The New Mexico journey continues with more journal pages. From Albuquerque, we took the Turquoise Trail scenic road to Santa Fe. The Tinkertown Museum near Sandia Park contains outsider artist Ross Ward's lifelong work (40 years) to carve miniature wood figures and construct Tinkertown with many different vignettes of villagers working, playing, eating, shopping. My favorite was the old fashioned circus that came to town. Outside the museum, he constructed many ironwork figures and sculptures. We stopped for lunch at the Ghost Ranch Cafe in Madrid.
We arrived for a few busy days in Santa Fe with not much time for sketching. I really liked the pockets that I included in my journal to collect postcards and other ephemera. I folded a manila file folder to make a pocket, folded the page in half, stitched tape on the book-bound edge.
Highlights of Santa Fe for me included the International Folk Art Museum, Canyon Road and other art galleries, The St John's Bible exhibit at the Museum of History, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (more on this museum in the next post) and several good restaurants- Pasqual's, La Casa Sena and il piatto.
Our journey continued on the scenic High Road to Taos. We stopped to see the El Santuario de ChimayĆ³. It's a pilgrimage site where the Crucifix of our Lord of Esquipulas was found in 1810. The chapel was built between 1813 and 1816 and is much smaller than I expected it to be. The dirt is considered to be holy and many come here searching for spiritual, emotional and physical healing.
I've wanted to visit ChimayĆ³ for many years. It reminds me of how this part of the US was once Mexico. The beliefs of Mexicans, Pueblo Indians and the Roman Catholic Church mix to create a sacred place.
Behind the chapel, I found this shrine to the Virgin de Guadalupe.