I arrived in Albuquerque after a fairly uneventful flight from Cedar Rapids to Denver to Albuquerque. The flight from Denver gave me a good chance to see how pretty New Mexico and Colorado are. There is so much undeveloped land. It's something you don't see in Iowa except for a few preserves here and there. Everything here is agriculture or architecture. Nature has been pushed out. This isn't the case in New Mexico. It probably has something to do with the fact that without complicated irrigation systems it is difficult to grow crops in the New Mexico environment. That isn't to say that there aren't native plants that don't have trouble. They just don't have much commercial value. In fact, the valleys between mountains were filled with desert plants. Bushes and cactuses and yucca plants were all over.
The city was pretty neat too. The architecture for almost all of the residential buildings mimiced spanish colonial architecture and the native pueblo building designs. Rectangular buildings made from redish brown stone with smooth curving cornors. Sometimes the top of the walls would have wooden beams poking out and evenly spaced along the sides of the buildings.
Many of the commercial buildings were designed similiarly. I was shocked (and kind of disturbed) to see a Wendy's with the same architural styles. It was like they were trying to pretend they weren't the corporate superpower they were and were really just part of the community. Odd... Other commercial buildings were typical modern designs. Nothing interesting or shocking.
What was interesting was the difference in demographics and how that effected the culture. It is hardly surprising that there would be a large hispanic population in a state that has a long history of Spanish and eventually Mexican rule. It wasn't even surprising that the hispanic population appeared to be the majority. What I thought was interesting was how advertisements were different as well. I wasn't shocked to see ads in Spanish. What I was shocked to see were ads only in Spanish and only targeting Spanish speakers. It is interesting that advertisers have decided that there are so many Spanish speakers in Albuquerque that they can afford to ignore those who can't understand their ads. I don't think it is good or bad, I just think it is interesting.
Another interesting ad campaign were numerous billboards with navy blue backgrounds and large white letters that said "Where's Larry?" or "Where's Diane?" That was all. No explanation, nothing. I found an explanation here and realized it wasn't that interesting anyway.
My grandparents picked me up from the airport. I dropped my stuff of at their house and we headed for Old Town. Old Town is a square of buildings that were the original Albuquerque Spanish colony. The buildings were all still in use by various "art" shops that all magically had the same things in stock. There was a church dominating one side of the square facing inwards towards the small park that stood at the center of these buildings. The church is apparently the oldest church in New Mexico that is still in use today. I went in and took some pictures but felt wierd because people were actually in there praying and I was just some disrespectful tourist.
We drove around for a while seeing the city and then went to the biggest restaurant I have ever been in. El Pinto was a large and beautiful Mexican restaurant. It had multiple rooms and each room was decorated differently and provided a different atmosphere then the others. There was also a large beautiful garden outside that you could eat in (weather permitting). I had a delicious chicken enchilada with green chili on top. It was very good.
We went home and I went to sleep early as I was exhausted.
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Throughout my trip we went to a lot of art museums. I started writing down the names of artists I really liked on various pieces of scrap paper. By the end of the week I had over 50 different names written down. I've been googling and going through and deciding what I artists I really like more then others.
I'll be posting some of them. I suppose (because it's the order I found them in) I'll post a few older artists before I move into my favorite contemporary.
I enjoyed William Penhallow Henderson's work, although I've only been able to find a few of his pieces online that don't require money to view.
Some of Walter Ufer's stuff is interesting as well.
My favorite out of these three would have to be Gene Kloss. She has some beautiful prints here.
-Brandon
