Santa Fe Bohemia

Book excerpt: By the early 1970s, an active bohemian colony had developed in Santa Fe and it became a cultural boom town. The number of art galleries went from two to a hundred. Besides the Santa Fe Opera, there came into being endless festivals: for art, music, literature, theater, movies, fashion, and the crafts of Indians and Spanish Americans. The city’s complex heritage of three interlocked cultures became “Santa Fe Style.” But the fifteen years between 1964 and 1980 held a special magic. And Eli Levin experienced it all: the fading generation of older artists and the newly arriving younger generation; wild night life at Claude’s Bar; artist’s battles with conservative arts organizations; questionable successes and tragic failure of careers; exemplary examples of lifetime dedication; and a number of suppressed scandals, one even involving possible murders. Packed with amusing anecdotes about the various artists with whom Levin painted, plotted and partied, this vivid memoir testifies to the exciting rebirth and burgeoning growth of one of this country’s most well known art colonies.