Tuesday, September 16, 2008

City Different - Politics on Canyon Road




What one hears from tourists and locals visiting the studio after fifty-plus years holds few surprises. You've heard it all before, some things many times over. It can be complimentary or abrasive regarding this or that painting and sculpture, a work evoking groans of disapproval from one viewer triggering approbation, even occasionally tears, in another. Disagreements between husband and wife about a purchase, one or the other "loving" a painting, the spouse not able to "stand it." Once, a couple in heated argument, suggested that I should provide a Quarrel Room where such disputes could be privately resolved.

Of course we all harbor preferences -- even if strenuously and admirably suppressed, biases and prejudices. Yet, lately, I've been exposed to overmuch. Tourists from across the US as well as abroad detour from discussions of exhibited art to that of politics. The comments I overhear are often as ugly -- and loud -- as those I hear on television or the screeds I head by columnists. And it's difficult to remain above the fray. Too frequently, my silent forbearance is challenged with the blatant demand "Who'll you vote for!" The response that I'm not partisan but an Independent, watchfully weighing my choices, can open floodgates of rhetoric equaling that which thundered from both recent national conventions.

The issues of race and gender in the presidential election of 2008 are difficult to accept in fellow Americans, even harder when expressed by non-citizens. The man from South Africa who insisted that I should opt for Obama now, not wait and watch, listen, to make up my mind, concluded that I was one of those Whites who wouldn't vote for a Black man. A lady from London strongly "recommended" the Republican ticket, "you Yanks need Sarah Palin, a woman in Washington, we had our Thatcher." A feminist from South Carolina with obvious unease about a forced decision, disappointed that Hillary Clinton had not won the nomination, told me "as a loyal Democrat, if I can't vote for a woman, I'll vote for a black man." A macho, elderly ex-marine, staunchly Republican but repelled by "liberated females" will vote the ticket even if McCann "has that butch Alaskan on his side." I can turn off the TV, do not have to read the newspapers and journals. But of course I won't, determined to attempt making sense of the vile attacks and lies perpetuated by Republicans and Democrats, and their shrill partisan advocates, seek to decide who, regardless of party, promises the best course of government for out troubled nation. For one's who's been an Independent since first attaining the age to vote and for over a long lifetime, I can't remember having ever been under such vehement pressure from those of entrenched political persuasion.

There are moments when the tourists on Camino Canon are few, no one comes into the studio, and I'm alone at my work. The current project is a sculpture of Saint Francis nearing completion. I think of how the man from Assisi renounced it all -- politics, wealth, worldly hates and fears, contentions -- and for a little while I, too, am free of it.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

America - 9-11 Anniversaries


Difficult to concentrate fully this date, seven years after it occurred, on anything but the horrors of 9-11, 2001. My plate's a full one -- at age 85, ignoring as much as possible physical limitations, there's homemaking and caretaking chores for wheelchair-bound spouse, errands to run, unexpected, challenging and not-to-be forfeited professional commissions and opportunities, no matter how late in life they make the scene. I give these matters due attention, but my thoughts are on Ground Zero Manhattan, the Pentagon Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania. Images and cries of anguish from our day of terror have never ceased to haunt me, but on the September anniversaries they're more insistent, more painful.
We're not many anymore but I wonder if other World War II veterans felt what I did when violence thundered from the skies shattering our world. How many years had we believed It Can't Happen Here, not what we saw in Europe and the Pacific, not in our country, on American soil. How many believed as I did that invasion, attacks, skeletal cities and civilian slaughters could lead to what we considered worse than war, defeat. And on our return to a US untouched by scars of combat soothed our wounded psyches with the conviction that fallen cousins, schoolmates and neighbors had not sacrificed in vain, that our country was not bleeding. Those men we loved and lost had guaranteed freedom from foreign attack for the rest of our lives, and possibly the lives of our children and even grandchildren.
Then came 9-11.
Television news accompanies my studio work on this seventh anniversary. The TV set is small, one I listen to rather than watch, but today I occasionally glance up from a sculpture in progress to see the visuals meshed with words. Mostly from the memorial sites, and, despite the grief on faces of gathered Americans, the images reflect little of the horrors we saw on 9-11. It is those indelible images which swim before my eyes. I knew personally none of the victims who lost their lives on that day which changed our world, nor do I dare consider any loss comparable to that borne by their surviving loved ones. But I mourn surrender of my own belief that It Can't Happen Here, and feel betrayal of my fallen comrades who suffered so it wouldn't. Are we up to, in coming years, renewing their dedication to shielding America from Harm's Way.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Travel - bridges


It has been much too long -- 2 years 4 months -- since I was last in Mediterranean countries. Introduced to those seductive shores as a soldier during and immediately following World War II, even then the horrors of a world gone mad, a devastated Europe, could not quell the gut-feeling that much of my future intellectual and spiritual growth lay there. Essential to my existence have been the subsequent rich hours, weeks, months of study, exploration, and beauty embraced in Italy, France and Spain, in Greece and on Crete, aboard various vessels, large and small, plying blue swells between Piraeus and Gibraltar. How many cities have I walked from end to end, savoring neighborhoods rarely visited by foreigners, stumbling upon unpublicized festas and memorials, encountering individuals of every stripe, finding in some friends for life.

The desire to study the architectural works of Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona and see the Frank Gehry Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao led me to join a study tour of Catalonia in year 2000. At the time, merely 77 years old and with open-heart surgery (who, me!) 6 years in the future, I felt fine, did the customary miles of tramping, for the most part independent of the travel group. I learned that Gaudi's renowned patron bore a version of my surname, and hiked from one to another of the far-flung spectacular Barcelona sites financed by Eusebi Guell i Bacigalupi. I did sport a walking cane, conscious that one's balance wasn't quite what it used to be, and the hills and cobbles of Catalonia warranted cautious footing.

Gehry's Guggenheim Museum -- the building, not its exhibits -- was a magnet from which I could not tear loose all three days we were in Bilbao. I forfeited group city excursions except for one which bussed into the hills to look down on panoramic views of the museum, and skipped meals, to circle again and again the perimeter of that extraordinary structure. I tired, but there were benches, and what better between ramblings than to sit and contemplate the sculptural forms of the glistening facade, their undulating reflections in moat-like pools. Daylight was usually fading when I'd concede that it was time to return to the hotel, more than a mile away on the other side of the River Nervion.

With my final farewell to the Guggenheim, feeling exceptionally fatigued, I opted to try a short-cut for the walk to the hotel, using a footbridge across the river which could be seen from the museum. As I approached the bridge, legs began to ache, breath came short, there were no benches to be seen, naught to do but push on. Yet, despite apprehension that my strength would not hold out, the graceful beauty of the bridge as I neared it mitigated pain. I'd not then heard of or seen the work of Santiago Calatrava, but knew instantly that I was gazing on architecture, engineering, building contemporarily significant and equal to that of the nearby museum. The bridge held open arms, come enter me. The first step upon it vanquished all concepts of conventional pathways, earthly materials. This was walking in air, on a cloud, a structure so light that one felt it floating above the river rather than anchored to its banks. I was aware that this crossing marked a personal bridge in my life -- time to surrender evasion, acknowledge that age would entail limitations. Travel in the future could mean certain concessions, less independence, less walking. But if one had to span that psychological bridge, what place better than here to accept it. Here, on Senor Calatrava's glorious passage from one shore to another.

There were subsequent travels, quite a few, all enjoyed and some surprisingly active, even strenuous. Then, suddenly, one's an octogenarian. And in 2006 at age 83 came the open-heart surgery. That puts one on another bridge -- road to recovery, which is no walk in the clouds as that I knew in Bilbao. Yet it's going somewhere, and I look forward to its exodus, what lies beyond this span. The Mediterranean? Torna, torna, whisper the winds. Awake or asleep, at work or tasks which I continue to do, I hear the sirens of Odysseus calling to him from distant shores. Unlike that ancient sailor, I do not ask to be tied to the mast to resist joining them.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Camino Canon - Peerless peer encountered


Though exorbitant gasoline prices and the threat of economic recession have sparked a decline in tourism to Santa Fe this summer, visitors to our gallery number about the same as other years. True, our modest establishment has never attracted casual sight-seers lured by larger, more prominent commercial facades and outdoor exhibits, has for decades drawn limited visitors and clients curious about what lies within the humble adobe. Many of those who've crossed the threshold became lifetime friends; many more, colorful and loquacious characters, have afforded indelible memories. Another such came through the door just this morning.
Petite, ambling with two canes and with an oxygen tank slung over her shoulder, she entered the studio with a much younger companion, obviously employed to assist her. When the aide suggested that he charge take advantage of a vacant settee, sit and rest, the older woman strongly refused, slowly circling the room to study paintings and sculpture. It was only after long minutes that she steered herself toward the settee. I heard the familiar heavy breathing of someone who has difficulty sitting or rising, the heavy sigh as her body collapsed rather than lowered into the upholstery.
She and I exchanged few words, as years greeting visitors to the gallery has taught me when silence is best. The old lady's companion seemed to know, too, the less said the better. Her employer's furrowed brow did not invite chit-chat. Yet, I studied that commanding presence -- white-haired, face lined but fine-boned and testament to great beauty, figure slim, held erect despite dependence on the canes. A multi-hued Mexican serape draped the austerely ochered Moroccan caftan she wore, and Navajo silver and turquoise jewelry adorned her bosom and arms. She'd traveled far. Yet I envisioned her in a stately parlor, simple black dress, pearls and white gloves, taking tea with the ladies, the American matron from decades long gone. Her first words to me were confrontational: "You damned artists, staring into people. The arrogance, thinking you can see more than others." The younger woman lowered her head and stared at the floor.
"But the work is good," the dowager conceded, "and those bronze medallions would be appropriate Christmas gifts for my great-granddaughters." Remaining seated, she directed her aide to bring medallions to her for selection, and chose six from the semi-abstract, stylized forms of angels and madonnas I've designed. As I wrapped the purchase, I heard her call across the room, loudly, addressing me. "You're a World War II veteran, aren't you," she stated rather than asked, and my affirmative response triggered the remark "I can always smell them out. My husband was one. Terse to the point of rudeness, you silent generation of bonded brothers." I've rarely been accused of reticence, often damned as extrovert, and her comment made me laugh. There was no need, really, for me to respond further, as the lady -- apparently assuming she was with a peer who'd comprehend whereof she spoke -- launched into a lengthy monologue of what was wrong with the world and how those of our vintage could set it right.
It was difficult to find proper gifts for young great-grandchildren because decency wasn't part of marketing for youth these days. Book she perused -- "designated children's literature!" -- focused on the trauma of teenaged protagonists from broken families, or their problems with drugs, and "always, sexual awakening, sexual orientation. A world devoid of Innocents." One of the great-grandsons asked for video games as birthday gifts, but all she previewed were awash in violence. A great-granddaughter collected discs of pop music, but most she monitored were strewn with lascivious, vile lyrics "no doubt even worse than phrases once restricted to the barracks you and my husband frequented." She'd always loved the arts, she said, all of it, but now when in New York, frequent attendance at the performing arts and in museums paid little dividends. Too much theater and "most of the cinema" contended that good drama has to be bolstered by ubiquitous profanity, pornographic language, a brutal offense to her ears. Too often museum exhibits were the neuroses of celebrated artists blatantly exploited in their paintings and sculpture. She was sick of "installations and happenings" in galleries where once she found walls aglow with modern works interesting, even beautiful, if challenging. She periodically sought escape to Europe to be again among the great public arts in the streets of Paris or Rome, to look once more on ancient masterworks. "But nowhere today is there true graciousness. I go back to my hotel and the local newspaper is at my door, wide-screen TV's in the room. No matter the country, the journals headline corruption, scandal, violence. Abhorrent American television ads cross oceans, and wherever in the world you are, assault you in English with their spiels on bowel and bladder medications, yeast infections, erectile dysfunction. Lewd. Disgusting. Sewers may be necessary, but must we frequent them." She paused, drew a deep breath. "Have some of us," the voice went plaintive, "Stayed -- as some wit put it -- Too Long at the Fair."
Talk exhausted her. Assisted by her aide, she rose from the settee with great difficulty, and I had a better appreciation of her years -- and the toll they'd taken on her -- than when she entered the room. She teetered just a bit on the two canes before achieving balance. She'd not used the oxygen mask while in the gallery, nor did she apply it on leaving, yet I was certain she would once inside their vehicle parked in our driveway. Santa Fe's 7,000-foot elevation doesn't well tolerate extended monologues. And I saw her pinch at a slight bulge in the elegant caftan. Did it conceal some kind of back or spinal brace? But once outside the gallery, on our front terrace, she straightened her back, held high her chin to face the brilliant northern New Mexico light, and with one of her canes tapped the foot of her anxious companion. "Okay, Girl, let's get on with it."

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Camino Canon - gallery hopping, arts crawl


I'm not Francesco from Umbria I tell the red-headed finch which dogs my footsteps as I work in the patio. Fully feathered, it's not a fledgling fallen from a nest, flew perfectly from a high branch to the ground, and obviously is not wounded or in need of aid. But it persists in staying close to heel, sometimes blocking my path, looking up for some kind of communion. Can't help you, little fellow, I'm not gifted at interpreting the wants or needs of undomesticated fauna. Minutes pass before its questioning eyes recognize that fact and it flies off.

The finch is merely the latest encounter with wild neighbors which have elected -- or been forced to -- establish residence on Santa Fe's Camino Canon. I well remember the days before our once-dirt thoroughfare became the city's "art and soul," Canyon Road -- when the animals one saw on a daily basis were generally restricted to roaming "outside, watchdogs" and stray felines. You occasionally heard a burro bray or a cock crow, and one of my friends kept geese which raised an alarm whenever anyone set foot on her property.

Ancient history. Before the family residences were sold and became galleries, and fields cleared to make room for condominiums. Perhaps the earliest influx of critters I saw were the raccoons. Once their own territories had been invaded, they found refuge in one of the few remaining open lots on the road, an expansive field and garden behind our small enclosed patio. The raccoons discovered we had a few vines trained to grow tall over an arbor and shade a terrace. The vines produced delicious Concord and Niagara grapes, and for many years had never attracted birds, much less raccoons. But now families of the masked critters come on autumn nights, and the fruit is quickly gone. During the night, I hear the raccoons scudding across the house roof enroute to the arbor, and at dawn have seen Momma leading as many as six well-rounded, satiated toddlers down our driveway back to their lair.

Now it's rabbits. For the past three years, after more than half a century in this residence with no evidence of any, the bunnies explore the patio, nap under our car in the driveway, often peer into the dining-room window when we're at table. And like that red-headed finch, sometimes mistake me for the man from Assisi, loitering inches from my toes, looking up with beseeching eyes. I've seen them gallery hopping, too -- aping the Santa Feans and tourists who clog the Road on Friday nights for art openings. One early evening recently, I watched a very young bobtail brave traffic to cross the street repeatedly, one gallery to another, checking out the plantings. New hollyhock leaves seemed to be his tidbit of choice.

In late spring, I twice saw two small black snakes in the patio gardens. Not to worry, just harmless creatures good for the soil. A day later, a young man told my wife he'd seen a snake in the driveway, and he obviously didn't consider it small or harmless. Then a neighbor feared a snake she saw in her patio was a rattler, and phoned Animal Control. It proved to be a bull-snake, three-feet plus in length with markings similar to a rattler's. Then another small black snake was spotted sunning off my front terrace, and an observant sculptor told me that one could well be no garden variety but a young bull-snake. Maybe they're nesting around here somewhere, he suggested. Snakes on Canyon Road! Certainly we'd always had sharks here, the human variety, with quite a few ending up in court for various shady dealings in the art world. My friend the sculptor advises that if more large bull-snakes show up, we're not to phone Animal Control, but let him know. He has many friends who live in the country, keep horses, and their fields and barns are overrun with mice. Bull-snakes eat mice.

A city-boy until well into adulthood, I was a slow learner regarding all creatures not native to the Concrete Jungle. But decades on Camino Canon fostered the assumption that I knew a thing or two about native flora and fauna. Explosive growth of our town, crowding out old habitats of animals that once lived nearby but not with us has me reappraising extended family in future years here.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Elders - Clearances


An unexpected heavy parcel delivered today was from a longtime friend in Pennsylvania. The package contained 20 albums of classical music, quite a few of them multiple-disc sets of operas. There was no note. Though all were in good condition, it was obvious that the CDs had been in my friend's possession for years, had been frequently handled and played. Knowing the love of music we'd long shared, I wondered how he could easily part with exceptional recordings, a few of which, though remastered, were of historic live performances dating back to the 60s and 70s, one -- Maria Callas' La Traviata at Teatro alla Scala -- from 1955.
There was a phonecall from Pennsylvania about a month ago. Something of a surprise, as I believed my friend and his wife were in Rome at the time, fulfilling a lifetime dream of finally visiting the Eternal City. But no, he explained, the trip had been cancelled. He'd had a mild heart attack, nothing too serious, he assured me, not comparable to the open-heart surgery I'd undergone less than two years ago. Nevertheless, he felt his energies were depleted, feared his years of work-related and pleasure travel would be seriously limited, sounded surprised that one could suddenly, following physical setback after years of robust health, be forced to make concessions to age.
Five years younger than I, he'd recently celebrated his eightieth birthday. Welcome to the club of octogenarians, old buddy. And yes, I know, handling, listening to, those fine CDs, why he sent them. Time to rid oneself of things -- possessions, no matter how deeply valued -- which in advanced age demand stewardship or maintenance not compatible with limited time and stamina. Divest oneself of many non-essentials, including collectibles you once believed you couldn't do without -- cherished books which won't again be re-read, reels or tapes of film which won't be viewed, artifacts and souvenirs from distant shores gathering dust, papers, letters, photos, boxes of paraphernalia stored in cupboards and closets. Stuff. You can accumulate mountains of it in four-score years.
I'll enjoy listening to those CDs, but know I won't want to add them to the burdened shelves of my own extensive trove. The sight of that wall of music is a reproof every time I pass it. When will you begin to thin the ranks, particularly when there' so much you rarely listen to anymore. And in this day of ubiquitous technology, who needs to store anything. I hear all the music I care to from 24-hour classical KHFM, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, as well as from streaming computer audio broadcast by New York's WQXR and Britain's BBC.
I've not been as hasty as my friend in Pennsylvania to begin clearing the decks, but hope his example will strengthen my resolve. One at my age has known the loss of much and many, among them loved ones whose spirits may walk beside me but who can't be embraced. We must let go people; it should be easy to let go things.

Friday, July 4, 2008

City Different - Santa Fe Falstaff

, Program 19th Season 1975

July and August mean opera in Santa Fe, and my wife and I have been attending performances since the first season, 1957. The amphitheater just north of town has always meant much to us. As ex-New Yorkers, relocation to Santa Fe in 1954 was precisely where we wanted to be, and still want to be, but nevertheless missed cultural attractions afforded by life in Manhattan. We greeted founder John Crosby's amphitheater north of town and its initial season with enthusiasm and support, and remain grateful to this day for the immeasurable wealth of music he brought to our town. We've gained life-long friends from cast members with the opera, two of our children were in productions of La Boheme and Wozzek, we've enjoyed countless world and US premieres of works which have greatly challenged and enriched our appreciation of music.
Among its five productions this year, the Santa Fe Opera is presenting Verdi's Falstaff. My introduction to the work was in 1975 with SFO's supremely unforgettable roster of talents convincing me that I'll never experience the singing and staging done better. With much respect for this year's artists, whose performance I attended, I vividly recall the magic of the earlier Falstaff and his merry wives of Windsor.
Conducted by Edo De Waart, directed by Colin Graham, with scenery by Allen Charles Klein, costumes by Suzanne Mess, and lighting by Georg Schreiber, the '75 Falstaff expertly captured the essence of Shakespeare's disreputable but lovable once-companion to young Prince Hal. This is no easy feat since Arrigo Boito's libretto and Verdi's music, if lacking the essential pathos as well as humor written in word and melody, can make of the "fat old knight" simply a dirty old man. Baritone Thomas Stewart as Falstaff brought warmth and sensitivity to the character that won thunderous praise not only from Santa Feans but was echoed by critics from across the nation who saw his performance. How mischievous and graceful his Quand'ero poggio and simpatico, even heart-breaking, his Mondo lardo. This was a Falstaff which seen has never been forgotten, which still on nights at the Santa Fe Opera is lovingly referred to by long-time patrons of that fabulous hilltop temple to music.
Stewart was superbly supported by the stellar cast, Helen Vanni as Alice Ford and Jean Kraft as Meg Page. Brent Ellis, who'd started out as apprentice with SFO but would go on to top opera houses of the world, was Ford. And Betty Allen gave us a Dame Quickly who imbued every word of the libretto and every note of music with true intent of the composers.
We're now into the second half-century of Santa Fe Opera. For some of us who've been with it from the beginning, compromised mobility and late hours make nights at the amphitheater a bit more challenging. Yet I see a lot of familiar, if weathered, faces in the subscription-night audiences. Santa Feans who can't imagine summer without music in the air, without still one more new interpretation of an old war-horse or the exciting premiere of a contemporary work.
Cominciamo !




Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Travel - the other meadows


What happens here, stays here, they insist, but I want to share just a little of the latest weekend jaunt to Nevada's southern city touted primarily for its neon Strip. On the only other visit to Las Vegas, I'd been escorted to the Strip by friends, residents of the city, and had surprisingly liked what I thought I'd abhor. The casinos not merely glittering gambling dens I'd assumed them to be, but components of structures housing fine boutiques, great restaurants, shops featuring wares from the best worldwide designers, art galleries where I viewed Picassos, Monets, Van Goghs. But there'd be no time for the Strip this time. I was arriving on Saturday to attend on Sunday the surprise 70th birthday party of a dear friend who'd been very close to death from pneumonia over the past month. My flight out of Vegas was scheduled for Monday.
"If you want to double your money when in the casinos," the flight attendant counseled as our plane taxied to the gate on arrival, "I've got the soundest piece of advice: take a dollar from your pocket and fold it in half. Then put it back in your pocket." Such patter is endemic for this city sprung from las vegas, the meadows, and you see it justified as you walk through the airport furnished with countless rows of slot machines manned by travelers who look anything but weary, avidly feeding coins and dollar bills into the whirring, flashing instruments of wishful thinking. I know that my forty-eight hours in town will not be in similar meadows.
Mutual friends of the morrow's Birthday Girl have kindly received me as guest in their home. I see for the first time their beautiful neighborhood of Summerlin, observe family properties expertly maintained, amid streets and thoroughfares handsomely landscaped, southwestern flora in sandy beds ablaze with brilliant sun suddenly countered by the unexpected vista of a shaded avenue under towering royal palms. This dignified eden, in the same town as the flamboyant street of neon I'd only known previously. I had a lot to learn about Vegas.
My host and hostess attend Saturday afternoon Catholic Mass and invite me to accompany them. To one more glimpse of still another Las Vegas. A huge, handsomely-designed modern church, crowded with communicants young and old. Before and after the liturgy, introduced to parishioners, I hear reports of family and friends, am shown the photo of a young man's two-year-old son, learn who is recovering from what illness, when someone's granddaughter is expected to visit. On leaving the church, I stop for a few words with the celebrant, who'd referred to his love for Rome during the homily. We exchange nostalgic longing to see again the Eternal City. I've not heard a single reference to Las Vegas' storied lures, the celebrity-studded shows, the spectacular extravaganzas, certainly not the gambling, of the Strip. Later at a restaurant, our conversation is centered mostly on the help, receptionist, manager and waiters known to my friends who are sincerely interested in the present lives and future ambitions of these young people.
Sunday. The surprise Birthday Party is held at a noted Italian restaurant, usually closed on the day of rest, reserved exclusively for this occasion. It is already crowded when we arrive, though Birthday Girl has yet to arrive with her husband. They and the couple with whom I'm staying are friends with whom I shared memorable times on a tour of Portugal and Spain four years ago. The restaurant hums with expectancy, all of us awaiting word of when Birthday Girl has left her house, how soon she'll appear to face a large assembly eager to express its love and happiness at her survival from serious physical assault. I meet -- all! -- her nine adult children, those who live in Vegas and those who've come from afar, and see in each of them the rich harvest of good parenting. Among family friends in attendance are fellow thespians from a local theatrical group to which Birthday Girl and spouse belong. Colorful, amusing, wonderful people with fine tall tales to tell me. I watch an elder (isn't he actually, like myself, an octogenarian?) dancing so energetically, wildly really, that I wonder if we'll have to call an ambulance. Not to worry. He was a boxer, gymnast, great athlete, I'm told, who continues to pride himself on his prowess.
Birthday Girl arrives to great cheering and a thunderous fanfare from the hired musicians. We wonder whether or not hubby had been able to keep the party a surprise, but if she'd guessed, does not display it. And she absolutely hadn't expected me to be there, our embrace is long. Wine flows, the dinner is superb -- the finest Italian cuisine lite -- and I much enjoy table companions, a lawyer and her educator husband, who've traveled far and share stories of adventures in places I haven't visited. Nearly everyone crowding the large two rooms is gregarious, and much circulating spawns many joyful encounters. I consciously consider that the occasion is in no way provincial, has nothing to do with the icon which is Las Vegas, could be happening anywhere in the world where loving families and dear friends gather. There on the dancefloor, Birthday Girl is dancing with her head on the shoulder of her husband of more than fifty years, their nine children -- and a few of their spouses, and just a smattering of the many grandchildren -- taking photos. When I speak with a son or a daughter, there's much laughter, this is a day for it, but a few times I detect a misty eye.
Back at Summerlin, host, hostess and I spend a few quiet Sunday evening hours sitting in their living room, reviewing the rock-solid bonding of family and the loyalty of friends we'd seen among everyone at the party. Television, though muted, was on across the room. Images thoroughly divorced from what we'd known this day. I wouldn't let them -- not those glimpses of world turmoil, political smut, human frailty -- intrude on what the three of us had experienced and were savoring. Call it Sin City if that pleases you, but I now know a Las Vegas, a wondrous meadow where none but good shepherds roam.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Camino Canon - Flowers


It's that time of year when Santa Fe's Canyon Road, which I continue to think of as my Camino Canon, is rampant bloom from the beginning of the street to its distant terminus. Much of this is due, of course, to the commercial art galleries which over the years have fostered extensive plantings in gardens once modest (or bare) when the camino and its adobe structures were primarily residential. I see many tourists with cameras obviously more interested in photographing flowers than the numerous outdoor sculptures and paintings displayed on exterior walls. They're ostensibly here to view the hyped art, but go figure.

Early this morning on the otherwise deserted street when I emerged from the house to fetch the newspaper, a Japanese man had a tripod set up on our terrace fronting the gallery. Intensly studying a Jackmani clematis stretched tall on a climbing rose, he was for long seconds unaware of me. I watched him click shutter time and time again before we acknowledged each other in greeting. In heavily accented English, he told me he'd spent the past three mornings on the Road, beguiled by early light on profuse bloom, thankful that he'd found what he considered among the best of all photo ops on his tour of the United States. He wanted to know the name of the roses in our terrace and driveway hedges, what the ground cover was (creeping phlox), and if the lilacs did well along a western wall. If I leave studio chores to step outdoors for a few minutes in summertime, I nearly always encounter a flower lover loitering on the property.

When my wife and I moved into this house in 1956, it sat on a lot of bare scorched earth, hardly a weed, and certainly no plants, modifying the stark exterior. One of our first tasks was to enclose the small back field with a wall, create a safe play area for our two small children. That barren yard was bordered on the east side by a low rock, mud plastered wall which provided glimpses into a neighbor's extensive gardens and fields. The neighbor was artist Olive Rush, celebrated for her paintings, and the mistress of an historic adobe home which also served as the Friends' Meeting House. Much pleasure to my wife, children and I was to look over the wall and see the little white-haired old lady lovingly tending plants. Often she worked with local young men obviously familiar with Santa Fe soil, who knew which flora did well here, how best to prune trees, divide perennials. I would stand in my bare expanse of dirt and look admiringly on what was afoot next door. And know how ignorant I was of the skills needed for such a garden.

If Olive had accepted the neglect of property by the previous homeowners, she was quick to notice our feeble attempts to introduce color into our drab landscape. Her gardens required frequent divisions, she said, wouldn't we like to have some sedum, a few iris, violets. She would come to the wall with a handful or have one of her handymen bring a container of them to our door. With each year, there were more. "I must thin the Tears of Job," she would say, "or that rambling Yellow Rose of Texas. You could use them." And so our gardens grew. And grew. Now I give away iris when they need division, have gladly welcomed friends who want clumps of the sedum and violets which have spread widely, find it necessary to remove numerous runners from the Yellow Rose of Texas, hope someone will accept them. Olive is long gone (though her lovely home remains the Friends' Meeting House), but with us in gardens owing much of their conception to her.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Italia Mia 1

Vesuvivo, computer art 2006

The strength of the Euro against the US Dollar continues to bring more foreign tourists than ever to Santa Fe's Canyon Road this summer. And it's a given that if they're from Italy, they'll stop in our studio/gallery after seeing the family name on our sign. They enter prepared to use their native language, exchange personal data on origins, share experiences of places mutually visited in Italy and America. Today it is a young professional couple from Chivavari, where the surname Bacigalupo seems as common as Smith in this country. They were were curious to know if I had relatives in their home town.

No such luck. I repeated the history given to many of their countrymen who've in the past expressed interest in my origins; a fourth-generation Italian-American, I never knew the great grandparents who came as youthful bride and groom to the US (1870) long before Ellis Island existed, did not know their names until late in life and only after many hours spent on genealogical research. They must have assimilated life in the New World rapidly, for their children (my grandfather) and subsequent generations were deprived the language, traditions and culture of their ancestors. My interest in the Mediterranean as a youth and young adult was in France, having studied French in high school and lusted for the highly-publicized romantic lives of American expatriates living in Paris. Italy was someplace my forebears had left behind. I'd probably never get there.

The couple from Chiavari were visibly distressed. Che brutta, the ignorance of heritage, knowing so little about where and from whom you've come. Mustn't one have some knowledge of what he was yesterday to understand who he is today? Once again I launched the discourse on rediscovery of my roots. There was the opportunity in 1950 under the GI Bill to pursue graduate studies abroad, and I submitted an application for a school in France to the Veterans' Administration. The response was that current exchange policies could offer art studies in Italy, not France. Though reluctant to compromise France for Italy, I became a graduate student at L'Accademia di Belli Arti, Firenze.

That disclosure won the interest and approval of the visitors from Chiavari. But they were not yet born in that year I spent in Tuscany, never knew the Tempo della Miseria which gripped the country even five years after World War II had ended. My introduction to Italy was harsh, subsistence under the GI Bill providing an unheated room in a crumbling cold stone palazzo and one meal a day with a desperately impoverished family. Yet, despite severe privations, love for the country took root. I have never since been free of her claim, repeatedly drawing me back for study, work and joy in the wealth of her artistic and scenic treasures, a culture rich in beauty and knowledge of the good life, among a people who've accepted me as their own, uno di noi, and whom I love.

My visitors now recognized that hyphenated Americans, at least some of us, choose to look back, research ancestral records, learn even a little about our ancestors. Sometimes grow to love the country of our origin. But this young man and woman do not know split allegiances. Their love for and loyalty to Italy, and particularly for their own region of Liguria, is paramount. Travel outside their country is a pleasure, and they've roamed widely, but no place on the planet can ever share commitment with the homeland. I'm suggesting, they say, something akin to adultery, passion for more than one beloved. Where, they ask, if forced to choose, would you prefer to live -- America or Italy. And of course don't quite accept an elder's view that one needn't choose, that both places exist and that if and when possible both should be embraced. They persist. If, per exempio, world politics alienated all of Western Europe and the US, if travel were restricted, if -- God forbid -- there were war between our countries, where would you want to be. As if I hadn't already demonstrated, proved that.

I lost patience with specious argument, and made an excuse about having to get back to work. The Italians graciously rose, and our farewell abbracci and buona fortunas were warmly sincere, we'd definitely found simpatico a chance encounter. Think of me when back in Chiavari. But some minutes later, as I worked, classical music on the radio gave way to an hourly news report. Audio clips of bombastic speeches by Republicans and Democrats lauding their candidate and reviling his opponent in the Presidential Election campaign. The latest, during months of obscene politicking which has many of us feeling we need a national cleansing. And I was keenly aware that the drumbeaters were insisting, as the recent visitors had, that I make a choice, this time for a party. Having been staunchly non-partisan for many years, faithfully voting for individuals I believed could best serve the country regardless of party affiliation, I refuse to surrender the option to listen and wait, study and decide, not jump on the bandwagon under pressure from strange bedfellows. Which makes me wonder if the Italians didn't have a point about shared allegiances. Much as I love Italy, her politics have never much engaged me. I care about America's, and strive to act conscientiously when facing them.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

City Different 1


One of my granddaughters, visiting Santa Fe, came upon this guitarist strumming away beside Grandpa's bronze of San Francisco which stands in front of City Hall. Seldom passing up a photo op, she captured a moment typical of incidents I've heard relating to the statue during the 28 years since it was installed.
The Santa Fe County competition for Art in Public Places, 1979, called for entries, preferably a mural, to grace the wall of a second-floor hallway in the city's municipal building. I took a look at the designated wall and considered it inappropriate, a location where few visitors to the building would see art work meant to be public. The rules of the competition did not, however, limit one to suggested media or specific site within or on the grounds of the building. I thought an icon of the city's patron, San Francisco, should stand prominently fronting City Hall where all citizens could view it. And submitted a maquette for the bronze to the juried panel of the Arts Commission, city councilors and the mayor. A few fellow artists who hadn't carefully read the competition's rules were disgruntled when an entry for sculpture took first prize in what they'd believed to be a mural contest.
I absolutely did not want to produce still another version of San Francisco holding birds, and so deliberately modeled the small maquette with the man of Assisi's hands folded behind his back. The figure was bent slightly forward, its head tilted downward as if gazing on something, and the composition demanded I put a sculptural element in his view. For weeks that element remained a lump of clay. Though I consider my work stylistic rather than representational, nothing abstract would do, something recognizable would have to justify Francis' rapt attention. One night, a friend visiting my studio demanded that I resolve the dilemma, turn that lump of clay into anything--a rock, plant, why not some small creature, wasn't the saint the patron of animals. When my response was that I could think of nothing, he countered with "It already looks like a prairie dog!" Miracolo, I think you've got it. And so it became. Once dedicated, the bronze was officially labeled San Francisco del Desierto. But locals never refer to it as such; for them it's always been and remains St Francis and the Prairie Dog.
I've cherished the public's acceptance of and interaction with the statue over the years: the many telephone calls from friends who've asked if I've been downtown, have seen the latest gift bestowed on Francis or his small friend by an anonymous donor--a bright red scarf circling Francis' throat following a heavy snowstorm; a Santa Claus cap upon his head during the Christmas season; a beautifully hand-crafted, flowered and beaded bonnet adorning the prairie dog one Easter Sunday; the coins left at Francis' feet, reportedly collected by an elderly senora and carried to the Poor Box at the Cathedral where she attends daily morning Mass. The frequent times, while downtown, I've seen residents or tourists sitting on one of the benches which flank the sculpture, reading or merely resting in the shadow of Francis, sometimes being photographed with a friendly hand on his arm. I get emails from across the country as well as from abroad by people who've read my signature on the bronze, google the name and locate my website on the internet, write words to gladden the heart. Art is essentially communication, and when we accomplish that, it makes worthwhile the hardwork and periodic rejections which come with the territory in this field of labor.
But if public approval of the statue has given me much pleasure, the city's neglect of its site triggers frustration. Awarding of the competition prize specified only that I was to execute and have the bronze freighted to City Hall. Someone employed by the administration at that time, whose name I never knew or can't recall (possibly the city architect or landscaper), designed and had constructed a solid and attractive base for the sculpture. At the dedication, on the feastday of Francis, 4 October 1980, planned and discussed (promised!) landscaping and lighting had not been done, but on such a joyous occasion I didn't consider that it never would be. The dedication was most festive, a procession of adults and children, led by vested priests, carrying or walking leashed pets from the terrace of St Francis Cathedral through the Plaza and down Lincoln Avenue to where Francis and the Prairie Dog awaited them. Speeches were made by politicians, clergy blessed the animals, and it was announced that the Procession and Blessing would become an annual event, that every year on October 4 we'd gather to honor Francisco, patron of this city named for his holy faith and patron of El Senor's wide animal kingdom. There was never again another procession or blessing, the landscaping plans not realized, no lighting installed.
Worse. The corner at Lincoln and Marcy Streets where the bronze fronts City Hall has over the years been disfigured by a long line of curbside newspaper and periodical-handout kiosks, directional signs and occasional illegal parking which all but hide Francis from approaching pedestrians or vehicles. Whenever I receive another phonecall or email from someone expressing delight in the bronze, I think of its violated site and wonder how anyone could fully appreciate it there. Those of us who love our City Different are dismayed, even angered, when someone disillusioned with it refers to it as the City Indifferent. But after many attempts with various city administrations to improve, clean up, the site, I'm no longer quick to argue the negative adjective.
Under construction adjacent to the Municipal Building and City Hall is Santa Fe's nearly completed multi-million dollar Civic Center, scheduled for opening before summer's end. A huge complex of excellent design trumpeting northern New Mexico's architectural traditions, the Center will be approached by many of its future thousands of visitors from the corner of Lincoln and Marcy Streets where Francis and his prairie dog look out on the intersection. I want to believe that pleas to rid the site of shabby accouterments--"To Beautify A City," as the Santa Fe Reporter headlined the story (27 September 1979) announcing the competition result--will not go unheeded. There Is a Season for All Things. Time to address this matter, give Francis his due as he anticipates welcoming crowds on their way to the Civic Center.

Camino Canon 1

Lazy June afternoon. The hottest month of the year in Santa Fe, and "the art and soul of Santa Fe," Canyon Road--still known as Camino Canon when I moved here more than half a century ago--is free of tourists, mad dogs and Englishmen under mid-day sun. They'll reappear, some of them that is, once the brilliant light begins to fade and the faithful cool of the evening sets in. The Road will then again be awash with visitors who stop and stare, intrigued by the sights and sounds of our now-renowned thoroughfare in this City Different.

It's pointless to resist change, and most of the time I accept, frequently prefer it to what went before. But one can't help sometimes remembering, when observing the plethora of high-end art galleries, restaurants and boutiques, the family neighborhood the Camino once was, the unpaved road and modest adobe homes, open fields where children played. The field across the unpaved street fronting my house--a vast stretch of land containing little but clusters of indigenous chamisa and a crumbling stable which sheltered two burros; and with an unobstructed vista clear to the Rito de Santa Fe, and beyond to the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. How I used to love that view and the braying (rusty hinges!) of the burros. Wonderments to someone whose youth had been spent in crowded east cost cities from Maryland to Massachusetts. View long gone, I look out now on a wall encircling condominiums within a gated community.

An early riser, there was a time when the only pedestrians I saw on the Road at daybreak were a few neighbors on their way to daily Mass at Cristo Rey Church. Senoras, their heads draped with lovely mantillas, often robed in severe black but occasionally sporting colorful fiesta skirts; the Senors sombreoed and booted. Always a stray dog or two, it was a time when Animal Patrol didn't exist or wasn't enforced. This morning when I stepped onto to the front terrace to fetch The New York Times, subscription gift from a daughter and son-in-law, joggers were coursing both sides of the street under faint eastern light, and there were dogs but not a cur in sight, thoroughbreds all on leash being walked by physically fit owners astride in summer shorts. As the red dawn brightened, more joggers, more dog-walkers, quite a few seasonal residents going to or coming from the neighborhood coffee house, out-of-town newspapers under their arms.

A posted notice in my studio/gallery informs visitors that they're in the oldest commercial establishment on the Road, and offers a brief history of my family's 50+ years occupation of the premises. This to forestall the inevitable questions about the obvious "old Santa Fe" ambiance we maintain compared to the modernization of many structures no longer family homes but chic galleries. Posted notice or not, there are comments and questions about our extended time here. Very often, disappointment in the changes to the city are expressed by tourists who were last here years ago, sometimes by decades. They rhapsodize about an old Santa Fe so much smaller, vehicular traffic not heavy, hotels and inns modest, the Spanish-American and Native-American cultures more dominant than they are today. Everything so simple, pure, free of the elegance and sophistication many of them consider pseudo, affectations. I've had to adopt a stock answer to the question of whether or not I'm bothered by all the changes I've seen on the Road.

No. Everything changes. I see that in the mirror every day when I shave. And many of the changes in Santa Fe make this a better city to live in than when I moved here. Of course, one doesn't like the snarled traffic, the inflated real estate and high-cost-of living, the loss of not knowing practically everyone in town when it was a smaller community, the preponderance of strangers everywhere one goes now. But as an ex-New Yorker, there was much I missed in the old Santa Fe I dearly loved despite its lack of cultural venues. My arrival here predates the Santa Fe Opera, which has afforded countless hours of enrichment since its founding in the hills north of town. In the early 1950s, there were but two movie theaters in Santa Fe, neither of which ever showed foreign films. Touring theater or ballet did not come to the city, nor did art exhibits on loan. There were long stretches when the thirst for good drama, dance, opera or painting and sculpture would demand one leave town if he could afford it, flee to New York or San Francisco for a glimpse, taste of the arts without which life is impoverished. And if you couldn't afford it -- .

With all the change, the landscape of northern New Mexico is constant. Our tierra bendita, our incomparable turquoise sky, those Sangre de Cristo and Nacimiento ranges, the great stretches of valleys and mesas. Adobe homes burnished by fiery sunsets, chamisa and pinon, cottonwoods and aspens. And in this Land of Enchantment, the Spanish-American clings to his fine heritage, his traditions still observed in the homes and churches, in the streets where you hear his musical language and see many of his courtly customs. We gringos love his cuisine, have adopted his architecture, many of his building and maintenance skills and some of his dress codes, revel in his Viva las Fiestas.

As I write, the temperature's lowered and tourists have begun to reappear. With the door open, I hear from the street their Oohs and Aahs about this exceptional Road, my Camino Canon. And not all in English. Or Spanish. No longer a small terminus at the end of the Santa Fe Trail, we're an international must-see in the new millennium. I hear French, Italian, Irish brogue and British twang, German, Slavic tongues which I can't identify. The weak dollar against the Euro undoubtedly partially accounts for so many foreigners in town this year. But those visitors have also heard or read about the exceptional La Villa Real de Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis in the foothills of the Sangres, and their gasps of approval tell me they are not disappointed.

Neither am I. It's changed, yes. What hasn't? Santa Fe remains the place where I most want to live in the US.