July 5 and 6, 2014

We left Phoenix very early in order to arrive in Santa Fe, NM in time to go to the Georgia O’Keefe Museum.  The exhibition was Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams: The Hawai’i Pictures.  We spent the morning walking on Canyon Road to photograph some of the art galleries. Then we left for Abiquiu, NM which was the site of one of her adobe houses which she bought and renovated in 1945.  We were not able to tour the house on a Sunday, but were able to see the outside of it and see the view from the bluff across the river valley with the cottonwood trees.  Georgia spent the summers in Taos from 1929 and on, but did most of her work starting in 1934 at Ghost Ranch, a few miles northwest of Abiquiu.  She bought a house and 7 acres in 1940 so that she could work in peace away from the dude ranch.  We took the landscape tour and visited all of the nearby locations that she painted.  The guides showed photos of the paintings, that we saw at the exact locations.  Even though she had here own style, the paintings were not abstract, but were fairly close renditions of the details at each location.  I was lucky to have great clouds to include in the photos.  By late afternoon we arrived in Taos at the  Mabel Dodge Luhan house, now a B&B.  Dodge moved to Taos in 1919, immediately started a literary colony, and invited many well known artists, poets, and writers.  Georgia O’Keefe first stayed with her or in a house very close by starting in 1929.  We stayed in the Solarium room which was the only room on the third floor with windows 360 degrees and no curtains.  I had the pleasure of trying to capture both a sunset and sunrise from the room.  In the morning before we left Taos we visited the Taos Pueblo, the oldest occupied pueblo in the America’s.