Santa Fe

I'm here in Santa Fe, New Mexico right now. And I must say it is considerably colder than I thought it would be, but still an incredible town. There are 200+ galleries for a population of about 65,000 people. That's the largest per capita art gallery population of any city in the world. While not all the galleries are world class, there are quite a few very good ones with some mid-market artists. The most noticeable difference is the "look" of the galleries - they are more like homes with fireplaces, front doors and porches, and the kindness of the owners and operators. This is the only place I've ever been where EVERY SINGLE gallery person said hi, got up and shook my hand, and asked how they could help. It was such a nice change from Chelsea galleries. 

Some of my favorite galleries here were Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Gerald Peters Gallery, Linda Durham Contemporary Art, and William Siegal Gallery. There is one road in town called Canyon Road where a majority of the smaller galleries are - it's worth visiting here for a couple of days just to check out all of these. And to take it slow. We tried to do a whole day of Canyon Road and were completely tired out by the end of it. Seriously exhausting to see that much art. 

Armory Show

I went to the Armory Art Fair today. It was awesome! And I'm so glad I went today (I was sort of considering waiting for the crowds to die down - today was opening day - but it wasn't even crowded today). There was some amazing art - one of my faves is this 150 year old wagon wheel that was lit from behind by color-changing LED lights. It costs 80,000 Euros! Ga! That's a lot - and for a wagon wheel. Oh well, one day perhaps.

There was some a lot of great new media stuff, very few photographs, some (but not much) weird mixed media sculpture, and a lot of staples. I thought that the prices would be lower because of the economics....ahem....problems, but just about everything that I asked after was VERY expensive ($100,000 expensive). I couldn't really get a feel for how things were selling - but a girl I'm doing a project with in class was walking around with me pretending like she was an art advisor and EVERYONE was willing to give her a 20% discount. That would have been RARE last year. Definitely.

All in all today was a great day. I love that I live in New York City where these sorts of things are at my fingertips. It's really incredible. This weekend will be very busy - I've got papers upon papers to write and then I'm going to Santa Fe for a week! Yaay!