Anna Karin Gallery: Warming the Exterior

Many of you remember last spring when, during Easter, Anna Karin, Bill Loyd and I finally found the perfect location for our Anna Karin Gallery. We’d lost our lease in the old place and rentals aren’t readily available in Truchas, NM. Many of the empty places are old, ancestral homes and people are, reasonably, hesitant to rent them out. But our wonderful landlord, Patrick Fuentez, decided to take a chance on us. THANK YOU PATRICK!

We spent several months making it ready to move in (see previous post Anna Karin Gallery: Before and After). And we were so focused on the inside that we had very little time or energy left to do much with the exterior. So this year that’s where our focus is. I mentioned in a previous post that Bill Loyd is making huge flower pots out of rusty metal. And Anna is so great with gardens and growing things that it’s really going to make an amazing difference.

AND, we’ve hired Isabro Ortega (see previous post Isabro Ortega: Master Carver) to make wood pieces to fit over all our windows. If you’ve been to New Mexico before you’ve seen them on many of the windows of the old adobes. Anna and I are going to paint them—probably to match the front door. We’re thrilled with this idea. Anna came up with it after visiting the San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in Ranchos de Taos (see previous post San Francisco de Asis Church, Taos, NM). Many of the old adobes on that plaza had them.

Isabro’s a busy man these days, though. He can’t start our project for three weeks, but we’ll be patient. We know it’ll be worth the wait.

We’re also kicking around the idea of bricking in the parking space in front of the building, creating our own little plaza. We’ll see if we find time and energy for that.

But this I know: It’s going to be impossible for people to pass us by this year!

Love to you all,
Jeane