Once upon a time, I started a post for fun. Myspace had become a drag, and thinkVisual’s blog became something new. I would say it was about 20 trips and several years ago. First I had a spin-off for educational stuff, then I wrote so many posts, I had no more room, so thinkMuseum came along under the thinkVisual’2 banner. Then the third blog is thinkVisual/thinkMuseum3.
Now another, the fourth blog is https://thinkvisual4blog.wordpress.com/. Thanks for reading.
Funky stuff like this transform a beach town into pure fun. Nancy surveys the Jantzen girl.
I haven’t been in Daytona Beach forever, I have passed through dozens of times to make the connection to 95. I have headed for St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Savannah, North Carolina, DC, NYC and beyond. It took a friend from Texas, Nancy Walkup, to get me to go into Daytona Beach for an FAEA convention she was speaking at.
Daytona calls itself “the world’s most beautiful beach,’ and was the only beach I know with cars on it, and girls in thongs serving lunch off a truck.
Lunch at Riptide, no extra charge for the fiberglass shark.
As Nancy probably had had no breakfast, we asked the valet’s for a place to have seafood. They suggested Riptide, a couple of miles down the road. My lunch cost a lot less than what I had to pay the Hilton for valet parking, when their regular lot was jam-packed.
A nice sort of funkiness sets in with stuff like this.
Daytona may, or may not, have the world’s most beautiful beach, but over the years it has gotten itself more together and remained a pleasant, funky kind of beach town. It remains more that this little section of Atlantic Avenue. Beyond there is a big race track, major golfing, a convention center and a small, but international, airport.
Nancy was impressed by the cleanliness. I was impressed by the pretty, young things in bikini’s on the street. A nice place to go, when in the state. Especially without the hubbub of Bike Week or Spring Break.
Suns out, guns out? I hope no one told George Zimmerman that.
Well, that quick, I grabbed the bag got out the camera and managed to get the shot on my way out to I-4 doing 50 mph.
Our first stop in Chimayó was at the Centinela Studio, where we met Irvin Trujillo, master weaver.
Irvin and his wife Lisa, who is also a master weaver, had samples of their beautiful work up and explained the history and traditions of Latino weaving traditions in New Mexico. It is interesting to remember that it was all New Spain, before it was anything. Mexico later, then finally with the Mexican-American War, what we know as New Mexico was annexed from Mexico. The sheep came from Spain, some of the manufactured dyes from Germany, then yarn even from Pennsylvania. Some of the traditions of the Navaho weaving designs merged with designs traced back to Moorish Spain.
We would later leave for Ortega’s Weaving Shop, and find Mr. Ortega (I am not sure if it was Robert or David) that we spoke to. He, like Irvin Trujillo, had started weaving as a boy of 10 years old.
Workroom and showroom at Ortega’s.
The Santuario de Chimayó is a sacred place, as it has sands there believed to restore health. The people go there with much reverence. I have been there before and it is not a place to take lightly. This day was sparse attendance, the weather was beautiful.
We might have misses a few divas.
On the grounds of El Santuario de Chimayó.
On the road, again.
And now to end our journey as one, we gathered at the Rancho de Chimayó
Rancho de Chimayó is a place that is world renowned. You couldn’t have asked for a classier setting in this sacred country? What kind of effect will this place have upon our divas?
Ask Bridget.
Ask the grand ladies from Tucson.
Ask the Annapolis trio.
Now the food is going to come. It looks beautiful. And how did our darling divas do?
Next comes many gifts from Stevie, Nancy and Bill.
From orange poppies, gift certificates, sculptures and. . .
. . .finally, for our 14-trip veteran, Maggie, a special and personal gift.
The ride back always gives us different insights.
No matter where we go, we will always be here.
Catch the corner window of Georgia O’Keeffe’s bedroom, that is the closest you are going to get to shooting it!
A little time at Ghost Ranch, just a visit, not the tour. I heard the young lady say it was $450 a night for single person. A few nights there I could go to Europe. We also genuflected at the Georgia O’Keeffe Abiquiu house, it is good to go, but quite overprotected. The shot above was done from a bus going about 45 miles an hour with a closeup lens (love the workman, never saw him)! There are no cameras, phones, bags, nothing allowed. The tour is pretty good, and the guide was real on the ball. It is wonderful to weave sense out of what she did, by how she lived.
My unofficial official of the group, remember no photoshop here.
At Abiquiu.
Today the weather went from bright to cloudy to bright to rain. Life is full of postcards.
Bill Palmer’sTV Killers at the bandstand.
The Hill will be hopping next weekend. The International Folk Market will be coming to town.
When art people refer to The Hill in Santa Fe, they are meaning Museum Hill, which sits neatly on the top of a residential section which overlooks old beautiful, green mountains. Museum Hill contains 4 museums, count them folks! I got to be in all four today. We went as part of our studies, but the festiveness of what will come next weeks already creeps in. That is nothing bad.
After a few unsuccessful tries other years, the Museum is open again!
I was lucky enough to finally get into the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art. It is small, and seems to be emerging. It was in between a change in collections. Oh, yeah, no photos, boo hoo! Although you were allowed a few outside. The collection is devoted to understanding the role the Spanish, and in particular, the colonial Spanish rancho community made in helping to shape New Mexico. Examples of paintings, retablos, bultos, iron and tinwork, furniture, weaving are all represented. There is even a neat little house outside, which while not native to the area, is an example of a Mexican colonial house.
Two other museums, further down the road, were a little more busy. The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture is devoted to the study of native peoples, often by showing their art and artifacts and their culture. It sits directly across the Museum of International Folk Art. They were having a show on turquoise and its importance to pueblo culture. There were other photographic portraits as well of Indians beginning post-Civil War.
Directly above (right) you can see the adire cloth designed by the artist who is part of the Between Two Worlds show.
Brasil & Arte Popular (Brazil and Folk Art) is a great show of several, in that it captures through folk art how diverse the Brazilian people are and how much has been poured into their culture. There are over 300 examples of their art, represented by the museum collection. They were also having a great opening for Between Two Worlds, which included haute cuisine. So imagine, you are going to visit a great museum, and unexpectedly they feed you, and what is the fare? Indian appetizers, African entrees, Japanese sushi and barbeque, El Salvadorian burrito and drink, and lots of pastry. Is this a great city, or what?
Our visit on the Hill ended with at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian which was initially the brainchild of Mary Cabot Wheelwright to preserve Navaho culture. Most of the work eventually was returned to the pueblo, and the Museum is still evolving into a museum of the American Indian.
A street procession to honor the Madonna.
Great display is what it’s all about. As ‘Nando says, it’s not how you feel, it’s how you look.
Food and fun, are enfolded in serious discusssion about the diva of divas, Georgia O’Keefe.
Months ago, I set up for this Crizmac workshop called Desert Divas. No, it does not sound as bad, as that sounds. It is really just a revolving group of art ed people (and others) who meet out in Santa Fe, which is a pretty good place to explore art. O’Keefe, Maria Martinez, Pablita Velarde and Roxanne Swentzell all crop up as influential women artists out of this part of the west. Many are native. They become the foundation for this study, which is both feminist and post-modernist.
The other night while in the New Mexico History Museum, I found a show called Painting the Divine: Images of Mary in the New World, which beautifully displays Spanish colonial art from places like Cuzco* and Mexico. This art gave impetus to formal religious art in the New World, as well as becoming a curiosity to young Latino artists, who are rediscovering it form in their recent work. The last section of the show is devoted to those young artists, and I was pleased to see the work of Marion Martínez, who was at Ghost Ranch Santa Fe, years ago with Nancy Walkup.
Mary Ann hides behind her circuit board angel as Marion looks on. (Sorry the better shot, never made it, the card wasn’t in the camera!)
Linda’s piece becomes an interesting broach.
We were all pleased to see her again today with her circuit boards and computer parts, making real that non-art material which has a real aesthetic can through artists be rediscovered and transformed into beautiful works. This became our workshop. While talking to her, I realized the debt I owed her, as the broken toy project, another recycling project done several years ago, was based upon the foundation she had given me.
Bill shoots one of our divas, displaying her circuit board creation.
The reconstructed studio of Pablita Velarde, at her studio (left). Note the grinding stone where she produced color from natural pigment (right).
As Nancy told us, Santa Fe is unique in that there are two museums devoted to women artists. One is the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. The other is Pablita Velarde Museum of Indian Women in the Arts. We went there to see the works of three generations of women, and we did to an extent. Pablita Velarde, Pablita’s daughter Helen Hardin and Pablita’s granddaughter Margarete Bagshaw. Margarete was there, shocking to see in person, as I have admired in videos. She introduced to us a lovely young woman who was having an opening right at that time. This talented young woman is named Kathleen Wall, showing her multimedia work called, Harvesting Tradition. Please visit and support this museum if you can, they are doing a great job, but lack the funding other museums possess.
We also traveled to the Golden Dawn Gallery which features the work of Pablita, Helen and Margarete. There are some beautiful scarves that Margarete has for sale, aside from beautiful paintings and prints. It is wonderful to see Pablita’s work up close and personal, where you can see mica mixed into her pigment. Helen is represented with wonderful painting, but absolutely pristine copper engravings and etchings.
Helen Cordero (left) and the Maria Martinez (right) family group are all represented at Andrea Fisher.
A romp through the Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery gallery should be mandatory for anyone serious about art. This gallery has some of the finest pottery in the city. Many fine examples of pueblo pottery are represented, including Maria Martinez and Helen Codero.
It was a shame that a great meal was ruined with lousy service at the Thunderbird.
For the second time in a row, and the last, not staying with the Plaza Cafe was a big mistake. We went upstairs to the Thunderbird and got some great food and drinks, but a mouthful of bad service. When eight of us asked for separate checks they gave us a song and dance, then charged a 20% service fee for a “large” party. So much for a place which offers a bigger wine list than a menu.
In the Five & Dime General Store is one way to end a night, divas all.
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*One wonders why the Catedral del Cusco is full of blank walls, were these paintings extracted from them?
Plenty went on in the Plaza this July 4th, besides what we were doing. Santa Fe seemed even more festive than last year.
Today was a beautiful day, cool air and sunshine. The Plaza by noon was stuffed with so many people you moved along carefully, not to bump into each other as people danced, listened to music and took pictures. There were kids around with folks and even more festive than last year, although by 7 at night it was all gone. No fireworks, that happens somewhere else, but the Girls on Stilts will do enough boom boom for the day.
The Girls on Stilts did more than stop traffic. . .
. . .they almost smothered the Pancake Man. . .
. . .who ran off posing for pictures.
No, this is not one of the winners of the car show.
The car show had even more cars than I have ever seen. And you know everyone was there for the pancakes being sponsored by the Rotary Club Pancakes On The Plaza, which always look great, the pancakes. The girls on stilts were the best, and there were two different music groups playing, but unfortunately neither can I find via Google. Santa Fe always seems to be filled with music. One was a 14 year old, with enough charm to fill a million bracelets.
The fourteen year old that sang and danced like a pro.
The pancakes looked great, too.
With the Crizmac group in the afternoon, it was off to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, which had on a new show Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawai’i Pictures, which was well done as always. All museums, as well as the streets, had plenty of people on the move.
Does anyone ever talk about O’Keeffe’s photos? (Sorry no photoshop on the road.)
Andy cutting up in front of the Chicago painting.
Tonight was free night at the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Governor’s Palace right there on the square, so you know that is where I was going to be. Local Color: Judy Chicago in New Mexico 1984–2014 was so well put together, especially the paintings. There was two other photos shows upstairs and Southwestern Allure: The Art of the Santa Fe Art Colony, which featured Bellows, Henri and even a Hopper watercolor, as well as the usual suspects who put Santa Fe on the artmap. There was even a little Georgia O’Keeffe from the Orlando Museum of Art on loan.
I shot this by the O’Keeffe Museum, that’s about as fireworks as it gets.
We begin again, in another great restaurant, Andiamo, in another great year.
This is a great start if you come to Santa Fe. You may get a meal, you don’t much care for the price, but this is one place where it is hard to get a bad meal. But, remember, this is a place where some people talk goofily about things like ambiance. But the whole place is ambiance from the beauty of those mountains, to the color, to the skies. Returning here, now has become familiar and happy. Away from the east, the eastern nervousness both in physiological and human climate. There is something both vacationy and cerebral.
Beautiful, huh?
This is one of the most beautiful places to see this time of year. There is rain off somewhere as you can see here.
As I was coming from Albuquerque, I notice they depend even more on color than Santa Fe.
Little things like this give the French their own style.
Several years ago during the Bush administration very many negative things were said about the French. It dismayed me, because France, generally throughout our history has always been a good friend and ally. Unlike the UK, which we really have a strong bloodline with, and therefore are more like our kindest cousins, France often tells us what we need to hear. We don’t like it sometimes, but that to me, has always been the sign of a truly good friend.
The East Coast also gets those magical Spring gray days, but Paris always seem to have a little color in there somehow.
Concoctions like this are only “saved” by the beauty of setting and care in detail surrounding it.
From the highs of Sacré-Cœur Basilica to the lows of Tour Eiffel.
Or Versailles.
Or Le Louvre.
Or the Le Petit Palais.
Even goofballs (hem, me included) come across more magnifique en Paris!
Who puts one of the most beautiful male sculptures on a wooden stool base and gets away with it? Well, they do at the Musée Rodin.
If we do something like this in NYC it has the element of Pop, in Paris it contains elements of the surreal.
Sometimes the element of goofy.
Or sentimental.
Or ooh la lah.
Or whatever.
What the French have always done is have style. Style is something everyone has, but some style trumps other style, just because. The English have a definitive style, so do the Italians. Americans really do have style, but it is something else. A bit of brass well placed, a certain way with putting words together or a tilt of a head. Paris drips of it, they don’t even know it. The West in the US is never self-conscious about its style. That is different in a place like NYC where they are always self-conscious about it. And what is flair? It is just a certain way of being self-confident about your style, and doing it just a tad more.
In the Metro (left), an hommage to Cartier Bresson at the Pompidon’t (right).
Different takes on childhood.
While I think many things within the Paris Metro are wonderful, I would never discount NYC for the mural work done over the past 20 years. The dreary long walk in that connecting tunnel in 42nd Street, became another planet with interesting tilework and imagery of people walking. This reminded me of it.
Silly, but fun. Why can’t my torso look like his!
Merci bien, Paris. Le stupide jeune homme qui est devenu le vieux fou va vous aimer à jamais.
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How do you keep 1500+ bodies, most in mental and physical movement, in unison and focused? (asked in 2011)
One answer, spend a lot of nights sleeping in the chair. I feel like I go through a few days in a day. The school day, the after school day, the visit to pat part of some days, the computer after dinner day, the sleep in the chair, and the awakening an hour or so later to either grade, plan, set up (clean out glue caps; sterilize and cut food trays for things like handprints, reorganize student artwork for grading, research, etc.). A little sleep in between, then get up and do it again.
How do you keep 750+ bodies, most in mental and physical movement, in unison and focused? (asked in 2013)
One answer, spend a night sleeping in the chair, but only when grades are due. Go from the chair to work, so you can be in by 7 am to unload/load the kiln and stay until 7:30 pm to make sure the room doesn’t burn down! Pat has moved on to another place, so I have oodles of time to get my grades in the book straight! I teach each half of the school in two different semesters. Meanwhile, my county still cannot get us the hint of a raise in 3 years, and no step in 2.
4th grade line installation, a way of keeping them engaged during the Kline painting.
Tiara’s fifth grade production of sketch, transfer finish, plate, proof and print. Treasure’s 3rd grade line painting.
Some things do get better I suppose, merry Christmas.
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