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Published: November 9th 2013
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Our Impressions of Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is located at 7000 feet above sea level on the southern edge of the Rocky Mountains and is the first truly beautiful small city that we have visited on this journey. It is one of the most important cities in the world for visual arts and contains over 250 art galleries and exhibition spaces. There are 300+ days of pure and bright sunshine per year, the light from which makes it an artists’ paradise. Georgia O’Keefe fell in love with the light here and lived in the area for over 40 years and was very productive and inspired. Santa Fe is the oldest capital city in the United States, founded in 1610 by Don Pedro de Poralta, and one of the buildings built that year, the Palace of the Governors, currently serves as the New Mexico History Museum.
There are three neighborhoods in Santa Fe and we arrived in the Railyard/Guadalupe District at around 10am and headed immediately to the Farmer’s market there. It dates from about 50 years and has includes fresh produce from the surrounding communities, including their famous dried chilies. We wandered around the stalls sampling the
baked goods and chutneys and watching the local families stock up on provisions.
Santa Fe is a very wealthy small city and a hothouse of talented people with very high IQs. It has an extraordinary concentration of PhD.’s and scientists, many based at the Santa Fe Institutes and more artists than any other American city its size. According to one recent report, 39 per cent of the city’s economy is generated by the arts and culture. And the artists and scientists are collaborating on complex artistic experiments that are among the world’s most progressive . There are also a number of Zen centers, several Tibetan shrines and a plethora of New Age institutions, mind, body, spirit advisors as well as churches of any faith and denomination imaginable. There are hundreds if not thousands of therapists also practising here.
We had a nice Mexican lunch in a nearby restaurant called La Choza. And then we walked the short distance into the second neighborhood, the historic heart of Santa Fe: Plaza/Downtown. It is a compact area of old renovated and restored adobe buildings containing art galleries, coffee shops and restaurants, an excellent bookstore, more than a few gift shops and
cowboy fashion shops. At the top end of the plaza stands the St. Francis Cathedral but it is unlike any other cathedral you might have seen in that its construction combines adobe, French-Romanesque and modern architectural styles and was built between 1869 anf 1887.
Adobe is a sun-baked mixture of earth, sand, charcoal and chopped straw. It is made into large bricks that are set with a mortar of the same materials and then plastered and smoothed over with mud and straw. This type of building defines New Mexico and is used for all types of buildings from homes and schools and churches and shop to large hotels and even shopping malls. Nearly 100 years ago the village elders adjusted their building code based on the ancient adobe style and Santa Fe is today made up almost entirely of buildings of this construction which makes it a magical and unique place to simply walk around and admire.
The next day, after catching up on with our emails at Starbucks, we cycled into Santa Fe for a Jazz Brunch at La Casa Sena. The food at the restaurant was very good: I had a ‘griddle’ that contained a pancake,
a couple pieces of French toast and a waffle and Joan had Eggs Benedict. The jazz was by a trio of local musicians: Arlen Asher (Santa Fe’s elder jazz statesman) on Alto sax, clarinet and flutes, Robert Fox on piano and a double bass player whose name I did not get. They played two sets of mostly classics and standards (no Monk songs though!) and were accomplished players enjoying themselves.
After the jazz brunch we visited the Georgia O’Keefe museum just a short walk away. This museum is dedicated to her work and claims to be the most visited art museum in New Mexico. (It was the only one we visited in this state.) It owns over 3000 artworks, photographs and archives as well as her two nearby homes. Georgia O’Keefe is one of the most significant artists of the 20
th century and it was a moving experience to see her paintings here and and also the local architecture and landscapes that inspired them. Although considered an ‘abstract’ artist by critics, seeing her paintings within the New Mexican context makes their subject matter much clearer, and her trademark sun-bleached skulls and iconic flowers become even more vivid.
After
our visit to the museum we returned to our bicycles and cycled up to the top of Canyon Road, the third neighborhood of Santa Fe. Canyon Road is an art lover’s mecca, with more than 100 world-class art and sculpture galleries showcasing old masters, contemporary paintings and sculpture, and traditional Native American weaving, ceramics and jewelry. We walked our bicycles down the mile-long street of beautifully-preserved and restored adobe and territorial –style houses. We stopped and browsed through a few of the galleries. Apparently wealthy patrons and art collectors from all over the world make frequent art-buying forays to this street in Santa Fe. We didn’t buy anything (our art buying days are over) but took a few photos instead.
We thoroughly enjoyed our brief stay in Sante Fe and would happily return to spend more time exploring it and sampling the other fine, interesting-looking restaurants we didn’t get to try. I’ll have to do some research and look for a jazz festival here!
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