Strolling the Real Tlaquepaque

I have been to Sedona's Tlaquepaque arts and crafts shopping and gallery center, and enjoyed browsing there immensely. But the real thing, the original, the old town about 10 miles from Guadalajara is even better. This community of more than half-a-million inhabitants inspired the Arizona shopping area.

Below are the tops of two landmark churches, El Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad (The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Solitude) and San Pedro (Saint Peter),

Many of Tlaquepaque's streets are for pedestrians only.

The old town is full of Talaquepaque history.

Beautiful carved door.

The center of Tlapequaque is clean and graffiti-free.

Small shops line narrow, car-free streets selling all manner of goods for residents and visitors.

Portals on some buildings along wider streets, like the main pedestrian street, protect people of sun and rain.

Open doors permit a peak of lovely center courtyards.

Food vendors are ubiquitous.

As are imaginative buisness, like this man who hacksaws any name onto a black key in just minutes.

And then, there's music, music everywhere.

And art and crafte as well, from very ancient...

...to very new.

Guadalajara's Hospicio Cabañas Fab Faberge Exhibition

Imperial Russian treasures displayed in magnificent Spanish Colonial landmark

The opening reception of the Society of American Travel Writers' 2009 convention took place in Gaudalajara's magnificent, monumental Hospicio Cabañas. Originally a hospital and refuge for the homeless and the helpless, and later an orphanage, it now houses the Cabañas Cultural Institute and its schools for arts and crafts, and it has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Aficionados of Spanish Colonial architecture know it for its grandiose presence in the heart of Mexico' second-largest city. Art lovers revere the brooding, dramatic murals painted by Jose Clemente Orozco more than 120 years after the building was completed. Much of Orozco's work in his native country was destroyed, because it was considered to dark and too violent, but masterpiece remains.

That we would see Orozco's work in the Hospicio Cabañas was no surprise. What was a surprise is that at the end of the opening event, someone casually mentioned that the Faberge collection would be left open for us. If you read Spanish better than I do, click here for more information on the exhibit. I have no idea how long this magnificent exhibition of Romanoff treasures will be open, but I was thrilled to have seen it. Photography was permitted -- under the watchful eyes of armed guards --but I was too busy looking and trying to puzzle out the key parts of Spanish descriptions of each object to try to take lots of pictures, and some that I snapped through glass didn't come out all that well. There were, of course, jewel-encrusted compacts, cigarette cases and more; paintings and paper documents; swords and scepters; garments and opulent geegasws, and an intruiging explanation of the role the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had in protecting (or something) Romanoff treasures when as an editor with Doubleday, she shepherded a book on the topic.

2009 Indian Market in Santa Fe

The most renowned market for Native American arts surpasses its billing

Even before I moved out West, I had heard about Indian Market, the place to see the very best of Southwestern art. Since I moved to Colorado in 1988, I've been wanting to attend Indian Market in Santa Fe. New Mexico's historic, beautiful and arts-obsessed capital city has hosted it since 1922. It is famous throughout the Southwest for the quality of art. Winning a ribbon in one of numerous categories in this juried event is a high honor for any artist. My husband and I went with our friends, Dick and Sally Moore, who live in Albuquerque and are Indian Market regulars.

Indian Market now dominates downtown, radiating out from the Plaza to adjacent side streets in all directions. Tens of thousands of visitors, from serious collectors of Native art to casual visitors, are drawn to booths set up by more than 1,200 artists from some 100 tribes. The crowds were too thick for me to photograph with my modest camera and modest stature. Nearby galleries host demonstrations where visitors can watch artists at work. Pottery. Jewelry. Paintings. Photography. Woven works. Wood carvings. Sculpture. Indian Market has it all in glorious abundance. Now that I finally got there, I wonder what took me so long. Here are just a few snapshots of the event.


Miss Indian America, a green-eyed beauty from California, was on hand for Indian Market. She probably had some official functions, but we encountered her window-shopping.

Several stages scattered around Indian Market enable musicians and dancers to perform their arts too. Families of potters often start their children young and display their efforts at Indian Market.

Twelve-year-old Jamie proudly holds a blue ribbon and the pot for which he won it. He is a beginning potter and admits that his parents helped.

Dusty Naranjo of Espanola, New Mexico, uses traditional Santa Clara techniques to render contemporary themes in clay.

This man looked almost like a sculpture as he quietly and stalwartly surveyed the crowd.

Artworks range from simple, like these flat kachinas...

...to works of astonishing complexity and sophstication like "Quest," a towering piece by Adrian Nasafotie, a Hopi artist. He displayed the 57-inch tall woodcarving, which he crafted from a single piece of cottonwood, on a turntable so that it could be seen from all sides.

One of many renditions of Koshari, the mischievous clown of Hopi and other Southwest Indian tradition. This piece was made by Joe Cajero, a renowned sculptor working in Placitas, New Mexico.

Tradition meets technology.

Oreland C. Joe of Kirtland, New Mexico, is a multi-talented artist. He is a sculptor, jeweler, musician and songwriter, and he told the story of a frog who nearly died but was revived as a medicine being, with a balance of masculine and feminine meaning he was both a warrior and a protector. Unfortunately, the ambient crowd noise drowned out his story-telling, so I hope I remembered it correctly. Even without being able to understand his words, just watching this brief video will give you an idea of how generously many Indian artists share the stories of their people or talk about their art.

Some people just aren't interested in Native art or stories, no matter what -- at least right now. But just give him time...

Fortunately, Rocky the bomb-sniffing dog didn't have much work to do. Note his Santa Fe PD badge.

Four hours and change, and I was in overload mode, but I'm hoping to return -- maybe in 2010. Guaranteed that it won't take me another 21 years to get back.