Departures: NM99: Part H

Invisible art... Some good art... A Four-letter word... Meteorology trumps curiosity...

Canyon Road: Un Cri du Tour

1999.03.31 WED

Early the next morning, I took a walk down Canyon Road. Many of Santa Fe's art galleries are on Canyon Road. Santa Fe is supposed to be a city rich in art. If the museums were lame, I figured, maybe I should try the galleries. After all, the reason Santa Fe is rich in art is that artists live there. I hoped their work would be on display in local galleries.

So I took a walk down Canyon Road. I didn't really want to spend too much time there, but I figured I could walk along it early in the morning and window shop. I was wrong.

There's this problem with the intersection of the Santa Fe art scene and Santa Fe architecture which makes it tough for the casual observer to admire the works of local artists.

Think about Santa Fe architecture; what comes to mind?

• Thick walls, providing shelter from the sun.
• Tiny windows, the better to keep out the sun.

If you walk past art galleries in San Francisco or New York, the entire storefront will be given over to windows, the better to show off the art inside. Santa Fe galleries, at least those that I saw on Canyon Road, house themselves in Santa Fe architecture. Tiny windows. They don't show much art to passers-by.

I don't know what the gallery owners want me to do. Do they seriously expect me to poke my head inside of every gallery, on the off-chance that I might see something inside that's worth looking at? If I don't feel that I have time for this, maybe I should consult a gallery guide to narrow down to a smaller set of galleries to check out. If a gallery's guide description says that it features works by local artists, but with an international appeal, do I want to visit it?

Photo: Mill Atelier Gallery, ready to repel a small- to medium-sized invasionary force

You might say that it's nice that the gallery owners were willing to preserve the adobe look-and-feel of Canyon Road, that they were willing to restrain themselves to using only the window space available. But it gets worse. Most of them had curtains up or closed shutters.

Photo: A Canyon Road window with no shutter, no curtain

There were a few galleries whose windows weren't blocked by shutters or curtains. Their proprietors had put their desks in the window. One gallery manager's desk looks much like another. None of them made me want to go in to a gallery. One suspects that the gallery owner put their desk by the window so that they could have a nice view looking out, a view of some activity. Of course, there might be more activity inside their gallery if they ever thought to put something interesting in the window that might encourage people to enter.

Were the gallery owners reluctant to put art in their windows because they're worried that the harsh sun will damage their precious works? A few weeks of strong sun can be hard on a painting, I suppose. Nevertheless, it might take less time to sell the art if more people had a chance to see it.

Photo: Leslie Flynt Gallery, patronized solely by acrobats and pole-vaulters

Once again disgusted with Santa Fe, I went back to the motel and checked out.

International Folk Art Museum

My next stop was the International Folk Art Museum. It was a few miles away from downtown. I ended up on streets without sidewalks, dusty places that made me think This can't be the right way; I must be lost. But I wasn't lost. They had just stuck this place way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. Eventually I found it.

It was great.

Admittedly, most of its contents didn't interest me. Unlike the other musea I'd seen, however, this one had lots of material and a wide variety. Anyone was bound to find something that they really liked.

There was a navigational chart made by natives of the Marshall Islands. It was made of sticks and cowrie shells; it represented the positions of stars in the night sky. I'd heard of these charts but never seen one. I thought about the Marshall Islands. I thought about nuclear missiles. I thought about nuclear missiles navigating by the stars. I shook my head, cleared it.

There were some worker's jackets from Northern Japan that I really liked. They were made of rough cotton-like fabric, dyed to make coarse horizontal bands of different shades of indigo. These were jackets of farm workers, and would wear out. They were repaired with rectangles of sashiko-quilted cloth. The jackets were patched symmetrically, even if wear wasn't symmetric. The effect was as if the patches were meant to be there. The designs worked as a whole.

I thought about my own jeans, about the patches I'd been putting on. I'd started thinking ahead when I decorated my patches. When I wrote "rep stosw" on one knee-patch, I'd figured I'd write something like "rep scasw" on the other. But I hadn't thought to patch both knees at once, hadn't thought of ways to make the patch colors and shapes complement one another.

The exhibit gave me a lot to think about. I was pretty sure that more of my jeans would wear out in the future.

The Santa Fe They Don't Show You On Package Tours

I headed South from the Museum towards the Greyhound station. A four-by-four, heading North, stopped next to me. Some yuppied guy stuck his head out the window and said, "Hey, do you live around here?" I replied, "Can't says I do." He looked frustrated. What a dope. If a non-local was walking down this dusty dirt road, maybe there was a site around that appealed to non-locals. The lady in the seat next to him asked, "Is this the way to the museum?" I replied, "Yep." Obviously, she was the brains of the outfit.

I reached the East-West road that would lead me to the Greyhound station. I was somewhat non-plussed when it turned out to be a freeway. I danced with traffic to navigate a cloverleaf while a policeman looked on.

At the station, I got a ticket, stashed my stuff in a locker, got some food at a nearby place called Delectables (which claimed to have the only home-made ice cream in Santa Fe), got back to the station, retrieved my stuff and was soon on the bus.

Battle of Twits

Back in Albuquerque, I walked East from the bus station, towards the place where Central Avenue went under the railroad tracks. As I came around the curving wall formed by the bridge's supports, I saw the guy walking the other way. I figured out that he was walking unsteadily when he stumbled into my path. I changed course to avoid him, keeping an eye on him in case he staggered again. He looked like he was having a really hard time. His face was red, he was sweating a lot. He looked as if he'd once been strong, but was now just fat. He glared back at me. I walked past, he walked past. Behind me, I heard a rustling of fabric. I looked back. He had stopped, turned around, was looking at me, upset. He yelled, "The fuck! What the fuck are you staring at?" I meant to shrug and turn around and walk away, and I guess I did. I really didn't mean to smirk like that. The smirk surprised me, made me tense up a bit--the shrug probably looked rather exaggerated, perhaps mocking. By the time all this had registered in my brain, I'd finished turning around.

I wondered if I should turn around again. The guy might interpret this as an insult, but he was pretty likely to take my smirk as an insult; he seemed quite ready to be insulted. He was so unsteady that I was pretty sure that he wouldn't present much of a threat as long as I could see him coming.

Instead, I just kept walking forward, ears peeled for the sound of rustling fabric, the sound which had given him away before. I heard nothing, I rounded the curve, risked a look back: he was not following me. Okay.

A few more steps, and I was in the shade of the railroad bridge. Down on the ground, I saw a small puddle of vomit. It was still fresh, steaming. I could think of only one person who could have left it there.

I think that guy was having a really rough day.

Not Much

1999.04.01 THU

For this day, I'd planned on renting a bike. Heck, my original plan for New Mexico had been a sort of desert bike ride. But today was not a good day for biking. It was cold and windy. It was really windy. The wind was blowing sand into my skin so hard that it stung. I spent most of the day in the hotel room, going out only long enough for errands.

I dropped off some film to be developed at a branch of the local camera chain, Kurt's Camera Corral. The clerk asked me for my phone number in case they needed to call me--like, if there was a delay in my film getting developed. I said I didn't know; I was a tourist, staying in a motel. She gave me her card so that I could call ahead and make sure that the pictures were ready.

Her name was Rhonda Forletta.

I considered asking her if she knew that her name was a "forletta" word. But I decided against it

Back at the motel, I took inventory of my clean laundry. I'd bought tourist t-shirts at the phone museum, the atomic museum, and Los Alamos. I'd bought those sweatsocks after the Rio Grande fiasco. I figured I had enough clean laundry to last me the rest of the trip. I jumped around and danced a little.

Long ago, when I was short, there was a grocery store in Berkeley called the Co-op. It was a co-operative. You could become a member. Members got discounts or something. A few years ago, it gave up the ghost.

But Co-op yet lives in Albuquerque. I got lunch from the Montesito Co-op's deli. They even had the co-op logo. If I'd had any memories of the old co-op, maybe this would have been a nostalgic experience.

Actually, it was a nostalgic experience, but not because of the old co-op logo. I had a falafel sandwich, the first falafel sandwich I'd had in weeks. I didn't realize how much I'd miss them until they were no longer available.

A Little More, but Still Not Much

1999.04.02 FRI

I went to the University Art Museum. I saw examples of local art. There was an exhibit of photographs which had dogs in them. One series of photos was pretty cool--it was called "Crime in the Home series". These photos didn't have dogs in them. They were like crime scene photos. There was a picture of a chewed-up rug with a crime-scene ruler next to the chew marks. A picture of some chewed up boots, a shredded brassiere. There was a picture of a cactus-shaped salt shaker with a chalk outline pointing out the absence of the corresponding cactus-shaped pepper shaker. Though there was no photo of a dog in this series, there was a composite sketch of one.

Downstairs, there was an exhibit of art inspired by books. There were paintings based on biblical tales, engravings from illustrated books. Even when some of the works weren't too interesting, I still had fun trying to guess which story they were illustrating. Oh, that's Samson? Is he supposed to look freshly shaved?

My next planned stop was the Tamarind Institute, which is supposed to have some very impressive pieces of lithography up for display in their gallery.

But when I emerged from the University Art Museum, it was windy. It was really windy. I was havng a tough time walking a straight line. From previous experience, I was pretty sure that it was only going to get worse as the afternoon progressed.

The Tamarind Institute was close-by; nevertheless I whimpered in terror and fled back to my motel room. Once there, I immediately questioned my decision to flee the wind. Was I going to let another afternoon pass by without doing anything? I ought to be outside, doing stuff!

I pulled on a jacket, nerved myself up, stepped outside. It was snowing. I stepped back inside, closed the door, sat down, and turned on the TV.

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