First few days in Santa Fe as a Native

     My first evening in Santa Fe I spent the night in a Walmart parking lot.  I woke up that morning and went to Starbucks.  My roommate situation with the newspaper reporter that looked like Gywneth Paltrow did not materialize.   There was some lady outside the Starbucks and I asked if I could take a photo of her. 

      Some time went by and suddenly it was mid afternoon and I was essentially homeless in Santa Fe.  I kind of panicked and considered moving to Taos or Las Vegas, NM.  However, I soon regained my composure and went for a drive around town.  I looked at some lofts and mobile homes.  Then I just gave up and checked in to the hostel.
     When I checked in to the hostel I saw that August was there.  He was in the same room a month and a half ago when I visited the first time.  He had secured a good job as a shoe salesman at Dillards.  He was currently living in a tent in an arroyo near his job.  The reason he had checked in was to just get a couple nights break from outdoor living.  He had a number of poetry books with him.  He was a fellow alumni from Loyola University in New Orleans.  We talked about Art, Literature and Music.  He shared some song with me from an album called New Electronic Music where this lady is talking and it slow degenerates into pure noise.  I really liked it.

     Soon after I saw Caitlin who I had met the last time I was there too.  She had made the loop of Taos, Colorado and Santa Fe and had finally decided on Santa Fe.  Now she was working at the Hostel.  I told her that I knew I would see her.  I also, ran into Rusty.  He was back to put the finishing touches on the mural of Zozobra.  He had his family come visit.  The next day I painted some paintings with his daughter outside.  I was just going to show her some of my work and then she started talking about paintings and what type of paintings she wanted to do and I just got the stuff out and we started painting in front of the hostel.  

     I also met a gifted Anthropologist named Pabla.  She was able to tell that I had spent time outside of America just by listening to my accent for a few moments.  I told her that I had lived in Oslo, Norway for a six months in highschool.  She had just returned from a ceremony with the 95 year old chief of the Taos Pueblo.  She told me about the ceremony and it was very interesting.  I will try to put a link to her paper.  She was very knowledgeable about human behavior and customs across many different cultures. She had several astute observations about humanity.

     Santa Fe is a very inspiring place for artists.  The mountains are in the distance.  The sky is constantly changing, the clouds movement casts strange shadows over the landscape.  Sometimes there appears to be a spotlight straight from heaven.  I have officially parked the Mercedes. 

      My new form of transportation is the singlespeed track bike(probably the best 200 bucks I spent in 2010).  I ride it on a back trail that winds its way beside an arroyo and the train tracks.  The great thing about the trail is that it is totally in nature.  There are no cars whizzing by.  Today I saw a Bluejay fluttering towards earth as I whizzed by at 19 miles an hour.  

     On Tuesday I went to the Farmers Market at the Railyard which is near Downtown.  There are several galleries down there and a youth graffiti training station called Warehouse 21.  The Market was very colorful.  There was also the Axle gallery.  

It immediately reminded me of Courbet's Tent of Realism that he set up outside the Lourve in Paris.  If you have never heard of the Tent of Realism I would encourage you to look it up.  This has got to be my most favorite gallery of all time.  The guy who invented this is a genius.  He has combined high Art and a concession truck into a place for Art afficianados to interact in a very personal way with the Art.  I just decided I want to have my first solo show in his Gallery.