Sunday, July 12, was the last day of #ArtSantaFe2015.
We loved being there and had many wonderful visitors. We were especially
pleased that works by #WilliamBaziotes, #IsabelBishop, #HowardDaum,
#PeterGrippe, #HughMesibov, and #AngeloPinto, (east-coasters all) were noticed
and admired. Seated Woman Drawing by #PeggyBacon was one of the hits.
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| Peggy Bacon, Seated Woman Drawing, 1930 |
Monday, July 13, we drove to the Puye Cliff
Dwellings, a National Historic Landmark and ancestral home of todays’ Santa Clara
Pueblo Native Americans. The site is run by the Pueblo; the guides are members
as well. The mesa is volcanic tuff, a light, easily cut material that was also
used to filter water for drinking. The hollowed out cave homes at the side of
the steep cliff were used in winter as the stone held the heat of the sun
through the night. At the top of the mesa there were window-less homes, one,
two, or even three stories, that were entered by climbing a ladder one flight
up and then down into the rooms, each
about nine by nine feet. These long skinny “town homes” with neighbors on
either side were built of the volcanic tuff and occupied by extended families.
From about 900 AD to 1580, when there was a severe draught, as many as 1500
people lived there at a time. They communicated with other mesas through
runners, but in emergencies used color-coded smoke signals as well. The cliffs
were clearly defensive housing. The hand and footholds on the face of the cliff
were strategic: life-savers if you knew the correct pattern or route -- a death
trap if you didn’t.
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| Puye Cliff Dwellings |
On Tuesday, July 14, we walked two trails at the
Petroglyph National Monument, Albuquerque, NM. There are more than 20,000
prehistoric and historic Native American and Hispanic petroglyphs (images
carved into rock) and pictographs (images painted onto the rock) in a park with
a huge variety of trails. The basalt boulders along Albuquerque’s West Mesa were
formed by volcanic eruptions as long as 150,000 years ago. They are dark brown
close up but black from a distance; their surfaces range from grainy or pitted
to smoothly iridescent. Thanks to a rainy spring and frequent thunderstorms
there were green plants among the giant boulders – much more greenery than we
expected.
