Saturday, September 11th
Journal:
Tina left for Heidelberg (via Albuquerque) at 6am (awoke briefly and waved goodbye). Wren woke me with a cuppa English Breakfast at 9am, as our plan was to get to the Georgia O'Keeffe museum when its doors opened at 10am. Needed to catch up with MBH and A and B, so that plan fell by the wayside (for me at least). Wren cooked up scrambled eggs on toast, then left for the museum. I made it out of the house about noon, and met her at the Plaza where the annual Santa Fe Fiesta was in full swing. Tracked down some espresso in Cafe d'Arte (shouldn't that be 'del Arte'?) in the basement in a mall off the side of the square. Sipped it walking down the street in the direction of the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, which we ended up visiting (nice and light, pastel paint job, cartoonish 14 stations of the cross -- pleasingly welcoming as opposed to coldly daunting, as many European cathedrals can be). Then across the street to the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (the MoCNA Santa Fe challenges SMoCA Scottsdale ;) -- loved 'Inert' wolfskin/taxidermy & threads of lineage piece, and 'my right of way' photos; also the room devoted to Rose Simpson's work (she just got her BFA! but then again, she's Roxanne's daughter). Headed back to the plaza and the Frida/Diego exhibit in an upstairs gallery we'd spotted from the street -- photos of Frida by eminent photographers, hosted by the Webster Collection. Very apropos, as we're listening to Barbara Kingsolver's La Lacuna (about Frida & Diego & Trotsky) in the car on our longer trips. Then Wren walked home to get the car to drive to Will Powell's on Don Gaspar, to check out his plaster work, and I walked over to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Asked directions of a woman on the corner - Mary Fahr, who worked at the Santa Fe radio station for 11 years, and now spends her summers in Steamboat CO. Loved the exhibit currently on, ending tomorrow, which gathers O'Keeffe works from major museums around the world (National Gallery, Whitney, Centre Pompidou, etc etc). Sprinkled with charming and insightful O'Keeffe quotes. EG "I'll tell you how I happened to make the blow-up flowers. In the twenties, huge buildings sometimes seemed to be going up overnight in New York. At that time I saw a painting by Fantin-Latour, a still life with flowers I found very beautiful, but I realized that were I to paint the same flowers so small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I'll make them big like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they'll have to look at them - and they did." Wren called about 3.30pm to say she was done at Will's and would I meet her at Don Gaspar x Peralta. I walked down to where she was parked and we drove over to SITE Santa Fe, the location of the Santa Fe 8th International Biennial (didn't know Santa Fe hosted an art biennial, let alone that it's been doing so for the last 8 years...but then again, didn't realize Santa Fe is generally acknowledged to be the third largest art market in the US after New York and Los Angeles). Walked into the boxy building (had a warehouse look to it, but in keeping with Santa Fe regulations, was finished in adobe) to find that 'The Dissolve' exhibition was a collection of 26 video pieces. My first reaction as I entered the dark space with screens flashing at me right and left and further down the hall, was 'how tedious', as I've been largely unimpressed by video and 'art' included in museum exhibits. But this turned out to be fabulous. Not in the Bill Viola vein of realism at all (one of the docents there to aid and inform visitors handed me that line; I haven't had time to double check whether Viola's videos would indeed bore the living daylights out of me). These films were quirky, innovative, touching; and a wide range of techniques were employed. We caught the last hour of it (4-5pm), then returned to Emaho's where Michael & Yana announced they were cooking up a gourmet meal for some friends and we were of course invited; psyche. Wrote yesterday's blog (including photos);that took over 2hrs and I didn't even finish it. Wren made a decision regarding staying in the area or making a dash for LA; the upshot is that I'll be flying out of Albuquerque. Dinner with the young crowd (Michael & Yanna; Clovis & wife & 2 1/2 year old Lucy; Jason; Rose; Ursula/Atlana; Elena) - steak with chanterelles and prosciutto, pimento de padrone, roasted bell peppers; salad of arugula and cantaloupe and sweet onion and sunflower seeds; dessert of spiced and grilled pineapple and pears over ice cream. Delish.
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