Arty Santa Fe

Where the locals go

When we were exploring the small park next to the cathedral on our first morning in Santa Fe morning some local women, who were working on a small archaeological excavation there, recommended breakfast at Tia Sophia’s, saying that it was where the locals would choose to go, so we decided to give it a try one morning. We found a cheerful, bustling, traditional Mexican-style homely sort of a place, with a steady stream of diners eager to try its legendary breakfasts. We were lucky only to have a wait a couple of minutes, and to get a nice booth near the counter. The service was friendly, with the staff coping well with a full café and managing everything with good humour.

The menu has all the regular breakfast items, some with a New Mexican twist, and all the local favourites. We were both in the mood for omelette, and chose the one with cheese and guacamole. It proved to be a generous size, well-stuffed with its spicy filling. We both opted for a side of potatoes (we could have had the local stew, posole, beans or tomatoes instead) and drank juice (orange for Chris, cranberry for me) and coffee. The latter was the only disappointing part of the meal – after a couple of days when I’d been able to get good espresso, here I was back to the ‘brown water with a hint of coffee flavour’ filter stuff that passes for coffee in too many US establishments. Despite that though Tia Sophia’s certainly delivered an excellent local-style breakfast in one of the more casual and friendly places in downtown Santa Fe.

New Mexico Museum of Art

This morning we decided to see more of Santa Fe’s devotion to art, starting with one of its major museums, the New Mexico Museum of Art, which back in 2011 was known as the Museum of Fine Arts. This proved to be possibly the best of the museums we visited in Santa Fe – not that we managed to get to anything like all of them!

To start with, I thought it was worth a visit for the building itself, which is a beautiful example of what is commonly known as ‘pueblo revival architecture’ (a style based on a mix of Native American mud buildings and Spanish mud-brick churches). It was built in 1917 and originally designed to be the New Mexico pavilion for a world expo in San Diego two years earlier. The wonderfully curvaceous building ‘borrows’ motifs from pueblo mission churches, such as the bell towers seen in several of my photos. It has a lovely tranquil inner courtyard, festooned with ristras (the distinctive strings of chillies).

The museum hosts both permanent and temporary exhibitions. We were originally lured in by posters promoting a major photography exhibition, ‘Earth Now’, with a focus on photographers who highlight environmental issues in their work. But with a few exceptions we both found these more didactic than inspirational. However there was plenty that appealed to us more, in particular another temporary exhibition of New Native Photography 2011. There were some really excellent images here, by 19 photographers from across North America.

The other exhibition that I really liked was ‘How the West is One’, which was described as a more or less permanent one. Although it no longer seems to be running in that form, I imagine many of the art works have since found their way into the permanent collection.

The website explained that the exhibition,
‘organizes key objects from the museum’s collections so that they outline an intercultural history of New Mexico art, from the arrival of railroads in 1879 to the present. This long term exhibition presents 70 works by Native American, Hispanic, and European-American artists which illustrate the changing aesthetic ideals that have evolved within southwestern art over the last 125 years. The exhibition allows viewers to discover the one-ness of New Mexico Art. Unique, unpredictable, often contradictory unity developed from the interactions of the Native American Hispanic, and mainstream American aesthetic traditions.’

Gallery hopping

Outside a Santa Fe Gallery

We devoted the second part of the morning to some gallery hopping in the smaller establishments in the streets immediately around the Plaza. Our favourites included the stylish Blue Rain Gallery on Lincoln Avenue, with a fascinating mix of paintings, sculpture, pottery and more, and the Galerie Züger on W San Francisco Street which had devoted most of its space to an awesome display of bronze sculptures by Gib Singleton (who also did the Stations of the Cross which we were to see a few days later at the Sancturio de Chimayo). Gib Singleton was the foremost Western and Biblical bronze sculptor in the late 20th and early 21st century in America and his pieces can be seen in many of the major world museums. Have a look at the gallery’s website to see some examples of his work and read more about him.

After visiting several galleries we decided it was time for an early lunch before moving on to the next part of our plan for the day, and for a change visited the French Pastry Shop, part of the historic La Fonda Hotel complex. While Santa Fe’s buildings are a homogenous group of light brown adobe structures, the interiors occasionally surprise, and none more so than this cosy little place. Step through the doors and you might almost be in an English, or at least European, tea shop, with dark wood furniture and a glass case displaying tempting pastries. Chris had a grilled cheese sandwich, but unusually for me at lunchtime I decided that the dessert menu was the more tempting, especially the sweet crepes, so I chose the blueberry one to go with my very good cup of coffee.

Now, having spent most of our time in the centre of Santa Fe, it was time on this last afternoon in the city to go slightly further afield and see another aspect to the city. So we returned to the casita to pick up our car and drove south, stopping on the way to check out one more of the city’s churches.

Santuario de Guadalupe

This church, Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe to give it its full name, lies just south of the downtown area. It is the oldest shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States and was built in the 1780s; the exact date uncertain, though some guidebooks appear to think that they know! Certainly our Moon Handbook let us down on this point, and on its description of the church, which it says in the late 19th century ‘got an odd makeover, with a New England–look wood steeple’ and ‘tall neo-Gothic arched windows’. This is not strictly true, as we discovered that there were in fact two church buildings on the site – one the original (and now restored) 18th century adobe one and one more modern (although not really New England style) church which was built as a new parish church and opened in 1961.The 18th century church was restored in 1976 as part of the US Bicentennial celebrations. Although decommissioned for a while, the church was reintegrated into the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in February 2006 and is now used again for a monthly Mass and for choir performances etc.

Inside the church is relatively plain in some respects, with its three foot thick adobe walls painted white and hung with simple paintings of the Stations of the Cross. The dominating features are the beautiful viga ceiling and the large painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe above the altar. is considered one of the finest oil paints of the Spanish Southwest. It is dated 1783 and signed by Jose de Alzibar, who was one of Mexico's most distinguished artists. It is the largest painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States and presents a central, full-body image of the Virgin surrounded by four illustrations of the main events of the 1531 apparition story. The painting made the journey north by cart and in sections, up the Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe.

Elsewhere there are some of the typical New Mexican santos, carved images of the saints. To the left of the altar a small doorway led us to a little museum, which was well worth visiting. A series of old photos shows the various appearances of the church over the years. This is where I learnt the facts about the neighbouring white-steepled building (maybe the author of the Moon book should make a visit here?!) I also learnt that the church was built originally as a mission church, to mark the northern end of the Camino Real from Mexico City, and only later became the parish church for this part of the city.

The Railyard

And now it was time to see a different side of Santa Fe. The railroad came to Santa Fe in 1880, with an 18 mile spur from Lamy to the south (named for the eponymous bishop who left such a mark on the city’s cathedral). On February 9th of that year, the very first train of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company pulled into the Santa Fe depot, accompanied by grand speeches and much celebration. No longer would people have to travel the Santa Fe Trail by stagecoach or wagon; at last the city was properly connected with the rest of the world. And connection meant tourism – the city has the railroad to thank for the boom in visitors at the end of the 19th and into the 20th centuries. Artists came to see and to paint its distinctive adobe buildings; holiday-makers came to wander its picturesque streets and buy souvenirs of Native American crafts, much as they do today. The railroad also brought growth to the city, as it expanded southwards to surround the depot with new buildings to service the needs of those arriving by train. For decades this was one of the liveliest parts of the city, but just as the railroad had meant the end of the old Santa Fe Trail, so the explosion in car use in the 1950s meant the end of the railroad. The trains stopped coming, the depot fell into disuse and the area around it declined.

In the 1980s the city council developed a plan, in partnership with residents, for its revival. The concept was to reflect the original rugged, industrial look of the old rail complex while at the same time provide local business opportunities. Visiting the area we could see that they have achieved this. The tracks still dominate, and indeed are still used – for tourist trips on the Santa Fe Southern Railway, along the old spur to Lamy and back, and for commuters (and visitors) to and from Albuquerque on the Rail Runner. But around them are a number of carefully restored and modernised buildings which contain shops, galleries, cultural spaces and cafés. There is also a park laid out alongside the tracks at the southern end.

We spent an enjoyable hour wandering round here – taking photos of the old trains, checking out one of the galleries and enjoying an iced coffee in a café. With more time in the city we could easily have spent longer – we didn’t get to ride the Southern Railway or to check out the modern art in the Site Art Space (these days there are many more galleries in the area, including the Blue Rain Gallery which we had visited this morning and which has since relocated to the Railyard area).

But even in that hour or so we found it a refreshing change from the undeniably attractive but at times a little artificial adobe (and pseudo-adobe) world of downtown Santa Fe.

Canyon Road

After spending a bit of time exploring the Railyard area we returned to the car and drove over to Canyon Road to the south east of the centre, the acknowledged heart of Santa Fe’s art scene. If you think there are a lot of galleries in the downtown area (in some streets, every other building it seems), wait until you see Canyon Road, where just about every building in a half-mile strip is one! And even though we enjoy visiting galleries, we did find it all a bit too much – there are only so many you can go in on one trip, or at least in a single day! But we did spend a pleasant couple of hours popping in and out of some of the galleries near the northern end, without ever making it down the full length as we had originally thought we might.

We had deliberately chosen to come here quite late on the Friday afternoon, as I’d read that many galleries have openings then or in the early evening. Often you get a chance to meet the artists and there are also sometimes refreshments on offer to lure you in. We were a little early for the latter but did enjoy chatting to one gallery owner who had just finished hanging and was happy to tell us about the various artists who were exhibiting.

My favourite gallery was probably Karan Ruhlen, at 225 Canyon Road (now known as Owen Contemporary). This was showing some striking abstract landscapes by Kurt Meer. There’s no way I could afford the price tags (between $2,440 and $5,250) but I did bring away a free postcard from the gallery to remind me of the works. Checking the gallery’s website (https://owencontemporary.com/kurt-meer) I see that they still have some of his paintings, and the prices have gone up considerably, so maybe I should have invested!

Last evening in Santa Fe

While enjoying our pre-dinner drinks yesterday at the Marble Brewery we had spotted the Rooftop Pizzeria, part of the same complex. Chris loves pizza, and we thought it would make a change from the (excellent) New Mexican food we had been enjoying most evenings. The same menu is served in the bar at one end on the first floor of the shopping complex where the two properties are located, and in the restaurant at the other, but we decided to eat in the latter as its interior looked very attractive with stylish furniture and art work on the walls. Both bar and restaurant also have an outdoor terraces but after dark in late September it was a little chilly for us to want to eat outside, although plenty of others were doing so.

Our meal started well as we shared the excellent antipasto of ‘Mediterranean vegetables’ and a selection of very good breads. Unfortunately though, the pizzas didn’t live up to the hype bestowed on them by the menu: ‘It has been said that the label “Pizzeria” is not adequate to describe the culinary experience awaiting you at the Rooftop ... From the first bite of our thin crust gourmet pizza you will be one step closer in your quest for pizza perfection.’ But no, this was not pizza perfection, although mine was not at all bad – a very good crust made with blue corn (a speciality here) and a reasonable topping of sundried tomatoes, goats cheese, artichoke hearts and olives. But Chris found that his mushroom pizza had far too many garlic cloves, even for someone who does really like garlic, as they totally overpowered all the other flavours. Maybe if we hadn’t been looking forward to our pizzas so much, and if they hadn’t been so over-hyped, we would have enjoyed them more, but as it was, we came away rather disappointed and wishing we had instead returned to one of our favourite restaurants from earlier in our stay for this last evening in Santa Fe.

For an after dinner treat we decided to have a drink in the lounge bar of the rather upmarket La Fonda hotel, situated on the south side of the Plaza, to experience its sense of history. We were carrying a box of left-over pizza as, although they had been disappointing, it seemed a shame to waste the remaining slices which we thought would do for lunch the next day. It didn’t seem appropriate to take these into the rather smart bar, so for some reason we decided to ‘hide’ them beneath a seat in the lobby. We enjoyed our Jack Daniels (our customary night-cap when touring in the US, although we never drink it anywhere else!) and returned to retrieve our pizza box, only to discover that it had gone – presumably tidied away by one of the very smart-looking security staff on duty there. We scuttled away, hoping that no one who saw us go would associate us with our disreputable baggage!