ABIQUIU STUDIO TOUR, 2010

ABIQUIU STUDIO TOUR, 2010

Driving north on Highway 84, you jog left on Fairview Drive in Espanola, which, at the first stop light, reconnects your with 84 north. Keep straight on 84 till you reach Abiquiu, the former homestead of the legendary Georgia O’Keefe.

On 84, you pass through a funky landscape of mobile homes, abandoned vehicles, and the churn of owner modified construction, unique with each home, that give a sense of joy and utility. This scenery is replaced by more open landscape as you near Abiquiu.

My wife and I took the drive today, intent merely to skim the surface, visiting the few sites that resonated favorably from the tour brochure. At the local inn and tour headquarters, we had delicious brunch, perused the store, and checked out the backyard shaded with large cottonwoods and which led across a stone bridge to site #16. From there, we headed to our clear favorite, the site (#30) of Armando Adrian Lopez.

Lopez , a native of Mexico, works in the tradition of such Mexican greats, all women, as Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. But there is a more inventive, materials-focused slant to Lopez. His approach to sculpture is experimental, informal, and ever evolving. He often uses found materials, combining industrial stuff like wire with organic substances like corn husks to make fantastic, delicate figures which suspend from above. These forms emerge only from his creative process, and not from pre-design. There is a feminine aspect to his work, and his fine paintings that organize the picture plane with sophistication and enchant with imaginative and sensitive imagery often feature androgynous figures.

Gabriel Cisneros at site 24 promised (from the brochure picture) to have a similar kind of enchantment to Lopez, but turned out to lack his creative fire and power. The land around his house was worth the excursion, however; it featured a powerful little waterfall that led into an acequia system. Beside the waterfall were Basquiet-like paintings that drew us up to an open air exhibition. These were the works of Isaac AlaridPease, who also did painted sculpture of naïve, folksy vehicles— childlike alligators, fish and other images carved out of wood and fitted with functional wooden wheels he also made. http://picasaweb.google.com/alaridpease/RocketBirdArt?authkey=q5cZb-dOJVg#

We ended up at the Purple Adobe Lavender Farm (#13). The central feature here is the store, where one can buy all sorts of lavender-enhanced products—cookies, drinks, soap, etc. I stayed outside, enjoying the wooden deck chairs under the largest cottonwood trees I’ve ever seen. We later looked inside the wooden playhouse, and, as we left the premises, commented on the lavender-colored flags sticking up from lavender-painted irrigation fixtures lining the driveway.