I was a little concerned I wouldn't get to do much touring on a work trip, since travel blogging is (tragically) not my job. Lucky for me, this conference includes about as much local culture as they could fit in.
My first activity was a tour of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. I've always had a little soft spot for O'Keeffe since she and I went to the same high school (about 100 years apart), but boy oh boy was I in for a treat. Apparently I adore Georgia O'Keeffe.
Everybody is so familiar with her famous flowers and cow skulls, but she also painted people, skyscrapers, mountains, clouds, and did beautiful abstract sketches and oils. She also sculpted in bronze (mostly large, beautiful curls inspired by ram horns) and meticulously designed four types of frames that she wanted all of her paintings displayed in. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum also owns one of her homes at Ghost Ranch and works closely with the owners of the other in Abiquiu. The museum owns her paints, her brushes, her clothes, her notebooks, and even her pencils and erasers. My personal favorite was a little scrap of paper covered in her beautiful, curling cursive which read "Quiero -- I want. No quiero -- I do not want. Me gusta -- I like. No me gusta -- I do not like." Her own private Spanish cheat sheet.
I bought myself a print of White Rose which I'm very excited to frame in my apartment. I think Georgia and I have a pretty similar interior design style -- sleek, modern blacks and whites with touches of southwestern color and cozy texture. The theme of my bedroom wall is Strong Women in Black and White, and her print will fit in perfectly.
We took a little stroll down the street to the Santa Fe School of Cooking. 12/10 for the Santa Fe School of Cooking. We got to participate in a class on Native Southwestern cuisine talk by Chef Dr. Lois Ellen Frank. Get this -- her PhD is an culinary anthropology, and she's pretty amazing. She started the afternoon with a lesson in North American culinary history, which absolutely fascinates me. Did you know that before 1492, the rest of the world had never heard of potatoes, tomatoes, beans, squash, maize, chiles, vanilla, or chocolate? So many cuisines around the world are now totally dependent on foods native only to our continent. Dr. Frank's culinary vision is to rediscover the cuisine of the Native Americans of the southwest which was in many cases suppressed and even lost during efforts to forcibly westernize the native peoples. She uses authentic methods and exclusively native foods -- that means no beef, pork, dairy, or processed sugars! With her help, we made blue corn dumplings, a mixed vegetable hash with corn, squid, zucchini, and roasted chiles, and clay salmon. The clay salmon was the coolest part. It's rubbed with herbs, wrapped in corn husks, and then folded into a clay envelope before being baked in the oven. When the clay is hard, it's shattered with a wooden mallet to get to the perfectly-cooked salmon. So time-consuming, but so delicious!
After that, we headed down to Canyon Road, the historic arts district. It's more like historic AND arts, not historic arts. The road has existed as a game trail for over 700 years, and became a residential area under Spanish colonization. Only in the last few decades has rezoning turned it into the thriving home of the Santa Fe Artist Colony. If you like galleries, you'll never run out of things to do on Canyon Road! It was getting pretty hot out, so I stopped into a charming local crafts shop called Tesoro. I got myself a nice adobe-colored shawl to wear to dinner tonight (with my turquoise jewelry and cowboy boots of course) and made my way back through downtown. I spotted a shop called Native Instruments, and of course I had to stop in. I'm a little obsessed with musical instruments.
I was immediately drawn to the flutes, since that's what I've played for 14 years. The owner, a charming older man for whom music is clearly a spiritual experience, asked if I was a flautist, and offered to give me a demonstration. He spent nearly a half hour explaining the mechanism and theory of the native flute and teaching me to play it. I was so tempted to buy one, but I just needed some time to think about whether its worth $115 for something I may not play as often as my many other instruments. But the time I spent in that shop was one of the most genuine culture experiences I've ever had. I got to spend time listening to this man teach me about his culture and his musical passion and joyfully share that culture with me.
The longer I sit here writing this, the more determined I am to go back tomorrow to buy the flute. Opportunities like this may only come once in a lifetime.