The Santa Fe Opera

The Santa Fe Opera logo

Every July and August since 1957, opera lovers have been drawn to the magnificent northern New Mexico mountains to enjoy productions by one of America’s premier summer opera festivals. Here, The Santa Fe Opera’s dramatic adobe theater blends harmoniously with the high desert landscape. It is this fusion of nature and art that leaves such an enduring impression on all who come. […]

 

The Santa Fe Opera has taken its place among the world’s leading opera festivals. Its mission is to advance the operatic art form by presenting ensemble performances of the highest quality in a unique setting with a varied repertoire of new, rarely performed, and standard works; to ensure the excellence of opera’s future through apprentice programs for singers, technicians and arts administrators; and to foster and enrich an understanding and appreciation of opera among a diverse public.  (The Santa Fe Opera)

The Santa Fe Opera has a wide array of education and community outreach programs to make opera accessible and appealing to a broad spectrum of the New Mexico population and visitors. It also offers apprenticeship opportunities to teach aspiring opera performers, technicians and arts administrators the craft.

Of course, it excels at its main function — the opera presents some wonderful productions! Visit their website to learn about upcoming performances and to obtain tickets.

The Crosby Theatre

Santa Fe Opera Open Air Theatre (Credit: Wikipedia)

Santa Fe Opera Open Air Theatre (Credit: Wikipedia)

The Santa Fe Opera performances are held in the beautiful Crosby Theatre.

The striking, state-of-the-art, open-air theater has won several important design awards and is widely recognized for blending contemporary design aesthetics with traditional building materials. It commands a panorama of breathtaking scenery, with the Jemez Mountains to the west and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east.  […] The “shape of the sound” inspired the roof concept. Its curves directly follow the acoustic reflections of sound from the stage to the audience.  (The Santa Fe Opera)

Wherever you enjoy a show in the theatre, every seat or standing position offers an Opera Titles screen—a digital computer screen on which instantaneous translations in English and Spanish are broadcast to provide a richer experience for those who may not understand the language of the performance they are viewing.

Learn more and see performance schedules on The Santa Fe Opera’s website: www.santafeopera.org. The opera is located at 301 Opera Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87506-2823. Find it on the map below.

Guadalupe’s Fun Rubber Stamps

The fun starts now... at Guadalupes Fun Rubber Stamps!

The fun starts now… at Guadalupes Fun Rubber Stamps!

Guadalupe’s Fun Rubber Stamps is the home of StampaFe Art Stamps:

“[It’s] an eclectic, fun and funky line with a southwestern flair. Willard Clark, Jaye Oliver and Penny Baker are among our artists. Image categories include: Goddess; Eastern Religions; Our Lady of Guadalupe; Hearts – including Sacred Hearts and Hands; Day of the Dead; Words and Phrases; People; Random Things; Plants; Animals and Insects; Dogs and Cats; and many, many more!” (StampFe)

Stephen Wust and Lee Kellogg are the husband/wife owners and manufacturers of StampaFe. Based in Santa Fe for 25 years, it’s said that the StampaFe rubber stamp line reflects the quirky nature of our time and place.

All of the stamps are handmade in Santa Fe. Guadalupe’s also offers a wide variety of stamp inks; card making supplies; fabric paints; stencils; books and magazines; tags of all sizes; ribbons; and embellishments.

A Christmas stamp from Guadalupes Fun Rubber Stamps.

A Christmas stamp from Guadalupes Fun Rubber Stamps.

At Guadalupe’s you can also attend a variety of classes and workshops!

Visit and Learn More

For more information visit www.funrubberstamps.com or www.stampafe.com. Contact them at (505) 982-9862.

You can also follow Lee Kellogg’s blog that keeps up on the happenings of the rubber stamp world.

Visit the store, open daily 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, and located at 114 Don Gaspar Ave., Santa Fe, NM 87501. Find it on the map below:

Santa Fe Culture: Past Meets Future

Past Meets Future (Travel + Leisure)

Becoming Human, a 30-foot-tall sculpture by Christian Ristow, greets visitors to the House of Eternal Return. Brian Finke (Source: “Past Meets Future”, Travel + Leisure)

The city’s carefully constructed image as a mecca of Southwestern-themed art, turquoise jewelry, and folksy spiritualism has lately begun to evolve, thanks to a group of oddball artists and entrepreneurs who insist on seeing their hometown differently. (Source: Amanda Fortini, “In Santa Fe, the Past Meets the Future”Travel + Leisure)

In this Travel + Leisure article, Fortini explains how the cultural identity of Santa Fe was deliberately crafted to portray its Southwestern aesthetic to encourage tourism — “the idea was to give the city a historic regional identity and the patina of an exotic travel destination.” It has worked well and the city does attract many travelers and it has even become one of the best known art destinations in the United States. However, some felt that the the art styles being promoted and encouraged were only those that fit with the theme already embraced as the Santa Fe style and limited the possibilities of new art styles. That has recently begun to change.

Using a new installation created by the company Meow Wolf as an ultimate example of the new artistic movement, Fortini describes The House of Eternal Return “as a haunted house without the monsters, an amusement park without the rides, an acid trip without the drugs,” it is both an abstract visual experience and has a mysterious narrative waiting to be explored. The complex that contains this feature also has studios, offices, and a youth-education center. Although not like the “traditional” art of Santa Fe this destination is drawing in the crowds and is showcasing the fact that Santa Fe can be this blend of old and new styles and doesn’t need to be stuck with a singular identity.

Fortini also explores some other traditions that are being played with, updated, or ignored including what is seen as art by Native Americans that doesn’t need to “look like” Native American art and in the category of culinary “art” the popular chiles of Santa Fe.

The article also discusses the issue of an aging population of Santa Fe residents, and what some are doing to try to develop policies and activities to help attract and keep a youth population, like encouraging more night life (as there is a lack) that would be available for and of interest to a younger crowd.

The article also ends with a list of recommendations of both places embracing the traditional and others the new, so check it out: “In Santa Fe, the Past Meets the Future.”

The Interior Life of Georgia O’Keeffe

I’ve just started Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe by Dawn Tripp ( ). One of my favorite subjects! I’ll update this post once I’m finished…

Dawn Tripp imagines the interior life of Georgia O’Keeffe (Source: The Boston Globe)

Dawn Tripp imagines the interior life of Georgia O’Keeffe (Source: The Boston Globe)

I didn’t want to write the story of the O’Keeffe we know, but how she became the O’Keeffe we know. I wanted to reveal how perceptions of her have been shadowed by the gendered politics she faced as a female artist in a predominantly male art world. I focused on the years she lived in New York with [Alfred] Stieglitz, because those were the years her art was recognized, when she fell in love, when she made those artistic innovations and choices that set the course of the rest of her life. It was relevant to women and artists years ago, and it’ll be relevant years from now. (Source: A novelist imagines the interior life of Georgia O’Keeffe – The Boston Globe)

Reviews of  Dawn Tripp’s Georgia

Dawn Tripp's novel, Georgia

Dawn Tripp’s novel, Georgia

In this masterly novel, Dawn Tripp erases the boundary between writer and character, bringing O’Keefe’s voice, essence, and vision to life. Georgia is a dazzling, brilliant work about the struggle between artist and woman, between self and the other, between love and the necessity to break free of it. The luminous sensuality of the writing glows from every page, drawing the reader into the splendor and machinations of the New York City art world between the wars, revealing both Georgia O’Keeffe and Dawn Tripp as the great artists they are. ~ B. A. Shapiro (author of The Art Forger and The Muralist)

Georgia O’Keeffe’s life became legendary even as she was living it, something she both invited and fought against. This is the fascinating tension at the heart of Dawn Tripp’s novel—a book that, like O’Keeffe’s paintings, is lush and rigorous, bold and subtle, sensual, cranky, deeply felt, and richly imagined. ~ Joan Wickersham (author of The News from Spain)

American artist Georgia O’Keeffe blazes across the pages in Tripp’s tour de force about this indomitable woman, whose life was both supported and stymied by the love of her life, photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz… [Readers] will feel the passion that infused her work and love life that emboldened her canvases.,, The relationship between Stieglitz and O’Keeffe, and her metamorphosis from lover to wife to jilted partner, is poignantly drawn. Tripp has hit her stride here, bringing to life one of the most remarkable artists of the twentieth century with veracity, heart, and panache. (Publishers Weekly)

Masterful… The book is a lovely portrayal of an iconic artist who is independent and multidimensional. Tripp’s O’Keeffe is a woman hoping to break free of conventional definitions of art, life and gender, as well as a woman of deep passion and love. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Tripp inhabits Georgia’s psyche so deeply that the reader can practically feel the paintbrush in hand as she creates her abstract paintings.

Georgia is a uniquely American chronicle… and, in the end, a book about a talent so fierce it crushed pretty much everything in its path—a rare story of artistic triumph… Tripp expertly makes drama of two traditional themes in the O’Keeffe story—the romance with Stieglitz and the development of her art—but it’s the track about her art and his management of it and her struggle not to be dominated by him that makes her novel compelling… In most first-person novels, the character talks to you. Here, she recollects with you—in her heart as well as her head. Which is to say that Dawn Tripp writes in much the same way as O’Keeffe painted: in vivid color and subtle shade. (The Huffington Post)

As magical and provocative as O’Keeffe’s lush paintings of flowers that upended the art world in the 1920s . . . [Dawn] Tripp inhabits Georgia’s psyche so deeply that the reader can practically feel the paintbrush in hand as she creates her abstract paintings and New Mexico landscapes. . . . Evocative from the first page to the last, Tripp’s Georgia is a romantic yet realistic exploration of the sacrifices one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century made for love. (USA Today)