advertising in Seattle, as well as later years in real estate in Seattle and Sun Valley, Idaho, it wasn’t until 2009 that Stratton made the decision to launch her painting career.

Stratton opened her first studio in Sun Valley and focused on encaustic painting. After moving to Taos, New Mexico, in 2013, she began exploring cold wax and oil, a direction that has turned out to be so rewarding, both personally and professionally, that she now works exclusively in the cold wax and oil medium. In 2017 she opened her gallery/studio on the Taos Plaza, and she also shows at Royal Street Fine Art in Aspen, Colorado, enjoying success with art buyers from all over the world.

Inspired by the skies, landscapes, and hues of the Southwest and working mainly in the abstract, Stratton puts an emphasis on color exploration, leading to bold and vivid combinations in both smooth and textured surfaces. Her vision and planning for upcoming works continues to excite her, and she feels the possibilities are endless.

Stratton enjoys the challenge of creating custom pieces for a client’s individual style and space, and she welcomes all inquiries. Numerous bodies of work in encaustic and cold wax and oil can be viewed on her website.

marystrattonart.com

| Gallery/Studio: 102 Dona Luz St | Taos, NM 87571 | 575-770-0760 trendmagazineglobal.com 6161 trendmagazineglobal.com

MICHAEL AUSTIN WRIGHT 62

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metal sculptor based in Madrid, New Mexico, Michael Austin Wright lives and works in a roadside studio made from recycled trusses of an old mining building. His office is in a former railway car that was once a drive-up liquor store. Wright’s life and process is all about reinvention. “I find interesting pieces of metal and envision what they may become together,” says Wright.

Amidst his welders, forges, anvils, and woodworking saws are assorted piles of patinaed metal and discarded materials from the nearby mine. He works with objects that call out their purpose in an assemblage process that yields a rustic, whimsical take on Southwestern art.

Under his hand a fender from an old Buick becomes a bison, or disparate metal parts elicit a buffalo chase scene. Often, in an ongoing conversation, the works remain in process until he finds the pieces that complete them.

Inspired by artist John Chamberlain, who worked with crushed car parts to imitate phrases of poetry, and Antoni Gaudí, whose compositions originated in nature, Wright is interested in the imagination’s role in assemblage. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, he taught art and design classes at the Institute of American Indian Arts and Santa Fe Community College for many years.

Having shown works at various galleries in Santa Fe, often with large-scale exterior installations, he’s represented at his boxcar gallery in Madrid, open on weekends by appointment.

Blue Horse (2001), patina metal, 7' x 3' x 6' 6" In permanent collection in Chicago, IL Left: Eagle (2003), recycled nails and metal, 6' x 36" x 38" Collection of Wilder Baker, Darien, CT Opposite: Monsoon Maize (2016), welded steel, 36" x 68" x 2" Georgia Maryol permanent collection

michaelaustinwright.com

505-577-4907 (call for appointment) 2785 State Highway 14, Madrid, NM 87010 trendmagazineglobal.com

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CANDYCE GARRETT

candycegarrett.com

| PO Box 593, Taos, NM 87571 | 575.937.1486

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andyce Garrett is a maverick, a visionary and a dreamer. She is also the world’s preeminent female monumental granite sculptor.

With ranching in her family and creativity in her blood, she draws energy from the backdrop of the desert Southwest. Working from studios in Texas and New Mexico, her art is expansive, just like the areas from which she draws her inspiration.

Garrett’s abstract and figurative art have universal appeal. Her work encourages viewer participation and interpretation, and its meaning can shift over time as the viewer changes and evolves.

With four decades of sculpting, Garrett’s art is global.

She’s represented everywhere from private collections in prestigious homes and businesses to museums, corporations, and public venues. You’ll see her works in the Taos shopping district and at the entrance of the San Antonio Spurs training facility. Her art can be found from California to Washington, DC, and from Barbados to Japan and Switzerland.

Recently profiled in the National Sculpture Society’s official publication, Sculpture Review, Garrett’s pieces have profound depth, balance, and intensity—much like their creator. Discover more at candycegarrett.com.

Awakening (2018), California Academy granite, 4' x 6' x 6', approximately 9,000 pounds Top: Emergence triptych (2008), California Academy granite, three pieces each appoximately 3–3½' x 3–3½' each, 3,000 to 3,500 pounds per section.

On display at the Santa Fe Botanical Gardens.

Opposite page: Follow Your Dreams (2019), Texas sunset red granite and California Academy granite, 9' x 9' For more information about these works, contact the artist at 575.937.1486. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Transcending the Moment Emotion, movement, and a willingness to take chances

BY CYNDI A. WOOD | PHOTOS BY ROBERT RECK 66

TREND art + design + architecture + cuisine 2020

trendmagazineglobal.com 67

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n Robert Reck’s series No. 8, the images are impressionistic, almost dreamlike, suggesting the capture of an elusive moment, the subject obscured in a painterly haze. “The series is mysterious,” Reck says. “It’s another way of looking at the world for me.”

With the appearance of soft brushstrokes, these images differ dramatically from the crisp angles and precise edges of the architectural work from Reck’s ongoing 40-year professional career. “They are divergent,” he says, “but they have a consistency in meaning that ties them all together. Working with line, and now working with random, curved lines—they’re still lines, yet they lead to a different visual conclusion.”

Reck began experimenting with images in this style years ago, but kept them to himself until they evolved into a satisfying, cohesive body of work. “The images use a method of childhood innocence to transcend the moment,” he says. “Even as a current means of expression for me that is extremely personal, the work freely allows viewer interpretation.”

Jasper Johns once said, “I feel that works of art are an opportunity for people to construct meaning, so I don’t usually tell what they mean. It conveys to people that they have to participate.” Reck agrees.

In this series, Reck is not so much interested in documentation, but rather in letting the image itself be the subject, and then allowing the viewer find a connection. “I want to present images that confront the viewer and give them the opportunity to look into their own experience and carry that image in memory.”

The images suggest that all vision is a kind of conversion of the real into the imaginary, capturing moments and converting them to artworks that have an emotional resonance with the viewer.

One of the photographs that launched this series was taken while driving down the highway, and it spoke to Reck emotionally and spiritually. “Collectively, the effervescent and transient nature of these photos has a qualitative impact on the awareness of and personal interactions with our surroundings,” he explains. “The images are a permanent trace of a very gestural response to sidelined information in the real world.”

Shot in New Mexico and surrounding states, the images are all created in camera, with no more sophisticated manipulation than would have occurred in the darkroom of Ansel Adams—dodging and burning, lightening and darkening, and manipulating contrast. There are no color enhancements. The honesty of the data collection is important to Reck, as is the integrity of the final images, printed on archival watercolor paper and often mounted to float from the wall to further enhance their ethereal feel.

“This approach embraces a willingness to take chances and an acceptance that mistakes can be part of the process,” Reck says.

“It’s a freedom of expression that holds a lasting peace.”

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Distraction (2006). Previous pages: Anticipation (2010)

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Uncertainty (2019)

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Soul Reliquary (2018)

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Sanctuary (2009)

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Making Their Marks

Four artists based in New Mexico propel into the new decade

BY KATHRYN M DAVIS PHOTOS BY AUDREY DERELL

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rom their origins as the son of generations of ranchers in the Española Valley to a Korean who grew up steeped in her culture’s traditions and arrived in the United States via Australia, our four featured artists have collectively traveled the world. Between them, they speak several languages, the most essential being that ineffable dialect of visual art. While their vocabularies may be quite diverse, each addresses the inevitable action of expressing one’s sense of self within an overarching community. And all possess that intangible yet necessary qualification for being an artist: Thomas Vigíl, Lauren Mantecón, Darren Vigil Gray, and Hyunmee Lee can’t not make art, and, collectively, they’ve been doing it for well over a hundred years. Capturing their processes, photographer Audrey Derell—an artist in her own right—presents spontaneous portraits of the artists at work in their studios.

Naturally, these four identify as unique individuals, though they have many traits in common, each drawing from their own cultural backgrounds to create new perspectives. Vigíl is, he says, “an outsider” who “is experiencing his own personal renaissance.” Represented by Evoke Contemporary in Santa Fe, he was also part of GenNext: Future So Bright in 2018 at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art. Vigíl creates graphical arts using spray paint, stencils, old road signs, and any weathered metal surfaces people find for him. His imagery, however, is straight out of the Baroque period of Counter-Reformation art— traditionally a source for Spanish Colonial art in Northern New Mexico.

Mantecón is one of those people you feel you’ve known forever—an easy talker. She has worked in many a medium over the years, from found items in the streets of Caribbean Mexico to the photographer’s darkroom. A painting instructor offering workshops and open studios, she feels her role is “to hold space for people to have their own experience of art.” Having begun her studies as a conceptual photographer at California State

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University, Fullerton, Mantecón, like her heroes Judy Chicago, Betye Saar, and Cindy Sherman, makes work that actively deflects the privileged male gaze.

After receiving her MFA in Portland, Mantecón won an artist’s residency at the Wurlitzter Foundation in Taos and was then invited to the Santa Fe Art Institute. “Santa Fe found me,” she laughs. She’s been painting in a lyrical style for at least 25 years and feels that she serves as a vessel for her art’s veiled yet potent mysticism.

Vigil Gray, of Jicarilla Apache and Kiowa Apache descent, grew up in the small community of Dulce, New Mexico, tribal headquarters of the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. As a child, he was influenced by his father and older brother, both honky-tonk musicians, and, by the age of ten, young Vigil Gray was performing in his brother’s band. It was at the Institute of American Indian Arts, back when it was located at the Santa Fe Indian School in the 1970s, that he began making art, inspired by instructor and Hopi jeweler Otellie Loloma. Now based in Santa Fe, his regular practice includes making music as a natural extension of his visual repertoire. He approaches painting simply as another means of presenting cultural imagery and notions in his own postimpressionist style. “I’ve stopped making 80 to 100 paintings a year, but I still need to paint,” he says.

Lee’s journey across the globe has been one of self-searching. Born after the Korean War, she recalls a childhood of poverty amid strong cultural roots. She trained in the classical art of calligraphy, but it wasn’t until she moved to Sydney, Australia, where she received her MFA at the University of Sydney, that she began to truly consider her native culture. At school, she “examined the works of Robert Motherwell, Franz Klein, and Mark Tobey, in an investigation into how textures . . . and color can balance composition.” While her paintings could be ascribed to the New York School of Action Painting, they are hardly the stuff of Jackson Pollock. Rather, her carefully trained hand makes meditative gestures that balance grace and tension as rigorously as a prima ballerina en pointe.

None of these artists can be separated from their cultural roots and experiences, yet each articulates a vision undeniably contemporary and indelibly their own.

Thomas Vigíl’s Die For What You Believe In (2017), spray paint, references the martyred Saint Sebastian, who survived a Roman death penalty in the late third century. By incorporating old road signs into his work, Vigíl also invokes the centuries-old medieval tradition of pilgrimage.

Previous spread, from left to right: Hyunmee Lee works on The Rise 10; Thomas Vigíl spray-paints layers of hand-cut stencils over recycled material; Lauren Mantecón working on a process-based painting in her Santa Fe studio; Darren Vigil Gray touches up Abiquiu Moment (2020), acrylic on mounted paper on board. In the background: Details from Mantecón’s The Abundance of Fall (2019), oil on panel

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T Thomas Vigíl

Thomas Vigíl outside his home in Espanola, New Mexico, with his mixed-media painting Withering Faith (2018).

“I chose the material for this painting to represent the decay of religious values in today’s society,” he says. Vigíl’s works blend the familiarity of urban graffiti with traditional religious imagery, with echoes of Caravaggio and Bernini.

Opposite: Vigíl’s Dolores (2019), spray paint on recycled wine crate, is a tribute to Dolores Huerta, who worked alongside César Chávez to organize the California grape strike for immigrant farm workers’ civil rights in the late 1960s. Vigíl is interested in themes of resistance over time.

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A work in progress employs Hyunmee Lee’s “sketching process,” which involves cutting and pasting hanji, Korean traditional handmade paper, to explore composition and texture.

“Shapes are spontaneously born,” Lee says.

“Though I begin with a composition in mind, the piece finds its own path.”

Opposite, top: Detail from Withy (2011), acrylic on canvas. Opposite, bottom: Detail from House of Riddle 6 (2017), acrylic on canvas

Hyunmee Lee

COURTESY OF HYUNMEE LEE

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Darren Vigil Gray

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It’s easy to picture Darren Vigil Gray as a rock and roll drummer, perched in front of his kit, informed by the rhythms of his life. The life of an artist “turns into a lifestyle,” he says, recalling his younger days with his band The Mud Ponies, but “now is a time of re-emergence and new momentum.”

Opposite: Calibrations Landscape (2020), acrylic on canvas, reveals the artist’s expressionist bent— deeply influenced by a momentous predecessor of Vigil Gray’s at the Institute of American Indian Arts: painter/musician T.C. Cannon.

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Lauren Mantecón

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Lauren Mantecón in her studio with It Takes Two (2019), oil on panel triptych. “The vessel has been emerging in my paintings over the last five years or so. I believe it to be a metaphor for moving from one plane of existence to another: a journey—whether it be death or just getting from point A to point B,” Mantecón says.

“I grew up around boats, so the idea of fluidity is always with me. I also often dream of people passing away before the news reaches me in the physical realm. My curiosity of how we might live in more than one dimension at a time is also of interest. In this painting the vessel is fading into atmosphere—the space between one and another. It Takes Two can refer to a relationship with oneself, the other, or an otherworldly essence.”

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Q& A

BY CYNDY TANNER STYLING AND INTERIOR DESIGN

BY SUSAN M. STELLA

Home Now

As the world adapts to the pandemic, “shelter in place” has assumed new meaning for all of us. Whether we live in a studio apartment in Brooklyn or a pitched-roof adobe farmhouse in New Mexico, we’ve all been home more than ever. One might assume that such circumstances would curb the enthusiasms of a self-described “extreme, pathetic extrovert,” but such is not the case for Larry Keller, owner of Design Warehouse, a contemporary home furnishing store in Santa Fe. r A visual combination of Albert Einstein, Christo, and Pee-wee Herman in a Thom Browne suit, Keller is on the cusp of celebrating 40 years in business, but due to the coronavirus, his shop has been shuttered. Instead, he’s been fielding calls from home, spending high desert mornings thick with the fragrance of lilacs chatting with customers from Palo Alto to Europe, as well as with his colleagues now working remotely. r So how did a guy whose passions include art, food, film, and fashion come to own a furniture store? “I love art so much,” Keller says, “but I’m also passionate about the democracy of good design and the accessibility of utilitarian objects that bring people pleasure.” He further muses, “I like to think of a chair as art that you can sit on. And I love the practicality of a French jelly jar glass or the beauty of a perfect kettle. I’m never driven by how many I could sell of something. I’m motivated by the thrill of the hunt for things I love and would have in my own home.” r As our own homes have become more lived-in and worked-in than ever, Keller’s mission couldn’t be more important. In the surreal context of this unprecedented communal experience, Keller shares his thoughts.

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SUSAN M. STELLA

LARRY KELLER of Design Warehouse gets real about interior design

Interior of Design Warehouse.

Opposite: Larry Keller in his Thom Browne suit, next to an Eames Lounge Chair, designed for the Herman Miller furniture company in 1956 to achieve the receptive look of a well-worn baseball mitt.

Q: You had stints working for the Palace of the Governors and New Mexico Magazine. What motivated you to open a housewares store in Santa Fe in 1981?

A: When I was in my 20s, I always equated entrepreneurs with losers—they couldn’t get hired in corporate America, so they had to start something on their own. I soon realized that by owning my own thing I could work hard and vacation hard too. I’m a wanderer and I live to travel—with one carry-on, a fave T-shirt, jeans, and the one book I’m reading.

Q: What drives your creative spirit and continues to inspire you?

A: I’m obsessed by things French and have visited Paris nine times—also Mexico, Japan, Bali, Thailand, England, Spain, Italy, and over one hundred trips to the Big Apple, my favorite place on the planet. Travel inspires me. I’m a good detective and I’m always on the hunt for the cool object.

KIM RICHARDSON (2)

Q: To quote artist Donald Judd, “It’s hard to find a good lamp.”

How would you describe the Design Warehouse aesthetic?

A: I’ve always considered Design Warehouse a design store.

Actually, I’m a furniture merchant who doesn’t like furniture stores. Furniture is so important for the business—but so are the smaller items, which I’ve always thought of as low-hanging fruit. Not everyone is in the market for a sofa, but it is lovely when a customer leaves with a bag, or maybe a great bar of soap or a kettle or a cool Noguchi lamp.

Q: Four decades later, what do you still love about your business?

A: I’m probably an extreme extrovert, and every day at Design Warehouse I get to talk about things I’m passionate about, what I call the three Fs: food, film, and fashion. And when my customers insist, furniture. I’m a minimalist at heart. I don’t care for rooms where the furniture overpowers the space and the people.

My colleagues in other markets would never touch the brands of Knoll or Herman Miller. They laugh at their thin profit margins

for any retailer. But I couldn’t bear not having them in my portfolio. When I go to market in North Carolina and New York, I try to focus on what I’d enjoy and value in my own living room rather than trying to guess what’s going to be a big seller. It’s worked.

Q: What’s the Design Warehouse mantra?

A: Witty windows, cool chairs, great tunes. We want the store to be like singer Sophie Tucker! Sexy, warm, cool, clean. There’s no chrome, no black except for an iconic office chair or two. How does a room give a person pleasure? That’s the question I ask when I source product for the store.

Q: What else might you love to do?

A: I wish I were a painter. I wish I could have been Frank Stella or Marlene Dumas. I love paint on canvas. Oh well, next life. R trendmagazineglobal.com

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photography : Š Wendy McEahern | Architectural Design and Construction : Woods Design Builders | Interior Design : Violante & Rochford Interiors

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BY ANYA SEBASTIAN | PORTRAIT BY PETER OGILVIE

Architect Richard Martinez at his renovated historic adobe home in Pecos, New Mexico, which he inherited from his great-grandfather.

Martinez added a double adobe addition with a Northern New Mexico–style tin roof to the original house of stacked stone, which was built around 1912. Martinez maintained its historic aesthetic with mud floors and milk paint.

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Coming Home

For architect Richard Martinez, it was his New Mexico homeland that ultimately gave him a voice.

PETER OGILVIE

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ichard Martinez grew up in Albuquerque, and when he left to study architecture at Princeton, thoughts of coming back were nowhere in his mind. After graduation, he went on to complete postgraduate studies at Columbia before joining an architecture firm in New York city and settling into life in the Big Apple. “It was the 1980s and I loved the energy of what was going on there,” he recalls, “but as time went on, I could see that going out on my own would be a challenge, and I wasn’t sure how to go about doing that.”

As he was pondering his next move, his great-grandfather passed away, leaving him a small house in Pecos, New Mexico.

“It obviously had great sentimental value,” he says, “but I also knew that it needed a lot of upgrades and TLC. I finally decided to take a year or two off, work on the house, and then go back to New York. Well, as you can see, I’m still here!”

As it turned out, it took Martinez about ten years to finish fixing up that house because he ran out of money along the way and had to take a break to find a job. DeWindt & Associates, an architectural firm in Santa Fe, took him on board and, from that point on, everything changed. “I really began to feel part of this community,” he says, “and before long, people started asking me to design houses for them. The gay community, in particular, was especially supportive and gave me my first five commissions. Their aesthetic sense and appreciation of creativity gave me the courage to try and make it on my own—something I hadn’t been able to do in New York.”

He has now had his own firm, Martinez Architecture Studio, for over 25 years, designing buildings from residential to commercial and historic to contemporary. Several have won awards, including the renovation of the renowned Hotel trendmagazineglobal.com

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Martinez discussing drawings for the proposed new spa at Hotel St. Francis in Santa Fe with colleague Yusuf Coffman. Built in 1910 in a mission style, the hotel is on the National Register of Historic Places. Built in the Mexican hacienda style with a central courtyard and carved stone detailing, the Tano Norte residence just outside of Santa Fe incorporates antique elements from the American Southwest, Mexico, Italy, and South America. Susan Dupepe designed the interior. The main portal has views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains from the home’s hillside setting.

PETER OGILVIE

St. Francis in downtown Santa Fe, which won the Associated General Contractors of America Best Buildings Award in 2011, and a home on Acequia Madre, which won the city of Santa Fe’s Heritage Preservation Award for Compatible New Construction in 2015.

He also designed the much-loved Plaza Cafe Southside in Santa Fe and the recently completed lobby of the Hotel Chaco in Albuquerque. This impressive project, put together with mud, plaster, vigas, and stacked stone, is intended to evoke the feeling of being inside an ancient Native American kiva with a contemporary flair. “My job is to do as much as you can with what you have,” Martinez says. “In other words, to preserve the history, while at the same time realizing possibilities that may not otherwise be thought of.”

In his free time, Martinez still enjoys working on his greatgrandfather’s house, where he lives and now shares with his husband, Ron James, an estate manager and a member of the Navajo Nation. Over the years, he acquired two neighboring properties as well, both previously owned by family members.

One, basically a log cabin but with the unusual distinction of now being recognized as a historic structure, was built by his grandfather and was the place where his mother grew up; the other he acquired from an aunt. Neither has been fully restored, although the log cabin has been a work in progress for quite some time. “Everything I do has to be approved by the Historical Review Board,” Martinez points out, “and that can take a while.”

He is well acquainted with that process, having served for a number of years as a member of the board of the Historic Santa Fe Foundation.

If it seems contradictory that Martinez is now known for is predominantly contemporary architecture—very much in contrast to his homegrown influences—he credits Princeton and Columbia for introducing him to the world of Modernism.

“Both were schools with roots in Modern design,” he says, “and they definitely informed and influenced the contemporary feel of architecture at the time. Don’t get me wrong—I still love adobe, stone, and very primal, organic elements—but now I can comfortably work with both.”

Whatever basic materials or style of architecture, his main concern is how people experience the space: how it feels as a person moves through it and how it engages with the environment. “I really like working with the energy of different materials and how they come together,” he says, “and we’re lucky to have such a range of great artisans here. Whether I’m thinking of incorporating stonework, plaster, cabinetry, doors, ironwork, steel, I know there are master craftsmen I can turn to, to make the vision a reality.”

Green building and the impact on the environment are, of course, very much on people’s minds these days, and Martinez is no exception. “We all need to be concerned about that,” he states categorically, “and I always make a point of taking environmental considerations into account when I start working on a project. That means installing solar panels whenever possible, making sure everything is well insulated to reduce energy costs, and basically using the least amount of natural resources possible. While upfront building costs may be higher, outgoings are much lower in the end, so there’s definitely a good return on the initial investment as well.”

One element that his architectural designs all have in common, whether classical, contemporary, or adobe, is clear-cut, clean lines. Each one is also a reflection of how natural light, surroundings, and views are incorporated, resulting in spaces that are dynamically human-centered. “I love drawing all the elements together and coming up with new ideas, pushing boundaries, if you like,” he says. “And I think this is the perfect place to do that.”

Having been involved with the city’s architecture for so many years, Martinez is firmly of the opinion that Santa Fe needs to think more creatively about the possibilities of what could be, rather than repeating the styles of the past. “You see the same old expressions over and over again,” he points out. “It’s definitely time to tap into the creativity of looking at things in new ways and I think the younger generation is ready to move in that direction.”

Martinez can definitely take credit for showing them the way. He envisages one day putting together an exhibition with sketches and ideas brought to him by clients before the start of a project alongside images of how buildings turned out in the end. “You would be amazed at the difference,” he says with a smile. “It just shows you what can happen when you throw out ideas and see where they go.”

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LOU NOVICK (2)

The Tano Norte living room leads into a dining room that incorporates stone antiques from Mexico. It has a fireplace mantel from Italy and wood trusses with wrought iron brackets by Helmut Hillenkamp. Top: The home’s central courtyard has an arcade of Mexican travertine, a central fountain with a statue from Mexico, and a large glass skylight. This nuclear courtyard leads to all major rooms of the house. Opposite: Martinez renovated the Hotel St. Francis lobby in 2011, reviving the entrance to one of the first hotels built in Santa Fe. Martinez strove to express a calm, monastic interior with plaster arches and stone detailing, working with interior designer Kris Lajeskie.

JEFF CAVEN

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JEFF CAVEN (2)

For Hotel Chaco in Albuquerque, Martinez worked with Kris Lajeskie to create a kiva-shaped lobby with mud-plastered walls with stacked stone bases, bancos, and a ceiling that supports backlit glass with a design by Tammy Garcia of Santa Clara Pueblo. Joe Cajero of Jemez Pueblo created the central sculpture in the room, Oneness.

DAVID MARLOW (2)

In the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, this Tesuque home has spectacular views and incorporates Santa Fe–style materials such as raw plaster, stacked flagstone, and stained wood beams. The living room looks out to the Jemez Mountains, and the interior design is by Lisa Samuel of Samuel Design Group. Top: The entry follows the home’s elongated design, which echoes the ridge and hill below. Landscaping design is by Clemens & Associates. trendmagazineglobal.com

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DAVID MARLOW (2)

The master bath of this Tesuque home has backlit onyx panels from Italy, with the same stone used for the floating vanity. The stone floor includes etched details. Top: The living and dining rooms with wood-beamed ceilings open into an entryway, separated by warmly lit steps. Opposite: The home, owned by collectors of Native American art, incorporates stone floors and plaster walls. R trendmagazineglobal.com

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VIOLANTE & ROCHFORD INTERIORS Violante & Rochford Interiors is a full-service, boutique design firm based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Known for creating spacious, light-filled, chic, and casually elegant interiors that fulfill client visions and lifestyles, the firm blends practical issues and aesthetic requirements, from traditional to contemporary or a mix.

Principals Paul Rochford and Michael Violante have been working together for over 20 years and they are also a married couple. Their experience creating luxurious interiors has made them the choice of a sophisticated clientele.

The firm is located in two historically significant Arts and Crafts structures on Paseo de Peralta in Santa Fe. One has a notable showroom and one of the largest fabric libraries in the area. The second building is THE STORE—the perfect complement to the core interior design business, stocked with unique pieces from around the world.

Violante & Rochford work with a diverse group of creatives to offer their clients the best and boldest resources available, from custom homebuilders and furniture fabricators to antique and art galleries (the duo is known for their brilliant curating), handmade rugs and carpets, landscapers, and more.

Photo by Wendy McEahern

401 and 405 Paseo de Peralta

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ARREDIAMO Moroccan rugs are colorful bursts of joy and energy that symbolize the daily lives of the individual tribes who make them. These pieces can be found anywhere, from the humblest of nomad tents to the most magnificent of palaces, and they reflect love, tradition, stories, drama—all that human beings live through!

Traditionally, Moroccan tribal weavings were made exclusively by women and solely for personal use. Dense pile rugs served not only as floor coverings but also as mattresses, seating, and even blankets in the winter months. Crafted from hand-spun shaggy goat wool, the vibrant colors of the rugs are achieved with natural vegetable dyes, and, when making a rug, each woman would weave in the story of her life. They are filled with symbolism and vary greatly depending on where they were woven.

In modern times, nomadic tribes have been scattered throughout multiple continents, and the traditions and lifestyles of the people that once produced these magnificent rugs are fading and being forgotten. But in Kabul, Afghanistan, these traditions are being revived with the same spirit and joy, and their magnificent, collectible, genuine Berber rugs are available in a variety of sizes at Arrediamo.

202/D-214 Galisteo Street

| Santa Fe | 505-820-2231 | arrediamo.com trendmagazineglobal.com

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K.O’NEAL First-time visitors to the K.O’Neal storefront are often overwhelmed with the explosion of color and eye candy that its Railyard District venue has brought to the Santa Fe retail scene. Furniture, decorative accessories, and an array of gift items, largely designed and created by a Texas-based team, are found nowhere else. The store was born of owner/designer Kelly O’Neal’s already thriving wholesale entity Design Legacy. O’Neal has been visiting Santa Fe for over 30 years, and its unparalleled, vibrant cultural influence has shaped his whimsical, colorful repertoire.

At the core of K.O’Neal’s offerings is an extensive textile collection, a treasure trove of color, style, and naturebased imagery. These elements combine to make the most inventive fabric collection available anywhere. Each pattern begins with O’Neal’s handwork or bits and pieces from his extensive collection of period prints. O’Neal has collected antique bookplates and prints since childhood and that collection forms the basis of his natural history patterns.

O’Neal’s eponymous atelier also exclusively represents two textile collections made in collaboration with design heavy-hitters Michelle Nussbaumer and Denise McGaha. The collection is available by the yard or as finished upholstery, pillows, and bedding that can be made to specification to be designed, printed, and assembled in O’Neal’s Texas studio. Items are shipped internationally under the more than 30-year-old brand Design Legacy, and O’Neal’s work has appeared in a who’s who roster of magazines. His original artworks are also exhibited.

insta/k.oneal_santafe | facebook.com/k.oneal.santafe 340 Read Street | Santa Fe | 505-772-0153 | koneal.com

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SLEEP & DREAM LUXURY BED STORE During these hectic days of modern technology, don’t we love to “get away from it all” and yearn for the peaceful, restful, stress-free joy of nature?

At Sleep & Dream Luxury Bed Store, we believe that the simplest natural materials are the best for rest and relaxation. Whether it’s the bed you sleep on, the pillow on which you rest your head, or the sheets and comforters you cuddle with, nature’s ingredients stand the test of time.

Some of the natural ingredients in our products are cashmere, Moosburger horsetail hair, alpaca, mohair, silks, various types of wool, organic cotton, goose and duck down, natural latex, linen, kapok silk, and bamboo. These materials never off-gas and are simply scented by nature!

From calico-encased vanadium coils to natural exotic elements, we feature two-sided mattresses and bed systems that provide support and comfort, as well as toppers that help customize the feel of any bed. Our natural latex beds from Posh+Lavish, Royal-Pedic, and Shifman provide a buoyant, weightless sleep. We can also create custom designs for unique shapes or antique sizes, including round beds from Hästens and Vispring.

Your pillow is the “bed for your head,” and it is also an important element for a good night’s sleep. If you’ve never been fitted for a pillow, this is a must! The most comfortable and supportive pillow depends on your sleeping preference, neck arch, and shoulder width, and ours come in different shapes, ingredients, and sizes.

We help curate nighttime sanctuaries. You owe it to yourself . . . experience the rest!

510 W Cordova Road

| Santa Fe | 505-988-9195 | mysleepanddream.com trendmagazineglobal.com

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GLASSplash From INSPIRATION to INSTALLATION GLASSplashÂŽ is an exciting new company utilizing cutting-edge technologies to transfer images onto heat-resistant, tempered glass for use in all your living environments.

Collaboration is our forte, as is evident in this Santa Fe installation. Tasked with updating the kitchen island, the GLASSplash design team found inspiration in the homeowner’s art collection. Utilizing a Plains Indian parfleche box, we took the design, color blocked it, and then had it digitally printed on tempered glass. Illumination by an LED light panel takes this traditional design to the next level. The laser-etched design on the cabinet door window is sourced from an African tribal tent curtain while the geometric pattern derives from carved leather strips. The result is a stunning work of art that stands shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the folk art collection in this unique home.

We love working with designers, artists, and homeowners to bring their visions to life on glass. We invite you to visit us in our showroom or online at glassplash.us.

Photo by Chris Corrie Photography

1512 Pacheco St., A102

| Santa Fe | 505-333-9096 | designteam@glassplash.us | glassplash.us

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SANTA FE BY DESIGN Good-bye toilet paper Hello to the ultimate in personal hygiene Water transforms us. It gives us a sense of vitality and vigor. It has the power to heal, restore, and rejuvenate. We shower in the morning, bathe at night, and wash our hands in between. Feeling clean is a part of our everyday lives and is as natural as breathing itself. Why then, do we give much less consideration to how we cleanse ourselves after we use the bathroom? Introducing AXENT.ONE C Plus—the hygienic way to stay exceptionally fresh all day.

This award-winning shower toilet brings you all the luxury that technology has to offer. Slim design and features like a sensor that recognizes you and automatically opens the toilet lid when you enter the room make for an unforgettable bathroom experience. AXENT.ONE C PLUS also features rear wash, front wash, warm-air dry, deodorization, night-light, Vacuum V Flush, proprietary Easy Clean glaze, auto flush, a convenient remote control and seat heating. This toilet features a 12� rough-in dimension.

1512 Pacheco Street, D101

| Santa Fe | 505-988-4111 | santafebydesign.com trendmagazineglobal.com

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DESIGNsource special section

MICHAEL AUSTIN WRIGHT

LLC

Michael Austin Wright applies principles of art and design to his construction and restoration work. From the build to the fine detail work, Wright is versed in Santa Fe style and interested in its contemporary iterations.

An acclaimed metal and stone sculptor, Wright brings an artist’s perspective to his design work. As a youth, he often traveled with his parents and was influenced by classical architecture. From the Taj Mahal to the streets of Epheses, Turkey, ancient culture affected his consciousness early on. He went on to study architecture and furniture design while maintaining his interest in the classical arts. Drawn to the simplicity of American Craftsman–style architecture, he also appreciates how the Art Nouveau movement chipped away at the distinction between applied and fine arts: he sees no separation between pleasing design and its functionality. Equally attracted to Frank Lloyd Wright’s emphasis on nature in architectural design and the bold patterns and colors of Memphis Style, Wright has shaped a contemporary aesthetic rooted in classical influences.

Over 25 years ago, Wright’s first project in Santa Fe was to restore an old adobe building once occupied by the mayor of Santa Fe. Since, he’s restored and renovated many homes and businesses, working closely with clients to synchronize aesthetic and function. Under his guidance, a ranch-style adobe home can take on a spacious, sky-lit pitched roof supported by columns, bringing light and space into a contemporized home that retains its historic style.

From new construction to home improvement, Wright brings the eye of an artist and the knowledge of a builder to the table. Always marrying form and function, he enacts his clients’ visions with exquisite results.

Photo: Old Winch House in Madrid, New Mexico

2785 NM-14, Los Cerrillos

| Madrid | 505-577-4907 | michaelaustinwright.com

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1512 Pacheco St, Ste D206 • Santa Fe, NM 87505 505.660.9939 • OfficeSpaceSantaFe.com • @pachecoparksf ache

J

JOSE VAREL A

ose Varela, owner of Artistic Gates, crafts custom metal gates and steel sculptures that conjure the surrealism and undulating forms of Salvador Dali. In stunning ranch and estate entrance gates, side pillars, walking gates, garden doors, and fencing, Varela’s is a functional artistry, marked with unique patinas and textures. “I’ve always been fascinated with the psychological tensions represented in doorways and gateways,” he says. “There’s a preternatural anticipation of what lies beyond the threshold, the potential act of forgetting once a threshold is crossed, and the definitions of memory sealed with a door’s closing.”

Born in Mexico, Varela migrated to the U.S. in 2000 and launched his business four years later. His steel sculptures—which began small-scale and have progressed to large-scale abstractions—have been featured in a number of local and state exhibitions as well as in various publications. Both his art and custom metal work are sought after throughout the Southwest, where he makes his home in Bernalillo, New Mexico.

artisticgates.us

vcreationsllc.com | 505-261-9732

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Garden Gate 3’ x 7’, steel and flagstone (2017) Top: Caballos Relinchandos, 16' x 12', steel, wood and flagstone (2010) Opposite: Magnificent Gate, steel, 20' x 9' (2018) 36" x 36" x 7' 6", base 36" trendmagazineglobal.com

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Full Moon Rise over Rio Chama, Abiquiu, NM

photo by walter nelson

ABIQUIU MUSEUM WITHOUT WALLS abiquiuguide.org | abiquiustudiotour.org | abiquiunews.com

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JIM WOODSON

“Memory images serve to identify, interpret, and supplement perception.

No neat borderline separates a purely perceptional image—if such there is— from one completed by memory . . .” —Rudolf Arnheim

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T

his group of paintings draws inspiration from the high desert of New Mexico.

Part of this inspiration involves an inner landscape that takes place in the imagination while visiting these places. This inner landscape is concerned with dreams, memories, thought fragments, and stream of consciousness. With a contextual placement or overlay of inner and outer worlds, I hope to convey my own thoughts about the nature of imagination. I work to achieve a sense of the imagination’s movement against a relatively unchanging environment.

I’m interested in calling attention to the act of painting as well as to how one understands visual conventions by combining self-referential marks and forms with more traditional rendering. I hope these juxtapositions enliven the surface and create an ambiguous space that causes the viewer to question notions about perceptual

Continuous Transitioning Premonitory Convergences (2017), oil on canvas, 60" x 288" (three 8' panels) Top: Discerned Inward Temporal Saturations (2018), oil on canvas, 60" x 84" Previous page: Determined Insistent Conflated Emergences (2018), oil on canvas, 60" x 84"

TOP LEFT: BARBARA MOORE; ALL OTHERS COURTESY OF VALLEY HOUSE GALLERY AND SCULPTURE GARDEN, DALLAS TEXAS, GALLERY@VALLEYHOUSE.COM

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Recovered Arising Perceived Emanations (2017), oil on canvas, 24" x 48" Top: Temporal Conflated Disturbance (2017), oil on canvas, 30" x 40"

space. With these works, I provide the viewer choices that lie between dualities like cultural and natural, perspectival and encompassed, near and far, representational and abstract, mythic time and geologic time, movement and stillness.

Most of all, I would like my concerns with the landscape to be understood as verbs rather than nouns.

jimwoodsonart.com

jimwoodsonart@gmail.com | 505-929-7489 | studio visits by appointment | Jim Woodson - VIMEO.com trendmagazineglobal.com

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A Woman’s Place Finding focus and clarity among Abiquiu’s natural landscapes and cultural diversity

BY RENA DISTASIO PORTRAITS BY PETER OGIVLIE

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Of all the enchanted spots in New Mexico, perhaps none has reached such mythic status as Abiquiu. Famous as the home of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived and worked there from 1945 until her death in 1986, Abiquiu is the backdrop against which the O’Keeffe legend unfolded, a tale told of the artist as environmental alchemist who abstracted from the simple elements around her—mesa and sky, flower and bone—a visual language of epic proportions.

But O’Keeffe was not the first—nor would she be the last—woman to decamp polite East Coast society for New Mexico. In her meticulously researched book Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest, author Leslie Poling-Kempes, an Abiquiu resident since 1976, tells the stories of a series of 19thcentury women who came to the wilds of New Mexico and, she writes, “. .-. imagined and created a new home territory, a new society, and a new identity for themselves and for all the women who would follow them.”

TREND art + design + architecture + cuisine 2020

TOP: LAURA GILPIN, COURTESY OF AMON CARTER MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART; OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF PAULA NARBUTOVSKIH

Poling-Kempes fell in love with Ghost Ranch during visits as a child, and the quest to tell its story led her to other, mostly unsung, ladies of the canyon. “We were used to hearing about the famous and iconic, like Mabel Dodge and O’Keeffe, but they didn’t give us a wide enough perspective,” she says. “We need more than the extreme and the ultra-successful. We need to share stories about ordinary women who did extraordinary things.”

Natalie Curtis was one, a talented musician who dedicated most of her life to cataloging the songs of New Mexico’s Puebloan people. Another, Carol Stanley, spent years running guest ranches in the Santa Fe area before taking over a former outlaw camp that her estranged husband had won in a poker game. She renamed it Ghost Ranch.

Just as these pioneering women discovered their calling in the wilds of New Mexico, so too have some present-day Abiquiu-based women artists found focus and clarity of vision here. Inspired by the natural landscapes and cultural diversity, they contribute in unique and powerful ways to the artistic canon of the American Southwest.

Back in the 1980s, the owners of the Taos gallery that was the first in New Mexico to show sculptor Star Liana York’s work were cautioned by the former owner not to bother with female artists. “He told them that we just don’t sell,” York says. Luckily, the new owners ignored the advice, and she became their best-selling artist.

Star Liana York in Copper Canyon on Zena O’Lena, a quarter horse mare born on her ranch, who she raised and trained. Top: Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch in 1953 trendmagazineglobal.com

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Star Liana York in her studio with two of her works in progress

A pioneer in her chosen media, York is today one of the foremost artists of cast bronze sculptures in the country, creating highly expressive works that reflect her passion for New Mexico’s wildlife and Native peoples. Her keen ability to imbue her subjects with both complexity and quiet grandeur has made her a favorite with collectors around the world, and her work has been featured in dozens of galleries and exhibitions throughout the country—including a retrospective at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

York learned the art of lost-wax casting at her high school in suburban Maryland just outside of DC, and she was enjoying brisk sales of her miniature sculptures even before graduating from the University of Maryland with a BA in Fine Art. Her work underwent a profound change in 1982, however, when the Smithsonian Institution commissioned her to sculpt an Anasazi Indian working on a sand painting. “I was used to doing tiny little things, and this piece was supposed to be a crouching man this big,” she says, holding her hand about three feet from the floor. “That was huge to me at the time.” It also opened up the opportunity to explore the subtleties of human facial expression, a skill for which she would become famous.

The commission also sparked an interest in sculpting the peoples and cultures of the American Southwest, an interest that deepened after she and her first husband, the writer Rodney 132

TREND art + design + architecture + cuisine 2020

Barker, moved to New Mexico in 1985, in part because York was looking for a foundry that could handle her work and found it at Weston Studio-Foundry in Santa Fe. Barker was also working on his book The Broken Circle, a true-crime story that takes place outside the Navajo reservation near Farmington. York often accompanied him on his interviews, and the friends she made and the cultural understanding she gained as a result would inspire her work for many years.

She is, however, perhaps best-known for her wildlife sculpture.

Surprisingly, for many years she resisted exploring this work, in spite of her lifelong love of animals and her series of large-scale bronzes inspired by ancient pictographs. “I thought, there are so many competent people out there, what would I bring to it?”

Her move to Abiquiu in 1995 after her divorce changed all that.

On any given day on the 40 scenic acres she shares with her second husband, seven horses, and four dogs, she’ll spot various wild animals, from elk and deer to hawks and the ever-present ravens. An avid horsewoman and former polocrosse player, she says, “I came up here originally because I wanted to breed horses, but it wound up being so much more than that because of how inspiring it was to be around so much wildlife. A big change for me was being a lot more conscious of the animals who live around here.”

In the process of bringing these animals to life, her work, while still representational, took on a more contemplative quality.

WENDY MCEAHERN (2)

Neither emblems of ferocity nor of Disney-style cuteness, her animal subjects are fully themselves and confident in their environments, separate from the preconceptions of the human gaze.

“To this day what most interests me about doing these pieces is the heart of it, trying to find that incredible personality inside the idea, inside the sculpture,” York says. “I want my animals to have a personality, and that’s what keeps me going back.”

Her life in New Mexico, she says, hasn’t just inspired her work, it’s also helped her, in ways both practical and spiritual, to find the focus required to bring it to such vivid life. “The more you open up to this place, the more it reveals itself,” she says.

Star Liana York, Touch the Earth (2017), cast bronze. Right: Star Liana York, Rocksie (2010), cast bronze

“There’s a reason why they call it the Land of Enchantment. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

Painter Paula Narbutovskih, who was born and raised in a small Pennsylvania town an hour north of Erie, has found her inspiration in the way the desert allows her to see “the bones of the Earth.”

A lifelong student of both the early 20th-century American painters and the European classics, she is a talented draftsperson and colorist, her work revealing a love of form, of light, of the play of color, while at the same time hinting at something wild and even otherworldly beneath the grid of visual reality.

Her father, an engineer with Westinghouse during the week and a Sunday painter on the weekends, regularly took his family on museum outings. “We didn’t just walk through and glance here and there,” Narbutovskih says, “we looked at every painting, so he really taught me how to look at art.” When she was 12, he bought her a set of oil paints. “There was no looking back after that.”

Yet when it came time to study painting, her parents balked. She spent two years focusing on architecture at Penn State, thinking it was the practical thing to do, before dropping out and heading to Europe. Reinvigorated by the experience, she returned home and enrolled at Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia. Later, after moving to New York City and meeting her first husband, who was a student at the New York Academy of Art, she studied composition, lighting, and color under his guidance.

The marriage didn’t last, but her love of classical composition and her desire to find her niche in the art world did. Visits to friends in Abiquiu and several summers spent hiking the National Parks in Utah cemented her love of the Southwest.

“What attracted me to the desert were the infinite possibilities,” she says, “the sheer beauty, at times the stark landscape stripped of the vegetation that hides the contours of wetter parts of the trendmagazineglobal.com

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Paula Narbutovskih in her studio working on Cliff Swallows in the Maze, oil on linen

COURTESY OF PAULA NARBUTOVSKIH

Right: Paula Narbutovskih, Life’s Residues (2018), oil on 100-percent rag paper

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country. It matches something about the way that I see life.”

One day, back in New York City, “It finally dawned on me: I was looking out these windows down these streets but what I was seeing were the canyons.” So she headed west in 1980, working first as a ranger at Chaco Canyon, where she formed close friendships with the Navajo people who worked with her. They also introduced her to her second husband, with whom she had a daughter. She moved to Abiquiu in 1990 and since 2018 has lived just south of there, in the village of Medanales.

Her paintings, she says, began as a way to “document the landscapes of the dying West, to paint all those beautiful landscapes before they are gone.” While she works from photographs she takes while out and about and then imposes a compositional grid atop her canvases, what emerges, she says, “comes from the heart.”

With their bright, sometimes downright psychedelic colors and animated, vibrating line and form, her works mix pop and graphic art energy with a hushed surrealism. This duality—the deliberate, classical structure underpinning a mystical landscape—illustrates what she calls the “reality behind the reality,” a way of seeing she in part absorbed from life with her now-ex-husband and his people, intertwined her own deeply spiritual beliefs.

An active member of the Native American Church, Narbutovskih

believes that everything that exists is part of the mind of God. If true, then perhaps everything that exists in the mind—and heart—of the artist represents the conduit between heaven and earth, reality and spirit.

Painter and sculptor Hebé García’s move from her native Puerto Rico to Abiquiu in 2015 was likewise a personal and professional reboot. While she hasn’t been there as long as York and Narbutovskih, she found the region to be just as inspiring, allowing her to more deeply express her interest in what she calls on her website “the internal and external mysteries of humanity.”

García studied painting and ceramics at Louisiana State University, from which she graduated cum laude with a BA in Fine Arts. Technological realities derailed her plans to then head to Europe for additional study—nothing was digital then and she could not afford to transfer her work to slides. Instead, she returned home to Puerto Rico, got married, and helped raise two daughters. She began to paint again after her daughters graduated from high school, made a foray into sculpture, and built a following in the Puerto Rican art world.

In 2013, as a way to de-stress after one of her daughters’ weddings, she attended a workshop conducted by sculptor Deborah Fritts. Her husband, who tagged along to hike while she worked,

Hebé García in her new habitat, marked by Georgia O’Keeffe’s beloved Cerro Pedernal in the distance trendmagazineglobal.com

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PETER OGILVIE; TOP: COURTESY OF HEBÉ GARCÍA

Hebé García’s studio. On the easel is Contemplaciones: Y ahora qué? (2017), acrylic on cradled Ampersand Gessobord. Top: Hebé García, Contemplaciones: Sin prisa (2017), acrylic on canvas

COURTESY OF HEBÉ GARCÍA

Hebé García, Viajeros (2020), coil-built mid-fire red sculpture clay, oxide, and glaze

is the one who suggested they eventually move to the Santa Fe area. Two years later, with both their daughters living in the States, they made the move to Abiquiu and built their home and García’s studio atop a scenic mesa with 360-degree views that include the Cerro Pedernal and Black Mesa.

García says they immediately felt at home, pointing out that as someone who had spent a lot of time on the ocean, the large expanse of desert didn’t intimidate her. “New Mexico is also very similar to Puerto Rico in that you also have the Hispanics, the Natives, the Americans, so we ‘get’ this place. We feel extremely accepted.” Especially, she says, by the artistic community, which she says is giving, kind, and helpful.

García’s studio, set apart from the house by a short walkway, is divided into two sections, one for painting and one for sculpting.

A lifelong painter, García turned to clay back in 2010 as a way to

loosen up. “I used to paint much more like this,” she says, pointing to a series of highly detailed representational portraits, “and clay was a way of not being so meticulous, so perfect.”

Central to García’s work in both media is an emphasis on texture and on the human figure, the former lending a tactile immediacy to the pieces and the latter serving as avatars for the artist’s explorations of psyche, identity, culture, and shared narratives.

“The human aspect of life has always intrigued me,” she says, “the stories that it tells.” And much in the way storytellers weave their spells, so too does her art, toggling between the real and surreal, with dreamlike, almost fairytale qualities.

A series of ceramic busts called Conversations in Silence explore the ways in which we communicate without saying anything. “All conversations are surrounded by silence somehow,” she says.

“You can express yourself without talking—people can hear you.”

Her Viajeros—travelers—are approximately foot-high sculptures of women walking, bundled up in floor-length garments, their faces featureless. The series is, among other things, a feminist exploration of the burdens women carry. “They are about the past several years, the #metoo movement, the border wall. They represent us women as a group, walking together, sticking together, carrying our burdens with us.

They walk with closed eyes because you have to trust in yourself.

That’s the only way to keep on going.”

Birds are another common theme in García’s work. “They express freedom to me, and are a symbol of survival,” she says.

In some of her paintings, ravens are the companions to the female figures walking horizontally across the canvas. In more recent works, the figures walk toward the viewer, inviting direct engagement in the themes of psychological and physical freedom. “These are about how we as a people have always traveled,” García says. And, through that travel, seek not only improvement but also inspiration.

Certainly, her experience has now become part of the rich history of all women who defied conventions and followed their inner voices to parts unknown. “Change your vocation, change your situation,” she says. “We are always looking for a better way of life.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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DEBRA FRITTS

F

igurative ceramic sculptures by Debra Fritts allow the viewer to feel and connect on many different levels. These bodies in clay speak a universal language of mystery, hope, and solitude.

“As a child I always had dirt under my fingernails from playing in the creek behind my home,” says Fritts. “I have continued to allow the earth to feed me information for my art and daily living. Working intuitively from pounds of wet clay, forms appear and stories develop. I may be questioning an occurrence or celebrating a relationship or just being present in daily life. At the present, I am exploring new territory in the West while embracing my Southern heritage.”

In a renovated building in Abiquiu, New Mexico, that was once a chicken coop, Fritts creates her one-of-a-kind sculptures with large coils of clay. She etches lines into the wet surfaces to create a personal language and then incorporates dry pieces of clay that record the history of the pieces. Each sculpture may be fired in a kiln three to five times depending on the color and surface she’s trying to achieve. She then uses a combination of slips, oxides, glazes, and underglazes on the clay surface in a painterly way.

Fritts has garnered national recognition for her work in ceramic sculpture through invitational exhibitions and awards, museum exhibitions and collections, gallery representation, and publications, and her work abounds in private collections. She also conducts national and international workshops in figurative sculpture with a focus on individual expression. “The search continues until I reach the core: the spiritual level of the sculpture,” she reflects. “Then the work can speak.”

debrafrittsartist.com

| Studio: Abiquiu, NM | 505-685-9468

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From left: Queen (2019), stoneware, 29" x 10" x 16" In My Quiet (2019), stoneware, 22" x 10" x 6" Three Wishes (2019), stoneware, 13" x 9" x 7" trendmagazineglobal.com

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DOUG COFFIN Doug Coffin Fine Art

| PO Box 938, 58 County Road 159, Abiquiu, NM 87510

505.685.4128 | dougcoffin@gmail.com

M

ost artists in Abiquiu began life in another place.

For sculptor and painter Doug Coffin, that was Lawrence, Kansas, at what is now Haskell Indian Nations University, an hour from his reservation, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation.

Coffin first visited New Mexico in 1955 with his parents at the age of eight. By the end of his first day in Santa Fe, he was hooked. He has lived in New Mexico for over 40 years, the last 27 spent on a mesa top in Abiquiu with his wife, filmmaker Kaären Ochoa.

Abiquiu, Coffin believes, “allows you to experience and appreciate light and time in a different way—in tune with the seasons, the land, sun, moon, stars, and all of nature.” Coffin built his studio out of rammed earth, which enhances this connection.

His often brightly colored steel sculptures, paintings, and other works have exhibited internationally at the Grand Palais in Paris, through the Art in Embassies Program, and in private collections.

They’ve appeared everywhere from the White House Sculpture Garden to the National Museum of the American Indian.

His Spirit Totem project, five 30-foot contemporary steel totems, will be installed at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City later this year.

“I’m working on a new sculpture concept and feel hopeful and lucky to live on our mesa, surrounded by the beauty of Abiquiu,” Coffin says.

DOUG COFFIN; TOP RIGHT: LEE CLOCKMAN; OPPOSITE: KAÄREN OCHOA

Right: Snake Dance Shaman, unpainted steel, 12' Below: Abiquiu Cosmos, mixed media on panel, 7' x 13' Opposite: Doug Coffin in his studio

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ABIQUIU

Connecting People to Build a Stronger Community

From the Ground Up

915 bags of roadside trash picked up for 8 miles in 28 months

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How We Live

BY CYNDY TANNER | PHOTOS BY AUDREY DERELL

Elegant Mutations Artist-couple BUNNY TOBIAS and CHARLES GREELEY never stop reinventing

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ou might guess that with over six decades of prolific art-making, multimedia artists Bunny Tobias and Charles Greeley might have slowed down a bit—but you would be mistaken. Both from New York City, they met in the 1960s while studying painting at the School of Visual Arts. “My interest in Charles had to do to a large extent with our differences,” says Tobias, raised in Brooklyn in a secular Jewish family, while Greely grew up Irish Catholic in Manhattan. “He was so attractive to me because he was so outside the framework of my familiar. Plus he was Irish. And funny.”

The two ended up pursuing a life of art together, and since 1972, they’ve occupied a 300-year-old adobe house in Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, where they’ve dug into rural life. Every horizontal space of the home is studded with Tobias’ assemblage work as well as paintings and ceramics by both artists. From 1996 to 2014, the house and its morphing studio spaces served as the couple’s beloved Gallery Zipp, which represented an eclectic assortment of Santa Fe artists. “People like to ask us about our past,” Tobias says, “but what is more exciting to us is whatever we are doing now. We’re still here, we’re still working, we’re still inventing ourselves.”

Reinvention has been an ever-present theme in both artists’ lives. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in 1963, Greeley traveled in Europe and Morocco for a year, and then they got married. In Marrakesh, Greeley was inspired by the mesmerizing patterning in Moroccan tile

Bunny Tobias and Charles Greeley with Greeley’s painting Pompeii (2018), acrylic on canvas, which was awarded Best of Show at the 2019 Santa Fe Art Fair. Tobias is wearing her necklace Shield (2015), made of bronze metal clay.

work and the process of tessellation— an arrangement of shapes closely fitted together by tiling a flat surface or plane using geometric shapes without any overlaps or gaps. This was an early influence on his paintings that later included ancient symbols, double helixes, and intricate, interwoven patterns.

Resistant to any definition or labelling of their work that ended in “ism,” they both started to feel that the art scene in Manhattan was restrictive and hyperfocused on Abstract Expressionism. After

a six-month painting hiatus in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, followed by a stint working in Houston, Texas, they moved to San Francisco, where the counterculture movement and Summer of Love were in full swing. After watching a news segment about a demonstration in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Tobias told Greeley: “We are flower children. We belong there.”

With little money and not a stick of furniture, their first purchase was an intricately woven prayer rug that they displayed like a painting in their aparment. trendmagazineglobal.com

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How We Live

Determined to make art their priority, they supported themselves with a variety of odd jobs—Tobias a gregarious travel concierge while Greeley worked at the airport, where part of his job was checking in body bags returning home from Vietnam. Meanwhile, Greeley dug into visionary painting and enjoyed a good reception in the Bay Area, though Tobias felt she was sidelined as a female artist. She shifted from graphite drawings based on natural imagery to the earliest of her assemblage art, constructing fantastical sculptures out of wood and fabric and beginning to explore and teach herself ceramics.

It wasn’t long before the two hankered for another adventure, though. They visited New Mexico and were smitten. They bought their patch of land, acquired two horses, and proceeded to become an indelible part of the Santa Fe artist community.

They were included in various biennial museum shows and showed at the iconic Hill’s Gallery and Elaine Horwitch Galleries, which were instrumental in creating local platforms for Contemporary art. Museums as well as private collectors acquired their work, and Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum featured a ten-year Tobias–Greeley retrospective in 1979. Their work was featured in a PBS documentary about New Mexico artists, and as a result, Disney commissioned

Tobias and Greeley on their property in Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, with their shelter dog Sadie (left) and a playmate.

them individually to produce work for their annual Collector’s Memorabilia Auction.

It’s still a rugged, mud-slick climb to the mountain road to their compound, and it is here that Tobias and Greeley work without an iota of lost momentum. In the living room, an antique white birdcage suspended from the ceiling is festooned with feathers, porcelain doll parts, crystal prisms, and antique silver tea strainers.

“My homage to the bowerbird,” Tobias quips.

Tobias’ studio is just a few steps away from the house in a rustic log cabin with designated areas for assemblage work, ceramics, painting, and a small kiln for firing bronze clay metal jewelry. Drawn to objects that have been forsaken or forgotten, her work can feel very much like a nest

of salvaged parts. She assembles found objects, shells, bones, and rusted parts with dry yet profound wit. “For me, it’s about reimagining objects with a new way of seeing,” she says. Often, Tobias will hold on to objects for years, and an assemblage piece may remain undone until “the right object appears.”

In the dining room a mixed-media sculpture assemblage by Tobias titled Chrysalis is composed of driftwood, a metal vase adorned with a cherub, a crackled doll’s head, an antique hatpin, and a rubber grasshopper. “When I found this piece of driftwood on the property I thought it looked just like a bird’s head,” Tobias explains. As it came together she had the realization that it was a birth, and a creature emerged. “I work with the ele-

The couple’s home. Its living room and dining room once housed Gallery Zipp and remains replete with their paintings and sculptures.

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Top: Charles Greeley, Truchas, NM (2015), Japanese paper collage.

Middle: Japanese paper collages from Greeley’s 2019 Face series, inspired by the #MeToo movement. Bottom: Greeley in his studio with his painting Endangered Species (2020), acrylic on canvas

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How We Live

Works by Bunny Tobias, clockwise from top left: Eye Pendant (2020), bronze metal clay, glass, and Swarovski crystal; Chrysalis (2019), mixed media; a painting from the San Miguel de Allende series (2020), acrylic on canvas; Homage to the Bird Bower (2019), mixed media 150

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Bronze metal clay jewelry by Tobias, part of the Bijoux Art collection. Right: Tobias’ studio is compartmentalized by her work in different media.

ments until something magical happens, and for me the process is like a state of perfection. I like to leave the world behind when I make things.”

A recent enterprise, Bijoux Art, combines her passion for ceramics and jewelry design. Beginning with a ball of bronze clay that can be sculpted, rolled, textured, fabricated, and sanded, Tobias then fires pieces in a digital kiln. The organic binder burns out, resulting in pure bronze jewelry pieces that are embellished with Swarovski crystals and gemstones. The collection shows at Form & Concept gallery in Santa Fe. In addition to teaching at the Santa Fe Community College, Tobias also facilitates jewelry design workshops where participants make bead necklaces from patterned, colorful Japanese washi paper. This practice comes from a medium crossover with Greeley, who had been using the paper in Southwest landscape collages.

With his leftover scraps, Tobias began the meditative process of making rolled paper beads, eventually fashioning them into necklaces. Teaching is something she’s enjoyed since before she moved to New Mexico, finding it propels her own sense of discovery. “Helping someone enjoy the creative process—without the critical conceptions of what art is or supposed to look

like—is so gratifying,” she says.

Meanwhile, a few steps off the dining room, Greeley’s cosmic universe and carefully curated chaos reigns. Amid a maze of paintings and collage works are 3-foot-tall, clear plastic bags filled with magazine and art catalog images alongside shelves and tables stacked with art books. Greeley also works with paint, clay, and collage, but the similarities to his wife’s work end there.

His abstract paintings are highly refined graphic tapestries where design motifs interweave with seemingly doodled details.

Ancient symbols, Celtic knots, double wedding ring quilt patterns, and decorative Victorian calendar imagery hide in plain sight. Periodically Greeley likes to take a break from painting and work in other mediums, including clay and paper collage. “I’m interested in creating mesmerizing patterns that become meditative in execution,” he says. “Alternating between painting and paper landscapes provides me with a fresh viewpoint, opening up a new world because of the relative ease of working with paper as opposed to paint,” he says. “When I am making a paper collage I feel like I’m painting with paper.”

A New Year’s Day tradition for Tobias and Greeley is to make something totally different from anything they have done before. Recently, while looking for trans-

parencies from the 1980s, Tobias came across graphite drawings from 1966 that she made while living in San Miguel de Allende. “I love the idea that I had come across something so old.” The resulting project for 2020 is a group of airy paintings with floating organic shapes. Greeley’s New Year’s Day endeavor included technicolor fish, prompted by the dire impact of climate change on the oceans.

As independent as their artistic processes are, both are fueled by a daily ritual of late-morning coffee in Greeley’s studio.

“We constantly inspire each other by looking at different images together, talking about what we see, and also by going to see museum and gallery exhibitions,” Tobias says. “It also helps that we really love each other’s work,” Greeley adds. “We gift each other with pieces that we know the other one loves. This way a few of our favorite pieces get to stay in the family.”

The French word collage—to glue or stick together by using different forms to create a new whole—is an apt metaphor for Tobias and Greeley’s approaches to art, both individually and in tandem. By erasing the boundaries between disciplines and metamorphosing objects and ideas, these two continue to craft a creative existence. “The day I met Bunny was the luckiest day of my life,” adds Greeley.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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BY APRIL REESE | PORTRAIT BY PETER OGILVIE

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PETER OGILVIE

yan Montaño and Mick Jagger share something in common, and it’s not just their profession. Like Jagger, Montaño possesses ample lips, the kind that some women pay thousands of dollars in Botox injections to create. But while Jagger uses his to enthrall a crowd, pouting and sneering through, say, “Under My Thumb,” Montaño’s smackers are an extension of his instrument. “I think they give me an advantage,” he says, sitting in the living room of the small Rio Rancho home he shares with his girlfriend, a Miles Davis poster hanging a few feet away. In marrying control and feeling, Montaño’s lips can evoke a languid lament one moment and an acrobatic crescendo of joy the next.

Montaño, whose career has seen a steady climb since his first official radio single was released in 2014, has been putting brass to lips since he was 12 years old. Growing up in Tijeras, the second youngest child in a large musical family, Montaño’s parents and siblings encouraged him to pursue music. After years of daily practice, local and touring gigs, and a detour into acting and a videography career—Montaño was the University of New Mexico’s videographer for a time and still freelances as one—he now makes a living almost entirely from music. Over the past six years, two of his singles, “I’d Like That” and “Honey Girl,” reached the top 15 on the Billboard jazz charts, establishing Montaño as a national artist, and his live performances— most notably a buzz-worthy performance at the Seabreeze Jazz Festival in Florida in 2015 and, more recently, as musical director of a local ensemble he handpicked for the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce event La Noche Encantada in February—have made him a sought-after live act.

“I’ve always believed in myself,” he says. “If I look back, even like three years ago, it’s terrible.

Why would I think I could do that on a national or international level? But I guess I’m a little bit crazy.”

Montaño, who is loose and playful on stage and serious, polite, and contemplative offstage, attributes his success not only to his musical

Albuquerque’s Renaissance Man One of the city’s top brass ascends to the national stage

Ryan Montaño’s original song “Soulfully” is his latest single and first collaboration with Grammy-award winning producer Darren Rahn since their 2015 hit “Honey Girl.” trendmagazineglobal.com

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skill and confidence but also to his adeptness at self-promotion. Every day after practice, he’s on the computer, reaching out to promoters, bookers, radio programmers, and potential collaborators. “For every 20 emails I send, I get one response,” he says. “It’s usually a ‘no.’” But every now and then it’s a “yes”—and some of those yeses have made a crucial difference in his career.

One of them came from Darren Rahn, an accomplished producer based in Denver. Montaño’s high school band director knew Rahn, a connection he mentioned in his email. After listening to Montaño’s music, Rahn agreed to collaborate, and a few months later “I’d Like That”—a playful, funky tune with a melody just as earwormworthy as that of any pop song—was born.

The single was Montaño’s second professional release. Since then, the two have collaborated on two other singles.

“He’s got a pretty complex musical mind,

Ryan Montaño and his band have headlined the main stage of Albuquerque’s International Balloon Fiesta for several years.

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he has a very fine ear, and he has very distinct taste, so my job as a producer is to bring that into focus,” Rahn says. While some musicians need a lot of direction, Montaño requires little guidance, he adds.

“Ryan is a very, very capable musician. He plays at a pretty high level, so I think my job is to let him express himself. I focus on letting him come through, because he’s a good enough musician for that.”

Reflecting on his career so far, Montaño says he feels a certain satisfaction in having been his own boss. “What I’m most proud of is that everything I’ve accomplished has been through my own hard work,” he says.

“I’m not beholden to anybody, I’m not with a record label.”

Montaño’s laser focus is now aimed at songwriting—he cites John Mayer and Norah Jones as recent influences—and strengthening the Albuquerque music community. “Whatever success I’ve had, I feel it’s my professional and social responsibility to pay it forward,” he says. That can include encouraging an up-and-coming musician to negotiate a higher rate for a gig, connecting one artist with another, or using his video skills to help another musi-

cian create a professional video. “That’s really, really important to me,” he says. In the age of the internet, musicians can build a successful career anywhere, he adds. “You don’t have to live in Los Angeles or New York. I really want to show people that it’s possible, through believing in yourself and hard work.”

In the coming months, Montaño will play the Myrtle Beach Jazz Festival in South Carolina in October and will release his second album, Truth Journey. It chronicles his experience trying to find his way to his own musical truth while also attempting to bring his music to as many people as possible.

Montaño can do anything he wants to do, and that includes crossing over into other genres, Rahn says. “Ryan is a very wellrounded musician, so I think even though Ryan has been making a name in the smooth jazz industry, he’s capable of playing far beyond smooth jazz,” Rahn says.

As for Montaño, he’ll keep playing his trumpet, writing songs that challenge him, and sending out those emails. “I hope I’m in the middle of an ascension, and my goals now are to not take it for

DOMINIC MONTAÑO

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Passion of the Palate NEW MEXICO’S CULINARY INSPIRATION

Wild salmon with herbed Farmers Market summer vegetables topped with horseradish and beet crème fraîche at 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar PHOTO BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM

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Passionof thePalate Passion of thePalate

Rebuilding From Within

New Mexico restaurants and food organizations pivot creatively and hope for a better post-pandemic industry

Clockwise from top left: Hue-Chan Karels of Open Kitchen; Louis Moskow of 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar; Martin Rios of Restaurant Martín; Matt Yohalem of Il Piatto Italian Farmhouse Kitchen; Fernando Olea of Sazón 166

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JOHN KARELS; DOUGLAS MERRIAM; KATE RUSSELL (2); MICHAEL JENSEN

BY MARK OPPENHEIMER

FROM TOP: MICHEAEL JENSEN (2), ANNE STAVELEY

“Every time we have a problem, we also have big opportunities,” says Chef Fernando Olea of Sazón restaurant in Santa Fe of the COVID-19 crisis. “Everything is going to change . . . unfortunately many restaurants are affected and only some will survive.”

According to the New Mexico Restaurant Association, at least 3 percent of the state’s 3,500 restaurants have permanently closed. Two-thirds of all restaurant employees, 47,000 people, have been laid off or furloughed. Restaurants also reported a 61 percent decline in sales for those that remained open.

Matt Yohalem, chef and owner of Il Piatto Italian Farmhouse Kitchen in Santa Fe, raises concerns about reopening, which restaurants were permitted to do at 50 percent capacity in early June. “To recreate the theatrical experience of hospitality in masks, how’s that going to work? We’re not just selling food, we’re selling an experience . . . I’m here looking for light at the end of the tunnel, and I see a distant flicker.”

Many owners, though, have experienced an unexpected boon from forced time off, which, even as it has crippled profits, has led to profound personal reflection that might benefit restaurant and food organizations going forward.

“We’re calling it a pivot,” says Louis Moskow, chef and owner of 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar. “I’ve had a fantasy project for some time to do a global line of frozen dumplings: kreplach, pot stickers, empanadas, ravioli, turnovers, pierogi, and gnocchi.” These are now available to go. “Moving forward, I’ll probably open earlier in the day and in the afternoon for an early dinner or cocktail hour. This would provide service to people who want to go out with less people to deal with.”

He also says that the ramifications of the pandemic have inspired a reconnection to the values that give meaning to his life.

“I love the solitude. It’s been a welcome change. Competing in the rat race for 30 years solid, this break has given me the opportunity to live my life again and put things into perspective for the life that I want to live. I’m no longer going to be occupied mentally or physically with my career, and know that I can actually go away and let things be, whatever is going to happen is going to happen.”

Annamaria O’Brien, chef and owner at Dolina, has similarly been drawn to the disruption brought on by the virus. “It forced me to slow down, to eliminate unimportant things that you get in an nonstop loop of ‘doing.’ This time has reminded me to see what is important in my life and what balances me to be a better person, inside and out.”

From top: Jennifer Hart of Love Apple; Andy Lynch of Common Fire; Annamaria O’Brien of Dolina trendmagazineglobal.com 167

Passionof thePalate Passion of thePalate

Clockwise, from top: Sazón’s guacamole with green onions and jalapenos; seasonal wild edibles at 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar; seasonal spread at Il Piatto Italian Farmhouse Kitchen, including house-cured salmon and squid-ink ravioli, squash blossoms, teardrop tomato salad, and house-cured smoked ham with peach and basil

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JOSLYN BAKER; DOUGLAS MERRIAM; KATE RUSSELL

Jennifer Rios, general manager and co-owner of Restaurant Martín with her husband, Chef Martin Rios, concurs. “In a lot of ways I enjoyed the closed times,” she says, noting that they’ve had a chance to regroup in the quiet setting of their Tesuque home. Now, they’re open for dinner and lunch again (a service they’d stopped last September), luring customers back with the charm of their outdoor dining area in the patio.

Like Chef Moskow, others have also changed their menus to accommodate those who might not be comfortable dining in at this point.

At Sazón, Chef Olea came up with something he calls Street Food of Mexico, “casual” items like tacos, tostadas, and flautas. “Something easy to take home,” he says. “Basically, comfort food.”

John Haas, executive chef at the M’tucci’s restaurant group in Albuquerque, had been working on a home meal replacement program even before the new coronavirus struck. “It’s a way we can supply food to people who don’t want to go out to eat, but still want to put a great meal on their table,” he explains. “So, I think we probably adapted a bit easier to this situation than most.” Even so, he says, “I hope customers will be

MICHAEL JENSEN (5)

Clockwise, from top left: Patio dining at Love Apple; the restaurant is tucked into a nature-filled Taos setting; interior dining room; owner Jennifer Hart also runs Manzanita Market, an all-organic community cafĂŠ; Manzanita Market remains a family favorite during the pandemic

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understanding. It’s going to require open-mindedness from operators and from consumers . . . it’s going to be a roller-coaster and it will be filled with some surprising, good things, and a lot of frustrations as well.”

Others aren’t so quick to revamp. Jennifer Hart of The Love Apple restaurant and Manzanita Market in Taos says, “I’m not going to completely rebrand my restaurant. The Love Apple is about ambience and the experience of being there. I’m not going to become a to-go restaurant.” Instead, Hart has rallied Taos restaurant owners to form a group that can pool resources and information. “We have no idea what is going to happen,” she says. “Thinking too far in the future doesn’t seem beneficial, because it just seems dark.”

Andy Lynch, owner of Common Fire in Taos, says that this is a chance to “take a closer, slower look at what we’re doing with our lives,” and to generally improve the food industry. “Why should there be an elaborate matrix of bad jobs in the food business? Farm workers, truck drivers, and grocery store employees are all being punished. So, it’s like, okay, let’s hurry up and put this thing back together. Or, no—let’s not.”

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As with many profound inequities that have been laid bare by the pandemic, the restaurant industry’s razor-thin margins, systematically low wages, and lack of health insurance for staff are finally getting attention. Lynch, for one, hopes we can rebuild for the better. He says he feels “radicalized by COVID,” and questions, “can I create a food production service phenomenon? An entity run by a small group of people with real jobs? If we’re going to reopen, I want to reopen with positions at $52,000 a year.” He says he hopes that consumers gain a new appreciation for the food industry and will be willing to pay more to allow for sustainable jobs.

Other alliances in the food industry are looking at the impact of the COVID-19 crisis not just on restaurants, but on food access as a whole. The nonprofit Reunity Resources, founded in 2011, has been collecting food waste from schools and restaurants to create highnutrient compost used on a community farm that donates healthy food to local hunger efforts. Program director Juliana Ciano explains that the closing of restaurants has impacted many players in an interconnected food system. “There is a newly heightened awareness about local food and the realization that the most secure food

KATE RUSSELL

Passion of thePalate

CLOCKWISE ROM TOP LEFT: JOHN KARELS; DOUGLAS MERRIAM; GENEVIEVE RUSSELL; COURTESY OF M’TUCCI’S

Clockwise from top left: Hue-Chan Karels; Matt Yohalem; Nina Yozell-Epstein of Squash Blossom; John Haas of M’tucci’s.

Opposite: Restaurant Martín

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Late-night happy hour on the sidewalk patio of Il Piatto Italian Farmhouse Kitchen

is the food we’re growing in our own backyards, or that local farmers are growing. We’re seen how supply chain interruptions and heightened demand have thrown off distribution systems. So I think that’s where the value of local food has come into play for a lot of people.”

For Reunity Resources, this means building new collaborations.

“It’s all about connecting. We’re working more closely than ever with other nonprofits, farmers, and businesses in town. I think historically a great many of us operate in a little silo. Moving into the future means how do we connect the dots as efficiently and meaningfully as we can?”

Meanwhile, Nina Yozell-Epstein of Squash Blossom in Santa Fe has rebranded her restaurant wholesale produce business into a retail subscription service for people in the community. A lead distributor 172

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of local produce, Squash Blossom works with over 25 small family farms that practice traditional, low-impact farming methods.

The organization’s pivot has helped maintain an income stream for farmers.

“We never could have seen this coming,” says Yozell-Epstein, a former farmer herself. “We started to do home delivery. I’m just thankful that here at Squash Blossom we were small enough to be able to adapt quickly. Our tight network of farmers allows us to be really flexible. We were one of the first businesses to say, ‘Okay, we’re here for you. If you need a source for healthy fresh food, we’ll make it happen.’” And she sees hope for New Mexico, given the strength of its local farms and markets. “Our local food system is more intact than in a lot of other places.”

“As a community it’s important that we stick together by increasing our awareness of how we are all interconnected,” says Hue-Chan Karels, chef and owner of Open Kitchen, which throws culinary events that foster community connections while sharing Asian and internationally inspired local cuisine. “Making the effort to know and appreciate where our food comes from, who grows and harvests the food, who tends the livestock, and how it’s reaching the customer is more critical now than ever before.”

As chefs and owners struggle to revive, it can be hard to keep essential spirits alive, never mind adaptable. Historically, pandemics have caused us to reimagine urban spaces and recalibrate social norms. Yet even as six feet becomes the new standard for personal space, restaurants, farms, and food markets anchor our communities. The question the food industry is asking now is one we must also ask ourselves: Who do we want to be when this is over?

Hart does envision new possibilities. “Hopefully now we can begin to work together as a community and create new solutions—vibrant solutions—for our community and not just for us as individuals. The time to create new solutions is when things fall apart. The solutions can be good or bad, but basically what we should be creating is more interesting solutions. That’s my hope.”

Ciano echoes the sentiment. “You know, with something like the pandemic that is completely out of your control, it’s so heartwrenching. First there is this disorienting feeling. I look around and ask myself, ‘What are we going to do next?’ I find a moment of quiet and I think that the image of becoming a seed and just dropping down and waiting for the rain to fall is so beautiful. It’s all about that flexibility, shape-shifting. This is the new moment. How do we meet it?” R

DOUGLAS MERRIAM

Passion of thePalate

221 Shelby Street, Santa Fe NM 87501 505-983-8604 sazonsantafe.com Monday - Saturday Dinner Service 5 pm until closed | Bar opens at 4 pm

Passion of thePalate

Spirit of the People

BY NANCY ZIMMERMAN PHOTOS BY MARC MALIN

D

eep in the densely wooded mountains of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca lies the tiny village of San Cristóbal Lachirioag, a mystical place where Zapotec Indians have lived and worked for centuries. The region is littered with tree-shrouded ruins of palenques, the primitive stills that once converted maguey (agave) into mezcal, the alcoholic drink used by the villagers’ ancestors for the spiritual ceremonies that formed a significant part of Indigenous life.

Unfortunately, much of the town’s ancient knowledge of how to create the heady quaff has long since faded, along with San Cristóbal Lachirioag’s connection to its agricultural roots. Farmers there traditionally grew corn for export, but the rewards were slim.

Always a poor village, its financial fate was sealed with the passage in 1993 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, as local farmers were no longer able to sell their corn at prices that could sustain the growers and their families. The hard-working villagers thus did what so many of their counterparts elsewhere were doing: they came to the United States to find work as bussers, dishwashers, and waiters so they could send money home

to support their families. As some 1,400 people of working age (out of a population of around 2,200) headed north and the town emptied out, the local culture became fragmented and the people’s music, legends, spiritual beliefs, and arcane knowledge quickly lost ground.

Today, however, the culture and economy are being revived, and the key to the village’s success is mezcal. In the early 2000s, San Cristóbal native Édgar González was working in San Francisco Bay Area restaurants and bars when he began to notice that Americans, always up for enjoying the latest trends in cocktail culture, were slowly warming to the idea of mezcal as a drink one could sip, like a fine cognac or a single malt scotch. Although he had never distilled the liquor himself, he decided that producing mezcal might be a good way to employ people and give local residents a reason to return to or remain in their town. González sent some money back to his father to purchase some land where together they could begin growing agave to reestablish the craft of distilling mezcal and, along with it, the fading culture it represented.

Scott Andrews films Manuel Salcedo as he loads his above-ground horno with agave lechuguilla. Top, from left: Raicillero Manuel Salcedo next to his distillery; Roberto Contreras Junior at his family’s distillery; Bacanora distilled by Beto and Francisca Heredia; Édgar Gonzáles takes a break near his condensing vat; Gonzáles’ donkey-driven stone mill; Gonzáles uses an in-ground conical horno to cook agave; cooked agave at Finca Tosba, resulting in the smoky flavor of mezcal.

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SCOTT ANDREWS (8)

Craft-distilled mezcal from Mexico’s small producers adds an earthy sophistication to what was once considered an unrefined pleasure

Around the same time, Santa Fe–based winemaker and filmmaker Scott Andrews, then residing in Northern California, became interested in mezcal, not only for its growing appeal as a sophisticated sipping spirit but also for its Indigenous roots and fascinating history. Andrews has a master’s degree in visual anthropology from Temple University and the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe, as well as a PhD in education, anthropology, and film from Stanford University.

Through The Wisdom Archive, his nonprofit organization, Andrews produces, directs, and shoots award-winning documentary films about disappearing traditional cultures and their collective knowledge. The subject of mezcal appealed to him in particular because it combined his three passions: winemaking, ethnology, and film production.

Andrews had been seeking traditional producers to supply him with mezcal that he could age himself and then sell in the US, and González was an ideal candidate because he adhered to traditional growing and distilling methods. He cooked the maguey the time-honored way in an underground oven made of stone and adobe, then crushed it with a stone wheel called a tahona that was rotated by a horse walking in a circle. González had only found limited distribution for his mezcal, which he calls TOSBA, and Andrews saw an opportunity to help.

“I bought four barrels of a special blend made for me by Édgar, shipped it un-aged to Santa Fe, and then aged it in a variety of French and American oak barrels for anywhere from 18 months to more than three years,” Andrews says.

While waiting for all the necessary import and production permits to come through, Andrews spent his time collecting used barrels from makers of chardonnay, cabernet, port, sherry, bourbon, and brandy. He then broke them apart and cut them into six-inch-long sticks that he used to “age” different spirits in the bottle. Blind tastings with friends led him to the barrel choices he uses in his barrel-aging program today.

Andrews works with other mezcaleros throughout Mexico as well, always traditional distillers who hew to the ancient ways, which produce a clean, unadulterated product with a tantalizing smoky, earthy quality. “People often ask what the difference is between tequila and mezcal,” he says. “In fact, all tequila is mezcal, but not all mezcal is tequila. The difference is that tequila, originally produced in the Mexican town of Tequila, is made exclusively from the blue agave plants that grow in several states, and the name was restricted by law to apply only to mezcal produced from blue agave in those regions.”

The blue agave used for tequila, he says, is grown from baby shoots that are replanted. It’s a monoclonal product—a plant that reproduces asexually from a single cell—so it’s susceptible to insects and plagues, which often necessitates widespread spraying of pesticides and herbicides. “As with all agaves, the center, or piña, of the plant is mostly starch, which doesn’t ferment unless it’s cooked,” Andrews explains. “In the industrial world of tequila, cooking usually is done with steam produced by burning fuel oil in huge stone or stainless steel ovens, and there is no contact with wood, smoke, or the earth. It’s also trendmagazineglobal.com 175

Passion of thePalate

usually made with commercial yeast developed in a lab and accelerants that are added to speed fermentation. By law, producers of aged tequila are allowed to add caramel for color and glycerin to improve the mouth feel, as well as oak essence and sugar. The small producers of mezcal use none of that.”

Mezcal goes by different names throughout Mexico because in 1995, a “Mezcal Denomination of Origin” limited official mezcal production to only eight of Mexico’s 32 states and required a costly certification process that excluded many small artisanal producers. “These unregistered producers, and those outside this strictly defined region, suddenly, after 500 years, could no longer call their product mezcal,” Andrews adds. “For this reason, all our products are simply labeled as ‘Spirits Distilled From Agave, Made in Mexico.’”

Another of Andrews’ sources is mezcalero Manuel Salcedo, who distills lechuguilla agave into a brew called raicilla in the mountains above Puerto Vallarta. It has a much more herbal, mineral flavor that’s less smoky because Salcedo uses an aboveground horno that bakes without much smoke, unlike the inground ovens. “The herbal characteristics really come through,” Andrews says.

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Andrews named his aged mezcal Doña Tules in honor of Santa Fe’s legendary saloon owner, who purchased liquor in Mexico and brought it up the Turquoise Trail to her establishment, just as Andrews does today. Although he is not legally allowed to open a tasting room for his products because they are not distilled locally—“I’m a craft ager, but not a distiller,” he explains—he does sell to select restaurants, such as Sazón, Geronimo, El Farol, and Paloma in Santa Fe. Fans who want to enjoy the mezcal at home can join Andrews’ online club, For Sipping Only.

As a means of further assisting the people who actually make the mezcal, Andrews gives 50 percent of his profits back to cultural organizations and projects in each mezcalero’s village.

The other 50 percent goes to The Wisdom Archive to help fund films about disappearing traditional cultures in New Mexico and around the world.

“I want to honor the people who make this,” Andrews says.

“I’m in awe of their art, and I want it to be known.” R View a short film about Édgar González at thewisdomarchive.com.

Check out Andrews’ online mezcal club at forsippingonly.com.

MARC MALIN (3)

From left: Doña Tules Single Barrel Añejo Espadin mezcals; oak pieces cut from 11 different barrels are used to determine the most appropriate aging for each lot of mezcal in the barrel; Andrews barrel tasting to check flavor progression in his mezcal aging “cave” in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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