Living History - Homes of Los Cinco Pintores

Irregular doorway at the Shuster House

If like me, your running or cycling takes you on the occasional rip down Canyon Rd or ascent of Camino Monte Sol, these waypoints pass right through much of Santa Fe's modern history. The roads are intimate and trail-like, the lighting is good, and there are several miles of fine art and architectural design for review and reflection. Along Camino Monte Sol itself, there are the literal homes of some of the artists that brought modernism to Santa Fe and established our capitol as a serious creative hub, and for a time this year nearly all of the original homes of Los Cinco Pintores were on the market in tandem.

The five pintores were Jozef Bakos, Fremont Ellis, Walter Mruk, Willard Nash, and Will Shuster, and four of the five were young and unencumbered enough when new to town that they set about building their own homes from adobe brick, right alongside one another on what would become Camino Monte Sol. None were trained in carpentry or architecture and as the stories go, the 'mud huts' they put up were not easily confused with works of fine art. One story has it that one of the men left his wall-in-progress to lend a hand in the construction of his buddy's wall across the way. He returned to find his own shoddy wall collapsed upon the ground and set about re-building it. Mruk didn't bother with this foolishness and instead bought Frank Applegate's original place nearby (Applegate being an artist and trained architect). Shuster's home is the easiest of the four to spot because it's adorned with his signature and a Zozobra painted mailbox. Mruk/Applegate's is the most impressive. All homes have been heavily refurbished, added to, and upgraded since their dubious foundations were first laid down. Charles Poling collected a nice summary of the Pintores homes, originally published in New Mexico Magazine.

Applegate/Mruk House

Applegate eventually sold to Mruk then bought and refurbished the Francisco de la Pena house down the way on El Caminito. The Thursday night run with the local (Striders) running group zips right by this hidden piece of history before climbing Camino Rancheros. De la Pena was a retired Mexican army sergeant who fought at the Battle of the Alamo then relocated to Santa Fe in the mid 1800's. The most recent owner of this amazing compound was gallery owner Gerald Peters. The Applegate/De la Pena house is also on the market and may be the most magnificent property I've ever visited in Santa Fe (via Showhouse SF this Oct).

Applegate - De la Pena Compound c. 1930s

Gustave Baumann, a personal favorite of mine, built his non-descript place just off of Old Santa Fe Trail around the same time as the others. His place, which was also recently on the market, has a distinctive GB inscribed keystone above the threshold along with several other decorative additions from the artist.(L, Baumann woodblock holiday card, R, Baumann House etching by Tom Miller)

Note:  I recently received an email from artist Tom Miller asking that I include a credit with his work (Baumann home etching, above). Miller - 'I did it (the etching) when I was living in Santa Fe for two years, in 2015/2016. It was completed at Argos studio in Santa Fe, a wonderful studio and gallery up by Dulce and Body. It's worth a visit'. 

I generally make it a point to include credits when possible with re-published images. Often I pull from Google Images which provides no source. Support our artists, credit their work, invest in their efforts.
Fremont Ellis House 586 Camino del Monte Sol (c. 1922)
Jozef Bakos House 576 Camino del Monte Sol, (c. 1923)
Willard Nash House 566-568 Camino del Monte Sol, (c. 1922-23(?), also known as the Goodacre House) Walter Mruk House 558 Camino del Monte Sol, (c. 1921, original Applegate home)
Will Shuster House 550 Camino del Monte Sol, (c. 1922-23(?))

Gustave Baumann House 409 Camino de las Animas (c. 1923)
Applegate Compound 831 El Caminito (c. 1700's; also known as the Francisco de la Pena Estate)

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Street Art and the Painted Desert Project

High Desert Babe wheels past Thomas' Love Train mural - July 2011

The east end of Santa Fe's Railyard Park has a big 'ol red caboose parked there near St Francis Drive northbound. It's been there for as long as I can remember. Someday soon there'll be a cool new underpass constructed right there that will neatly tie the Railyard/Guadalupe Districts to the Hickox/St Anne/Baca St Districts of town along the new Acequia Trail.

That Railyard caboose has just sat there overlooking things from its well-trafficked perch through the last several decades. She can generally look pretty worn down, especially when aspiring young artists markup the red car-walls with tags and immature scribbles. In the fall of 2010 however, the caboose looked glorious. Artist Chip Thomas (aka Jetsonorama) was commissioned to put up a wheat paste mural of playing children, and the transformation of old railway relic to contemporary art chic was jarring. I loved to ride by there and marvel at how glue paper and ink could have such a bold effect on that forever-dusty corner setting.

Pool Diver

The paper and images have worn away since then with sun exposure and the rotation of seasons. The Pool Diver on the north-facing side remains but the piece has poor visibility from trail or road. I often wonder if the caboose will be re-done and made new again! Better yet, what other number of scribbled walls and faded surfaces around town or beside the trails could be costumed with new meaning and fresh outlook?

All this imaginating and curiosity got me reading about the artist, Chip Thomas - and whoa - could not have envisioned what an impossibly badass guy this dude is. Grew up in New York, heavily influenced by the nascent hip-hop and graffiti scene (now more developed and categorized as street art). He now works as a practicing physician with Indian Health Services on the Navajo Nation and in his spare time dreams up and  pastes these transfixing images that mirror the people and lands themselves. An extended body of work that he and visiting artists and his pasting team (calling themselves No Reservations Required) pulled together in 2012 they call the Painted Desert Project. The images themselves are ordinary, but their size and setting somehow become extraordinary when viewing. I love what this guy does.

All work by Chip Thomas
More images at the artist's site, speakingloudandsayingnothing.blogspot.com

John Begishie

King Fowler

Laughing Woman

Open Hand

Standing Sheep

Watching Tank

Ben

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Not Seen on Treadmills - Shepard Fairey Edition

Been on the lookout for this since February. Stencil tags by street artist Shepard Fairey, spotted this weekend outside the Santa Fe Public Library on Washington Ave.

Public deviance - ftw

Much more on Fairey and his work at Artsy.net

Museum Hill Trails Come Alive

Just a small party with the master artisans of the world

Santa Fe was decked out in papel picado for last week's International Folk Art Market. This event has blown up over the last few years and is legitimately beginning to punch above its weight. Event organizers filled Railyard Park on Thursday evening with a free concert, and seemingly all of the town's restaurants and patios were packed full Thur-Sat evenings. Indian and Spanish Market peeps where all like, WHA? Dudes were bringing the noise.

Right, well Museum Hill is where a significant amount of my early morning running/biking routes cross through so I got to see the tents going up during the week, the excited market vendors waiting for opening on Saturday morning, then the full on Market by foot later in the day with the beautiful Mrs. Dirt and the button-cute little Pistol. A lot of excitement springing up out of my ordinarily quiet trail network in the east foothills. What made my day is that some ingenious soul dreamt up an onsite Bike Valet station which happened to be packed full of bikes of all sorts, including ones with toddler-seats and trailer hitches. Marvelous.

Bike Valet

Decoraciones fiestas

My favorite: the Oaxacan weavers of southern Mexico. There stuff was simply off the charts. Across the parking lot, sitting on the rim of the Arroyo de los Pinos is the brand spanking new Santa Fe Botanical Gardens which has its grand opening to the public this weekend. I run by there on a near weekly basis and have been witness to the slow determined progress of workers fashioning barren New Mexican clay and sand into a space of brilliant color and understated beauty. And what was once old, is new again.

Santa Fe Botanical Gardens

The re-purposed and remodeled span of the Kearney Gap Bridge - Sun Mountain top left

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View Museum Hill Foot Trails - Santa Fe, NM in a larger map

New York's Incredible High Line Park

NYC High Line

A friend of mine tipped me off to New York's new High Line, which passed near where we were staying on our recent visit. The High Line itself is an old elevated rail line that used to ferry goods from the ships at port to the warehouses in the Meat Packing District. What makes it new is that rather then demo-ing what was left of the long out-of-use rail structure, it has recently been reclaimed and repurposed as a marvelous garden walkway, floating through the fashionable Chelsea neighborhood several floors above street level. Its completion is new enough (2011) that all the surrounding investment it has spurred is still filling up the spaces below and rising up around it: Several new condo hi-rises, large scale renovations of old buildings, even a new wing of the Whitney Museum of Art is in build-out at the south end of the line. An amazing urban space.

I was up at daybreak on Memorial Day so I could run it out (in a linkup with the Hudson Greenway). Lots to see.

Tracks as garden beds

Floating above Manhattan streets

One of many artistic contributions

Viewing spaces

These can track back and forth with the sun

Old rail spurs abut the surrounding buildings. They're now garden spurs.

Design frames design - IAC Building at left

Glass elevators to street level

Or stairs

End of the line - Gansvoort and Washington

View High Line Park - New York City in a larger map

Not Seen on Treadmills

Cannon's Washington Landscape with Peace Medal Indian

Out with the family today at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Lots of good stuff of course, but I'm partial to the work of my man T.C. Cannon, Taos landscapes, and the requisite Pedernal icon by O'Keefe. Hadn't seen this one before, it's lovely. This was the Pistol's first go around for all the above.












Know what's almost better than no-admission Sundays at the museums? The short walk across the Plaza to the Marble Tap House Patio, ftw.

O'Keefe's Pedernal and Painted Earth

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Shepard Fairey's Newest Artwork

Shepard Fairey - Artistic interlude and stencil scrap

Guerrilla artist and noted badass Shepard Fairey passed through Santa Fe this week. He was the guest artist for the Santa Fe University of Art and Design's (formerly the College of SF) Artists for Positive Change series. Last year's guest artist was Public Enemy (not a joke). Admirably, they nearly topped that get by landing the most important current artist in American underground and pop-art. Fairey made it clear at the beginning of Sunday's Q&A at the Greer Garson Theatre that he accepted the guest invite on the spot after hearing he'd be following Public Enemy - the major influences in his work being skate culture, rebellion, punk and hip-hop themes, the contradictions of materialism, and being awesome.

Fairey's Public Enemy

The guy built his fame through an ambitiously prolific street-art campaign of 'OBEY' images, often accompanied by a minimalist print of wrestler Andre the Giant. The image had no broader meaning other than its own ubiquity. It carried the street ethos of expression free from commercial reward. OBEY stickers and stencils were scattered everywhere in the mid 90's, first in every major U.S. city, then Europe, then Japan and Korea - all canvassed by Fairey himself in night-long bombing sessions. I can recall seeing dozens near the CU campus in Boulder in the late 90's and wondering wtf. The wife remembers them from our days in Pittsburgh.

The underground enigma thing he had going rocketed into the mainstream when his later work included the iconic red-blue Obama 'Hope' image during the 2008 election cycle. He now hangs out with comedian Dmitri Martin and Metallica's road manager. Led Zeppelin used his work for the cover art and liner notes of their anniversary best-of album. He collaborates with the Black Keys on their concert tour posters and with street-art king Banksy out of the UK. He submits pieces for Time Magazine covers. He designed graphics for a Discovery Team bike that Lance Armstrong rode in a stage of the Giro d' Italia. And he came to Santa Fe for three days, talked with the art students here on how to make it professionally, then put up a mural in the center of campus for me to visit during my weekend outings.

Best question from Sunday's Q&A session:  'Is Sheena, or isn't she, a punk rocker'? Fairey was wearing a Ramones shirt and rockin' the addidas.

Much more on Fairey and his work at Artsy.net