Architecture
I’m taking weekly photos of the progress on the Imperial Building construction project going on behind our office. Today’s photos are from Monday, January 19th, and Friday, January 23rd. The middle photo shows our daily marking off of climbing the stairs in the New Mexico Bank & Trust Building (on the right in the first and last photos.
Laurie studies in the old part of the Zimmerman Library on UNM Campus while she waits for me to pick her up after work. Zimmerman Library was designed and built by John Gaw Meem in 1938, and it has been in continuous use for the past 76 years. Built in his famous Pueblo Style, Zimmerman is still the heart of UNM’s campus with over a million visits per year according to a booklet celebrating Zimmerman’s 75 years of history. You can read more about John Gaw Meem and the Zimmerman library at http://library.unm.edu/zimmerman75/meem.php.
You can see from Laurie’s interior photo and my exterior photo how Zimmerman’s high ceilings and incandescent lighting creates a warm, magical atmosphere that is calming and conducive to study. Although the study tables look empty, Laurie said there are students at nearly every table, but they are either sitting close to the walls or their backpacks and computers mark their presence.
Photos of the interior of the lodge at las Golondrinas.
The Spanish came into the Salinas Valley to the east of the Rio Grande Valley in what is now central New Mexico in 1581. The Franciscans began Christianizing the residents of Abó in 1622 and built their first church in the last half of the 1620’s. The remains of the second church built at Abó (pictured) have a sophisticated buttressing to stabilize the high walls that was very unusual for architecture in this area in the 1600’s. Abó was abandoned between 1672 and 1678 after a series of disasters struck the Salinas Valley.
A couple notable features about these ruins are 1) the church is oriented north and south instead of the east/west orientation commonly found in old and new Catholic churches in New Mexico. 2) There is a kiva on the east side of the church. Kivas are used by the Pueblo Indians for rituals and spiritual ceremonies generally associated with the Kachina belief. While the Spanish christianized the residents, they also let them practice their own rituals and spiritual ceremonies.
One of the first buildings you come across at Ranchos de las Golondrinas is the church. The church is the north building of a hacienda that has a central plaza with a well in the center and hornos for baking. Note the church has a pitched, tin roof, but the other buildings have flat roofs. The church originally had a flat roof as well, and the tin roof would have been added after 1850 when New Mexico became a US territory which opened up trade and goods to come in from the Eastern US. The ceiling of the church still has the horizontal vigas (timbers) that supported the original flat, dirt roof.
The interior of the church has simple benches for pews, an artisan crafted retablo at the altar, and hand carved Stations of the Cross (the Stations of the Cross are a modern addition, according to a docent).
Las Golondrinas is a living museum on a 200 acre site a few miles south of Santa Fe. They are having their annual harvest festival this weekend and all the sites and industries, set mostly around the early to mid 19th Century, are operating. We spent most of the day there yesterday, and I have a lot of photos to process, so for today, I have a few abstractly representative photos.
I sheet rocked in the darkroom Sunday. I turned out to quite frustrating and painful at times, mostly because the heads of the sheet rock screws strip easily. I couldn’t find a bit that seated well into the screw head, which made the bit want to slip off the screw head, so I ended up unintentionally driving the bit into my fingers and palms of my hands more than once. Over the past several weekends, I got water into the darkroom, ran electrical, and put in a light. Laurie came up with the title, because she said all the noise from screw heads striping and me yelling about a resulting injury, unintended hole in the wall or broken piece of sheet rock, sounded like the wall was winning. I took Laurie into the dark-side of the newly sheet rocked darkroom to check it out, and as I swung the portal door around she said “I can’t see a damn thing!” It is dark inside, so I think I’ll go “soccer” on it and call it a tie!
Another garden on the Corrales Garden Tour had adobe sculpture in various states of dissolution. Adobe sculpture is a little like longer lasting sand paintings, but instead of erasing them at sundown, the adobe sculptures slowly erode back into the earth.
Off Center & Not Even 