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New Mexico: Open land and psychic elbow room Its landscape has been the symbol of the Southwest regional artist, but that image has begun to dissolve as more and more painters, printmakers and sculptors of all persuasions come to live and work in the open spaces by CHARLOTTE MOSER They come from the cold climate of Oregon and Wisconsin, or the urban sprawl of Los Angeles or Chicago. They arrive pursuing a dream or escaping a nightmare, to live in the Albuquerque suburbs or hide in the mountains outside Santa Fe. Since the 1920s, artists have been coming to New Mexico. One of the poorest states in the nation, it offers these restless seekers open land, a hard clear sun, clean air and a kind of solitude within reach of supporting camaraderie. "After a year here, I realized it was the first time in my adult life I'd ever been in a position to control my distractions," says Larry Bell, Los Angeles sculptor who moved to a place outside Taos in 1973. "I can't think of any good reason to leave." It's a refrain that's repeated over and over again by artists all over New Mexico. "It's magic here," says an Albuquerque painter who came from Los Angeles 12 years ago. "There's a freeness. I really like working here." No one knows how many artists live in New Mexico. More than a thousand submitted work to the last biennial at Santa Fe's Museum of New Mexico in 1976, but that figure also included artists from other southwestern states. In early October, 111 artists showed in Santa Fe's Armory for the Arts, an exhibition of work by artists living within 30 miles of the city. Sarah Moody, director of Santa Fe's venerable Hill's Gallery, estimates that there are a hundred top artists represented in New Mexico galleries, another 30 not shown regularly, and 25 top photographers shown irregularly. There are also a few nationally prominent artists who live in New Mexico and, as a rule, don't interact much with the other artists around them. Bell and Kenneth Price live in Taos, Fritz Scholder in Santa Fe. Georgia O'Keeffe lives in Abiquiu, north of Santa Fe, and Agnes Martin and Paul Sarkisian live south of it, Martin in Cuba and Sarkisian in Cerrillos. Among the photographers, Paul Caponigro, Laura Gilpin, William Clift and Eliot Porter live in Santa Fe. Alisa Wells lives in Taos, Danny Lyon in Bernalillo and Alex Traube in Albuquerque. Several national photography figures live around the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque: photography historians Beaumont Newhall Charlotte Moser is an ARTnews correspondent in Houston and critic for the Houston Chronicle. [[image]] Bruce Lowney's Monument to Nature, color lithograph. Nature figures large in New Mexico's history as an artist's retreat. [[image]] Sam Scott's lush abstraction, Dream of the Navigator, oil. Scott helped organize the artist-run Armory Show in Santa Fe, a "statement of common awareness." 74 ARTnews [[image]] Richard Thompson's rough-tough cowboys are a takeoff on local imagery, in the color lithograph Study for a Spring Landscape. (now living in Santa Fe but teaching part-time at UNM) and Van Deren Coke and photographers Thomas Barrow, Betty Hahn, Wayne Lazorik and Anne Noggle. But almost none of New Mexico's artists are native. The average time in New Mexico for artists today is about five years, according to Richard Thompson, a member of the art faculty of UNM. Thompson himself, who moved from Oregon ten years ago to study lithography in New Mexico, says he had also been fascinated as a child with the mythology of the Wild West, cowboys and desert. "It takes a special kind of artist to come to New Mexico," says Thompson. "They're no less ambitious, but they're kind of fed up with the cultural hierarchy of Los Angeles or New York. There's more time here to go to baseball games and rodeos. Nobody makes a big deal about it, but nobody's made any career compromises." Bell agrees. He has no problem getting supplies and materials, either buying locally or shipping them in. Not showing regularly now with any galleries, he does most of his business over the telephone. "It's only a thousand miles to Los Angeles from Albuquerque, a one-hour plane trip," he says. "It's not as though I was on a desert island." The people in New Mexico are used to working with artists, since they've been around since the 1920s, says Bell. "They might not understand what's going on, but they're broad-minded and accept it. It's really no big issue." Thompson thinks there are two reasons why artists stay in New Mexico once they get there. Apart from being a good place to live and work, the state provides ready access to non-art activities like camping and fishing, popular recreations for many in northern New Mexico. Artists also like the idea, according to Thompson, of being in a place where things are starting to happen. A third reason for staying in New Mexico, and perhaps the most binding for some artists, is the exhilarating sense of space. Flat desert planes soar to mountain heights within a matter of miles and, throughout it all, the sun and crystal-clear air etch impressions into the consciousness in high relief. It's the kind of psychic elbowroom that allows a harmony in creating artwork and conducting a life in a personal sort of way. In spite of New Mexico's long history as an artists' retreat, there has been relatively little institutional or commercial activity in the arts. Galleries, their income almost totally tourist-based, come and go rapidly. Museums make only passing commitments to regional artists. But the consensus is that things are improving. The state is attracting wealthier, more culturally interested residents. The Santa Fe Opera, Tamarind Institute and the art program of the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque bring a steady stream of artists through the state. The museums are taking more notice, with the Museum of New Mexico staging both a print show and a photography show by New Mexico artists last year. Efforts are underway to upgrade the art program of Albuquerque's city museum and, under the directorship of Van Deren Coke, UNM's art museum has taken some recent strides. A good deal of New Mexico's art growth has been witnessed - and stimulated - by Van Deren Coke, one of the nation's most eminent figures in American photography, who moved to Albuquerque in 1962 to head the university art gallery. Head of the art department from 1964 to the early '70s, he succeeded in attracting many nationally prominent artists and photographers to New Mexico. Among these is famed photography historian Beaumont Newhall, upon whose retirement Coke acted as director of the George Eastman House in Rochester for two summers. Coke is now once again director of the UNM art gallery, staging invitational shows for New Mexico artists. A significant part of the activity in New Mexico is artist-motivated. It's been artists who have formed some of the best galleries, organized the most ambitious shows and set December 1977 75
