¡Colores!; 105; John Gaw Meem/Nisbet

I hope you enjoy. Bigger, baby. . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Tonight, New Mexico's preeminent architect, John Garmine, his style and legacy.

If you spend any time reading and zero in the light, you know that learning becomes the kind of religious experience. The spirit of place is, it's an ephemera, it's always moving, it's always ghostlike around the edges. And the work of landscape painter, he ain't his bit. Like the 19th century painters, I have a responsibility to celebrate nature from a positive perspective. But at the same time, I have responsibility to present nature on Canvas in a new way.

Next, I'm Colores. The face of Albuquerque and much of the southwest is rapidly changing. Good evening and welcome to Colores, I'm Esther Reyes. Tonight we feature one of New Mexico's preeminent architects, John Garmine. Drawing upon the Native American Dan Hispanic cultures, me more toldheartedly to retain the graces of this rich heritage. He sought a regional statement that celebrated the indigenous architecture of New Mexico. He had such a visualization.

Spaning 35 years, John Gommeem's career as an architect was extraordinarily successful, working between 1927 and 1959. The volume of his work is impressive. He designed numerous homes,

hospitals, banks, municipal and commercial buildings, and entire university campus, and much more. As Meeem was adept at various architectural styles, he was clearly interested in creating a regional style that expressed the unique heritage of Southwestern architecture, being drew from the Pueblo and the Spanish colonial style to create a contemporary architecture that meant the functional needs of modern living, he had designed with symbolic forms and details of Southwestern architectural history. Most Poblano's is a wonderful example of John Gommeem's architecture. It shows his sensitivity to New Mexico, the style, the Pueblo style and the territorial style. It gives an idea of being grounded of a sense of place. What we have here is a very colonial territorial style of architecture. The home itself is built around a placeita or a cord, and it's entered through large gates that

provide access for the people and also in case of any marauding Indians or anything they could drive the animals in the court through these doors. The Pueblo style itself would be considered saying to you the exposed beamwork like this with the vegas and the ceiling and the latillas are not really latillas. In this case, it's decking. He went to so much detail that these are actually look as though they've been hand-hewn. This is considered a territorial treatment or Georgian revival. The white trim around the window gives a little bit of, say, the pediment or the top of the window. He's integrating this treatment, which is very, very, I would say, very formal with something that is very plain and simple in the Pueblo style. On this beam, you can see how much care was taken in some of the carving that was done on the beam itself. Just the slightest bit of detail. Some of these are reminiscent of Indian designs or it might have been the fact that

the sims were very fond of cats, and I know that for a fact, so that's probably that reason. But you'll notice that all of this is all done by hand and very carefully. This is probably one of the more spectacular rooms that John Gomme, that I've seen that John Gomme has done. It has such a good feeling right from the floor all the way up to the vegas on the ceiling. The way the light comes into the room is just incredible. The use of materials, the tile, the feeling of massiveness by the size of the beams, the feeling of, say, the thickness of the walls, the little bit of bevel, for instance, in this wall, the step down wall, or they call it a Santa Fe wall now. It has a little bit of a bevel to it to show its massiveness, how it almost grows up out of the ground, and then follows right on up, supports that corable very well, and then carries that beam right across the top of the room. It's just beautiful. Everything that

you see in that's permanent, that's a piece of this art, it's almost as though it's as though it were a painting to an artist from the standpoint that each brush stroke, there's a reason that it was put down, and in this case there was that much attention to detail. One thing I like very much about his style is the fact that the earth just seems to have lifted up and formed itself in his buildings, and I think that's a contribution that he's made both to architecture and to landscape architecture and the state. He has architecture seems very much in keeping with the place and the materials. He had a strong tendency to use modern materials in the traditional way, and he made sure that everything looked as though it had been in place for centuries. The mean was very interested in fundamental form, which linked, of course, the form to traditions and the memories, and we can call it regional, of course, quality. But the issue

mainly with the memories, he was a good architect as well, you know, that could have been other, that's been doing similar work, and not have the quality. The memories, fine architect, is interior so wonderful. If you look at the library, there is a spirit in the old part, which cannot be repeated in the new part, but that may be a cultural difference in the old part of the library books where holy. In the new part, there's simply a means of communication. Actually, you can feel it. You can feel the kind of environment, especially in that library, that says he has a great architect in those space, and he understands the deeper cultural forces, which are even beyond regionalism, that libraries are holy. The book is holy. It's a wonderful place to be. Zimmerman Library seems to be the prime example, because most people recognize the massing of the

structure, the elevations, and how elegantly everything was put together from the 10-story tower to the north side where the Anderson room is, to the T-wing. The expanse of the ceiling in the T-area is 185 feet long. It's 35 feet wide, 22 foot ceilings in the entire area of the west wing. All of it fits together beautifully. The feeling you get from inside by looking at the beam ceilings and the carvings around you, the tin work, the care that went into all of the artwork, including particularly the Kenneth Adams murals, lends a sort of spiritual atmosphere. And, of course, all of this ties in beautifully with the ceiling that's a replica of the Rancho State Tower's church. In fact,

I have had people tell me that they've had religious experiences in the west wing, and that no one didn't surprise me. He caught the spirit, but as time changes, the spirit has to move on. The world is calling us. There is a future here as well. New Mexico is a land crowded in spirit, and architecture derives from spirit. Architecture is founded in those intangible energies of place, and those energies are really transcend architectural style. There's no regional style here, in my opinion. It's an ever-evolving, extraordinary confluence, cultural confluence. The topicality of the Wild West still is everywhere around us, witness our strips,

but there's a power in this place that attracted me here 35 years ago, and I've stuck with it, and that power isn't something that is readily definable. In architecture, the power of New Mexico, for me, coalesces through many forms. If I think about style, and I think of John Gogmeem as perpetuating style, then it's very limiting for me. The easy antecedents that one can draw from, that is the fabulously rich, Anasazi architecture of Northwestern New Mexico and Eastern Arizona is there, and the Pueblo cultures of the Rio Grande Valley are there, and the Salinas Pueblos, east of the Manzanos. These are all an architecture derived from energies of the time.

Then there's the spiritual diagram, the array of the Kivas, the sense of a ritual and collective connection to place and spirit. Those have no need to do with style. Nobody was thinking about style. When Anglo-architects come along down the road and codify style, it's to me a bit artificial because the presence of the place, the power of the place isn't about that. V.B. was meme on the right track. He sure was. I think his buildings here at the University of New Mexico are buildings you become passionate about. He not only managed to crystallize the cultural essence of New Mexico. He did it, I think, without doing any disservice to the major thrust of his own time, which was modernism. If you spend any time reading in Zermun Library,

you know that learning becomes an almost a kind of religious experience, because you're in the reading rooms of what amounts to the main chapel at the Church of Acama. What he managed to do is to give the heart of this state an architectural image. He didn't invent the image, but he perfected it, I think. For my way of thinking, I'd rather have seen a little bit more of an expression of the essence of this region, rather than as literal a translation as the building seemed to come out. In other words, to me, they don't have as much a feeling of the essence of the materials and the region, the climate. As they do, the literal almost imitation of the buildings that he found here.

I agree, obviously, the kinds of work that meme has done. You're just incredibly strong, and wonderful spaces. I guess I just feel somewhat like Bart does that architects create, in essence, cultural artifacts. It's really important that what they're creating represent that period in which they're working. I really think the kinds of materials we've got today that it's more interesting to capture the spirit of what it's like to live in this region. I would it feels like to go out on a mason and see a sunset. Because, quite frankly, you know, replicating detail to a certain extent is sort of a dead end. I mean, it really doesn't expand the cultural frontiers. How do you replicate that spirit then? There are certain reactions to climate, terrain, and culture that still come into play. They don't necessarily always say that you're going to do beams and vegans or Adobe

walls or that the color of the building is going to be brown, necessarily. But there are reactions to climate. Obviously, the climate here in New Mexico is certainly different than it is in Portland or, you know, East Coast. And that begins to tell you something about what that building looks like if you do a high-rise building and it's glass on all four facades in New Mexico, then you have some really interesting problems to try to solve them. He was really adamant, though, about not making archaeological buildings. And I think it'd be one thing if we started to replicate meme in the 80s, you know, the 90s. But what I think he was trying to do was to make modern icons of the past, to kept on saying over and over again, these forms are ancient, but they are not lost in the past. Bart, a few minutes ago, you indicated that you wished meme had done a few things differently.

Could you elaborate on that statement? I like the spirit that comes through in a lot of this work, and I like the feeling that comes through. But I guess what I would like to have seen is more of that applied to the specific problems, or the essence of that. I know it sounds maybe it sounds very confusing. In a more up-to-date way, I guess. In other words, I still see these as much more literal kinds of translations. Now, you were saying that he was concerned about not doing that. Somehow, I guess the buildings that he's done don't really, they don't grab me. They don't move me like something like House Pueblo does. And I don't know whether it's the difference between, you know, seeing the original thing and a building that was really created for a specific purpose that looks the way it does because it is what it had to become, you know, based on the problem, whereas a lot of these other buildings look to me like it's applied from the outside

rather than coming from the inside. I think that in a very sort of quiet way, meme was trying to see if modern forms could serve a broader social function. And that function would be to help preserve locality. To help conserve the essence of locality onto the future. Here is an architect who is working in a particular situation with an idea that he's trying to achieve. And I think that when you look at it that way, he certainly did, he did succeed. And he did create some very interesting buildings within the nature of the way he was working. And when I say that I wish that more of the essence of what it seemed like he certainly understood came through, I suppose it sounds kind of kind of confusing. But to me, there's one step somehow that got

missed. I mean, it's like it didn't quite get the breath of life breathed into it. You know, it's almost architecture. What you really want to have, they'll put in all of a sudden, Dennis, you want the work of a strong designer because I feel like you and you. You know, I would have much rather had had you guys do the new airport and have it, you know, a strong work than have this kind of engineering past deli kind of compromise. Well, true. You feel that we have digressed so far from this sense of regional style and designs that we're just another urban environment without any ties to our past. I think Albuquerque has lost its local identity, not because it does not have a design code, but because it has allowed itself to be franchised, it is allowed itself to to accept anything that anybody wants to do here. We have a long, wonderful history of

beautiful design here in the state, but we don't seem to pay much attention to it here anymore. I think we've become kind of an awful homogenized glop. If we do what we did in Santa Fe, then we become a kind of a Disneyland. But if we do what we do here, we become a kind of bunker. And I don't think you can legislate architectural taste. Santa Fe is, I think, certain portions of it are an unfortunate example of that. I'd like to see us again get back to a reaction to the climate and the culture and the forces that are right here affecting us directly. And I think that's better than saying let's make it square, put a flat roof on it and color it brown. You know, I mean, that's sort of the lowest common denominator of reacting to this environment. There's definite spirit and forces at work in this area that are like nowhere else in the country.

That's the best essence I think in the Mexico has been the creativity of some of the people that have been here. And I think if they're allowed to work in a creative way that will be able to keep the, you know, the best of what would be considered a region, which isn't necessarily a tie to a particular stop. The spirit of place is, it's an ephemera. It's always moving. It's always ghostlike around the edges. It's a poetic spirit. You can't grab a hold of it because it's intangible. You just have to let it into your system. And when you think of the cultural accretion, you get a hold and there's some pre-Columbian pot shards. And then you come up the excavation, you find fragments of arrowheads or a fragment of a silver saddle, a conquistador saddle. And then

you find 30s hubcaps, and you find McDonald's wrappers, and course beer cans. And on top of it, all the vapor of UFOs. I'm like I'm like a walking cuisine art. It all gets in there and it gets all chopped up and it comes out. In our profile tonight, landscape painter Pierre Nisbit, whose work exemplifies the joy he finds in painting his surroundings, the nature of New Mexico. Some people have asked me why I became an artist and why I'm involved in this process. And I really don't know any other way to live in this world than through the process of translating my personal experiences into canvas. When I'm on location, I wait for a time when the light

achieves a certain resonance, when the clouds achieve a certain shape, and when the elements, the time of day, the feeling that I have, all juxtaposed together to create an event. It's a synchronous event, it's an important event, it is like breathing. You breathe in, nature breathes in. And when nature breathes in to that point where it's just about ready to exhale, the light is right, the clouds are right, the shapes are right, everything is perfect. That's what I like to call a very important moment. That's the basis for my paintings. I grew up on the east coast of North Carolina. As a young boy, I was blessed with a great deal

of natural beauty there. The water is expansive, there's exquisite quality of light. The skies are full of vapor, tremendous storms roll through hurricanes, water spouts. And that experience instilled in me a tremendous love of nature. My reality, my world, is different than the world of a lot of people. The things that interest me are closely connected to nature. I am primarily interested in space. And by space, I mean distance, the illusion of space that can be created on canvas, and the light that illuminates those spaces. And that's why I live in New Mexico because the light here is very spectacular. And I basically came out here because I wanted to paint the landscape as so many artists have

done before me. And since that time, which was 1980, I've spent primarily every moment pursuing clouds and light, the landscape, and all of the many natural dramas, which unfold so casually out here, but which form the basis for the spectacular quality of the landscape, which is the West. I personally believe that like the 19th century painters, I have a responsibility to celebrate nature from a positive perspective. But at the same time, I have a responsibility to present

nature on canvas in a new way. And as my fondest wish to translate through my experiences in nature, a very profound and sincere belief that there's more going on out there than meets the eye. What is it out there that appeals? What is it out there that makes me as a painter decide to select this particular view or that particular view? My option is to pursue it positively or to paint it negatively. And I want to see work which is a celebration of nature, is an affirmation of beauty, and is an altogether positive statement about the world I live in. And this is probably naive to think, but maybe as an artist by seeking to reveal those elements. I have some small

chance of influencing the perspective or the opinion of maybe one or two individuals. And if my worldview is to protect nature, then I've done my little part in protecting the overall scheme. This Colores program is available on home video cassette for 1995, plus shipping and handling to order call 1-800-328-5633.