Winter 2015 – El Palacio

Three men stand in a sunlit outdoor corridor next to a stucco building, with plants growing along the wall and a motorcycle visible in the background. [gen-ai]

Through the Looking Glass

Glass negatives were a boon to photography when they were first introduced in the 1860s. But it was with the invention of the gelatin dry-plate glass negative, coming on the market in 1871, that the medium really established itself as an alternative to the messy wet-plate process or the unreliability of early paper negatives. A thin sheet of glass covered with a silver salts emulsion was so much easier to use than the wet collodian process that it enabled early photographers such as William Henry Jackson and Ben Wittick to traverse the West, capturing some of their later iconic images.

By Daniel Kosharek

Categories: Framework, Visual art

A mural depicts a person lying on the ground in a rural landscape on the left and a group of people with animals in front of pastel buildings on the right. [gen-ai]

The Enchanted Staircase

BY PENELOPE HUNTER-STIEBEL At first I thought it was a private stairway connecting two of Santa Fe’s hubs of historic research, the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, above, and the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, below, whose respective heads, Tomas Jaehn and Daniel Kosharek, are in frequent, direct communication. [wonderplugin_slider id="92"] (more…)

By Penelope Hunter-Stiebel

Categories: Visual art

Adobe-style building with wooden accents, two flags (USA and New Mexico) on the roof, blue sky, and landscaping in front. [gen-ai]

The Spirit of Flamenco

BY NICOLASA CHÁVEZ Why has this way of life, so natural in Spain, become such a fixture in New Mexico? Why do New Mexicans feel such resonance with flamenco dance, music, and emotions, and why do they feel a common bond with its country of origin? For those who have traveled and studied in Spain, who then come to the

By Nicolasa Chávez

Categories: Uncategorized

Close-up view of a large, cracked fossil with several overlapping layers and horn-like structures, displayed on a metallic surface. [gen-ai]

New Life for an Old Pot

BY GARY COZZENS It must have been a good year for the Jornada Mogollon farmer tending his field along Rio Bonito, in south-central New Mexico. That year was about AD 1400, and the farmer had enough corncobs to fill an oversized ceramic storage vessel with the fruits of his labor. [wonderplugin_slider id="91"] (more…)

By Gary Cozzens

Categories: Visual art

People walking on a street with a patterned sidewalk featuring circular designs in red, yellow, blue, white, and black tiles. [gen-ai]

Two Poems

These poems were previously published in The Curvature of the Earth, by Gene Frumkin and Alvaro Cardona-Hine, with a foreword by V. B. Price (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007). Used with the permission of Alvaro Cardona-Hine. (more…)

By Alvaro Cardona-Hine and Gene Frumkin (1928-2007)

Categories: Poetry

A stylized, blue-toned portrait of a man with a mustache, beard, and ruffled collar, painted with abstract and textured elements. [gen-ai]

Artists in Flight

BY TOM IRELAND The title of the ongoing exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum—From New York to New Mexico: Masterworks of American Modernism—reminds me of my coming-of-age in postwar New York City and raises the question of what brought so many homegrown immigrants, including artists, from a place of such material abundance to a place of such abundant emptiness. [wonderplugin_slider

By Adriel Heisey and Tom Ireland

Categories: Editor's Letter

Black and white sketch of a man with a receding hairline, mustache, and goatee, wearing a collared shirt with a decorative tie or cravat. [gen-ai]

Shakespeare’s First Folio Comes to Santa Fe

When William Shakespeare died in 1616, eighteen of his plays, including Macbeth, The Tempest, and As You Like It, had not been published. Seven years later, in 1623, two members of his troupe collected his plays into Mr. William Shakespeares [sic] Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, a book now referred to as the First Folio, and one of the most important in the history of print.

By Cynthia Baughman

Categories: Featured

A person dressed in traditional attire and hat leaps energetically in mid-air while holding a stick, against a plain background. [gen-ai]

Flamenco: From Spain to New Mexico

BY NICOLASA CHÁVEZ Passionate, fiery, sensual, meditative. These are a few of the words that come to mind when contemplating the art of flamenco. Close to 150 items related to the form and its history are on display in Flamenco: From Spain to New Mexico, which opened at the Museum of International Folk Art in November. [wonderplugin_slider id="88"] (more…)

By Nicolasa Chávez

Categories: Featured

Abstract painting with geometric shapes in pale colors, blue and pink hues, angular lines, and minimal detailing, resembling a landscape or architectural forms. [gen-ai]

American Modernism and the New Mexico Landscape

BY KATHERINE WARE Americans had long considered Europe to be the international capital of art and style when the radical artistic movement known as modernism began to emerge there in the mid- to late 1800s. [wonderplugin_slider id="87"] (more…)

By Katherine Ware

Categories: Featured, Visual art

A stylized landscape painting featuring blue mountains, rolling green hills, and a reflective blue lake in the foreground. [gen-ai]

O’Keeffe In Process

BY CARMEN VENDELIN I was the sort of child that ate around the raisin on the cookie and ate around the hole in the doughnut saving either the raisin or the hole for the last and best. So, probably—not having changed much—when I started painting the pelvis bones I was most interested in the holes in the bones—what I saw through them—particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky as one is apt to do when one seems to have more sky than earth in one’s world .

By Carmen Vendelin

Categories: Featured, Visual art