Celebrating culture all week
Markets, markets, everywhere a market, and all this week, Santa Fe prepares for two of the most unique — Traditional Spanish Market and Contemporary Hispanic Market — in and around the Plaza come Saturday and Sunday. Fortunately for us, the benefits of our city’s love of cultural markets stretches beyond a weekend. All week long people can celebrate ¡Viva La Cultura! There will be music, dance, studio tours, gallery shows and other activities, designed to bring both visitors and locals closer to the traditions of New Mexico’s colonial settlers.
Spanish Market, after all, exists to help preserve the culture of those early settlers, sons and daughters of Spain who came to this frontier after a perilous journey from Mexico. They brought with them their fierce Roman Catholic faith and a love of beauty — weaving straw when there was no gold, painting saints on wood, carving statues, weaving wool into rugs, hammering tin into crosses and otherwise taking the materials they found and creating both utilitarian and lovely objects to grace their surroundings. That their descendants still carry on is a testament to the legacy those settlers passed down.
Already this week, studio tours have been taking place, giving art lovers the opportunity to spend time with creative people and see where the work they love is made. Tours are happening in and around Santa Fe, but also in Chimayó and Albuquerque. (See The New Mexican’s Spanish Market guide for a complete schedule. Copies can be found at the newspaper, 202 E. Marcy St., and in kiosks around downtown.)
Thursday night, there will be a special treat with the Nuestra Musica show on the Santa Fe Bandstand on the Plaza from 6 to 9 p.m. This show features the music of Northern New Mexico, including such favorites as Cipriano Vigil y Familia, Roberto Mondragon and Robert Martinez. New this year is folk band Lone Piñon, proving once more that traditions continue to evolve.
Usually held at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, the musical show had been on hold. We appreciate Kevin and Miquela Korte, who stepped in to keep Nuestra Musica alive, with the Spanish Colonial Arts Society as a sponsor (the society will keep sponsoring the show in 2018, when it should return to the Lensic). The music of a people is crucial to preserving tradition and culture.
Friday night, the Traditional Spanish Market Preview takes place, allowing people the opportunity to see the best of the best, all in once place. The Spanish Colonial Arts Society, market sponsor, honors the best work at market each year — and preview is the one chance to see the award winners before everyone goes off to market. This year, it will take place at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe in the Santa Fe Railyard, with the public preview beginning at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20.
On Saturday and Sunday, the big show arrives, with traditional and contemporary markets taking place. The 66th annual Traditional Spanish Market — with more than 200 adult and young artists — is on the Plaza proper. The Contemporary Hispanic Market runs down Lincoln Avenue — it features more contemporary work, with artists leaving traditional modes behind. The contemporary market was founded 31 years ago and features 133 participants this year.
One treat on Sunday is the Spanish Market Mass at 8 a.m. in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, a reminder that faith underpins this traditional art form. That’s as true today as it was in the 1600s, when an isolated people created work to sustain them in a hostile land. See for yourself. This weekend, stop by Traditional Spanish Market and Contemporary Hispanic Market, in and around the Santa Fe Plaza.