I spent the past weekend in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with my extended family, to help celebrate a special occasion.
In particular: attending a fashion show and art auction at the Convention Center, part of the 100th annual ‘Santa Fe Indian Market’. The event — a fundraiser for SWAIA, the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, the group that sponsors the annual market in Santa Fe every August — was attended by, I’m guessing, 400 wealthy art-lovers who paid $250 each to enjoy the fashion show and, later, to bid thousands of dollars on artworks made by well-known American Indian artists.
My daughter Ursala had been invited to show some of her Tlingit Indian-inspired weavings in the fashion show, alongside six other prominent Native American clothing designers. Ursala is posing with her models in the photo above.
(Luckily, Ursala was provided two free tickets to the event, so I was able to attend with my son-in-law, Chris Haas.)
Santa Fe is sometimes cited as the third-oldest city in the U.S., settled by Spanish invaders in about 1607. [Among U.S. cities founded by Europeans, only St. Augustine, Florida (1565) and Jamestown, Virginia (1607) are older, from what I can tell.]
A life-changing event, perhaps, for my daughter? And a delightful experience for me, as her father.
She wrote on Instagram:
It was my @santafeindianmarket fashion show debut, and the first time I’ve been able to accompany my collection on the runway. I didn’t know what needed to be done to make for a successful show, and relied heavily on my models for their support and expertise.
I’m a weaver — I work by myself most of the time, and sometimes will not leave the house for days. I’m not used to this world of mass collaboration, expending beaucoup amounts of energy, and being surrounded by such concentrated talent. From 10am – 10pm I was in a building jammed packed with makeup artists, hair stylists and models that were authentic rebel-rousing creatives with pure hearts and the complete inability to give any fucks. I’m so grateful to the SWAIA runway team, from the volunteers to the producers, backstage crew to my beautiful models.
I don’t know how I got so damn lucky.
I was also lucky enough to collaborate with @jenniferyoungerdesigns to accessorize my looks. She’s an talented Tlingit silver smith, and a damn-right force of nature. I couldn’t have asked for a more seamless collaboration.
I wore a gorgeous piece woven by @rhiannonmgriego to take my finale walk down the runway, following my collection. I’m hugely inspired by Rhiannon’s woven garments, and I hope that remnants of her brilliance show in my own work.
My sister-in-law @kikomikiko was also there to support my models and I with her fabulous backstage attire (and earrings), boobie tape, and mommy instincts. I would have completely lost all my marbles without you.
I’m thinking about Santa Fe this morning for a couple of reasons.
The fashion show, for one. I’m understandably excited for my daughter and her career as a creator of beautiful things.
And the cost of living in Pagosa Springs, for another. I wonder how much longer young people like Ursala will be able to afford to live in Pagosa.
100 years ago, some American Indian artists organized an ‘Indian Market’ in the plaza in Santa Fe, where they could gather and sell woven rugs, jewelry, pottery, beaded clothing, Kachinas, moccasins, and other traditional crafts originally developed to sustain life in the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona. It turned out that wealthy (and not-so-wealthy) Anglos liked to collect these handmade ‘art’ items and hang them on walls or display them on fireplace mantles or wear them on special occasions.
A utilitarian weaving, originally meant to keep its owner warm during a chilly winter, or worn during a special tribal ceremony, could bring many pieces of silver when sold as ‘art’.
I’m sure the Native artists who started the Indian Market 100 years ago, in 1922, would feel uneasy about what has happened to Santa Fe, if they could look into the future.
From the Santa Fe New Mexican, March 2019 (updated April 2022):
Two wealthy retirees from Chicago gave a few million dollars to put their names on a Santa Fe museum whose construction will erase an iconic mural created by a Chicano artist.
Around 75 people rallied Saturday in the Railyard to say they’ve heard this story before. They were part of a Gentrification Walking Tour organized by the coalition Keep Santa Fe Multicultural…
… Last month, the state began construction on the Vladem Contemporary satellite wing of the New Mexico Museum of Art. In 2018, Bob Vladem, a partner in a number of Pennsylvania car dealerships who started trucking and logistics companies, and his wife, Ellen Vladem, gave a $4 million gift to the museum.
According to a news release from the Department of Cultural Affairs, the mural will be “retired as a part of the renovation, and the museum plans to acknowledge the mural and its history with a display in the interior.”
On Saturday, speakers at the rally drew parallels between the mural — painted by Chicano artist Gilberto Guzman and others — and previous waves of gentrification in the Railyard and other parts of Santa Fe.
The demonstration concluded in front of the mural on Guadalupe Street, with a 120-foot long banner that read, “Gentrification is erasure is gentrification.”
The walking tour started near the O’Gah Po’Geh Community Altar, a community art project that bears the Tewa name for the current city of Santa Fe, before progressing to Warehouse 21, a former teen arts center that closed in 2019 and is for sale.
“My first memories of drawing and music were Warehouse 21. It was a beautiful space, a place in downtown Santa Fe where kids from our community could come together. It’s gone now,” Artemisio Romero y Carver, a senior at New Mexico School for the Arts, said outside the vacant building.
“Opulence requires poverty. Through here and the mural and the ways they’ve removed non-white expression, images, faces and words from this place, the only way that I can describe that is the cleaning of a murder scene,” he added.
Last month, a report from local housing advocacy nonprofit Chainbreaker Collective found about 5,700 Santa Fe households — at least 31 percent of renters — are at risk of eviction when state and federal moratoriums expire.
The New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness estimates the city is short of affordable housing by 5,000 units. Meanwhile, in the final quarter of 2020, 557 homes in Santa Fe County sold for a record median price of $537,764, a 19.5 percent increase from the same period in 2019.
“I am speaking from lived experience. My family is working class. We live in trailer parks. We make up the people who clean homes and build houses for wealthy white people who come from out of state. The one sector that has seen continual growth throughout the pandemic is construction,” Hernan Gomez Chavez, a local welder and sculptor, said in front of the Railyard’s decorative water tower…
A cautionary tale, for places like Pagosa Springs?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.