Knitting/Walking Meditation on Santa Fe, Me and Miss O'Keeffe

From 2009
First day of October brings brisk winds and biting cold that makes colors of sky and mountains bright and crisp. Pass morning workers as city of Santa Fe wakes up on morning meditation knitting and walking across town. Pause to knit in front of Museum of Fine Arts, a reminder that artists in Santa Fe are living, breathing creatures not all hidden behind adobe walls sequestered in private studios. Visitors from California offer to snap a photo of artist knitting with dog. Turns out the charming, intelligent tourist was born in New Mexico, but raised in California and her great, great uncle was archaeologist Adolph Bandelier, namesake of Bandelier Monument and infamously banned by the Pueblos. The ladies were on their way to see the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and we conversed about how irritated Georgia would be about the irony of a museum of her art in Santa Fe, which ignored and denigrated her paintings when she first lived here. She vowed she would never let the Santa Fe Museum of Fine Arts buy her art after the snub. Now, they have a few in their collection, but they paid dearly for them and their bad choice.
Walk continues while sun warms up city streets until I arrive at Miriam’s Well where bright fall flowers are an array of colors in the sharp morning shadows and light. Miriam, who is elated that the current U.S. President has arrived in her native Denmark, greets me with a smile and the second batch of Chunky Baby Alpaca to continue knitting Sage’s LDK Cable Line Blanket.
Taj and I bid her goodbye and retrace our steps across town while I knit while I walk until we reach Saveur for a lunch meeting with Jacques about TouchArt Books publishing plans and marketing strategy, then return home to the studio for an afternoon of painting.
I think about choices artists and women make, and am grateful. Remember Miss O’Keeffe was famous and paintings collected for millions, but she died alone in her nineties at her gated estate on Old Santa Fe Trail after being tricked by Juan Hamilton into signing away rights to much of her art thinking she was signing a marriage contract to her decades younger assistant who bedecked the mansion with flowers for a sham wedding.
Art-making is a constant in my life, but it is woven into a rich tapestry of joy, laughter and sharing stories and food with husband, grown children and many diverse and interesting friends. Painting is at the center of all my work and life in Santa Fe, but it may take my death for the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts to hang my paintings on its adobe walls. Figure I share that with Miss O’Keeffe, but thankfully, I won’t share her lonely end.
Photos and Text by Charleen Touchette 2009