I Am Here and I Remember

I first came to Truchas in 2005. I was living in a small desert town in southern Utah, close to the Nevada border. One way or another, it had been discovered by the wealthy and the red dirt roads, homesteader fences and livestock were swiftly being replaced with blacktop and mini-mansions. I knew I had to go.

I was looking at land up the canyon when a friend told me about Truchas, a thriving artists’ community in the mountains of northern New Mexico. She’d visited six years before. So I packed up my Jeep and headed to New Mexico.

I arrived in the black of night, so I didn’t see anything of the village until the next morning. I had never seen anything like it. While I was drawn to this unusual place, I also felt something dark there—something haunting. I knew nothing about New Mexico or these ancient villages, yet on that very first trip, I bought two acres of land I’d only heard about the evening before I had to leave. There was no road leading to it, so I bought it sight unseen. I realize now there was some hubris in what I did, a stranger inserting herself into such deep history, but there I was.

I made my decision in large part because of Bill Franke’s Hand Artes Gallery. The minute I walked through its doors I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Bill only represented local artists so that made up my mind.

I was told that if I could get Bill to represent me I would be in good shape as an artist and that ended up being true. I never became one of the High Road artist elite, the royalty from around here during that golden age, but I achieved my goal because of Bill: to earn a modest living with my art.

Many others from around New Mexico have Bill to thank for that. He sold a lot of art out of that iconoclastic gallery in the middle of nowhere. In the High Road’s heyday, art lovers regularly traveled from around the world to see what Bill had collected. He kept many artists’ careers vibrant for decades.

He was a quirky guy. I often thought of him as an excited elf, almost dancing when showing off a new work. He greeted folks at the door with a glimmer in his eye and an exquisite joy at the prospect of ushering them into his special domain. I believe he may have loved art more than anyone I’ve ever met, artists included.

He was always excited to introduce visitors to his artists and would often call to ask if I might drop by to meet collectors who were interested in my work. Embarrassingly he’d introduce me as Jeane “Viiiii-gel,” embellishing the sound of my German name, as he embellished pretty much everything.

He mixed modern and traditional art seamlessly, fine art and craft, as well as the incredible furniture art of Larry and Nancy Buechley. He didn’t limit the idea of what “art” was. Not an artist himself, he considered the gallery to be his own personal artform, and it was. He wove disparate expressions together as a cohesive whole.

I came here to pursue my artist’s dream, a New Mexico cliché, I know. By then mine had been compacted into a small one: simply to pay my way with painting. I’d been told and had believed that there was a decent living to be made in the state. But New Mexico and my life have taught me that nothing is easy. I’ve said it before: New Mexico can be a hard place; it’s complicated. But then, so is life. The crash of 2008, the year my house was complete and I moved here, was a tough one for the High Road. Few world travelers visited, and that hit us all. Perhaps the art village began to die a little then. Not being as fruitful, new artists didn’t arrive to replace the old.

Coming to pursue my art, I knew nothing about the historic challenges of Native, Hispano, Anglo peoples melding together on this land. I wasn’t even fully aware that these three cultures fought wars with each other over this place where I lived; that Truchas came into being in the 1750s because the King of Spain wanted to protect his colonies down along the Rio Grande from the marauding tribes coming over an easy pass at Truchas Peaks. So he gave away land that wasn’t his, to a small band of colonists who tamed and kept it.

I don’t think there is any “knowing” New Mexico without first living on her soil. And while I understand that can be said of anyplace, I think it’s especially true of New Mexico.

I live among grudges that have lasted for generations. But I’m also the beneficiary of centuries of work that has resulted in a blending of these three cultures. I believe this is why art thrives here, not so much the light that we all hear about, but rather our rich artistic history. It is essential to understand that we’re newcomers. Art has been made here for centuries and although we’ve been welcomed, we must understand our place in its complex past.

It was a balancing act that we regularly discussed. I remember the summers when a few of us artists would gather at Bill’s after wrapping up our workday, sitting under his grand Russian olive tree and drinking wine—or winters spent in his cozy kitchen, talking about art, our struggles, and our insights.These cultural tensions were a regular topic as we each worked to understand our place in this adoptive home. Bill offered a gathering place for artists, where we could openly compare notes, shore each other up when we were stuck and come to terms with the complexities of New Mexico.

One of my fondest memories is finishing a painting and driving it, still wet, down my long dirt road over to Bill’s. He’d see me coming down the drive and meet me at the door, hands clapping together, dancing his little jig, like a child on Christmas Day. We’d sit in the gallery’s main room and look at what I’d done. He’d squint his eyes, hand up to his chin and gaze silently for some minutes. Then he’d say, “Let’s find a place to hang it.” I believe this is what most artists dream of. Anyway, I did.

He never expected me to stick to one style, as many gallerists tend to do. He was all about supporting an artist’s journey, unfettered. And because of that he was able to offer honest work to the people who came to visit. His vision was not financial but rather artistic expression. He wanted to see the artist’s raw interior. He supported the realization of that truth. He once told me that a client had suggested that I might paint another piece similar to one that was already gone. He never asked that of me, even though he could always use the money.

We lost Bill a couple of years ago, and Hand Artes a while before that, because he’d simply gotten too old. And while that unlikely pinnacle of art, contained in a little adobe house in the middle of nowhere, is no more, its spirit continues. It lives on in the many artists who survived because of it, whose works bring beauty to homes all over the world thanks to Bill, in our memories—and among the many ghosts of this once vibrant artist’s colony.