Humans and nature collude to create superior hiking (and dining) conditions on the Continental Divide Trail in Southwestern NM
","publish_start":"2013-11-06T12:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a","58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4","58f5533b46da1c146c0fc752","58b4b2404c2774661570f306"],"tags_ids":["59090e46e1efff4c9916fb37","59090ce8e1efff4c9916fa49","59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20","59090dbce1efff4c9916fae0"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_tagline":"The state’s ski resorts are eager to crank the lifts.","created":"2013-11-06T12:13:29.000Z","legacy_id":"84067","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"powder to the people","updated":"2017-05-05T01:46:09.115Z","active":true,"author":{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f25e","blog":"magazine","name":"Whitney Dreier","_name_sort":"whitney dreier","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.428Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.436Z","_totalPosts":5,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f25e","title":"Whitney Dreier","slug":"whitney-dreier","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/author/whitney-dreier/58b4b2404c2774661570f25e/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/author/whitney-dreier/58b4b2404c2774661570f25e/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.436Z","totalPosts":5},"categories":[{"_id":"58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a","title":"Travel","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"travel","updated":"2017-03-14T18:21:37.155Z","created":"2017-03-14T18:21:37.156Z","_totalPosts":179,"id":"58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a","slug":"travel","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/travel/58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/travel/58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-03-14T18:21:37.156Z","totalPosts":179},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4","blog":"magazine","title":"Going Places","_title_sort":"going places","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.493Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.506Z","_totalPosts":78,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4","slug":"going-places","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/going-places/58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/going-places/58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.506Z","totalPosts":78},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","blog":"magazine","title":"November 2013","_title_sort":"november 2013","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.592Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","_totalPosts":10,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","slug":"november-2013","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","totalPosts":10}],"image":{"_id":"58b4b2474c2774661570f470","legacy_id":"84069","title":"Main","created":"2013-11-06T13:22:23.000Z","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:06.484Z","credits":"Henry Lopez","content_owner":"magazine","tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"title_sort":"main","resource_raw":{"public_id":"clients/newmexico/main_2d877803-99cc-429a-af03-63ffc208b676","version":1488237127,"signature":"8212994c1ea1f1685c545c3db169ba40524f99de","width":488,"height":325,"format":"jpg","resource_type":"image","created_at":"2017-02-27T23:12:07.000Z","bytes":77313,"type":"upload","etag":"8c735395f72ab67534fe226ce7d55930","url":"http://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1488237127/clients/newmexico/main_2d877803-99cc-429a-af03-63ffc208b676.jpg","secure_url":"https://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1488237127/clients/newmexico/main_2d877803-99cc-429a-af03-63ffc208b676.jpg","exif":{"Copyright":"Copyright Chris McLennan. Not to be used or published in any way or form without a written license"},"original_filename":"main"},"deleted":false,"id":"58b4b2474c2774661570f470","type":"image","resource":{"raw":{"resource_type":"image","format":"jpg","public_id":"clients/newmexico/main_2d877803-99cc-429a-af03-63ffc208b676"}},"inAssetRequest":false,"alt_text":"Main"},"tags":[{"_id":"59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20","title":"Events","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"events","updated":"2017-05-02T22:48:09.170Z","created":"2017-05-02T22:48:09.171Z","_totalPosts":57,"id":"59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20","slug":"events","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/tag/events/59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/tag/events/59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-05-02T22:48:09.171Z","totalPosts":57}],"id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f919","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/powder-to-the-people-84067/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/powder-to-the-people-84067/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/powder-to-the-people-84067/","metaTitle":"Powder to the People","metaDescription":"","teaser":"","cleanDescription":"\r\n\r\n
Dust off the ski boots, try on the gear, and get ready for another fun-filled winter spent slashing down New Mexico’s various ski slopes. According to George Brooks, executive director of Ski New Mexico, “Natural snow usually starts in late October and early November.” Combining Mother Nature’s fluffy stuff with machine-made snow allows five of the state’s nine alpine ski areas to open this month. The rest follow soon thereafter.
\r\n\r\n“With a healthy snowfall, New Mexico skiing is outstanding—light dry snow, blue skies, no crowds,” says Kevin Brennan, who blogs about all things outdoors at HighDesertDirt.blogspot.com.
\r\n\r\nSo whether you’re a big-mountain skier in search of fresh powder or a beginner looking for family-friendly slopes, there are plenty of options around the state. If you prefer cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, we’ve got intel on those activities as well.
\r\n\r\nANGEL FIRE
\r\nThe only place to night ski in New Mexico.
OPENS: December 13
\r\nSTATS: Average Snowfall – 158”; Base Elevation – 8,600’; Peak Elevation – 10,677’; Vertical Drop – 2,077’
\r\nWHAT’S NEW: Powder City is a new front-of-the-mountain terrain park that stays open late for night skiing and snowboarding.
\r\nDON’T MISS: Give your skis a break and slide down the mountain on a shovel instead. The Shovel Races Championship (February 7–8) are as silly—and as serious—as the name implies. Top competitors go nearly 80 mph.
\r\n(575) 377-6401; angelfireresort.com
PAJARITO MOUNTAIN SKI AREA
\r\nSki the Jémez—downhill or cross-country.
OPENS: Early December.
\r\nSTATS: Average Snowfall – 103”; Base Elevation – 9,200’; Peak Elevation – 10,400’; Vertical Drop – 1,200’
\r\nWHAT’S NEW: The Pajarito Brewpub & Grill, in downtown Los Alamos, serves up the best food in town and stays open late. You’ll enjoy the ski décor and the vast beer menu.
\r\nDON’T MISS: Torchlight Parade (December 31). At dusk, Pajarito staff ski down the mountain holding torches, while visitors enjoy drinks and snacks on the deck.You can also access cross-country skiing trails on Forest Service land from Pajarito’s parking lot. These trails are maintained by the Southwest Nordic Ski Club (swnordicski.org).
\r\n(505) 662-5725; skipajarito.com
RED RIVER SKI AREA
\r\nMining town turned ski town—that likes to party.
\r\nOPENS: November 27
\r\nSTATS: Average Snowfall – 156”; Base Elevation – 8,750’; Peak Elevation – 10,350’; Vertical Drop – 1,600’
\r\nWHAT’S NEW: The UNM Corporate Ski Cup has a new name: the UNM Ultimate Ski & Snowboard Challenge. On January 18, 2014, compete alongside Lobo athletes in up to three races. Can’t make this weekend? The series comes to Angel Fire on January 25, Santa Fe on February 22, and Taos on March 1.
\r\nDON’T MISS: From a crawfish boil to a gator plunge, Mardi Gras in the Mountains (February 27–March 4) is a week of wild fun.
\r\n(575) 754-2223; redriverskiarea.com
SANDÍA PEAK SKI AREA
\r\nSmall mountain, big views, only 25 minutes from the Sunport.
\r\nOPENS: Late November (weather permitting).
\r\nSTATS: Average Snowfall – 118”; Base Elevation – 8,678’; Peak Elevation – 10,378’; Vertical Drop – 1,700’
\r\nWHAT’S NEW: High Finance Restaurant, atop Sandía Peak, now accepts lunch and dinner reservations through opentable.com.
\r\nDON’T MISS: Because Sandía doesn’t get as much powder as other resorts, it’s best to check their website before making plans. Snowshoeing, however, is almost always an option. Consider the Sandía Peak Snowshoe Race (January 18), which offers spectacular views of the Duke City, the Río Grande, and the Turquoise Trail. See sidebar (p. 18) for more snowshoeing opportunities.
\r\n(505) 242-9052; sandiapeak.com
SIPAPU SKI RESORT
\r\nUncrowded slopes, family-friendly atmosphere.
\r\nOPENS: November 16 (Sipapu’s earliest opening ever, and the 11th straight year the resort has been the first ski area to open in New Mexico).
\r\nSTATS: Average Snowfall – 190”; Base Elevation – 8,200’; Peak Elevation – 9,255’; Vertical Drop – 1,055’
\r\nWHAT’S NEW: Fourth- and fifth-graders ski free every day (report card required). Kids six and younger, active-duty military, and adults ski free, as do those aged 40, 60, 70, and older (special promotion).
\r\nDON’T MISS: Forget about sand castles. February Fun Fest, a free event held President’s Day weekend (February 15–17), boasts a multistory snow castle that’s full of slides, steps, and tunnels. “No one else in New Mexico builds anything like this,” says marketing director Stacey Glaser. “It takes our mountain crews a full week to create it!” In addition to the castle, the weekend includes scavenger hunts, a costume parade, face painting, and games.
(800) 587-2240; sipapunm.com
\r\n\r\nSKI APACHE
\r\nThe southernmost ski resort in the country—and it has a new gondola.
\r\nOPENS: November 28
\r\nSTATS: Average snowfall – 149”; Base Elevation – 9,600’; Peak Elevation – 11,500’; Vertical Drop – 1,900’
\r\nWHAT’S NEW: Ski Apache’s 51-year-old passenger gondola was retired in January and replaced with the Apache Arrow, a new, high-speed, Doppelmayr gondola. The vessel carries eight passengers to 11,500 feet twice as fast as the old lift. In addition, four swift new ski lifts will whisk 3,600 more skiers to trail heads hourly.
\r\nDON’T MISS: Gather together a team of five for the Ski Apache Cup and Vertical Challenge (mid-January). See how many vertical feet you can total in four hours. Unwind afterward at the Inn of the Mountain Gods.
\r\n(575) 464-3600; skiapache.com
SKI CLOUDCROFT
\r\nCelebrating 50 years of southern skiing in the Sacramento Mountains.
\r\nOPENS: December
\r\nSTATS: Average Snowfall – 57”; Base Elevation – 8,350’; Peak Elevation – 9,050’; Vertical Drop – 700’
\r\nWHAT’S NEW: Ski Cloudcroft has been operating since 1963. This year the resort celebrates 50 years with great skiing (weather permitting; no snow-making) and new activities (check Facebook for updates). The Silver Spoon Ski School and Mustard’s Last Stand restaurant are as good as ever.
\r\nDON’T MISS: Cloudcroft might be small (fewer than 800 residents), but holidays are a big deal here. Bring an ornament to decorate the tree at the Lighted Christmas Parade & Tree Lighting (December 7), or chow down on Cajun cuisine during Mardi Gras in the Clouds (February 28–March 2).
\r\n(575) 682-2333; skicloudcroft.net
SKI SANTA FE
\r\nA sunny slope only 20 minutes from the capital city.
\r\nOPENS: November 28
\r\nSTATS: Average Snowfall – 189”; Base Elevation – 10,350’; Peak Elevation – 12,075’; Vertical Drop – 1,725’
\r\nWHAT’S NEW: The recently renovated La Casa Lodge features a new rental facility that offers more than 1,000 sets of Head skis and Burton snowboard equipment, plus boots, poles, helmets, and more. The lodge’s spiffy new food court features a bakery and a pasta bar.
\r\nDON’T MISS: Rando skiing, which combines aspects of alpine, telemark, and backcountry skiing with mountaineering, is all the rage among winter-sports buffs, and Ski Santa Fe is offering the state’s first competition. The Santa Fe Fireball Rando Race (February 8) is approximately 4,200 feet and includes multiple ascents on climbing skins and at least one bootpack.
\r\n(505) 982-4429; skisantafe.com
TAOS SKI VALLEY
\r\nBig-mountain skiing.
\r\nOPENS: November 28
\r\nSTATS: Average Snowfall – 236”; Base Elevation – 9,207’; Peak Elevation – 12,481’; Vertical Drop – 2,612’
\r\nWHAT’S NEW: The upcoming December issue will include a report on exciting new developments in the works at TSV.
\r\nDON’T MISS: With both a ski event and a benefit auction, Breast Cancer Awareness Day takes place February 22. During the K2 Bumps Challenge, teams of two ski Al’s Run as many times as possible in four hours. That evening, bidders can take home snowboards that have been painted by local artists during the Paint for Peaks Art Auction. The Salomon Extreme Freeride Championships (February 27–March 1) showcase some of the best double-diamond terrain in the country. Over 150 athletes compete for more than $15,000 in prizes.
\r\n(575) 776-2291; skitaos.org
\r\n
\r\n","publish_start_moment":"2013-11-06T12:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2017-09-22T05:00:45.041Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f918","title":"One of Our Fifty is Missing","slug":"one-of-our-fifty-is-missing-november-2013-84066","description":"Snow reports provided by OnTheSnow. The snow report widget is most likely not displaying because you have JavaScript disabled. To see the Ski Report for every ski area in the world visit OnTheSnow or click on these popular regions:
\r\n\r\n- \r\n\t
- Red River \r\n\t
- Taos Ski Valley \r\n\t
- Angel Fire Resort \r\n\t
- Ski Santa Fe \r\n
One of Our Capital Cities is Missing
\r\n\r\n![\"Screen](\"~https://res-3.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/screen_shot_2013_11_13_at_4_11_45_pm_488x228_d98a3b98-c597-47a9-97b7-3b42f493df32.jpg\")
Len LaClair noticed that this Living Social email promoted a deal on a hotel located in Santa Fe, Arizona. That'd be a hard one to redeem.
\r\n\r\nPower Failure
\r\n\r\nA few years ago, Patrick Watson, of San Marcos, Texas, went to work as an industrial painter for a contractor doing a shutdown at a power plant in San Antonio. He told the contractor that he had a New Mexico driver's license and was told, "No problem, just show it at the gate on your first day to get an ID card."
\r\n\r\nWhen he showed his driver's license at the guardhouse, the woman asked him for his green card. Watson gave her a funny look, and said, "Lady, this is a New Mexico driver's license. I'm a United States citizen." She didn't believe him. Watson called the contractor, who in turn called the guard gate to assure them that New Mexico was indeed in the U.S.A.
\r\n\r\n¡Muchos Expatridos Aquí!
\r\n\r\nWhile at a travel agency in Granada Hills, California, Charles and Twilia Perry began chatting with an elderly woman about their travel plans. "Eventually, the subject rolled around to the retirement home we bought in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, and our plan to move there in four years." The woman commented that she had heard it was a good place for retirement. After a long pause, she asked if the Perrys would be living near other Americans in that town. To save face, they assured her that there were many American already living there. "My husband and I looked at each other," says Twilia, "knowing we had just been served out first "One of our 50 is Missing experience."
\r\n\r\nOffice Space
\r\n\r\nAfter Charlotte Johnson completed a purchase at a Staples store in Londonberry, New Hampshire, the clerk asked her if she had a Staples card. After replying in the negative, Johnson turned to her husband and said, "We could get one, as we have a Staples store at home." The clerk asked where home was, and when Johnson told her Las Cruces, New Mexico, she said, "I heard we went global!"
","publish_start":"2013-11-06T00:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58b4b2404c2774661570f306","58b4b2404c2774661570f30b","58b4b2404c2774661570f267"],"tags_ids":["59090dbce1efff4c9916fae0","59090de2e1efff4c9916fafb","59090c10e1efff4c9916f95a"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_tagline":"Tales of misinformation and misunderstanding about New Mexico","created":"2013-11-06T00:45:34.000Z","legacy_id":"84066","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"one of our fifty is missing","updated":"2017-05-05T01:45:35.207Z","active":true,"categories":[{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","blog":"magazine","title":"November 2013","_title_sort":"november 2013","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.592Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","_totalPosts":10,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","slug":"november-2013","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","totalPosts":10},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f30b","blog":"magazine","title":"One Of Our 50 Is Missing","_title_sort":"one of our 50 is missing","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.592Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.600Z","_totalPosts":66,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f30b","slug":"one-of-our-50-is-missing","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/one-of-our-50-is-missing/58b4b2404c2774661570f30b/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/one-of-our-50-is-missing/58b4b2404c2774661570f30b/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.600Z","totalPosts":66}],"id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f918","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/one-of-our-fifty-is-missing-november-2013-84066/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/one-of-our-fifty-is-missing-november-2013-84066/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/one-of-our-fifty-is-missing-november-2013-84066/","metaTitle":"One of Our Fifty is Missing","metaDescription":"One of Our Capital Cities is Missing
Len LaClair noticed that this Living Social email promoted a deal on a hotel located in Santa Fe, Arizona. That'd be a hard one to redeem.
Power Failure
A few
","teaser":"One of Our Capital Cities is Missing
Len LaClair noticed that this Living Social email promoted a deal on a hotel located in Santa Fe, Arizona. That'd be a hard one to redeem.
Power Failure
A few
","cleanDescription":"One of Our Capital Cities is Missing
\r\n\r\n
Len LaClair noticed that this Living Social email promoted a deal on a hotel located in Santa Fe, Arizona. That'd be a hard one to redeem.
\r\n\r\nPower Failure
\r\n\r\nA few years ago, Patrick Watson, of San Marcos, Texas, went to work as an industrial painter for a contractor doing a shutdown at a power plant in San Antonio. He told the contractor that he had a New Mexico driver's license and was told, "No problem, just show it at the gate on your first day to get an ID card."
\r\n\r\nWhen he showed his driver's license at the guardhouse, the woman asked him for his green card. Watson gave her a funny look, and said, "Lady, this is a New Mexico driver's license. I'm a United States citizen." She didn't believe him. Watson called the contractor, who in turn called the guard gate to assure them that New Mexico was indeed in the U.S.A.
\r\n\r\n¡Muchos Expatridos Aquí!
\r\n\r\nWhile at a travel agency in Granada Hills, California, Charles and Twilia Perry began chatting with an elderly woman about their travel plans. "Eventually, the subject rolled around to the retirement home we bought in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, and our plan to move there in four years." The woman commented that she had heard it was a good place for retirement. After a long pause, she asked if the Perrys would be living near other Americans in that town. To save face, they assured her that there were many American already living there. "My husband and I looked at each other," says Twilia, "knowing we had just been served out first "One of our 50 is Missing experience."
\r\n\r\nOffice Space
\r\n\r\nAfter Charlotte Johnson completed a purchase at a Staples store in Londonberry, New Hampshire, the clerk asked her if she had a Staples card. After replying in the negative, Johnson turned to her husband and said, "We could get one, as we have a Staples store at home." The clerk asked where home was, and when Johnson told her Las Cruces, New Mexico, she said, "I heard we went global!"
","publish_start_moment":"2013-11-06T00:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2017-09-22T05:00:45.044Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f917","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1a2","title":"Bed, Breakfast, and Beyond","slug":"bed-breakfast-and-beyond-84055","description":"\r\n\r\n“Albuquerque has bed-and-breakfasts?”I heard that more than once while researching this article. Apparently, the charms of these properties are better known to those outside New Mexico than to in-staters. That’s a shame, as bed-and-breakfasts offer one of the most transporting lodging experiences around—a way to feel ensconced in a home away from home without any of the attendant chores and frets. They’re ideal for Albuquerque staycations, located minutes from museums, shopping, and outdoor recreation (or any of the farm-to-table outings mentioned in Cheryl Alters Jamison’s October feature, “To Market, To Market”). B&Bs are also great settings for mini family reunions, destination weddings, and girlfriends’ getaways.
\r\n\r\nWhen B&Bs came on the scene in the 1980s, their chintz-draped bedrooms and hot, homemade breakfasts appealed to travelers who were tired of the homogeneity of hotels and motels. Since then, vacation rentals, amenity-laden boutique hotels, and even spiffy Airstream parks have also become popular, but the charms of bed-and-breakfasts endure. They offer a particular escape from reality: Where else can I pretend that I’m in a Merchant-Ivory movie, or that I have a gracious aunt or uncle with a big house containing a bevy of guest rooms . . . who makes killer scones? The smell of homemade cookies often suffuses the common areas, and you can generally find some to snack on, beside carafes of hot coffee and water for tea.
\r\n\r\nConnection is at the heart of the B&B experience—hosts are invariably experts on their localities, happy to recommend just-right restaurants, museums, and shopping excursions. And for travelers who enjoy socializing, breakfast and wine-and-cheese hour offer plentiful opportunities to chat with guests and hosts. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea, which is fine. More cookies for me.
\r\n\r\nFrom historic downtown Victorians to a North Valley hacienda, homey habitations await. (Find more members of the Albuquerque Bed and Breakfast Association at abqbandb.com.)
\r\n\r\nBrittania & W.E. Mauger Estate Bed & Breakfast Inn
\r\n\r\nThis Queen Anne Victorian, built in 1897, was the residence of prominent Bostonians W.E. and Brittania Mauger (pronounced major) from 1907 to 1923. Although the Old Town house is 116 years old, the décor is eclectic rather than chintz-and-doily. We stayed in the Exotic Suite (2C), which has an understated safari vibe; our second-floor bedroom, a former sunporch, is graced with multiple walls of wood-slatted windows. Prints of animals and maps decorate the furnishings. Other rooms have Southwestern, colonial, Provençal, or Asian themes; browse the website to find the room that most appeals to you.
\r\n\r\nBreakfast is served with a smile by owner Tamera Walden and her assistants, often UNMstudents. Dig into Apple Bacon Cheddar Bake or Breakfast Bread Pudding with Warm Berry Sauce . . . or perhaps a Southwestern Sunrise Soufflé dotted with diced green chile. All rooms have private baths. Adjacent townhouses offer more space for families and groups. From $99; (800) 719-9189; maugerbb.com
\r\n\r\nBottger Mansion of Old Town Bed & Breakfast
\r\n\r\nBuilt in 1908, this rose-colored residence in Old Town is steeped in history (Machine Gun Kelly, Elvis Presley, and Janis Joplin stayed here). Archival photographs of early-20th-century Albuquerque line the handsome main hallways, each paired with a lively and educational caption. The Franz Huning Room, where we stayed, offers a relaxing palette of white linens, dark wood, and beige walls, and a private bath with a clawfoot tub and mini-chandelier. The high step-up bed and net-and-pearl canopy contribute to its romantic mood.
\r\n\r\nThe innkeepers, Steve and Kathy Hiatt, are a pleasure to converse with (the perfect pretend aunt and uncle). They recommended great restaurants, and the breakfast they served (Green Chile Quiche and Blueberry French Toast Casserole) in the house’s enclosed front porch fueled our morning hike, and then some. Although the rooms are quiet, guests are just steps away from the Old Town Plaza, and guest parking is free. From $104. (505) 243-3639; bottger.com
\r\n\r\nCinnamon Morning
\r\n\r\nAn expansive, adobe-walled courtyard adorned with flowers, pools, Talavera tile, and bright furniture—that’s the first thing guests see as they enter this hacienda-style compound in Albuquerque’s North Valley. The spot-on Mexican vibe evident throughout the property can be traced back to the time owners Sue and Dick Percilick spent living in Quimixto, near Puerto Vallarta.
\r\n\r\nTo accommodate our family of four, we chose Casita Delores over a room in the main house. Rosy earth-toned walls, brightly striped textiles, colorful tile, and a sconce filled with M&Ms comprised a festive ambience. A kitchenette, living room (with foldout futon), bedroom, and a cute outdoor patio with chimenea gave us room to spread out.
\r\n\r\nWhen the guests gathered for breakfast in the main house’s great room with exposed kitchen, anticipation mounted as Sue put the finishing touches on our meal: fresh fruit, pillowy French toast, and plump sausages. We all sat down at a long, vibrantly adorned wooden table, which encouraged conversation—we were soon swapping travel tips like old friends. (800) 214-9481; cinnamonmorning.com
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Managing Editor Candace Walsh is the author of Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Identity (Seal Press). She’s on Twitter @candacewalsh.
","publish_start":"2013-11-04T15:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a","58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4","58f5533b46da1c146c0fc752","58b4b2404c2774661570f306"],"tags_ids":["59090e46e1efff4c9916fb37","59090ce8e1efff4c9916fa49","59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20","59090dbce1efff4c9916fae0"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_tagline":"At these memorable Albuquerque B&Bs;, step back in time, or over the border.","created":"2013-11-04T15:38:47.000Z","legacy_id":"84055","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"bed, breakfast, and beyond","updated":"2017-05-05T01:45:03.640Z","active":true,"author":{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1a2","name":"Candace Walsh","image_id":"58e7e5f9478ef02e53f5f3a0","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.237Z","blog":"magazine","_name_sort":"candace walsh","updated":"2017-04-07T19:18:25.070Z","image":{"_id":"58e7e5f9478ef02e53f5f3a0","original_public_id":"clients/newmexico/CWheadshot_a7fc7d73-0783-4e20-b137-036a07586bb5","title":"Candace Walsh","resource_raw":{"public_id":"clients/newmexico/CWheadshot_a7fc7d73-0783-4e20-b137-036a07586bb5","version":1491592680,"signature":"1edd140c9759be576e41ab808591ab3b06ccceea","width":613,"height":613,"format":"jpg","resource_type":"image","created_at":"2017-04-07T19:18:00.000Z","bytes":52860,"type":"upload","etag":"7093b233b69cc06536eac84b021d958a","url":"http://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1491592680/clients/newmexico/CWheadshot_a7fc7d73-0783-4e20-b137-036a07586bb5.jpg","secure_url":"https://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1491592680/clients/newmexico/CWheadshot_a7fc7d73-0783-4e20-b137-036a07586bb5.jpg","original_filename":"file"},"alt_text_raw":"Candace Walsh","credits":"The Staff","content_owner":"magazine","title_sort":"candace walsh","updated":"2017-04-07T19:18:17.335Z","deleted":false,"created":"2017-04-07T19:18:17.337Z","id":"58e7e5f9478ef02e53f5f3a0","type":"image","resource":{"raw":{"resource_type":"image","format":"jpg","public_id":"clients/newmexico/CWheadshot_a7fc7d73-0783-4e20-b137-036a07586bb5"}},"inAssetRequest":false,"alt_text":"Candace Walsh"},"_totalPosts":27,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1a2","title":"Candace Walsh","slug":"candace-walsh","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/author/candace-walsh/58b4b2404c2774661570f1a2/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/author/candace-walsh/58b4b2404c2774661570f1a2/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.237Z","totalPosts":27},"categories":[{"_id":"58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a","title":"Travel","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"travel","updated":"2017-03-14T18:21:37.155Z","created":"2017-03-14T18:21:37.156Z","_totalPosts":179,"id":"58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a","slug":"travel","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/travel/58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/travel/58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-03-14T18:21:37.156Z","totalPosts":179},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4","blog":"magazine","title":"Going Places","_title_sort":"going places","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.493Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.506Z","_totalPosts":78,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4","slug":"going-places","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/going-places/58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/going-places/58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.506Z","totalPosts":78},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","blog":"magazine","title":"November 2013","_title_sort":"november 2013","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.592Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","_totalPosts":10,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","slug":"november-2013","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","totalPosts":10}],"tags":[{"_id":"59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20","title":"Events","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"events","updated":"2017-05-02T22:48:09.170Z","created":"2017-05-02T22:48:09.171Z","_totalPosts":57,"id":"59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20","slug":"events","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/tag/events/59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/tag/events/59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-05-02T22:48:09.171Z","totalPosts":57}],"id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f917","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/bed-breakfast-and-beyond-84055/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/bed-breakfast-and-beyond-84055/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/bed-breakfast-and-beyond-84055/","metaTitle":"Bed, Breakfast, and Beyond","metaDescription":"“Albuquerque has bed-and-breakfasts?”I heard that more than once while researching this article. Apparently, the charms of these properties are better known to those outside New Mexico than to
","teaser":"“Albuquerque has bed-and-breakfasts?”I heard that more than once while researching this article. Apparently, the charms of these properties are better known to those outside New Mexico than to
","cleanDescription":"\r\n\r\n“Albuquerque has bed-and-breakfasts?”I heard that more than once while researching this article. Apparently, the charms of these properties are better known to those outside New Mexico than to in-staters. That’s a shame, as bed-and-breakfasts offer one of the most transporting lodging experiences around—a way to feel ensconced in a home away from home without any of the attendant chores and frets. They’re ideal for Albuquerque staycations, located minutes from museums, shopping, and outdoor recreation (or any of the farm-to-table outings mentioned in Cheryl Alters Jamison’s October feature, “To Market, To Market”). B&Bs are also great settings for mini family reunions, destination weddings, and girlfriends’ getaways.
\r\n\r\nWhen B&Bs came on the scene in the 1980s, their chintz-draped bedrooms and hot, homemade breakfasts appealed to travelers who were tired of the homogeneity of hotels and motels. Since then, vacation rentals, amenity-laden boutique hotels, and even spiffy Airstream parks have also become popular, but the charms of bed-and-breakfasts endure. They offer a particular escape from reality: Where else can I pretend that I’m in a Merchant-Ivory movie, or that I have a gracious aunt or uncle with a big house containing a bevy of guest rooms . . . who makes killer scones? The smell of homemade cookies often suffuses the common areas, and you can generally find some to snack on, beside carafes of hot coffee and water for tea.
\r\n\r\nConnection is at the heart of the B&B experience—hosts are invariably experts on their localities, happy to recommend just-right restaurants, museums, and shopping excursions. And for travelers who enjoy socializing, breakfast and wine-and-cheese hour offer plentiful opportunities to chat with guests and hosts. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea, which is fine. More cookies for me.
\r\n\r\nFrom historic downtown Victorians to a North Valley hacienda, homey habitations await. (Find more members of the Albuquerque Bed and Breakfast Association at abqbandb.com.)
\r\n\r\nBrittania & W.E. Mauger Estate Bed & Breakfast Inn
\r\n\r\nThis Queen Anne Victorian, built in 1897, was the residence of prominent Bostonians W.E. and Brittania Mauger (pronounced major) from 1907 to 1923. Although the Old Town house is 116 years old, the décor is eclectic rather than chintz-and-doily. We stayed in the Exotic Suite (2C), which has an understated safari vibe; our second-floor bedroom, a former sunporch, is graced with multiple walls of wood-slatted windows. Prints of animals and maps decorate the furnishings. Other rooms have Southwestern, colonial, Provençal, or Asian themes; browse the website to find the room that most appeals to you.
\r\n\r\nBreakfast is served with a smile by owner Tamera Walden and her assistants, often UNMstudents. Dig into Apple Bacon Cheddar Bake or Breakfast Bread Pudding with Warm Berry Sauce . . . or perhaps a Southwestern Sunrise Soufflé dotted with diced green chile. All rooms have private baths. Adjacent townhouses offer more space for families and groups. From $99; (800) 719-9189; maugerbb.com
\r\n\r\nBottger Mansion of Old Town Bed & Breakfast
\r\n\r\nBuilt in 1908, this rose-colored residence in Old Town is steeped in history (Machine Gun Kelly, Elvis Presley, and Janis Joplin stayed here). Archival photographs of early-20th-century Albuquerque line the handsome main hallways, each paired with a lively and educational caption. The Franz Huning Room, where we stayed, offers a relaxing palette of white linens, dark wood, and beige walls, and a private bath with a clawfoot tub and mini-chandelier. The high step-up bed and net-and-pearl canopy contribute to its romantic mood.
\r\n\r\nThe innkeepers, Steve and Kathy Hiatt, are a pleasure to converse with (the perfect pretend aunt and uncle). They recommended great restaurants, and the breakfast they served (Green Chile Quiche and Blueberry French Toast Casserole) in the house’s enclosed front porch fueled our morning hike, and then some. Although the rooms are quiet, guests are just steps away from the Old Town Plaza, and guest parking is free. From $104. (505) 243-3639; bottger.com
\r\n\r\nCinnamon Morning
\r\n\r\nAn expansive, adobe-walled courtyard adorned with flowers, pools, Talavera tile, and bright furniture—that’s the first thing guests see as they enter this hacienda-style compound in Albuquerque’s North Valley. The spot-on Mexican vibe evident throughout the property can be traced back to the time owners Sue and Dick Percilick spent living in Quimixto, near Puerto Vallarta.
\r\n\r\nTo accommodate our family of four, we chose Casita Delores over a room in the main house. Rosy earth-toned walls, brightly striped textiles, colorful tile, and a sconce filled with M&Ms comprised a festive ambience. A kitchenette, living room (with foldout futon), bedroom, and a cute outdoor patio with chimenea gave us room to spread out.
\r\n\r\nWhen the guests gathered for breakfast in the main house’s great room with exposed kitchen, anticipation mounted as Sue put the finishing touches on our meal: fresh fruit, pillowy French toast, and plump sausages. We all sat down at a long, vibrantly adorned wooden table, which encouraged conversation—we were soon swapping travel tips like old friends. (800) 214-9481; cinnamonmorning.com
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Managing Editor Candace Walsh is the author of Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Identity (Seal Press). She’s on Twitter @candacewalsh.
","publish_start_moment":"2013-11-04T15:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2017-09-22T05:00:45.046Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f916","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f240","title":"What’s Happening!","slug":"whats-happening-november-2013-84049","image_id":"58b4b2474c2774661570f464","description":"NOV. 1–2
\r\nFLOATING ON A MELODY
On the first weekend of November in the town of Artesia, 42 miles south of Roswell, the horizon is transformed into a colorful, glowing mosaic as 25 to 30 hot-air balloons take to the sky. “Ballooning is a long-standing tradition in our town,” says event coordinator Vickie Grousnick, “and this is a community event that feels like an extended-family gathering. This year, the Artesia Balloons & Bluegrass Festival honors one of the pilot’s wives, who passed away.” Expected to attract around 1,000 attendees, the free event includes performances by New Mexico–based bluegrass bands, an arts-and-crafts bazaar, a food festival, and high-flying fun. Most of the action takes place at Martin Luther King Park (N. 13th St. at W. Gilchrist Ave.). Balloons take off at 7 a.m. (575) 746-2744; artesiachamber.com
\r\n\r\nNOV. 2–29
\r\nHOME? SWEET HOME!
Design Santa Fe—an annual event that in-cludes presentations by national design-industry professionals, a home tour, and other special programs—ends with a bang this year. Design Lab: Next Nest challenged student and professional designers to design new interiors and exteriors for the modern home, such as the kitchen, entertainment area, entryway, and garden. But this isn’t your average redesign scenario. Imagine electronically controlled wall graphics and tablet-controlled ambient sound and lighting. Through most of November, the SITE Santa Fe art space (sitesantafe.org) will exhibit Next Nest’s top design concepts. The exhibit opens November 2, with an awards ceremony honoring the top entries in the juried competition. (505) 989-1199; sitesantafe.org, designsantafe.org
\r\n\r\nNOV. 5
\r\nSONGSMITHS Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt are skilled at pointing out the profundities of life in their songs, and while their vocal approaches— Lovett’s smoky tenor, and Hiatt’s whiskey-burned croon—may differ, they share common ground. The two musicians have played together often. Inspired by a previous tour featuring Lovett, Hiatt, Guy Clark, and Joe Ely, Heath Concerts promoter Jamie Lenfestey created the Songs & Stories series, which brings like-minded artists together onstage, this time at Albuquerque’s Popejoy Hall. “It gives the listener a very unguarded look into the musicians,” Lenfestey says. “There’s something magical that happens when the artists jell; there is an intimacy that’s shared with the audience.” (877) 664-8661, (505) 925-5858; popejoypresents.com, unmtickets.com
NOV. 8–10
\r\nCERAMICS Y MÁS
“When the Pecos Valley Potters’ Guild Art Show debuted in 1989,” says guild president Megan Heil, “we had only a handful of artists involved. Now we have nearly 50 booths, many of them with multiple artists.” This year the show and sale in Roswell, dubbed Fiesta del Arte, isn’t limited to ceramics. “There are paintings, prints, glasswork, photographs, sculpture, metalwork, textiles and fiber art, woodwork, jewelry, leatherwork, and mixed media, too,” Heil says. On November 8, at the Roswell Convention Center, an opening-night party will include hors d’oeuvres and live music by Ritmo Latino—which plays salsa, cumbia, and cha-cha—and a local mariachi band. (575) 752-0105; roswellpotters.org
\r\n\r\nNOV. 8–10
\r\nDELICIOUS DOINGS
The exhibition New World Cuisine: Chocolate, Maté, y Más is on view through January 5, 2014, at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, and a program tied to the event, FUZE•SW: Food+Folklore Festival, is an epicure’s playground. “We will celebrate and honor food, which we do so well here in New Mexico,” says Steve Cantrell of the Department of Cultural Affairs. “We’ll look at New Mexico’s food traditions, folklore, history, and representations in the arts.” The festival includes talks and panel discussions by authors, chile experts, and farmers. New Mexico Magazine contributing culinary editor Cheryl Alters Jamison leads a panel discussion titled “Cooking Culture: Recipes, Tales, and Traditions,” and will teach a cooking class with her husband and co-author, Bill Jamison. Joining Jamison are Santa Fe chefs Martín Rios (Restaurant Martín) and James Campbell Caruso (La Boca and Taberna La Boca). Other highlights include a food-truck brunch, a cocktail party, and a gala reception. $200–$250 per person. (505) 476-1126; fuzesw.museumofnewmexico.org
\r\n\r\nOn November 9, Holiday Pie Mania rolls out at Santa Fe’s Builders’ Source Gallery. Enjoy free samples of chef-made pies, then bid to have one made for your own holiday meal. Proceeds benefit the Food Depot, northern New Mexico’s food bank. $5 in advance, $7 at the door. (505) 847-3333; holidaypiemania.com
\r\n\r\nNOV. 20–24
\r\nMARIACHI MAESTROS
Each year, between 500 and 900 musicians of all ages from around the world make their way to the Las Cruces International Mariachi Conference for a series of performances and workshops. On Saturday, enjoy the 20th annual Spectacular concert, featuring Mariachi Cobre (the house band of the Mexican Pavilion at Epcot Center), Las Colibri, and internationally renowned mariachi-banda vocalist Ezequiel Peña. This popular concert draws more than 7,000 attendees each year. Sunday, following a nondenominational mariachi morning mass, the action moves to the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Museum for a mariachi competition, hands-on art activities for children, an arts-and-crafts exhibit, and delicious food. (575) 525-1735; lascrucesmariachi.org
\r\n\r\nNOV. 8–DEC. 1
\r\nSHOP LOCAL
Numerous fairs and expos give shoppers the opportunity to purchase gifts directly from the many talented artists and craftspeople we count among our neighbors. Here’s a rundown of some popular holiday-time fairs: The Ruidoso Christmas Jubilee (Nov. 8–10), at the Ruidoso Convention Center (575-336-4877; ruidosochristmasjubilee.net); the 30th Annual Weems International Artfest (Nov. 15–17), at Albuquerque’s Expo New Mexico (505-293-6133; weemsinternationalartfest.org); the juried Los Alamos Affordable Art Sale (Nov. 22–Jan. 4), at Fuller Lodge (505-662-1635; fullerlodgeartcenter.com); the 32nd Annual Placitas Holiday Arts & Crafts Sale (Nov. 23–24), in Placitas (505-867-5740; placitasholidaysale.com); the 14th Annual Río Grande Arts and Crafts Festival Thanksgiving Holiday Show (Nov. 29–Dec. 1), at Expo New Mexico’s Lujan Exhibit Complex (505-292-7457; riograndefestivals.com); and the Bosque Farms Christmas Bazaar (Nov. 30–Dec. 1), at Cowboy Hall. (505) 865-4662; bosquefarmsrodeo.org
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FLOATING ON A MELODY
On the first weekend of November in the town of Artesia, 42 miles south of Roswell, the horizon is transformed into a colorful, glowing mosaic as 25 to 30 hot-air
","teaser":"NOV. 1–2
FLOATING ON A MELODY
On the first weekend of November in the town of Artesia, 42 miles south of Roswell, the horizon is transformed into a colorful, glowing mosaic as 25 to 30 hot-air
","cleanDescription":"NOV. 1–2
\r\nFLOATING ON A MELODY
On the first weekend of November in the town of Artesia, 42 miles south of Roswell, the horizon is transformed into a colorful, glowing mosaic as 25 to 30 hot-air balloons take to the sky. “Ballooning is a long-standing tradition in our town,” says event coordinator Vickie Grousnick, “and this is a community event that feels like an extended-family gathering. This year, the Artesia Balloons & Bluegrass Festival honors one of the pilot’s wives, who passed away.” Expected to attract around 1,000 attendees, the free event includes performances by New Mexico–based bluegrass bands, an arts-and-crafts bazaar, a food festival, and high-flying fun. Most of the action takes place at Martin Luther King Park (N. 13th St. at W. Gilchrist Ave.). Balloons take off at 7 a.m. (575) 746-2744; artesiachamber.com
\r\n\r\nNOV. 2–29
\r\nHOME? SWEET HOME!
Design Santa Fe—an annual event that in-cludes presentations by national design-industry professionals, a home tour, and other special programs—ends with a bang this year. Design Lab: Next Nest challenged student and professional designers to design new interiors and exteriors for the modern home, such as the kitchen, entertainment area, entryway, and garden. But this isn’t your average redesign scenario. Imagine electronically controlled wall graphics and tablet-controlled ambient sound and lighting. Through most of November, the SITE Santa Fe art space (sitesantafe.org) will exhibit Next Nest’s top design concepts. The exhibit opens November 2, with an awards ceremony honoring the top entries in the juried competition. (505) 989-1199; sitesantafe.org, designsantafe.org
\r\n\r\nNOV. 5
\r\nSONGSMITHS Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt are skilled at pointing out the profundities of life in their songs, and while their vocal approaches— Lovett’s smoky tenor, and Hiatt’s whiskey-burned croon—may differ, they share common ground. The two musicians have played together often. Inspired by a previous tour featuring Lovett, Hiatt, Guy Clark, and Joe Ely, Heath Concerts promoter Jamie Lenfestey created the Songs & Stories series, which brings like-minded artists together onstage, this time at Albuquerque’s Popejoy Hall. “It gives the listener a very unguarded look into the musicians,” Lenfestey says. “There’s something magical that happens when the artists jell; there is an intimacy that’s shared with the audience.” (877) 664-8661, (505) 925-5858; popejoypresents.com, unmtickets.com
NOV. 8–10
\r\nCERAMICS Y MÁS
“When the Pecos Valley Potters’ Guild Art Show debuted in 1989,” says guild president Megan Heil, “we had only a handful of artists involved. Now we have nearly 50 booths, many of them with multiple artists.” This year the show and sale in Roswell, dubbed Fiesta del Arte, isn’t limited to ceramics. “There are paintings, prints, glasswork, photographs, sculpture, metalwork, textiles and fiber art, woodwork, jewelry, leatherwork, and mixed media, too,” Heil says. On November 8, at the Roswell Convention Center, an opening-night party will include hors d’oeuvres and live music by Ritmo Latino—which plays salsa, cumbia, and cha-cha—and a local mariachi band. (575) 752-0105; roswellpotters.org
\r\n\r\nNOV. 8–10
\r\nDELICIOUS DOINGS
The exhibition New World Cuisine: Chocolate, Maté, y Más is on view through January 5, 2014, at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, and a program tied to the event, FUZE•SW: Food+Folklore Festival, is an epicure’s playground. “We will celebrate and honor food, which we do so well here in New Mexico,” says Steve Cantrell of the Department of Cultural Affairs. “We’ll look at New Mexico’s food traditions, folklore, history, and representations in the arts.” The festival includes talks and panel discussions by authors, chile experts, and farmers. New Mexico Magazine contributing culinary editor Cheryl Alters Jamison leads a panel discussion titled “Cooking Culture: Recipes, Tales, and Traditions,” and will teach a cooking class with her husband and co-author, Bill Jamison. Joining Jamison are Santa Fe chefs Martín Rios (Restaurant Martín) and James Campbell Caruso (La Boca and Taberna La Boca). Other highlights include a food-truck brunch, a cocktail party, and a gala reception. $200–$250 per person. (505) 476-1126; fuzesw.museumofnewmexico.org
\r\n\r\nOn November 9, Holiday Pie Mania rolls out at Santa Fe’s Builders’ Source Gallery. Enjoy free samples of chef-made pies, then bid to have one made for your own holiday meal. Proceeds benefit the Food Depot, northern New Mexico’s food bank. $5 in advance, $7 at the door. (505) 847-3333; holidaypiemania.com
\r\n\r\nNOV. 20–24
\r\nMARIACHI MAESTROS
Each year, between 500 and 900 musicians of all ages from around the world make their way to the Las Cruces International Mariachi Conference for a series of performances and workshops. On Saturday, enjoy the 20th annual Spectacular concert, featuring Mariachi Cobre (the house band of the Mexican Pavilion at Epcot Center), Las Colibri, and internationally renowned mariachi-banda vocalist Ezequiel Peña. This popular concert draws more than 7,000 attendees each year. Sunday, following a nondenominational mariachi morning mass, the action moves to the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Museum for a mariachi competition, hands-on art activities for children, an arts-and-crafts exhibit, and delicious food. (575) 525-1735; lascrucesmariachi.org
\r\n\r\nNOV. 8–DEC. 1
\r\nSHOP LOCAL
Numerous fairs and expos give shoppers the opportunity to purchase gifts directly from the many talented artists and craftspeople we count among our neighbors. Here’s a rundown of some popular holiday-time fairs: The Ruidoso Christmas Jubilee (Nov. 8–10), at the Ruidoso Convention Center (575-336-4877; ruidosochristmasjubilee.net); the 30th Annual Weems International Artfest (Nov. 15–17), at Albuquerque’s Expo New Mexico (505-293-6133; weemsinternationalartfest.org); the juried Los Alamos Affordable Art Sale (Nov. 22–Jan. 4), at Fuller Lodge (505-662-1635; fullerlodgeartcenter.com); the 32nd Annual Placitas Holiday Arts & Crafts Sale (Nov. 23–24), in Placitas (505-867-5740; placitasholidaysale.com); the 14th Annual Río Grande Arts and Crafts Festival Thanksgiving Holiday Show (Nov. 29–Dec. 1), at Expo New Mexico’s Lujan Exhibit Complex (505-292-7457; riograndefestivals.com); and the Bosque Farms Christmas Bazaar (Nov. 30–Dec. 1), at Cowboy Hall. (505) 865-4662; bosquefarmsrodeo.org
","publish_start_moment":"2013-11-01T13:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2017-09-22T05:00:45.049Z"},{"_id":"58b4b27f4c2774661570f915","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1f6","title":"Robert Christensen's Diamonds in the Rough","slug":"robert-christensens-diamonds-in-the-rough-84048","description":"\r\n\r\nLocals didn’t always welcome the tall stranger with the camera. Odd enough that he slowed his car to a stop on their no-name two-lane roads. Odder still that he focused his lens on the things that used to be—the old gas station, the old coffee shop, the old bar.
\r\n\r\nIn the mid-1990s, some 20 years after one of his “typical hit-and-run shots,” Robert Christensen returned to the Mora County village of Cleveland (population sub-200) to shoot Louie’s Gas Station. A fellow was working in the yard of a house next door, so Christensen asked him if he knew anything about the old building. Boy, did he. That fellow was Louie—Louie Casados—and he invited Christensen in for a chat.
\r\n\r\nSitting on his couch, Casados spun a tale of how his father had proudly emblazoned his then-baby son’s name on his new business in 1949. Louie himself later tried to make a go of it before too few cars made it too much work for too little cash. In Christensen’s 1977 image, the screen door yawns before a wooden door locked tight. Faded promises of a cold Pepsi cling to buckled stucco.
\r\n\r\nAll in all, it personifies Christensen’s idea of a perfect building to photograph.
\r\n\r\n“I would react to places that I felt were kind of looking back at me,” he said. “I saw them as portraits more than documentation. There’s almost faces in them.”
\r\n\r\nFor nearly 40 years, Christensen has driven the state’s blue highways, a surreptitious photographer of handmade houses and businesses of the “we-don’t-need-no-stinkin’- blueprint” school of architecture. It was his private passion, known to only a few friends, his wife of 10 years, and folks encountered along the way, like Louie Casados.
\r\n\r\nBut now, as he’s “counting down to 70,” Christensen suddenly finds himself in the spotlight. Through March 16, 2014, the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History features Vernacular Architecture of New Mexico: Photographs by Robert Christensen. The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, in Santa Fe, has accepted his collection of nearly 300 images. He sees the possibility of out-of-state gallery shows, maybe even a book.
\r\n\r\nThis measure of fame could have eluded him, as it did Vivian Maier, the Chicago street photographer whose 100,000 images were discovered in 2009, shortly before her death. Employed as a nanny for her entire career, Maier had likewise indulged a secret love for photography, focusing on historic landmarks, accidental portraits, and the rarely documented lives of down-and-outers. Since 2011, her work has appeared in international exhibitions, an outcome she couldn’t have predicted any more than Christensen could have foreseen his own newfound visibility.
\r\n\r\n“It’s all kind of avalanched on me,” he said. “I’m kind of surprised.”
\r\n\r\nChristensen’s photographic journey began unremarkably enough in 1970, after a stint in the Vietnam-era Army. Needing to clear his head, he said goodbye to his native Chicago and headed west, to be near his brother in Albuquerque. He loved the mild winters and hot chile, but what grabbed most of his heart was “the beguiling homespun architecture.” He took a job as a taxi driver, but an unexplainable urge told him to capture those quirky buildings. A 35-millimeter camera came by mail, and soon he was at the University of New Mexico, pursuing a master’s degree in fine-art photography—“you know, where the big bucks are,” he joked.
\r\n\r\nThe best thing about college was becoming friends with B.G. Burr, a fellow photographer. Otherwise, Christensen’s UNM teachers felt so-so about his photos of campus buildings, which rarely included people. Christensen was similarly unmoved by the art theories of the era. Once his GI Bill ran out, he quit and moved on, to a string of odd jobs.
\r\n\r\nAn early one saw him delivering produce all over New Mexico and Texas. Besides fruit and vegetables, he’d load the truck with camera gear, then meander from point A to point B—with stops at C, D, and E—hunting for buildings that lacked occupants but burst with character. The Spurs Saloon, in Vaughn. The Coffee Cup, in Carrizozo. A hippie house in La Joya.
\r\n\r\nMost notoriously, Christensen consumed more than four hours snailing his way from Las Cruces to El Paso, a trip that the Interstate rips out in 46 miles. His boss grew suspicious. He was followed. Then he got fired.
\r\n\r\nChristensen’s sallies along the back roads turned into an off-hours compulsion with repeat visits to favorite sites. He didn’t stop in every town, and a building had to be more than just old to earn a few frames.
\r\n\r\n“People say to me, ‘Oh, you’ve got to see this place,’” he said. “I go out, and it’s just a building, and I think, ‘Oh, they don’t get it.’”
\r\n\r\nFor one of his work stints, Christensen logged time as a darkroom technician, perfecting skills that fellow photo-geeks still rave about. His college friend Burr, a photo archivist at the Los Lunas Museum of Heritage and Arts, once asked him to guest-teach a photography class at UNM–Valencia County.
\r\n\r\n“He showed the students a print, and they were all impressed with it,” Burr said. “Then he laid another beside it. It was noticeably better. They talked about how he brought out the details. Then he laid another one down. And another one. He did that 10 times. By the time he was finished, the students were speechless. I’ve never known anybody to print that well.”
\r\n\r\nBy then, Christensen had settled in Belén, Burr in nearby Los Lunas. Sometimes, the two went out together on shooting jaunts. In 2001, Christensen fell for a coworker at a camera shop, and married her two years later. Debra Christensen joined him on some of his outings, shooting her own close-ups of nature. To Christensen, it was all a great hobby, like collecting baseball cards: “One photo would go up on the wall; another would come down.”
\r\n\r\nBurr kept telling him that his images compared well with the work of Walker Evans, a Farm Security Administration photographer whose Depression-era legacy included classics of the vernacular genre. A few years ago, the two spread out Christensen’s images on his coffee table, and it clicked.
\r\n\r\n“I’d never looked at it all together before,” he said. “I realized then that what B.G. said was true: I had a cohesive body of work.”
\r\n\r\nIt took a while, but Christensen finally called Glenn Fye, photo archivist at the Albuquerque Museum. Once Fye got a glimpse, the dominoes tumbled.
\r\n\r\n“I thought they were little jewels,” Fye said. “They’re not pretentious, they’re not random snapshots. They’re character studies.” Best of all, he said, “They don’t have a ye-olde quality.”
\r\n\r\n“Bob’s not trying to tug at your heartstrings,” Albuquerque Museum of Art and History curator Andrew Connors said. “It’s a neutral statement and allows the viewer to apply their own meaning. He doesn’t care about trends, or what’s considered fashionable from an art perspective. He’s looking at what makes sense to him.”
\r\n\r\nWhat makes sense are buildings that reflect an era of do-it-yourself initiative, before the prefab sameness of national franchises turned every town into anytown.
\r\n\r\nChristensen doesn’t always know the stories behind his storefronts. Despite several drives south, he couldn’t divine why a onetime church north of El Paso had bones painted on its exterior. He can’t say what’s up with a windowless, flat-front building whose rooftop sign proclaims “cowboy jim’s.” “I only know that it’s in Santa Rosa,” he said.
\r\n\r\nPart of the info gap comes from the way people’s knees jerk the first time they see him.
\r\n\r\n“People don’t trust people with cameras,” he said. “So I go knocking on doors, and the first thing I say is, ‘I’m not from the government and I’m not selling anything.’ When they see a photograph I’ve taken of their place, they usually just open right up.”
\r\n\r\nChristensen treasures the times when the approach works and he can document a little tale. One of the sweetest sprang from a folk-art mural on a Belén auto-parts store with the initials “PC.” He met a Plácido Chavez there, an elderly man. They had a nice chat, but not much else. In the 1990s, Christensen got the Valencia News Bulletin to publish the image, asking folks to fill in the blanks. It turned out the mural painter was Plácido’s son, Florencio Chavez, a talented naïve artist who had decorated a number of buildings around town before dying young.
\r\n\r\n“The buildings were gone,” Christensen said. “His family had no record of his artwork, and they were thrilled to see my photo.”
\r\n\r\nIn recent years, the master film printer has shot with a digital Nikon D300 and extols the charms of Adobe’s Photoshop software, particularly the consistency of a computer over a darkroom. He’s quick to acknowledge that he has yet to explore plenty of places in the state, but concedes that there may not be many more of his vernacular portraits to come.
\r\n\r\n“I got two good images this year, and they’re the first I’ve gotten for a couple of years,” he said. “It hurts to drive around now, physically.”
\r\n\r\n“We can’t go traipsing like we used to,” Debra Christensen said.
\r\n\r\nStill, the road calls, especially the little towns hugging the Río Grande and the Gila National Forest, Christensen’s happiest haunts. He hears it when looking at his favorite photo, of the Joy Drive In marquee near Anthony, the only memory of a moviegoing way station that fell into disuse, pecan trees finally growing up through and over the parking spots. How many more little jewels might be out there, settling a bit more each year into desert dust?
\r\n\r\n“They are becoming increasingly scarce,” he said in his artist statement for the exhibit, “but I still love to explore New Mexico, and I am always gratified when I chance upon just one more of these wizened old mugs looking back at me.” ✜
\r\n\r\nKate Nelson is the author of Helen Hardin: A Straight Line Curved (Little Standing Spruce Publishing, 2012). She reported on the renovation of La Fonda on the Plaza in the September issue.
\r\n\r\nNEED TO KNOW
\r\n\r\nVernacular Architecture of New Mexico: Photographs by Robert Christensen is on display at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Tues.–Sun., until March 16, 2014. (505) 243-7255;cabq.gov/culturalservices/albuquerque-museum
","publish_start":"2013-11-01T13:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3","58b4b2404c2774661570f306"],"tags_ids":["59090c80e1efff4c9916fa05","59090cb1e1efff4c9916fa25","59090dbce1efff4c9916fae0"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_photo_credit":"Robert Christensen","custom_tagline":"The revelation of a decades-in-the-making portfolio of side-of-the-road portraiture has all the elements of a major event in the annals of New Mexico photography.","created":"2013-11-01T13:01:43.000Z","legacy_id":"84048","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"robert christensen's diamonds in the rough","updated":"2017-05-05T01:44:24.885Z","active":true,"author":{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1f6","name":"Kate Nelson","image_id":"591384b9da8f9b60115b35c5","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.335Z","blog":"magazine","_name_sort":"kate nelson","updated":"2017-05-10T21:23:12.398Z","image":{"_id":"591384b9da8f9b60115b35c5","original_public_id":"clients/newmexico/KateNelson_BW_bd3ffb62-7e95-48ab-9632-e0d990a22fb7","title":"Kate Nelson","resource_raw":{"public_id":"clients/newmexico/KateNelson_BW_bd3ffb62-7e95-48ab-9632-e0d990a22fb7","version":1494451375,"signature":"8515a455aa8d1c45cb2ea23564361315ae326164","width":734,"height":728,"format":"jpg","resource_type":"image","created_at":"2017-05-10T21:22:55.000Z","bytes":82933,"type":"upload","etag":"3e5ea89d7f98b867a4b167c98a3d55bd","url":"http://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1494451375/clients/newmexico/KateNelson_BW_bd3ffb62-7e95-48ab-9632-e0d990a22fb7.jpg","secure_url":"https://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1494451375/clients/newmexico/KateNelson_BW_bd3ffb62-7e95-48ab-9632-e0d990a22fb7.jpg","exif":{"Copyright":"Copyright Minesh Bacrania (2016)"},"original_filename":"file"},"alt_text_raw":"Kate Nelson","content_owner":"magazine","title_sort":"kate nelson","updated":"2017-05-10T21:23:05.506Z","deleted":false,"created":"2017-05-10T21:23:05.507Z","id":"591384b9da8f9b60115b35c5","type":"image","resource":{"raw":{"resource_type":"image","format":"jpg","public_id":"clients/newmexico/KateNelson_BW_bd3ffb62-7e95-48ab-9632-e0d990a22fb7"}},"inAssetRequest":false,"alt_text":"Kate Nelson"},"_totalPosts":43,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1f6","title":"Kate Nelson","slug":"kate-nelson","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/author/kate-nelson/58b4b2404c2774661570f1f6/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/author/kate-nelson/58b4b2404c2774661570f1f6/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.335Z","totalPosts":43},"categories":[{"_id":"58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","title":"Culture","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"culture","updated":"2017-03-14T18:41:36.747Z","created":"2017-03-14T18:41:36.748Z","_totalPosts":208,"id":"58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","slug":"culture","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/culture/58c839601f16f9392cf09a98/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/culture/58c839601f16f9392cf09a98/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-03-14T18:41:36.748Z","totalPosts":208},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3","blog":"magazine","title":"Features","_title_sort":"features","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.492Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.504Z","_totalPosts":202,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3","slug":"features","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/features/58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/features/58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.504Z","totalPosts":202},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","blog":"magazine","title":"November 2013","_title_sort":"november 2013","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.592Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","_totalPosts":10,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","slug":"november-2013","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","totalPosts":10}],"id":"58b4b27f4c2774661570f915","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/robert-christensens-diamonds-in-the-rough-84048/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/robert-christensens-diamonds-in-the-rough-84048/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/robert-christensens-diamonds-in-the-rough-84048/","metaTitle":"Robert Christensen's Diamonds in the Rough","metaDescription":"Locals didn’t always welcome the tall stranger with the camera. Odd enough that he slowed his car to a stop on their no-name two-lane roads. Odder still that he focused his lens on the things that
","teaser":"Locals didn’t always welcome the tall stranger with the camera. Odd enough that he slowed his car to a stop on their no-name two-lane roads. Odder still that he focused his lens on the things that
","cleanDescription":"\r\n\r\nLocals didn’t always welcome the tall stranger with the camera. Odd enough that he slowed his car to a stop on their no-name two-lane roads. Odder still that he focused his lens on the things that used to be—the old gas station, the old coffee shop, the old bar.
\r\n\r\nIn the mid-1990s, some 20 years after one of his “typical hit-and-run shots,” Robert Christensen returned to the Mora County village of Cleveland (population sub-200) to shoot Louie’s Gas Station. A fellow was working in the yard of a house next door, so Christensen asked him if he knew anything about the old building. Boy, did he. That fellow was Louie—Louie Casados—and he invited Christensen in for a chat.
\r\n\r\nSitting on his couch, Casados spun a tale of how his father had proudly emblazoned his then-baby son’s name on his new business in 1949. Louie himself later tried to make a go of it before too few cars made it too much work for too little cash. In Christensen’s 1977 image, the screen door yawns before a wooden door locked tight. Faded promises of a cold Pepsi cling to buckled stucco.
\r\n\r\nAll in all, it personifies Christensen’s idea of a perfect building to photograph.
\r\n\r\n“I would react to places that I felt were kind of looking back at me,” he said. “I saw them as portraits more than documentation. There’s almost faces in them.”
\r\n\r\nFor nearly 40 years, Christensen has driven the state’s blue highways, a surreptitious photographer of handmade houses and businesses of the “we-don’t-need-no-stinkin’- blueprint” school of architecture. It was his private passion, known to only a few friends, his wife of 10 years, and folks encountered along the way, like Louie Casados.
\r\n\r\nBut now, as he’s “counting down to 70,” Christensen suddenly finds himself in the spotlight. Through March 16, 2014, the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History features Vernacular Architecture of New Mexico: Photographs by Robert Christensen. The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, in Santa Fe, has accepted his collection of nearly 300 images. He sees the possibility of out-of-state gallery shows, maybe even a book.
\r\n\r\nThis measure of fame could have eluded him, as it did Vivian Maier, the Chicago street photographer whose 100,000 images were discovered in 2009, shortly before her death. Employed as a nanny for her entire career, Maier had likewise indulged a secret love for photography, focusing on historic landmarks, accidental portraits, and the rarely documented lives of down-and-outers. Since 2011, her work has appeared in international exhibitions, an outcome she couldn’t have predicted any more than Christensen could have foreseen his own newfound visibility.
\r\n\r\n“It’s all kind of avalanched on me,” he said. “I’m kind of surprised.”
\r\n\r\nChristensen’s photographic journey began unremarkably enough in 1970, after a stint in the Vietnam-era Army. Needing to clear his head, he said goodbye to his native Chicago and headed west, to be near his brother in Albuquerque. He loved the mild winters and hot chile, but what grabbed most of his heart was “the beguiling homespun architecture.” He took a job as a taxi driver, but an unexplainable urge told him to capture those quirky buildings. A 35-millimeter camera came by mail, and soon he was at the University of New Mexico, pursuing a master’s degree in fine-art photography—“you know, where the big bucks are,” he joked.
\r\n\r\nThe best thing about college was becoming friends with B.G. Burr, a fellow photographer. Otherwise, Christensen’s UNM teachers felt so-so about his photos of campus buildings, which rarely included people. Christensen was similarly unmoved by the art theories of the era. Once his GI Bill ran out, he quit and moved on, to a string of odd jobs.
\r\n\r\nAn early one saw him delivering produce all over New Mexico and Texas. Besides fruit and vegetables, he’d load the truck with camera gear, then meander from point A to point B—with stops at C, D, and E—hunting for buildings that lacked occupants but burst with character. The Spurs Saloon, in Vaughn. The Coffee Cup, in Carrizozo. A hippie house in La Joya.
\r\n\r\nMost notoriously, Christensen consumed more than four hours snailing his way from Las Cruces to El Paso, a trip that the Interstate rips out in 46 miles. His boss grew suspicious. He was followed. Then he got fired.
\r\n\r\nChristensen’s sallies along the back roads turned into an off-hours compulsion with repeat visits to favorite sites. He didn’t stop in every town, and a building had to be more than just old to earn a few frames.
\r\n\r\n“People say to me, ‘Oh, you’ve got to see this place,’” he said. “I go out, and it’s just a building, and I think, ‘Oh, they don’t get it.’”
\r\n\r\nFor one of his work stints, Christensen logged time as a darkroom technician, perfecting skills that fellow photo-geeks still rave about. His college friend Burr, a photo archivist at the Los Lunas Museum of Heritage and Arts, once asked him to guest-teach a photography class at UNM–Valencia County.
\r\n\r\n“He showed the students a print, and they were all impressed with it,” Burr said. “Then he laid another beside it. It was noticeably better. They talked about how he brought out the details. Then he laid another one down. And another one. He did that 10 times. By the time he was finished, the students were speechless. I’ve never known anybody to print that well.”
\r\n\r\nBy then, Christensen had settled in Belén, Burr in nearby Los Lunas. Sometimes, the two went out together on shooting jaunts. In 2001, Christensen fell for a coworker at a camera shop, and married her two years later. Debra Christensen joined him on some of his outings, shooting her own close-ups of nature. To Christensen, it was all a great hobby, like collecting baseball cards: “One photo would go up on the wall; another would come down.”
\r\n\r\nBurr kept telling him that his images compared well with the work of Walker Evans, a Farm Security Administration photographer whose Depression-era legacy included classics of the vernacular genre. A few years ago, the two spread out Christensen’s images on his coffee table, and it clicked.
\r\n\r\n“I’d never looked at it all together before,” he said. “I realized then that what B.G. said was true: I had a cohesive body of work.”
\r\n\r\nIt took a while, but Christensen finally called Glenn Fye, photo archivist at the Albuquerque Museum. Once Fye got a glimpse, the dominoes tumbled.
\r\n\r\n“I thought they were little jewels,” Fye said. “They’re not pretentious, they’re not random snapshots. They’re character studies.” Best of all, he said, “They don’t have a ye-olde quality.”
\r\n\r\n“Bob’s not trying to tug at your heartstrings,” Albuquerque Museum of Art and History curator Andrew Connors said. “It’s a neutral statement and allows the viewer to apply their own meaning. He doesn’t care about trends, or what’s considered fashionable from an art perspective. He’s looking at what makes sense to him.”
\r\n\r\nWhat makes sense are buildings that reflect an era of do-it-yourself initiative, before the prefab sameness of national franchises turned every town into anytown.
\r\n\r\nChristensen doesn’t always know the stories behind his storefronts. Despite several drives south, he couldn’t divine why a onetime church north of El Paso had bones painted on its exterior. He can’t say what’s up with a windowless, flat-front building whose rooftop sign proclaims “cowboy jim’s.” “I only know that it’s in Santa Rosa,” he said.
\r\n\r\nPart of the info gap comes from the way people’s knees jerk the first time they see him.
\r\n\r\n“People don’t trust people with cameras,” he said. “So I go knocking on doors, and the first thing I say is, ‘I’m not from the government and I’m not selling anything.’ When they see a photograph I’ve taken of their place, they usually just open right up.”
\r\n\r\nChristensen treasures the times when the approach works and he can document a little tale. One of the sweetest sprang from a folk-art mural on a Belén auto-parts store with the initials “PC.” He met a Plácido Chavez there, an elderly man. They had a nice chat, but not much else. In the 1990s, Christensen got the Valencia News Bulletin to publish the image, asking folks to fill in the blanks. It turned out the mural painter was Plácido’s son, Florencio Chavez, a talented naïve artist who had decorated a number of buildings around town before dying young.
\r\n\r\n“The buildings were gone,” Christensen said. “His family had no record of his artwork, and they were thrilled to see my photo.”
\r\n\r\nIn recent years, the master film printer has shot with a digital Nikon D300 and extols the charms of Adobe’s Photoshop software, particularly the consistency of a computer over a darkroom. He’s quick to acknowledge that he has yet to explore plenty of places in the state, but concedes that there may not be many more of his vernacular portraits to come.
\r\n\r\n“I got two good images this year, and they’re the first I’ve gotten for a couple of years,” he said. “It hurts to drive around now, physically.”
\r\n\r\n“We can’t go traipsing like we used to,” Debra Christensen said.
\r\n\r\nStill, the road calls, especially the little towns hugging the Río Grande and the Gila National Forest, Christensen’s happiest haunts. He hears it when looking at his favorite photo, of the Joy Drive In marquee near Anthony, the only memory of a moviegoing way station that fell into disuse, pecan trees finally growing up through and over the parking spots. How many more little jewels might be out there, settling a bit more each year into desert dust?
\r\n\r\n“They are becoming increasingly scarce,” he said in his artist statement for the exhibit, “but I still love to explore New Mexico, and I am always gratified when I chance upon just one more of these wizened old mugs looking back at me.” ✜
\r\n\r\nKate Nelson is the author of Helen Hardin: A Straight Line Curved (Little Standing Spruce Publishing, 2012). She reported on the renovation of La Fonda on the Plaza in the September issue.
\r\n\r\nNEED TO KNOW
\r\n\r\nVernacular Architecture of New Mexico: Photographs by Robert Christensen is on display at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Tues.–Sun., until March 16, 2014. (505) 243-7255;cabq.gov/culturalservices/albuquerque-museum
","publish_start_moment":"2013-11-01T13:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2017-09-22T05:00:45.053Z"},{"_id":"58b4b27f4c2774661570f914","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f240","title":"Wrapped in Tradition","slug":"artscapes-winter-spanish-market-2013-84044","image_id":"58b4b2474c2774661570f461","description":"In July 1951, the Archbishop of Santa Fe walked among a large gathering of artists on the city’s historic Plaza, blessing them and their artworks with holy water procured from what was then known as St. Francis Cathedral.
\r\n\r\nThe occasion was the inaugural Spanish Market, the oldest (and today the largest) annual juried exhibit and sale of devotional art in the U.S.—an event so tied to religious celebration and family tradition that it would have seemed unusual not to see a holy blessing. Created by the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, an organization founded in 1929 to promote and preserve the traditions of Spanish Colonial arts and crafts, Spanish Market has since blossomed, and now includes an annual winter show and sale. What began in 1989 with just a handful of artists in Santa Fe is now a Winter Spanish Market that includes nearly 100 artists, many of them regular participants in the summer event. And this year, the market is heading south, to Albuquerque, to expand the reach of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society and to attract a larger, more diverse clientele to this one-of-a-kind art show and holiday-shopping experience.
\r\n\r\nDerived from Iberian customs transplanted to the New World in the last decade of the 15th century, Spanish Colonial art in the U.S. combines new and original artistic traditions, each with its own specific language and decorative guidelines. In addition to the high-quality New Mexican artisanship required to participate, Catholic imagery is the thread that ties these artistic practices together, and what makes the market so suitable for Christmas shopping. However, not all items at the market are devotional pieces—there are artworks and functional pieces to satisfy every lifestyle and budget. Winter Spanish Market artists, many of whom fetch top dollar for prize-winning pieces, work in 19 different categories, from copper prints and retablos (devotional paintings on wood) to weavings and straw appliqué.
\r\n\r\n“It’s a wonderful, family-friendly event that suits casual buyers of things like holiday ornaments and other small, handmade, holiday-themed gifts, as well as serious collectors,” says Museum of Spanish Colonial Art marketing director Maggie Magalnick. “There is also a youth-artists’ market.” This year, Winter Spanish Market takes place at Hotel Albuquerque, in Albuquerque’s Old Town district, within walking distance of the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, and historic Route 66.
\r\n\r\n“Albuquerque has many fantastic, well-established cultural institutions and arts and crafts shows,” Magalnick says, “but this will really be the first world-class juried art show and sale of its kind there. It’s mutually beneficial for us and the city.” The Society brought the Winter Market to Albuquerque mainly to broaden the pool of people who appreciate these art forms, which nearly fell into obscurity in the American Southwest at the beginning of the 20th century. This art tradition is unique to the region, and it’s become very much a family affair, passed down from masters to new generations, often through a guild system.
\r\n\r\nGrace Servas, a longtime Society volunteer and wife of Society board member Frank Servas, says that Winter Spanish Market gives travelers and locals a chance to buy, directly from the artist, a piece of affordable, New Mexico–made artwork steeped in tradition. “Unlike the summer market,” she explains, “there is more time to talk to the artists in the winter. They’re not running around so much, and the atmosphere is more congenial and relaxed than at summer market.”
\r\n\r\nServas says that most artists sell their larger pieces at the summer event, and craft smaller, less-expensive pieces for winter market. “You’ll find a lot of carved-wood, straw appliqué, and tinwork ornaments and holiday decorations,” she says, and many are priced between $25 and $80. Smaller retablos, bultos, and jewelry pieces between $40 and $100 also make a great showing, as do functional tinwork items such as framed mirrors and decorative tissue boxes. Form meets function in larger (and thus more expensive) hand-carved furniture pieces such as benches and shelves, which make great showpieces and display rests for smaller works.
\r\n\r\nArtists young and old participate at Winter Market, and each finds a way to his or her chosen craft through family influence, mentorship, or both. Straw-appliqué artist Della Vigil, retablo and santo maker Nicolás Otero, and furniture maker Randy Trujillo exemplify the high level of craftsmanship that artists must demonstrate in order to be included.
\r\n\r\nAll in La Familia
\r\n\r\nA summer and winter Spanish Market participant since 2008, Santa Fe–based straw appliqué artist Della Vigil is a descendant (on her mother’s side) of Santuario de Chimayó altar-screen artist José Rafael Aragón.
\r\n\r\n“Also, my great-great-grandmother and her sisters were weavers,” says Vigil, “and they were known for their Río Grande Valleros blanket designs. I use some of that patterning in my straw work.” Vigil also serves as co-chair of the market’s artist-liaison committee, which oversees the authenticity of work submitted to Spanish Markets.
\r\n\r\n“Straw appliqué here goes back to the late 1700s or early 1800s,” Vigil says, “and many believe the practice was used to mimic the work seen on Spanish crosses.” Spanish-colonial artists had no access to bulk precious metals, and straw became an inexpensive replacement for gold.
\r\n\r\n“I like to demonstrate the art form at my booth during the market,” says Vigil, whose smaller Winter Market works, such as ornaments, crosses, and Río Grande weaving designs, will range in price from $25 to $400, with most pieces priced under $100. “Besides learning a little bit about straw appliqué’s history and significance, people can get a sense of the amount of work that goes into making a piece. It helps justify the price.”
\r\n\r\nAn Early Start
\r\n\r\nArtist Nicolás Otero, 32, can say without batting an eye that he has participated in Spanish Market for half his life. His journey as an artist began in 1997, when master santera (a carver of devotional wooden sculptures) Rhonda Crespin mentored him during his high school years.
\r\n\r\nOtero, who will sell his smaller retablos for $50 to $250, admitted to not knowing much about his Hispanic heritage before immersing himself in retablo making, and said that monetary motivation kept him in the studio early on. Proceeds from selling his work and prize money from juried shows (he won First Place, Large Retablos, and First Place, Small Retablos at this year’s summer Spanish Market) put him through college. But the more he creates, and the more of his heritage he absorbs, the better he understands the gifts given him as a younger artist.
\r\n\r\nHis curiosity and talent have opened many doors for him, such as the opportunity to illustrate How Hollyhocks Came to New Mexico, a 2012 children’s book written by Rudolfo Anaya (Bless Me, Ultima) and translated by Nasario García. Today Otero mentors others, teaching them about the iconography and methodology of his work— and how to blend and bind their own pigments, shape and gesso their own wooden panels, and varnish the finished pieces.
\r\n\r\nOtero’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, the White House Archive Collections, and other cultural institutions throughout the U.S.
\r\n\r\nLike Father, Like Sons
\r\n\r\n![\"Randy](\"https://res-1.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/interior_21_artscapes_randytrujillo_42eb543e-2c3e-4a9a-a535-94deb32c1f2b.jpg\")
Furniture maker Randy Trujillo, 50, first entered Spanish Market in 2010. “Making Spanish Colonial furniture by hand is how I feed my soul,” Trujillo says. “When I first learned I had gotten into Spanish Market, I actually cried.”
Trujillo sticks to traditional techniques in his southside Santa Fe studio when creating work for both Spanish Markets, winter and summer. His blanket boxes, shelves, benches, lanterns, washstands, chairs, tables, and cribs are made from hand-planed and -waxed pine with hand-carved mortise-and-tenon joints—and absolutely no lacquer. “That would be sacrilege in my book,” he says. Trujillo plans to sell crosses ($100), shelves ($200), and collection boxes ($250), as well as larger items such as blanket boxes ($3,800).
\r\n\r\nTrujillo’s sons, furniture maker Manuel (22) and woodcarver Andrew (21), will be joining their father at their own booths during Winter Spanish Market in Albuquerque. “They learned a lot from me just by observing,” Trujillo says, “and now people are just blown away by their work. I think it’s a critical time right now to keep these traditions alive, for family, and for my heritage. That’s the biggest takeaway from Spanish Market for me: the sense of connection to my roots, both family and artistic.”
\r\n\r\nNEED TO KNOW
\r\n\r\nThe 25th annual Winter Spanish Market will be held 2–9 p.m. Friday, November 29, and 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Saturday, November 30, at Hotel Albuquerque (800 Río Grande Blvd NW; 505- 843-6300; hotelabq.com). Tickets at the door $6 per person, $10 per couple, 12 and younger free. Parking is free, food and beverages will be available for purchase, and special room packages at the hotel will include admission to the market. (505) 982-2226; spanishcolonialblog.org
","publish_start":"2013-11-01T12:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3","58b4b2404c2774661570f306"],"tags_ids":["59090c80e1efff4c9916fa05","59090cb1e1efff4c9916fa25","59090dbce1efff4c9916fae0"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_photo_credit":"MINESH BACRANIA","custom_tagline":"Winter Spanish Market moves from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, just in time for the start of the holiday shopping season.","created":"2013-11-01T12:11:47.000Z","legacy_id":"84044","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"wrapped in tradition","updated":"2017-05-05T01:43:21.855Z","active":true,"author":{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f240","blog":"magazine","name":"Rob DeWalt","_name_sort":"rob dewalt","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.394Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.405Z","_totalPosts":22,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f240","title":"Rob DeWalt","slug":"rob-dewalt","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/author/rob-dewalt/58b4b2404c2774661570f240/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/author/rob-dewalt/58b4b2404c2774661570f240/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.405Z","totalPosts":22},"categories":[{"_id":"58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","title":"Culture","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"culture","updated":"2017-03-14T18:41:36.747Z","created":"2017-03-14T18:41:36.748Z","_totalPosts":208,"id":"58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","slug":"culture","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/culture/58c839601f16f9392cf09a98/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/culture/58c839601f16f9392cf09a98/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-03-14T18:41:36.748Z","totalPosts":208},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3","blog":"magazine","title":"Features","_title_sort":"features","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.492Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.504Z","_totalPosts":202,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3","slug":"features","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/features/58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/features/58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.504Z","totalPosts":202},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","blog":"magazine","title":"November 2013","_title_sort":"november 2013","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.592Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","_totalPosts":10,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","slug":"november-2013","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","totalPosts":10}],"image":{"_id":"58b4b2474c2774661570f461","legacy_id":"84045","title":"22-Artscapes -Della Vigil","created":"2013-11-01T12:33:59.000Z","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:06.466Z","credits":"Henry Lopez","content_owner":"magazine","tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"title_sort":"22-artscapes -della vigil","resource_raw":{"public_id":"clients/newmexico/22_artscapes_dellavigil_0ec1f987-31cc-404c-a6e3-b9049b82c606","version":1488237126,"signature":"0ed9cd8d3d1835b8b32426f1e1cd2aba9f12861b","width":488,"height":697,"format":"jpg","resource_type":"image","created_at":"2017-02-27T23:12:06.000Z","bytes":62121,"type":"upload","etag":"db22e4037ea510e2cea56f180d20cb65","url":"http://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1488237126/clients/newmexico/22_artscapes_dellavigil_0ec1f987-31cc-404c-a6e3-b9049b82c606.jpg","secure_url":"https://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1488237126/clients/newmexico/22_artscapes_dellavigil_0ec1f987-31cc-404c-a6e3-b9049b82c606.jpg","exif":{"Copyright":".. Minesh Bacrania (2013)"},"original_filename":"22-artscapes-dellavigil"},"deleted":false,"id":"58b4b2474c2774661570f461","type":"image","resource":{"raw":{"resource_type":"image","format":"jpg","public_id":"clients/newmexico/22_artscapes_dellavigil_0ec1f987-31cc-404c-a6e3-b9049b82c606"}},"inAssetRequest":false,"alt_text":"22-Artscapes -Della Vigil"},"id":"58b4b27f4c2774661570f914","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/artscapes-winter-spanish-market-2013-84044/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/artscapes-winter-spanish-market-2013-84044/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/artscapes-winter-spanish-market-2013-84044/","metaTitle":"Wrapped in Tradition","metaDescription":"In July 1951, the Archbishop of Santa Fe walked among a large gathering of artists on the city’s historic Plaza, blessing them and their artworks with holy water procured from what was then known as
","teaser":"In July 1951, the Archbishop of Santa Fe walked among a large gathering of artists on the city’s historic Plaza, blessing them and their artworks with holy water procured from what was then known as
","cleanDescription":"In July 1951, the Archbishop of Santa Fe walked among a large gathering of artists on the city’s historic Plaza, blessing them and their artworks with holy water procured from what was then known as St. Francis Cathedral.
\r\n\r\nThe occasion was the inaugural Spanish Market, the oldest (and today the largest) annual juried exhibit and sale of devotional art in the U.S.—an event so tied to religious celebration and family tradition that it would have seemed unusual not to see a holy blessing. Created by the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, an organization founded in 1929 to promote and preserve the traditions of Spanish Colonial arts and crafts, Spanish Market has since blossomed, and now includes an annual winter show and sale. What began in 1989 with just a handful of artists in Santa Fe is now a Winter Spanish Market that includes nearly 100 artists, many of them regular participants in the summer event. And this year, the market is heading south, to Albuquerque, to expand the reach of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society and to attract a larger, more diverse clientele to this one-of-a-kind art show and holiday-shopping experience.
\r\n\r\nDerived from Iberian customs transplanted to the New World in the last decade of the 15th century, Spanish Colonial art in the U.S. combines new and original artistic traditions, each with its own specific language and decorative guidelines. In addition to the high-quality New Mexican artisanship required to participate, Catholic imagery is the thread that ties these artistic practices together, and what makes the market so suitable for Christmas shopping. However, not all items at the market are devotional pieces—there are artworks and functional pieces to satisfy every lifestyle and budget. Winter Spanish Market artists, many of whom fetch top dollar for prize-winning pieces, work in 19 different categories, from copper prints and retablos (devotional paintings on wood) to weavings and straw appliqué.
\r\n\r\n“It’s a wonderful, family-friendly event that suits casual buyers of things like holiday ornaments and other small, handmade, holiday-themed gifts, as well as serious collectors,” says Museum of Spanish Colonial Art marketing director Maggie Magalnick. “There is also a youth-artists’ market.” This year, Winter Spanish Market takes place at Hotel Albuquerque, in Albuquerque’s Old Town district, within walking distance of the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, and historic Route 66.
\r\n\r\n“Albuquerque has many fantastic, well-established cultural institutions and arts and crafts shows,” Magalnick says, “but this will really be the first world-class juried art show and sale of its kind there. It’s mutually beneficial for us and the city.” The Society brought the Winter Market to Albuquerque mainly to broaden the pool of people who appreciate these art forms, which nearly fell into obscurity in the American Southwest at the beginning of the 20th century. This art tradition is unique to the region, and it’s become very much a family affair, passed down from masters to new generations, often through a guild system.
\r\n\r\nGrace Servas, a longtime Society volunteer and wife of Society board member Frank Servas, says that Winter Spanish Market gives travelers and locals a chance to buy, directly from the artist, a piece of affordable, New Mexico–made artwork steeped in tradition. “Unlike the summer market,” she explains, “there is more time to talk to the artists in the winter. They’re not running around so much, and the atmosphere is more congenial and relaxed than at summer market.”
\r\n\r\nServas says that most artists sell their larger pieces at the summer event, and craft smaller, less-expensive pieces for winter market. “You’ll find a lot of carved-wood, straw appliqué, and tinwork ornaments and holiday decorations,” she says, and many are priced between $25 and $80. Smaller retablos, bultos, and jewelry pieces between $40 and $100 also make a great showing, as do functional tinwork items such as framed mirrors and decorative tissue boxes. Form meets function in larger (and thus more expensive) hand-carved furniture pieces such as benches and shelves, which make great showpieces and display rests for smaller works.
\r\n\r\nArtists young and old participate at Winter Market, and each finds a way to his or her chosen craft through family influence, mentorship, or both. Straw-appliqué artist Della Vigil, retablo and santo maker Nicolás Otero, and furniture maker Randy Trujillo exemplify the high level of craftsmanship that artists must demonstrate in order to be included.
\r\n\r\nAll in La Familia
\r\n\r\nA summer and winter Spanish Market participant since 2008, Santa Fe–based straw appliqué artist Della Vigil is a descendant (on her mother’s side) of Santuario de Chimayó altar-screen artist José Rafael Aragón.
\r\n\r\n“Also, my great-great-grandmother and her sisters were weavers,” says Vigil, “and they were known for their Río Grande Valleros blanket designs. I use some of that patterning in my straw work.” Vigil also serves as co-chair of the market’s artist-liaison committee, which oversees the authenticity of work submitted to Spanish Markets.
\r\n\r\n“Straw appliqué here goes back to the late 1700s or early 1800s,” Vigil says, “and many believe the practice was used to mimic the work seen on Spanish crosses.” Spanish-colonial artists had no access to bulk precious metals, and straw became an inexpensive replacement for gold.
\r\n\r\n“I like to demonstrate the art form at my booth during the market,” says Vigil, whose smaller Winter Market works, such as ornaments, crosses, and Río Grande weaving designs, will range in price from $25 to $400, with most pieces priced under $100. “Besides learning a little bit about straw appliqué’s history and significance, people can get a sense of the amount of work that goes into making a piece. It helps justify the price.”
\r\n\r\nAn Early Start
\r\n\r\nArtist Nicolás Otero, 32, can say without batting an eye that he has participated in Spanish Market for half his life. His journey as an artist began in 1997, when master santera (a carver of devotional wooden sculptures) Rhonda Crespin mentored him during his high school years.
\r\n\r\nOtero, who will sell his smaller retablos for $50 to $250, admitted to not knowing much about his Hispanic heritage before immersing himself in retablo making, and said that monetary motivation kept him in the studio early on. Proceeds from selling his work and prize money from juried shows (he won First Place, Large Retablos, and First Place, Small Retablos at this year’s summer Spanish Market) put him through college. But the more he creates, and the more of his heritage he absorbs, the better he understands the gifts given him as a younger artist.
\r\n\r\nHis curiosity and talent have opened many doors for him, such as the opportunity to illustrate How Hollyhocks Came to New Mexico, a 2012 children’s book written by Rudolfo Anaya (Bless Me, Ultima) and translated by Nasario García. Today Otero mentors others, teaching them about the iconography and methodology of his work— and how to blend and bind their own pigments, shape and gesso their own wooden panels, and varnish the finished pieces.
\r\n\r\nOtero’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, the White House Archive Collections, and other cultural institutions throughout the U.S.
\r\n\r\nLike Father, Like Sons
\r\n\r\nFurniture maker Randy Trujillo, 50, first entered Spanish Market in 2010. “Making Spanish Colonial furniture by hand is how I feed my soul,” Trujillo says. “When I first learned I had gotten into Spanish Market, I actually cried.”
Trujillo sticks to traditional techniques in his southside Santa Fe studio when creating work for both Spanish Markets, winter and summer. His blanket boxes, shelves, benches, lanterns, washstands, chairs, tables, and cribs are made from hand-planed and -waxed pine with hand-carved mortise-and-tenon joints—and absolutely no lacquer. “That would be sacrilege in my book,” he says. Trujillo plans to sell crosses ($100), shelves ($200), and collection boxes ($250), as well as larger items such as blanket boxes ($3,800).
\r\n\r\nTrujillo’s sons, furniture maker Manuel (22) and woodcarver Andrew (21), will be joining their father at their own booths during Winter Spanish Market in Albuquerque. “They learned a lot from me just by observing,” Trujillo says, “and now people are just blown away by their work. I think it’s a critical time right now to keep these traditions alive, for family, and for my heritage. That’s the biggest takeaway from Spanish Market for me: the sense of connection to my roots, both family and artistic.”
\r\n\r\nNEED TO KNOW
\r\n\r\nThe 25th annual Winter Spanish Market will be held 2–9 p.m. Friday, November 29, and 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Saturday, November 30, at Hotel Albuquerque (800 Río Grande Blvd NW; 505- 843-6300; hotelabq.com). Tickets at the door $6 per person, $10 per couple, 12 and younger free. Parking is free, food and beverages will be available for purchase, and special room packages at the hotel will include admission to the market. (505) 982-2226; spanishcolonialblog.org
","publish_start_moment":"2013-11-01T12:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2017-09-22T05:00:45.059Z"},{"_id":"58b4b27f4c2774661570f913","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1a6","title":"Book Reviews November 2013","slug":"books-november-2013-83872","image_id":"58b4b2474c2774661570f46e","description":"
\r\n![\"Leaving](\"~https://res-1.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/91osyle45vl_sl1500_160x240_f68b969d-28a5-44dc-a2b9-c8831ebdc002.jpg\")
LEAVING TINKERTOWN
BY TANYA WARD GOODMAN
\r\n(University of New Mexico Press, 2013)
Tanya Ward Goodman writes with clear-eyed, simple elegance as she tells the tender story of a special father-daughter bond nurtured at traveling carnivals and county fairs, and cemented with the thousands of bottles that make up the exterior walls of Tinkertown—the family’s home and oddball museum in Sandia Crest, just northeast of Albuquerque.
\r\n\r\nTinkertown is New Mexico’s version of that peculiar fringe of Americana known in the mid-20th century as the roadside attraction. Whether it’s Reverend Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden, in Georgia, or Dr. Niblack’s Wood-Carving Museum, in South Dakota, the aesthetic is the same: creatively eccentric folk art of the most unusual kind, generally helmed by a singularly and obsessively talented individual.
\r\n\r\nGoodman’s father, Ross Ward, was such a character; his love of the roadside attraction was born on a childhood visit to Knott’s Berry Farm in the 1940s. He grew up to be a carnival painter, traveling the country’s back roads while dreaming of having his own museum to house his growing collection of his own hand-carved miniature circus dioramas, as well as dozens of wedding-cake toppers, souvenir bullet pencils, old hand tools, and the other flotsam and jetsam his breed of collectors tends to accumulate. In the 1970s, he moved his exhibits from the New Mexico State Fair to a permanent installation in the family’s small house in Sandia Park, off N.M. 14—a house that began growing along with Ward’s collections.
\r\n\r\nWard Goodman reveals her remarkable childhood in Tink-ertown almost casually, as the story she really wants to tell is not her own but that of her intensely talented and passionate father, whose life began unraveling at the age of 58, when he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Doctors told him—and the family—to expect about five years of steady, predictable, heartbreaking decline.
\r\n\r\nAlthough struggling to build a Hollywood writing career, and newly in love with the man she would eventually marry, Ward Goodman, at 28, made the painful decision to return to Tinkertown to be with her father while he was still in reasonably good shape, and to take care of him as he slowly faded away.
\r\n\r\nShe writes of battles with her controlling stepmother balanced by quiet visits with her mother, who sequestered herself at the edges of the family drama. There are moments of Ross’s lucidity that shine brightly amid the dross of his declining health. There is a museum to run, a long-distance relationship receding into the ether, and a growing awareness of Ward Goodman’s own fragility as self-care is lost amid the heavy lifting required of caretakers.
\r\n\r\nThrough it all, Ward Goodman writes with well-modulated reflection. In short, poignant chapters that capture the essence of her relationship with Ross and the magnitude of her loss, she eventually comes to the realization that, just as “the show must go on” at Tinkertown, so must she also come out from under its shadow and move on with her own life.
\r\n\r\n![\"HOW](\"~https://res-4.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/screen_shot_2013_10_18_at_12_28_02_pm_160x228_7f2f434b-4023-45d2-81e5-2bba71638d83.jpg\")
HOW GEORGIA BECAME O’KEEFFE: Lessons in the Art of Living
BY KAREN KARBO
\r\n(Skirt! Books, 2012)
In Portland-based author Karen Karbo’s biographies, including the light-footed How Georgia Became O’Keeffe, you don’t find the morose idol worship or relentless catalogues of detail that plague the genre. This latest in Karbo’s series makes an easy read for anyone interested in the life of the woman behind the O’Keeffe legend.
\r\n\r\nKarbo’s biography reveals how O’Keeffe’s extraordinary life embodies wisdom about how to live authentically that can be gleaned by more ordinary mortals like us. While the book offers the traditional biographical fare, How Georgia Became O’Keeffe also serves up some helpful bits of advice derived from O’Keeffe’s own choices, which allowed her cultivate her talent and build her formidable oeuvre. The book’s 10 chapters are titled and based on 10 action verbs that Karbo identifies as crucial to O’Keeffe’s unique lifestyle and success: defy, grow, adopt, muddle, embrace, bare, rebel, drive, break, prize.
\r\n\r\nIn the chapter “Rebel,” for example, Karbo discusses how O’Keeffe broke away from expectations of subjects traditionally painted by female artists and painted a couple dozen paintings of skyscrapers while she lived in midtown Manhattan. She hung one of these, New York with Moon, in Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery for a group show of seven artists (all of the others were male), but when the show opened, O’Keeffe discovered that Stieglitz, her future husband, had taken the painting down, explaining that “the Men had felt it was inappropriate.” Although she was furious, Karbo explains, O’Keeffe “did nothing.” Nothing, except hang the same painting in a one-woman show the next year and sell it for the nice price of $1,200. From this Karbo derives a bit of wisdom, as she does throughout the book: “We must follow our instincts.”
\r\n\r\nOnly in the later, Land of Enchantment chapters of the book—“Drive,” “Break,” “Prize”—do we see O’Keeffe really hit her stride. Eventually taking up solitary residence at Ghost Ranch, 16 miles down a dirt road from the nearest phone in Abiquiú, O’Keeffe did just as she pleased in New Mexico, including letting her husband fend for himself back in New York. She learned to drive a car, collected cow skulls, and painted adobe buildings, striated mesas, and surreal blue skies to her heart’s content.
\r\n\r\n—Theo Pauline Nestor
\r\n\r\n![\"A](\"~https://res-2.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/91hsxrzkchl_160x239_d3232b69-320d-489e-aa71-6d6ff83f01d8.jpg\")
A TIME OF CHANGE
AIMÉE & DAVID THURLO
\r\n(Forge Books, 2013)
Josephine Buck, a Diné woman who lives near Farmington, takes night classes, works part-time at a trading post, and is also in training to be a medicine woman. Right smack dab into the life of this busy 26-year-old falls a murder and, in suspenseful succession, the attendant cops, gumshoes, spottings of suspicious cars, and clues. Page-turning mysteries are a dime a dozen, but this one is deftly interwoven with Navajo spirituality, northwestern New Mexico landscape, and cowboy culture. Co-author David Thurlo grew up on a Diné reservation, and his knowledge base is evident throughout the narrative. Husband-and-wife team David and Aimée Thurlo live in Corrales. This is their 29th book.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
—Candace Walsh
","publish_start":"2013-10-16T10:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58b4b2404c2774661570f28c","58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","58b4b2404c2774661570f306"],"tags_ids":["59090c74e1efff4c9916f9fd","59090c80e1efff4c9916fa05","59090dbce1efff4c9916fae0"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_tagline":"Leaving Tinkertown, How Georgia Became O'Keeffe, A Time of Change","created":"2013-10-16T10:53:53.000Z","legacy_id":"83872","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"book reviews november 2013","updated":"2017-05-05T01:39:01.539Z","active":true,"author":{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1a6","name":"Candelora Versace, Candace Walsh, and Theo Pauline Nestor","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.237Z","blog":"magazine","_name_sort":"candelora versace, candace walsh, and theo pauline nestor","updated":"2017-03-15T19:50:00.408Z","_totalPosts":1,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1a6","title":"Candelora Versace, Candace Walsh, and Theo Pauline Nestor","slug":"candelora-versace-candace-walsh-and-theo-pauline-nestor","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/author/candelora-versace-candace-walsh-and-theo-pauline-nestor/58b4b2404c2774661570f1a6/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/author/candelora-versace-candace-walsh-and-theo-pauline-nestor/58b4b2404c2774661570f1a6/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.237Z","totalPosts":1},"categories":[{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f28c","blog":"magazine","title":"Books","_title_sort":"books","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.491Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.501Z","_totalPosts":35,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f28c","slug":"books","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/books/58b4b2404c2774661570f28c/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/books/58b4b2404c2774661570f28c/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.501Z","totalPosts":35},{"_id":"58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","title":"Culture","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"culture","updated":"2017-03-14T18:41:36.747Z","created":"2017-03-14T18:41:36.748Z","_totalPosts":208,"id":"58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","slug":"culture","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/culture/58c839601f16f9392cf09a98/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/culture/58c839601f16f9392cf09a98/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-03-14T18:41:36.748Z","totalPosts":208},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","blog":"magazine","title":"November 2013","_title_sort":"november 2013","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.592Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","_totalPosts":10,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f306","slug":"november-2013","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/november-2013/58b4b2404c2774661570f306/#comments","createdMoment":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.599Z","totalPosts":10}],"image":{"_id":"58b4b2474c2774661570f46e","legacy_id":"83890","title":"Main","created":"2013-10-16T20:14:55.000Z","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:06.352Z","credits":"Henry Lopez","content_owner":"magazine","tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"title_sort":"main","resource_raw":{"public_id":"clients/newmexico/main_30bd5b11-0611-4664-913e-d9c303723c07","version":1488237126,"signature":"a8bcd7c67000b57ad25bd208165f3d2d8f982239","width":488,"height":351,"format":"jpg","resource_type":"image","created_at":"2017-02-27T23:12:06.000Z","bytes":76242,"type":"upload","etag":"d8a30e080f56951a845360b22bb70508","url":"http://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1488237126/clients/newmexico/main_30bd5b11-0611-4664-913e-d9c303723c07.jpg","secure_url":"https://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1488237126/clients/newmexico/main_30bd5b11-0611-4664-913e-d9c303723c07.jpg","original_filename":"main"},"deleted":false,"id":"58b4b2474c2774661570f46e","type":"image","resource":{"raw":{"resource_type":"image","format":"jpg","public_id":"clients/newmexico/main_30bd5b11-0611-4664-913e-d9c303723c07"}},"inAssetRequest":false,"alt_text":"Main"},"id":"58b4b27f4c2774661570f913","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/books-november-2013-83872/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/books-november-2013-83872/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/books-november-2013-83872/","metaTitle":"Book Reviews November 2013","metaDescription":"
LEAVING TINKERTOWN
BY TANYA WARD GOODMAN
(University of New Mexico Press, 2013)
Tanya Ward Goodman writes with clear-eyed, simple elegance as she tells the tender story of a special father-daughter
","teaser":"
LEAVING TINKERTOWN
BY TANYA WARD GOODMAN
(University of New Mexico Press, 2013)
Tanya Ward Goodman writes with clear-eyed, simple elegance as she tells the tender story of a special father-daughter
","cleanDescription":"
\r\nLEAVING TINKERTOWN
BY TANYA WARD GOODMAN
\r\n(University of New Mexico Press, 2013)
Tanya Ward Goodman writes with clear-eyed, simple elegance as she tells the tender story of a special father-daughter bond nurtured at traveling carnivals and county fairs, and cemented with the thousands of bottles that make up the exterior walls of Tinkertown—the family’s home and oddball museum in Sandia Crest, just northeast of Albuquerque.
\r\n\r\nTinkertown is New Mexico’s version of that peculiar fringe of Americana known in the mid-20th century as the roadside attraction. Whether it’s Reverend Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden, in Georgia, or Dr. Niblack’s Wood-Carving Museum, in South Dakota, the aesthetic is the same: creatively eccentric folk art of the most unusual kind, generally helmed by a singularly and obsessively talented individual.
\r\n\r\nGoodman’s father, Ross Ward, was such a character; his love of the roadside attraction was born on a childhood visit to Knott’s Berry Farm in the 1940s. He grew up to be a carnival painter, traveling the country’s back roads while dreaming of having his own museum to house his growing collection of his own hand-carved miniature circus dioramas, as well as dozens of wedding-cake toppers, souvenir bullet pencils, old hand tools, and the other flotsam and jetsam his breed of collectors tends to accumulate. In the 1970s, he moved his exhibits from the New Mexico State Fair to a permanent installation in the family’s small house in Sandia Park, off N.M. 14—a house that began growing along with Ward’s collections.
\r\n\r\nWard Goodman reveals her remarkable childhood in Tink-ertown almost casually, as the story she really wants to tell is not her own but that of her intensely talented and passionate father, whose life began unraveling at the age of 58, when he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Doctors told him—and the family—to expect about five years of steady, predictable, heartbreaking decline.
\r\n\r\nAlthough struggling to build a Hollywood writing career, and newly in love with the man she would eventually marry, Ward Goodman, at 28, made the painful decision to return to Tinkertown to be with her father while he was still in reasonably good shape, and to take care of him as he slowly faded away.
\r\n\r\nShe writes of battles with her controlling stepmother balanced by quiet visits with her mother, who sequestered herself at the edges of the family drama. There are moments of Ross’s lucidity that shine brightly amid the dross of his declining health. There is a museum to run, a long-distance relationship receding into the ether, and a growing awareness of Ward Goodman’s own fragility as self-care is lost amid the heavy lifting required of caretakers.
\r\n\r\nThrough it all, Ward Goodman writes with well-modulated reflection. In short, poignant chapters that capture the essence of her relationship with Ross and the magnitude of her loss, she eventually comes to the realization that, just as “the show must go on” at Tinkertown, so must she also come out from under its shadow and move on with her own life.
\r\n\r\nHOW GEORGIA BECAME O’KEEFFE: Lessons in the Art of Living
BY KAREN KARBO
\r\n(Skirt! Books, 2012)
In Portland-based author Karen Karbo’s biographies, including the light-footed How Georgia Became O’Keeffe, you don’t find the morose idol worship or relentless catalogues of detail that plague the genre. This latest in Karbo’s series makes an easy read for anyone interested in the life of the woman behind the O’Keeffe legend.
\r\n\r\nKarbo’s biography reveals how O’Keeffe’s extraordinary life embodies wisdom about how to live authentically that can be gleaned by more ordinary mortals like us. While the book offers the traditional biographical fare, How Georgia Became O’Keeffe also serves up some helpful bits of advice derived from O’Keeffe’s own choices, which allowed her cultivate her talent and build her formidable oeuvre. The book’s 10 chapters are titled and based on 10 action verbs that Karbo identifies as crucial to O’Keeffe’s unique lifestyle and success: defy, grow, adopt, muddle, embrace, bare, rebel, drive, break, prize.
\r\n\r\nIn the chapter “Rebel,” for example, Karbo discusses how O’Keeffe broke away from expectations of subjects traditionally painted by female artists and painted a couple dozen paintings of skyscrapers while she lived in midtown Manhattan. She hung one of these, New York with Moon, in Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery for a group show of seven artists (all of the others were male), but when the show opened, O’Keeffe discovered that Stieglitz, her future husband, had taken the painting down, explaining that “the Men had felt it was inappropriate.” Although she was furious, Karbo explains, O’Keeffe “did nothing.” Nothing, except hang the same painting in a one-woman show the next year and sell it for the nice price of $1,200. From this Karbo derives a bit of wisdom, as she does throughout the book: “We must follow our instincts.”
\r\n\r\nOnly in the later, Land of Enchantment chapters of the book—“Drive,” “Break,” “Prize”—do we see O’Keeffe really hit her stride. Eventually taking up solitary residence at Ghost Ranch, 16 miles down a dirt road from the nearest phone in Abiquiú, O’Keeffe did just as she pleased in New Mexico, including letting her husband fend for himself back in New York. She learned to drive a car, collected cow skulls, and painted adobe buildings, striated mesas, and surreal blue skies to her heart’s content.
\r\n\r\n—Theo Pauline Nestor
\r\n\r\nA TIME OF CHANGE
AIMÉE & DAVID THURLO
\r\n(Forge Books, 2013)
Josephine Buck, a Diné woman who lives near Farmington, takes night classes, works part-time at a trading post, and is also in training to be a medicine woman. Right smack dab into the life of this busy 26-year-old falls a murder and, in suspenseful succession, the attendant cops, gumshoes, spottings of suspicious cars, and clues. Page-turning mysteries are a dime a dozen, but this one is deftly interwoven with Navajo spirituality, northwestern New Mexico landscape, and cowboy culture. Co-author David Thurlo grew up on a Diné reservation, and his knowledge base is evident throughout the narrative. Husband-and-wife team David and Aimée Thurlo live in Corrales. This is their 29th book.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
—Candace Walsh
","publish_start_moment":"2013-10-16T10:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2017-09-22T05:00:45.064Z"},{"_id":"58b4b27f4c2774661570f912","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1a8","title":"These Walls Talk","slug":"these-walls-talk-83871","description":"\r\n\r\nFrom caves to adobes to Spaceport America, New Mexico’s architectural legacy tells a compelling story of people and places written in stone, mud, steel, and glass. Visiting these handsomely wrought sites, you can touch, climb on, and walk through history—quite a privilege.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Boca Negra Cave
\r\n\r\nSome 1,700 years ago, the people who camped in a cave on Albuquerque’s West Mesa were in the midst of a major cultural and biotechnological revolution: They started to grow and eat corn.
\r\n\r\nThey were onto something. A hundred years later, the culture of the Pueblos would emerge from this innovation, as nomadic hunter-gatherers began to settle in villages, tend their crops, grind corn into flour, and make pottery.
\r\n\r\nThink of breakthroughs like fire, the printing press, the harnessing of electricity: Growing corn ranks right up there. “After 7,500 years of a very stable—and very mobile—culture, people were on the verge of a whole new way of life,” says archaeologist Matt Schmader, Superintendent of Open Space for the City of Albuquerque.
\r\n\r\nAnd right here in Boca Negra cave, a shallow niche tucked into an extinct volcano in Albuquerque’s West Mesa Open Space, within the Petroglyph National Monument, archaeologists have found the earliest evidence of corn in the region. Schmader says the inhabitants roamed between the Río Grande and the Río Puerco hunting deer, antelope, and rabbits. Today, on the steep apron that fronts the cave, you’ll find scattered and splintered artifacts to mark their presence: stone tools, fire-cracked rock, arrowhead fragments, scorched deer bones.
\r\n\r\nSchmader also found a rusty scrap of sheet metal. “There were World War II bomb targets out here,” he explains. “The way this West Mesa has been used over the years is amazing, from Paleo-Indian hunters to bombers.”
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nFrom the Big I intersection of Interstate 40 and Interstate 25 in Albuquerque, take I-40 W. about 9.8 miles to the Atrisco Vista Blvd. exit. Travel N. 4.8 miles to the park access on the right and proceed E. to the small parking lot. Boca Negra cave nestles in the third large volcano from the S., a hike of less than a mile. From the parking lot, follow the dirt road N. a few hundred yards. Another dirt road crosses diagonally. Follow it NE about 2/3 mile. The cave is visible on the E. side of the volcano on your right. For information, call the Open Space Visitors Center, in town. (505) 897-8831
\r\n\r\nSALINAS PUEBLO
\r\n\r\nA single, unbroken architectural thread spanning 1,000 years connects New Mexico’s ancient Pueblo years to the latest Pueblo Revival–style home going up in Santa Fe. You can touch a long stretch of that thread at Gran Quivira, in the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, near Mountainair. The name Salinas comes from the salt that the Gran Quivira, Quarai, and Abó Pueblo people collected from nearby salt lakes, which they considered sacred places. Near the top of a mound of largely buried limestone walls and sunken kivas, you can stand on a 500-year-old wall and peer two floors down into a room closer to 900 years old.
\r\n\r\nHere at Las Humanas Pueblo, Tompiro-speaking people first built pit houses mostly underground, then thatched-roof structures rising partly out of the earth, then a circular Pueblo of stone, and finally a rectilinear stone Pueblo that rose a few stories aboveground. The masonry work bears the stamp of Anasazi know-how, though it’s less elaborate than the intricate walls at 11th-century Chaco Canyon.
\r\n\r\nThe rooms are tiny because people lived mostly outside. With its rectangular proportions, faintly pyramidal multistory design, protruding vigas, rooftop patios, adobe plaster, and latilla shade structures, the Pueblo typified a design language that continues today: a good example is the Inn and Spa at Loretto near Santa Fe’s Plaza.
\r\n\r\nNow look over your shoulder. Standing tall on the Pueblo’s western toes you’ll see the roofless ruins of the San Buenaventura mission church. In the mid-1600s, Spanish padres compelled the Indians to build it from the same stone, using many of the techniques they’d used on their Pueblo. It’s New World–Old World architecture.
\r\n\r\nPerhaps 2,000 people lived at Gran Quivira at its peak. By the 1670s, everyone was gone—drought, famine, and rocky relations with neighboring Apaches drove them away. Eventually, roofs collapsed, plaster crumbled, and blowing dust filled in the rooms. The stone remains.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nFrom Albuquerque, take I-40 E. about 7.5 miles from Tramway Blvd. to the Tijeras exit. Follow N.M. 337 about 30 miles S. and turn right on N.M. 55. Follow it another 25 miles to Mountainair. Follow N.M. 55 another 25 miles S. to Gran Quivira, at milepost 37. Open seven days a week, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. (505) 847-2770; nps.gov/sapu
\r\n\r\nLas Trampas Church
\r\n\r\nTo see Spanish Colonial architecture intact and unadorned, preserved but neither embalmed nor glamorously restored, take the hour-long drive north from Santa Fe along the High Road to Taos to the church of San José de Gracia, in Las Trampas. After winding your way up from Española, past Chimayó and through Truchas, you’ll find the church at the roadside just beyond the sparkling Río de las Trampas.
\r\n\r\nThe church is a monument to Hispanic Catholicism in the New World, fashioned from native mud, stone, and timber, seemingly left untouched since the 1770s.
\r\n\r\n“The church has been considered by some ‘the most perfectly preserved Spanish colonial church in the United States,’” says Marina Ochoa, of the Office of Historic-Artistic Patrimony and Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
\r\n\r\nArchitecturally, the church shows classic elements that define Spanish Colonial architecture not just for churches, but for homes as well. Look at the towers flanking the front door, the balcony joining them, the incredibly thick but upward-tapering walls, the exposed wood lintels, the alternating patterns in the rail-and-stile doors, and the rope-carved posts. Architect John Gaw Meem, considered by many the father of Santa Fe style, built a career drawing variations on these elements, even in secular buildings like his University of New Mexico masterpiece, Zimmerman Library (see p. 32).
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nFrom Riverside Drive/N.M. 68 in Española, turn E. on N.M. 76, the High Road to Taos, and take it 24 miles. To arrange a tour of the interior or to find out about mass, contact the Holy Family Parish of Chimayó. (505) 351-4360; bit.ly/lastrampas
\r\n\r\nFort Union National Monument
\r\n\r\nA string of brick chimneys punctuate the rolling prairie, all that remains after more than 100 years of rain, snow, wind, and sun have melted away the adobe walls of the officers’ quarters at Fort Union. Still, this national monument near Las Vegas remains one of the few places you can see the architectural ghosts of New Mexico’s Territorial style ancestors.
\r\n\r\nWhen people talk about Santa Fe style, which peaked as the must-have look for New Mexico homes in recent decades, they’re really talking about Territorial Revival and Pueblo Revival. A vaguely classical and symmetrical look, Territorial style went beyond the Pueblo look with a floor plan around a central hall, and by adding milled-wood trim (usually white), fired-brick coping at the roofline, milled vigas, multipaned windows with carved mullions and triangular pediments above, and multipanel doors. All these details became possible as trade picked up with the East after New Mexico became a U.S. Territory in 1850. The arrival of the railroad, in 1878, further accelerated the trend.
\r\n\r\nFort Union began guarding the Santa Fe Trail in 1851. Army architects de-signed it and its defunct urban cousin, Fort Marcy, above Santa Fe, to emulate their Eastern relatives. Today, while Fort Union’s native New Mexican adobe walls have all but vanished, its firebrick chimneys remain at attention.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nFrom Las Vegas, New Mexico, take I-25 N. about 20 miles to exit 366, N.M. 161/ Watrous/Valmora. Turn left on N.M. 161 and drive about seven miles to Fort Union National Monument. Open daily except Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. (505) 425-8025; nps.gov/foun
\r\n\r\nAlvarado Transportation Center
\r\n\r\nThe original Alvarado Hotel, in Albuquerque, wasn’t just a train stop in the desert between Chicago and Los Angeles. It was a destination in its own right, and a local society hot spot. Built by the Fred Harvey railroad-lodging-tourism juggernaut in 1902, at the apex of the era of glamorous train travel, this crown jewel on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway hosted movie stars, celebrities, and presidential candidates. Guests and visitors shopped for Native American merchandise at the adjacent Indian Curio Building, marveled at on-site Navajo weavers working at the loom, and signed up for auto tours of nearby Pueblos.
\r\n\r\nThe hotel was demolished in 1970, during tough economic times in downtown Duke City. In 1993, the station burned down. Albuquerqueans lamented its loss.
\r\n\r\nUntil, that is, Downtown went through a renaissance. In the early 2000s, the city came to its architectural senses and built the Alvarado Transportation Center, a hub for buses and trains, on the hotel site, just as the new commuter Rail Runner Express rolled onto the scene, revitalizing the iron horse in New Mexico. The local architectural firm Dekker/Perich/Sabatini and lead architect Christopher Gunning hewed close to the grand old hotel’s California Mission style with the clay tile roofs, open arcades, and brick-paved promenades so characteristic of the Harvey houses.
\r\n\r\nBeside the Center, the Indian Curio Building still stands, now a small office building for Amtrak employees.
\r\n\r\nLong live the Alvarado!
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nSmack in the heart of downtown Albuquerque, the Alvarado Transportation Center sits on the tracks at Central Ave. and First St. From I-25, head W. less than a mile down Central. Look for the retro clock tower. 320 First St. SW; cabq.gov/transit
\r\n\r\nZimmerman Library
\r\n\r\nJohn Gaw Meem, the 20th-century architect who did more than anyone else to revive and reinvigorate New Mexico’s native architectural traditions, created one of his masterpieces at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Zimmerman Library is the headliner of an all-star lineup of Meem buildings on campus that includes Scholes Hall and the lovely Alumni Chapel. The American Institute of Architects, New Mexico chapter, recently named the library the “building of the 20th century in New Mexico.” Historian David Kammer (an alum himself) notes that Meem regarded the Zimmerman as the “finest building that he had ever designed in the Spanish- Pueblo style, a sentiment shared by many.”
\r\n\r\nIn recent years, UNM has oscillated between unfettered and historically minded modernism, but the Meem buildings endure with the relaxed inevitability of all great designs. Even with major—call them vast—additions to the Zimmerman, Meem’s original rooms remain as a west wing. Inside and out, they give a quick survey of Pueblo Revival architectural elements, from its stepped, asymmetrical massing to finer, oft-imitated details like heavy wood lintels over multipaned windows set deep into battered walls, intricate tinwork light fixtures, and spectacular viga-and-corbel ceilings—the massive carved beams repeat in tight succession, a glorious architectural riff harmonizing with the deepest roots of native architecture. These study areas are some of the most inviting public spaces in New Mexico. Come, grab a book, and settle in.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nReach the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque by exiting I-25 at Lomas Blvd. and driving less than a mile E. Turn S. on Yale Blvd. Zimmerman Library is at nearly the midpoint of the campus, across from the duck pond. (505) 277-9100; library.unm.edu
\r\n\r\nRío Grande Nature Center State Park
\r\n\r\nYou enter the Río Grande Nature Center in Albuquerque through a seven-foot-diameter corrugated culvert that might have been salvaged from a nearby acequia. The rest of the long, low, naked-concrete building hides behind a grassy, shrubby earthen berm under the stately old-growth cottonwoods of the bosque. That culvert feels both pedestrian and transformative.
\r\n\r\nInside, a series of vertical water columns in clear tubes divides an informational display area from broad windows that gape onto the several-acre pond, where various waterfowl reside. You could sit here for hours, meditating. Or you could move outside to continue monitoring the wildlife scene from behind a concrete wall punctuated by rectangular portholes. Or you could walk deeper into the bosque, to the banks of the Río Grande.
\r\n\r\nAntoine Predock designed the center in the early 1980s. An architect of international acclaim, he has designed grand homes, the stately George Pearl Hall at UNM, and monumental projects like the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, an astonishing structure that treats glass and steel like origami paper. And then there’s the Nature Center, a masterpiece of understated belonging and sensitivity to its surroundings.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE From I-40 in Albuquerque, take the Río Grande Blvd. exit and head N. about 1.5 miles to Candelaria Rd. Turn left and drive just over a half-mile to the Nature Center. 2901 Candelaria Rd. NW, Albuquerque. Visitor Center, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. (505) 344-7240; bit.ly/rgspnm
\r\n\r\nKarl G. Jansky Very Large Array
\r\n\r\nThe Plains of San Agustin rejigger your sense of scale. In that vast, treeless, mountain-fringed bowl, the sky goes huge while earthbound objects shrink, miniaturized by the void. The scene has no foreground. As you drive west across U.S. 60, your attention leaks into the distance. When you first spot the 27 bright-white antennas of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope, their parabolic dishes cupped skyward, they seem toylike—Pixar tulips.
\r\n\r\nSome 20 miles west of Magdalena, find the turn to the VLA, which is part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, under the National Science Foundation. Along with Los Alamos National Laboratory, this almost surreal monument to all things extraterrestrial expresses New Mexico’s deepest duality, the paradoxical cohabitation of the highest of high tech with a landscape of undiluted nature.
\r\n\r\nAt the Visitor Center, stare up into one of the nearly 100-foot-tall antennas. The tower’s struts and braces hold an 82-foot-diameter receiving dish, and can tilt it to any conceivable angle for viewing the sky, day or night. As a built object, the tower epitomizes the modernist architect’s battle cry of “Let form follow function!” It’s beautiful for how it looks and what it does: peering into the deepest reaches of space, more than 13 billion years back in time, gathering radio waves that a supercomputer and its gazillion computations convert into images of the oldest stars and galaxies yet observed by Earthlings.
\r\n\r\nThe infrastructure of the VLA includes 40 miles of double railroad tracks that trace a huge Y on the grassland plains. Along the tracks, a transporter shuttles the 27 dishes into a variety of configurations—the “zoom” of the lens they collectively form. Sometimes they’re bunched together; sometimes they sprawl. After a recent $98 million overhaul, says VLA spokesman Dave Finley, the VLA continues making landmark discoveries as it squints ever closer to the Big Bang. Seeing so far into space means looking far back in time because the light—radio waves, in this case—takes so long to reach us. And while the science may fly over our heads, the VLA itself captivates on a gut level.
\r\n\r\n“I call this art,” says Laura Barish, education and outreach specialist. “People come just to hang out and commune with the antennas.”
\r\n\r\nBart Prince House
\r\n\r\nMaybe it takes a native son to imagine life outside the adobe box.
\r\n\r\nArchitect Bart Prince lived in Santa Fe through kindergarten, when his family moved to Albuquerque. Those Santa Fe years shaped his tastes, but not in ways you’d expect. Known internationally for designing mind- and form-bending homes that often defy the public’s sense of earthly architecture, Prince couldn’t have diverged further from Santa Fe style, though his roots are deep—his great-grandfather served as Territorial Governor, and lived in the Palace of the Governors, on the Santa Fe Plaza.
\r\n\r\nAs an architect, Prince went in a different direction. Consider his studio-home in Albuquerque. Built in 1983, nestled into the ground yet three stories tall, it crouches among the postwar Pueblo-, Territorial-, and even Tudor-style suburban bungalows.
\r\n\r\nAs he does for every commission, Prince designed his home from the inside out, first thinking how he’d use the space, then shaping the structure around it. He created an organic complex of interconnected spirals, curving walls, and slatted overhangs, every inch a remarkable but functional detail. Overhead hovers an ellipsoid room reached by an internal spiral staircase. A library tower guards one side, while an angular flying-bridge gallery shoots over the nearly 70-year-old adobe next door. It’s all steel, wood, tile, cement, carpet, acrylic, and other materials, with structural elements like concrete piers and pipe rafters on full display.
\r\n\r\nHow do the 66-year-old and his buildings fit into the state’s architectural legacy? “I don’t! It’s the story of my life.”
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nFrom Central Ave. at the eastern edge of the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque, turn diagonally left onto Monte Vista Blvd. and drive 0.5 mile to the house on the NE corner of Monte Vista and Marquette Ave. Please respect the homeowner’s privacy by observing the home from the street.
\r\n\r\nSpaceport America
\r\n\r\nIn the distance, a Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway train rolls down the old Jornada del Muerto route of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, near Truth or Consequences. From Spaceport America the train looks like a Lionel set as it retraces the route followed by Spaniards from Mexico City to Santa Fe some 400 years ago.
\r\n\r\nAnd now the sparkling new Spaceport creates a three-dimensional crossroads marking the exact spot where the earthbound past meets the extraplanetary future. Sometime next year, Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson plans to board the company rocket, ride it out of the atmosphere, and jump-start the era of commercial space travel. Not bad, considering that, 1,800 years ago, New Mexicans lived in caves and were just learning to cultivate corn.
\r\n\r\nThe Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space terminal and hangar at Spaceport America stake New Mexico’s claim as the pioneering civilian space center on the blue planet. Six hundred and thirty deposit-paying customers have already signed up for two-hour flights with four minutes of weightlessness in space.
\r\n\r\nThe New Mexico Spaceport Authority operates the Spaceport, owns the site, and leases the terminal and hangar to Virgin Galactic. The London-based firm Foster+Partners designed the Spaceport for Virgin Galactic, while the URS architectural firm, in Albuquerque, handled the project in New Mexico.
\r\n\r\n“As the point of departure and return, as well as the operational and training base, the Spaceport is central to the astronauts’ experience,” says architect Antoinette Nassopoulos Erickson, a partner with Foster+Partners. “In a sense, its design brings space back to Earth.”
\r\n\r\nOn the west side, the terminal’s faintly geomorphic terminal burrows into graveled berms under a winged roofline that echoes the skyline of the distant San Andres Mountains. Visitors and astronauts enter through a channel cut into the earth that leads to a gallery above the maintenance hangar. Continuing through the building, you end up on the second floor at the astronauts’ lounge, where two-story-tall windows overlook a broad apron for staging spacecraft.
\r\n\r\nIf you have the underworld associations of caves and kivas on your mind, it’s not hard to see this passage through the building as a transition between realms, from inside the Earth to outer space. Beyond those huge windows, the runway disappears north and south into the creosote-studded desert. The sky domes overhead, improbably large. Waiting.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nIf you can’t spare the $250,000 to book a flight, tour Spaceport America by bus instead. Follow the Sun Tours go to the Spaceport on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Pickup locations are 710 Hwy 195, Elephant Butte; and Holiday Inn Express, 2201 F.G. Amin St., Truth or Consequences. (866) 428-4786; spaceportamerica.com ✜
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Charles C. Poling has been writing articles about New Mexico for 34 years and he isn’t bored yet: You can’t beat good material.
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","teaser":"From caves to adobes to Spaceport America, New Mexico’s architectural legacy tells a compelling story of people and places written in stone, mud, steel, and glass. Visiting these handsomely wrought
","cleanDescription":"\r\n\r\nFrom caves to adobes to Spaceport America, New Mexico’s architectural legacy tells a compelling story of people and places written in stone, mud, steel, and glass. Visiting these handsomely wrought sites, you can touch, climb on, and walk through history—quite a privilege.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Boca Negra Cave
\r\n\r\nSome 1,700 years ago, the people who camped in a cave on Albuquerque’s West Mesa were in the midst of a major cultural and biotechnological revolution: They started to grow and eat corn.
\r\n\r\nThey were onto something. A hundred years later, the culture of the Pueblos would emerge from this innovation, as nomadic hunter-gatherers began to settle in villages, tend their crops, grind corn into flour, and make pottery.
\r\n\r\nThink of breakthroughs like fire, the printing press, the harnessing of electricity: Growing corn ranks right up there. “After 7,500 years of a very stable—and very mobile—culture, people were on the verge of a whole new way of life,” says archaeologist Matt Schmader, Superintendent of Open Space for the City of Albuquerque.
\r\n\r\nAnd right here in Boca Negra cave, a shallow niche tucked into an extinct volcano in Albuquerque’s West Mesa Open Space, within the Petroglyph National Monument, archaeologists have found the earliest evidence of corn in the region. Schmader says the inhabitants roamed between the Río Grande and the Río Puerco hunting deer, antelope, and rabbits. Today, on the steep apron that fronts the cave, you’ll find scattered and splintered artifacts to mark their presence: stone tools, fire-cracked rock, arrowhead fragments, scorched deer bones.
\r\n\r\nSchmader also found a rusty scrap of sheet metal. “There were World War II bomb targets out here,” he explains. “The way this West Mesa has been used over the years is amazing, from Paleo-Indian hunters to bombers.”
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nFrom the Big I intersection of Interstate 40 and Interstate 25 in Albuquerque, take I-40 W. about 9.8 miles to the Atrisco Vista Blvd. exit. Travel N. 4.8 miles to the park access on the right and proceed E. to the small parking lot. Boca Negra cave nestles in the third large volcano from the S., a hike of less than a mile. From the parking lot, follow the dirt road N. a few hundred yards. Another dirt road crosses diagonally. Follow it NE about 2/3 mile. The cave is visible on the E. side of the volcano on your right. For information, call the Open Space Visitors Center, in town. (505) 897-8831
\r\n\r\nSALINAS PUEBLO
\r\n\r\nA single, unbroken architectural thread spanning 1,000 years connects New Mexico’s ancient Pueblo years to the latest Pueblo Revival–style home going up in Santa Fe. You can touch a long stretch of that thread at Gran Quivira, in the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, near Mountainair. The name Salinas comes from the salt that the Gran Quivira, Quarai, and Abó Pueblo people collected from nearby salt lakes, which they considered sacred places. Near the top of a mound of largely buried limestone walls and sunken kivas, you can stand on a 500-year-old wall and peer two floors down into a room closer to 900 years old.
\r\n\r\nHere at Las Humanas Pueblo, Tompiro-speaking people first built pit houses mostly underground, then thatched-roof structures rising partly out of the earth, then a circular Pueblo of stone, and finally a rectilinear stone Pueblo that rose a few stories aboveground. The masonry work bears the stamp of Anasazi know-how, though it’s less elaborate than the intricate walls at 11th-century Chaco Canyon.
\r\n\r\nThe rooms are tiny because people lived mostly outside. With its rectangular proportions, faintly pyramidal multistory design, protruding vigas, rooftop patios, adobe plaster, and latilla shade structures, the Pueblo typified a design language that continues today: a good example is the Inn and Spa at Loretto near Santa Fe’s Plaza.
\r\n\r\nNow look over your shoulder. Standing tall on the Pueblo’s western toes you’ll see the roofless ruins of the San Buenaventura mission church. In the mid-1600s, Spanish padres compelled the Indians to build it from the same stone, using many of the techniques they’d used on their Pueblo. It’s New World–Old World architecture.
\r\n\r\nPerhaps 2,000 people lived at Gran Quivira at its peak. By the 1670s, everyone was gone—drought, famine, and rocky relations with neighboring Apaches drove them away. Eventually, roofs collapsed, plaster crumbled, and blowing dust filled in the rooms. The stone remains.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nFrom Albuquerque, take I-40 E. about 7.5 miles from Tramway Blvd. to the Tijeras exit. Follow N.M. 337 about 30 miles S. and turn right on N.M. 55. Follow it another 25 miles to Mountainair. Follow N.M. 55 another 25 miles S. to Gran Quivira, at milepost 37. Open seven days a week, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. (505) 847-2770; nps.gov/sapu
\r\n\r\nLas Trampas Church
\r\n\r\nTo see Spanish Colonial architecture intact and unadorned, preserved but neither embalmed nor glamorously restored, take the hour-long drive north from Santa Fe along the High Road to Taos to the church of San José de Gracia, in Las Trampas. After winding your way up from Española, past Chimayó and through Truchas, you’ll find the church at the roadside just beyond the sparkling Río de las Trampas.
\r\n\r\nThe church is a monument to Hispanic Catholicism in the New World, fashioned from native mud, stone, and timber, seemingly left untouched since the 1770s.
\r\n\r\n“The church has been considered by some ‘the most perfectly preserved Spanish colonial church in the United States,’” says Marina Ochoa, of the Office of Historic-Artistic Patrimony and Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
\r\n\r\nArchitecturally, the church shows classic elements that define Spanish Colonial architecture not just for churches, but for homes as well. Look at the towers flanking the front door, the balcony joining them, the incredibly thick but upward-tapering walls, the exposed wood lintels, the alternating patterns in the rail-and-stile doors, and the rope-carved posts. Architect John Gaw Meem, considered by many the father of Santa Fe style, built a career drawing variations on these elements, even in secular buildings like his University of New Mexico masterpiece, Zimmerman Library (see p. 32).
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nFrom Riverside Drive/N.M. 68 in Española, turn E. on N.M. 76, the High Road to Taos, and take it 24 miles. To arrange a tour of the interior or to find out about mass, contact the Holy Family Parish of Chimayó. (505) 351-4360; bit.ly/lastrampas
\r\n\r\nFort Union National Monument
\r\n\r\nA string of brick chimneys punctuate the rolling prairie, all that remains after more than 100 years of rain, snow, wind, and sun have melted away the adobe walls of the officers’ quarters at Fort Union. Still, this national monument near Las Vegas remains one of the few places you can see the architectural ghosts of New Mexico’s Territorial style ancestors.
\r\n\r\nWhen people talk about Santa Fe style, which peaked as the must-have look for New Mexico homes in recent decades, they’re really talking about Territorial Revival and Pueblo Revival. A vaguely classical and symmetrical look, Territorial style went beyond the Pueblo look with a floor plan around a central hall, and by adding milled-wood trim (usually white), fired-brick coping at the roofline, milled vigas, multipaned windows with carved mullions and triangular pediments above, and multipanel doors. All these details became possible as trade picked up with the East after New Mexico became a U.S. Territory in 1850. The arrival of the railroad, in 1878, further accelerated the trend.
\r\n\r\nFort Union began guarding the Santa Fe Trail in 1851. Army architects de-signed it and its defunct urban cousin, Fort Marcy, above Santa Fe, to emulate their Eastern relatives. Today, while Fort Union’s native New Mexican adobe walls have all but vanished, its firebrick chimneys remain at attention.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nFrom Las Vegas, New Mexico, take I-25 N. about 20 miles to exit 366, N.M. 161/ Watrous/Valmora. Turn left on N.M. 161 and drive about seven miles to Fort Union National Monument. Open daily except Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. (505) 425-8025; nps.gov/foun
\r\n\r\nAlvarado Transportation Center
\r\n\r\nThe original Alvarado Hotel, in Albuquerque, wasn’t just a train stop in the desert between Chicago and Los Angeles. It was a destination in its own right, and a local society hot spot. Built by the Fred Harvey railroad-lodging-tourism juggernaut in 1902, at the apex of the era of glamorous train travel, this crown jewel on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway hosted movie stars, celebrities, and presidential candidates. Guests and visitors shopped for Native American merchandise at the adjacent Indian Curio Building, marveled at on-site Navajo weavers working at the loom, and signed up for auto tours of nearby Pueblos.
\r\n\r\nThe hotel was demolished in 1970, during tough economic times in downtown Duke City. In 1993, the station burned down. Albuquerqueans lamented its loss.
\r\n\r\nUntil, that is, Downtown went through a renaissance. In the early 2000s, the city came to its architectural senses and built the Alvarado Transportation Center, a hub for buses and trains, on the hotel site, just as the new commuter Rail Runner Express rolled onto the scene, revitalizing the iron horse in New Mexico. The local architectural firm Dekker/Perich/Sabatini and lead architect Christopher Gunning hewed close to the grand old hotel’s California Mission style with the clay tile roofs, open arcades, and brick-paved promenades so characteristic of the Harvey houses.
\r\n\r\nBeside the Center, the Indian Curio Building still stands, now a small office building for Amtrak employees.
\r\n\r\nLong live the Alvarado!
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nSmack in the heart of downtown Albuquerque, the Alvarado Transportation Center sits on the tracks at Central Ave. and First St. From I-25, head W. less than a mile down Central. Look for the retro clock tower. 320 First St. SW; cabq.gov/transit
\r\n\r\nZimmerman Library
\r\n\r\nJohn Gaw Meem, the 20th-century architect who did more than anyone else to revive and reinvigorate New Mexico’s native architectural traditions, created one of his masterpieces at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Zimmerman Library is the headliner of an all-star lineup of Meem buildings on campus that includes Scholes Hall and the lovely Alumni Chapel. The American Institute of Architects, New Mexico chapter, recently named the library the “building of the 20th century in New Mexico.” Historian David Kammer (an alum himself) notes that Meem regarded the Zimmerman as the “finest building that he had ever designed in the Spanish- Pueblo style, a sentiment shared by many.”
\r\n\r\nIn recent years, UNM has oscillated between unfettered and historically minded modernism, but the Meem buildings endure with the relaxed inevitability of all great designs. Even with major—call them vast—additions to the Zimmerman, Meem’s original rooms remain as a west wing. Inside and out, they give a quick survey of Pueblo Revival architectural elements, from its stepped, asymmetrical massing to finer, oft-imitated details like heavy wood lintels over multipaned windows set deep into battered walls, intricate tinwork light fixtures, and spectacular viga-and-corbel ceilings—the massive carved beams repeat in tight succession, a glorious architectural riff harmonizing with the deepest roots of native architecture. These study areas are some of the most inviting public spaces in New Mexico. Come, grab a book, and settle in.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nReach the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque by exiting I-25 at Lomas Blvd. and driving less than a mile E. Turn S. on Yale Blvd. Zimmerman Library is at nearly the midpoint of the campus, across from the duck pond. (505) 277-9100; library.unm.edu
\r\n\r\nRío Grande Nature Center State Park
\r\n\r\nYou enter the Río Grande Nature Center in Albuquerque through a seven-foot-diameter corrugated culvert that might have been salvaged from a nearby acequia. The rest of the long, low, naked-concrete building hides behind a grassy, shrubby earthen berm under the stately old-growth cottonwoods of the bosque. That culvert feels both pedestrian and transformative.
\r\n\r\nInside, a series of vertical water columns in clear tubes divides an informational display area from broad windows that gape onto the several-acre pond, where various waterfowl reside. You could sit here for hours, meditating. Or you could move outside to continue monitoring the wildlife scene from behind a concrete wall punctuated by rectangular portholes. Or you could walk deeper into the bosque, to the banks of the Río Grande.
\r\n\r\nAntoine Predock designed the center in the early 1980s. An architect of international acclaim, he has designed grand homes, the stately George Pearl Hall at UNM, and monumental projects like the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, an astonishing structure that treats glass and steel like origami paper. And then there’s the Nature Center, a masterpiece of understated belonging and sensitivity to its surroundings.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE From I-40 in Albuquerque, take the Río Grande Blvd. exit and head N. about 1.5 miles to Candelaria Rd. Turn left and drive just over a half-mile to the Nature Center. 2901 Candelaria Rd. NW, Albuquerque. Visitor Center, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. (505) 344-7240; bit.ly/rgspnm
\r\n\r\nKarl G. Jansky Very Large Array
\r\n\r\nThe Plains of San Agustin rejigger your sense of scale. In that vast, treeless, mountain-fringed bowl, the sky goes huge while earthbound objects shrink, miniaturized by the void. The scene has no foreground. As you drive west across U.S. 60, your attention leaks into the distance. When you first spot the 27 bright-white antennas of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope, their parabolic dishes cupped skyward, they seem toylike—Pixar tulips.
\r\n\r\nSome 20 miles west of Magdalena, find the turn to the VLA, which is part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, under the National Science Foundation. Along with Los Alamos National Laboratory, this almost surreal monument to all things extraterrestrial expresses New Mexico’s deepest duality, the paradoxical cohabitation of the highest of high tech with a landscape of undiluted nature.
\r\n\r\nAt the Visitor Center, stare up into one of the nearly 100-foot-tall antennas. The tower’s struts and braces hold an 82-foot-diameter receiving dish, and can tilt it to any conceivable angle for viewing the sky, day or night. As a built object, the tower epitomizes the modernist architect’s battle cry of “Let form follow function!” It’s beautiful for how it looks and what it does: peering into the deepest reaches of space, more than 13 billion years back in time, gathering radio waves that a supercomputer and its gazillion computations convert into images of the oldest stars and galaxies yet observed by Earthlings.
\r\n\r\nThe infrastructure of the VLA includes 40 miles of double railroad tracks that trace a huge Y on the grassland plains. Along the tracks, a transporter shuttles the 27 dishes into a variety of configurations—the “zoom” of the lens they collectively form. Sometimes they’re bunched together; sometimes they sprawl. After a recent $98 million overhaul, says VLA spokesman Dave Finley, the VLA continues making landmark discoveries as it squints ever closer to the Big Bang. Seeing so far into space means looking far back in time because the light—radio waves, in this case—takes so long to reach us. And while the science may fly over our heads, the VLA itself captivates on a gut level.
\r\n\r\n“I call this art,” says Laura Barish, education and outreach specialist. “People come just to hang out and commune with the antennas.”
\r\n\r\nBart Prince House
\r\n\r\nMaybe it takes a native son to imagine life outside the adobe box.
\r\n\r\nArchitect Bart Prince lived in Santa Fe through kindergarten, when his family moved to Albuquerque. Those Santa Fe years shaped his tastes, but not in ways you’d expect. Known internationally for designing mind- and form-bending homes that often defy the public’s sense of earthly architecture, Prince couldn’t have diverged further from Santa Fe style, though his roots are deep—his great-grandfather served as Territorial Governor, and lived in the Palace of the Governors, on the Santa Fe Plaza.
\r\n\r\nAs an architect, Prince went in a different direction. Consider his studio-home in Albuquerque. Built in 1983, nestled into the ground yet three stories tall, it crouches among the postwar Pueblo-, Territorial-, and even Tudor-style suburban bungalows.
\r\n\r\nAs he does for every commission, Prince designed his home from the inside out, first thinking how he’d use the space, then shaping the structure around it. He created an organic complex of interconnected spirals, curving walls, and slatted overhangs, every inch a remarkable but functional detail. Overhead hovers an ellipsoid room reached by an internal spiral staircase. A library tower guards one side, while an angular flying-bridge gallery shoots over the nearly 70-year-old adobe next door. It’s all steel, wood, tile, cement, carpet, acrylic, and other materials, with structural elements like concrete piers and pipe rafters on full display.
\r\n\r\nHow do the 66-year-old and his buildings fit into the state’s architectural legacy? “I don’t! It’s the story of my life.”
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nFrom Central Ave. at the eastern edge of the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque, turn diagonally left onto Monte Vista Blvd. and drive 0.5 mile to the house on the NE corner of Monte Vista and Marquette Ave. Please respect the homeowner’s privacy by observing the home from the street.
\r\n\r\nSpaceport America
\r\n\r\nIn the distance, a Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway train rolls down the old Jornada del Muerto route of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, near Truth or Consequences. From Spaceport America the train looks like a Lionel set as it retraces the route followed by Spaniards from Mexico City to Santa Fe some 400 years ago.
\r\n\r\nAnd now the sparkling new Spaceport creates a three-dimensional crossroads marking the exact spot where the earthbound past meets the extraplanetary future. Sometime next year, Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson plans to board the company rocket, ride it out of the atmosphere, and jump-start the era of commercial space travel. Not bad, considering that, 1,800 years ago, New Mexicans lived in caves and were just learning to cultivate corn.
\r\n\r\nThe Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space terminal and hangar at Spaceport America stake New Mexico’s claim as the pioneering civilian space center on the blue planet. Six hundred and thirty deposit-paying customers have already signed up for two-hour flights with four minutes of weightlessness in space.
\r\n\r\nThe New Mexico Spaceport Authority operates the Spaceport, owns the site, and leases the terminal and hangar to Virgin Galactic. The London-based firm Foster+Partners designed the Spaceport for Virgin Galactic, while the URS architectural firm, in Albuquerque, handled the project in New Mexico.
\r\n\r\n“As the point of departure and return, as well as the operational and training base, the Spaceport is central to the astronauts’ experience,” says architect Antoinette Nassopoulos Erickson, a partner with Foster+Partners. “In a sense, its design brings space back to Earth.”
\r\n\r\nOn the west side, the terminal’s faintly geomorphic terminal burrows into graveled berms under a winged roofline that echoes the skyline of the distant San Andres Mountains. Visitors and astronauts enter through a channel cut into the earth that leads to a gallery above the maintenance hangar. Continuing through the building, you end up on the second floor at the astronauts’ lounge, where two-story-tall windows overlook a broad apron for staging spacecraft.
\r\n\r\nIf you have the underworld associations of caves and kivas on your mind, it’s not hard to see this passage through the building as a transition between realms, from inside the Earth to outer space. Beyond those huge windows, the runway disappears north and south into the creosote-studded desert. The sky domes overhead, improbably large. Waiting.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE
\r\n\r\nIf you can’t spare the $250,000 to book a flight, tour Spaceport America by bus instead. Follow the Sun Tours go to the Spaceport on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Pickup locations are 710 Hwy 195, Elephant Butte; and Holiday Inn Express, 2201 F.G. Amin St., Truth or Consequences. (866) 428-4786; spaceportamerica.com ✜
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Charles C. Poling has been writing articles about New Mexico for 34 years and he isn’t bored yet: You can’t beat good material.
","publish_start_moment":"2013-10-16T10:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2017-09-22T05:00:45.073Z"},{"_id":"58b4b27f4c2774661570f911","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f212","title":"Badlands Walkabout","slug":"badlands-hiking-83869","image_id":"58b4b2474c2774661570f457","description":"All five areas within the badlands—the little-known Mesa de Cuba, Mesa Chijuilla, Mesa Penistaja, Ceja Pelón, and Cejita Blanca—offer moonscape-like scenery and multihued rock sculptures. They also harbor amazing old trees: Solitary, twisted ponderosa claw at bare mesa edges, and groves of 1,000-year-old junipers thrive on stabilized sand dunes.
\r\n\r\nAll five badlands lie along an east–west line stretching from Cuba and are best accessed from the south. Within each unmarked scenic area, hiking difficulty can range from easy to moderate to strenuous, depending on the path you choose to cut. The diversity of terrain allows hikers to design their own excursions, but, as with all outdoor activities, caution is as important as nutrition and hydration, all of which you’ll have to provide. The village of Cuba is a 15–20-minute drive from the Mesa de Cuba.
\r\n\r\nThe sites have no established trails, and no significant sources of potable water or food in the immediate vicinity. Precipitation in the area can make some dirt roads difficult to navigate without a four-wheel-drive vehicle with high clearance; some roads require both even in good weather.
\r\n\r\n![\"Screen](\"https://res-1.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/screen_shot_2013_10_18_at_10_52_48_am_487x181_ac96fd37-e563-4c90-b606-ea44686d10d3.jpg\")
There are some lodging and dining options in Cuba and surrounding areas, and camping in the Santa Fe National Forest is just 11 miles from the village. You can stock up on water, ice, food, sunblock, and other supplies at Cuba’s only full-service grocery store, Mickey’s Save Way Market; gas stations are plentiful in and around town »
\r\n\r\n![\"Mesa](\"https://res-4.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/mesa_de_cuba_180x202_4747ba13-3912-446c-891c-51c3582f267f.jpg\")
1. Mesa de Cuba This area stretches for three miles along the west side of its namesake village. Many steep-walled, hoodoo-filled box canyons separated by narrow, intricately sculpted ridges resemble an exotic city where winding lanes pass countless bazaars and alleyways filled with larger-than-life statues. Petrified wood is strewn everywhere, from chunks of various sizes to entire logs. Huge, round, rust-colored stones called iron concretions, some up to five feet across, lie scattered like forgotten marbles.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE: Turn off U.S. 550 onto N.M. 197 at the S. end of Cuba, and curve S. and then W. around Cuba Mesa for 5.5 miles to a right-hand turnoff onto a two-track dirt road. You can park here and hike E. to the mesa base, or continue 1 mile N. along the rugged dirt road to another convenient starting point.
\r\n\r\n![\"measa](\"https://res-2.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/screen_shot_2013_10_18_at_11_02_56_am_180x198_fed04040-88a4-4d21-b531-531749cbf23d.jpg\")
2. Mesa Chijuilla
This is the most intimate of the Cuba badlands. The 5-mile-long, east-facing mesa base is scattered with huge, bright-orange-and-red boulders, and impressive hoodoos silhouetted against lushly textured, white-shale mesa walls capped with thick sandstone. The detailed beauty here lies in the richly eroded shapes and the patterns painted from a vibrant earth-tone palette. Desert varnish—the thin, red-to-black coating found on exposed rock surfaces in arid regions—adorns cliff tops, and lonely bonsai ponderosa protrude from solid rock.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE: The turnoff for Mesa Chijuilla is 0.2 mile past the junction of N.M. 197 and the dirt road that is the main access route from the S. for all four of the badlands beyond Mesa de Cuba. Continue north on the turnoff 3 miles to the first parking area and the hoodoos clearly visible to the left, or continue N. another 2.3 miles along the mesa base; park wherever you want and walk over to the mesa.
\r\n\r\n![\"Mesa](\"https://res-2.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/screen_shot_2013_10_18_at_11_04_31_am_180x147_f9ea3499-97ed-44c3-8d0b-c6e0064c0311.jpg\")
3. Mesa Penistaja
Continuing west, this area has an extremely complex perimeter surrounded by dozens of smaller, equally complicated mesas and buttes. The result is a canyon labyrinth, and miles of mesa edges carved into fantastically shaped cliffs overlooking numerous hoodoo galleries. Isolated mesa tops hide superb, naturally landscaped botanical parks showcasing our high-desert vegetation’s incredible hardiness and beauty. Huge petrified tree trunks decorate the canyon bottoms.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE: Mesa Penistaja is accessible from the original dirt road by continuing W. for a total of 16.9 miles from the initial junction of U.S. 550 and N.M. 197, and taking a right (N.) turn onto a smaller dirt road. Take this road 2 miles N. until you see the Mesa Penistaja badlands on the right. Park where convenient, then head E. to the obvious hoodoos. To access the interior of Mesa Penistaja, you must climb over the mesa and hike a short distance into the hoodoo maze.
\r\n\r\n![\"Ceja](\"https://res-1.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/screen_shot_2013_10_18_at_11_05_26_am_180x179_4c578939-4ed9-4774-9488-c76b25a5ebd7.jpg\")
4. Ceja Pelón
Adjacent to Mesa Penistaja, the Ceja Pelón badlands have three distinctly different levels. The second or middle level is carved into long, thin, projecting fingers that form a series of narrow box canyons below. Brilliantly colored petrified logs dot the edges of the canyons. Several portions hold ancient logjams in which dozens of 50-foot-long broken trunks, still lying in place, are piled across each other at various angles. A towering, elegantly tapered spire grows from the first level to form an impressive centerpiece landmark.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE: The access road into Ceja Pelón is another 0.6 mile N. from Mesa Penistaja, and on the left. This route requires four-wheel drive, or you can park and walk the half-mile to the mesa base.
\r\n\r\n![\"Cejita](\"https://res-5.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1/clients/newmexico/screen_shot_2013_10_18_at_11_08_10_am_180x156_1655bbfd-9bd5-4ed6-bb99-b5a7016c8a81.jpg\")
5. Cejita Blanca
Cejita Blanca is a hidden world guarded by a ring of intricately sculpted sandstone cliffs. The bowl-like interior encloses three large, stabilized sand dunes that support magnificent old-growth juniper groves—some of these arboreous patriarchs are 1,500 years old. Long, winding slot canyons with multiple branches penetrate the encircling rim. Their broad, sandy, easily hiked bottoms lead past multicolored shale walls to hoodoo galleries and stashes of petrified wood.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE: Cejita Blanca is the farthest and most difficult to reach. Take the same original dirt road W. for a total of 20.9 miles from the junction of U.S. 550 and N.M. 197 to a large, white Spanish mission complex. Take a sharp turn left and go 0.5 mile to a paved road, Navajo 474. Turn right (N.) and travel 7.3 miles past the Navajo Ojo Encino Chapter complex to a right-hand turn E. down a dirt road. This very rough, rutted, 1.9-mile road into the badlands and juniper groves requires four-wheel drive. ✜
\r\n\r\nNEED TO KNOW
\r\n\r\nCUBA
\r\n\r\nLODGING
\r\nFrontier Motel Clean, simple, inexpensive accommodations ($70). Request one of the newer rooms. 6474 Main St.; (575) 289-3474
CAMPING
\r\nClear Creek Campground Santa Fe National Forest, 11 miles E. of Cuba via N.M. 126; publiclands.org, http://bit.ly/19Lr0af
Río de las Vacas Campground Santa Fe National Forest, 12 miles E. of Cuba via N.M. 126; publiclands.org, http://bit.ly/16nrxPF
\r\n\r\nDINING
\r\nCuban Cafe Stop here for a traditional New Mexican breakfast. 6333 U.S. 550; (575) 289-0257
El Bruno’s Restauranté y Cantina Hearty New Mexican lunch and dinner. 6453 U.S. 550; (575) 289-9429; elbrunos.com
\r\n\r\nPROVISIONS
\r\nMickey’s Save Way Market 6392 N.M. 44; (575) 289-3454
All five areas within the badlands—the little-known Mesa de Cuba, Mesa Chijuilla, Mesa Penistaja, Ceja Pelón, and Cejita Blanca—offer moonscape-like scenery and multihued rock sculptures. They also
","teaser":"All five areas within the badlands—the little-known Mesa de Cuba, Mesa Chijuilla, Mesa Penistaja, Ceja Pelón, and Cejita Blanca—offer moonscape-like scenery and multihued rock sculptures. They also
","cleanDescription":"All five areas within the badlands—the little-known Mesa de Cuba, Mesa Chijuilla, Mesa Penistaja, Ceja Pelón, and Cejita Blanca—offer moonscape-like scenery and multihued rock sculptures. They also harbor amazing old trees: Solitary, twisted ponderosa claw at bare mesa edges, and groves of 1,000-year-old junipers thrive on stabilized sand dunes.
\r\n\r\nAll five badlands lie along an east–west line stretching from Cuba and are best accessed from the south. Within each unmarked scenic area, hiking difficulty can range from easy to moderate to strenuous, depending on the path you choose to cut. The diversity of terrain allows hikers to design their own excursions, but, as with all outdoor activities, caution is as important as nutrition and hydration, all of which you’ll have to provide. The village of Cuba is a 15–20-minute drive from the Mesa de Cuba.
\r\n\r\nThe sites have no established trails, and no significant sources of potable water or food in the immediate vicinity. Precipitation in the area can make some dirt roads difficult to navigate without a four-wheel-drive vehicle with high clearance; some roads require both even in good weather.
\r\n\r\n
There are some lodging and dining options in Cuba and surrounding areas, and camping in the Santa Fe National Forest is just 11 miles from the village. You can stock up on water, ice, food, sunblock, and other supplies at Cuba’s only full-service grocery store, Mickey’s Save Way Market; gas stations are plentiful in and around town »
\r\n\r\n
1. Mesa de Cuba This area stretches for three miles along the west side of its namesake village. Many steep-walled, hoodoo-filled box canyons separated by narrow, intricately sculpted ridges resemble an exotic city where winding lanes pass countless bazaars and alleyways filled with larger-than-life statues. Petrified wood is strewn everywhere, from chunks of various sizes to entire logs. Huge, round, rust-colored stones called iron concretions, some up to five feet across, lie scattered like forgotten marbles.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE: Turn off U.S. 550 onto N.M. 197 at the S. end of Cuba, and curve S. and then W. around Cuba Mesa for 5.5 miles to a right-hand turnoff onto a two-track dirt road. You can park here and hike E. to the mesa base, or continue 1 mile N. along the rugged dirt road to another convenient starting point.
\r\n\r\n2. Mesa Chijuilla
This is the most intimate of the Cuba badlands. The 5-mile-long, east-facing mesa base is scattered with huge, bright-orange-and-red boulders, and impressive hoodoos silhouetted against lushly textured, white-shale mesa walls capped with thick sandstone. The detailed beauty here lies in the richly eroded shapes and the patterns painted from a vibrant earth-tone palette. Desert varnish—the thin, red-to-black coating found on exposed rock surfaces in arid regions—adorns cliff tops, and lonely bonsai ponderosa protrude from solid rock.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE: The turnoff for Mesa Chijuilla is 0.2 mile past the junction of N.M. 197 and the dirt road that is the main access route from the S. for all four of the badlands beyond Mesa de Cuba. Continue north on the turnoff 3 miles to the first parking area and the hoodoos clearly visible to the left, or continue N. another 2.3 miles along the mesa base; park wherever you want and walk over to the mesa.
\r\n\r\n3. Mesa Penistaja
Continuing west, this area has an extremely complex perimeter surrounded by dozens of smaller, equally complicated mesas and buttes. The result is a canyon labyrinth, and miles of mesa edges carved into fantastically shaped cliffs overlooking numerous hoodoo galleries. Isolated mesa tops hide superb, naturally landscaped botanical parks showcasing our high-desert vegetation’s incredible hardiness and beauty. Huge petrified tree trunks decorate the canyon bottoms.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE: Mesa Penistaja is accessible from the original dirt road by continuing W. for a total of 16.9 miles from the initial junction of U.S. 550 and N.M. 197, and taking a right (N.) turn onto a smaller dirt road. Take this road 2 miles N. until you see the Mesa Penistaja badlands on the right. Park where convenient, then head E. to the obvious hoodoos. To access the interior of Mesa Penistaja, you must climb over the mesa and hike a short distance into the hoodoo maze.
\r\n\r\n4. Ceja Pelón
Adjacent to Mesa Penistaja, the Ceja Pelón badlands have three distinctly different levels. The second or middle level is carved into long, thin, projecting fingers that form a series of narrow box canyons below. Brilliantly colored petrified logs dot the edges of the canyons. Several portions hold ancient logjams in which dozens of 50-foot-long broken trunks, still lying in place, are piled across each other at various angles. A towering, elegantly tapered spire grows from the first level to form an impressive centerpiece landmark.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE: The access road into Ceja Pelón is another 0.6 mile N. from Mesa Penistaja, and on the left. This route requires four-wheel drive, or you can park and walk the half-mile to the mesa base.
\r\n\r\n5. Cejita Blanca
Cejita Blanca is a hidden world guarded by a ring of intricately sculpted sandstone cliffs. The bowl-like interior encloses three large, stabilized sand dunes that support magnificent old-growth juniper groves—some of these arboreous patriarchs are 1,500 years old. Long, winding slot canyons with multiple branches penetrate the encircling rim. Their broad, sandy, easily hiked bottoms lead past multicolored shale walls to hoodoo galleries and stashes of petrified wood.
\r\n\r\nGETTING THERE: Cejita Blanca is the farthest and most difficult to reach. Take the same original dirt road W. for a total of 20.9 miles from the junction of U.S. 550 and N.M. 197 to a large, white Spanish mission complex. Take a sharp turn left and go 0.5 mile to a paved road, Navajo 474. Turn right (N.) and travel 7.3 miles past the Navajo Ojo Encino Chapter complex to a right-hand turn E. down a dirt road. This very rough, rutted, 1.9-mile road into the badlands and juniper groves requires four-wheel drive. ✜
\r\n\r\nNEED TO KNOW
\r\n\r\nCUBA
\r\n\r\nLODGING
\r\nFrontier Motel Clean, simple, inexpensive accommodations ($70). Request one of the newer rooms. 6474 Main St.; (575) 289-3474
CAMPING
\r\nClear Creek Campground Santa Fe National Forest, 11 miles E. of Cuba via N.M. 126; publiclands.org, http://bit.ly/19Lr0af
Río de las Vacas Campground Santa Fe National Forest, 12 miles E. of Cuba via N.M. 126; publiclands.org, http://bit.ly/16nrxPF
\r\n\r\nDINING
\r\nCuban Cafe Stop here for a traditional New Mexican breakfast. 6333 U.S. 550; (575) 289-0257
El Bruno’s Restauranté y Cantina Hearty New Mexican lunch and dinner. 6453 U.S. 550; (575) 289-9429; elbrunos.com
\r\n\r\nPROVISIONS
\r\nMickey’s Save Way Market 6392 N.M. 44; (575) 289-3454
Category - November 2013
Tales of misinformation and misunderstanding about New Mexico
At these memorable Albuquerque B&Bs;, step back in time, or over the border.
Robert Christensen's Diamonds in the Rough
by photos by
The revelation of a decades-in-the-making portfolio of side-of-the-road portraiture has all the elements of a major event in the annals of New Mexico photography.
Wrapped in Tradition
by photos by
Winter Spanish Market moves from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, just in time for the start of the holiday shopping season.
Leaving Tinkertown, How Georgia Became O'Keeffe, A Time of Change
Badlands Walkabout
by photos by
Just west of the village of Cuba, the new 70,000- acre San Juan Basin Badlands Recreation Area offers paleo adventures at five mind-blowing sites.