santafean

Living the Art of Living in Art
Devon Jackson // photos by Jonathan Blaustein

James Bristol & Troy Fernandez's dining room, dominated by the eerie gaze of Scott Donaldson’s J. Robert Oppenheimer, with photographs (to the left of the 100-plus-year-old table from Zacatecas, Mexico) by Mark Morrisroe (top) and Nan Goldin and to the right, an aluminum work by Peter Stanfield. (Not pictured: a Gregory Lomayesva painting and a photograph by current New Mexico Cultural Affairs secretary Stuart Ashman.)

James Bristol & Troy Fernandez: Storykeepers
James Bristol, a family-law attorney and onetime social worker, and Troy Fernandez, a director at OptumHealth and former deputy director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center, embrace art not only for its aesthetic values but for the narratives it adds to their home and to their own life narratives. Having renovated their entire house themselves seven years ago (“As much as we did,” says Fernandez, “we earned a PhD in house”), they have graced it with one of the more eclectic though consistent and consistently interesting—and most chronicled—collections in Santa Fe.
“For me, it’s art, it’s history, it’s my heritage,” explains Fernandez, who was a santero growing up in the village of Truchas, north of Santa Fe. “I appreciate what these people—my aunts, my great-grandmothers, the Native peoples and the Hispanics who made these rugs, these pots, this retablo, this candelabra—had to do.”
Bristol and Fernandez’s living room: Colonial New Mexico pieces from the 1810 era adorn the fireplace; Santa Fe sculptor Deborah Miller made the sculpture on the table; the pottery above the bookshelves are Hispanic bean pots, pots from the San Juan and Santa Domingo pueblos, and Anasazi pots; to the left of the bookshelf window is a Robert Henri portrait that Fernandez found at a Santa Fe flea market, and the framed photograph to the right of the window is a Joel-Peter Witkin Polaroid.

“We like contemporary things but old things, too, because we like the history,” says Bristol, an amateur beekeeper and lover of the figure, photography, tramp art, face jugs, and bottle whimsies.
Assiduous in their notetaking and in their desire for each piece’s provenance, its creator, its critics, its admirers—its story—Bristol and Fernandez always want to know as much as they can about a work, whether it’s an Egyptian faience figurine from the 21st dynasty, an 1810 José Aragón retablo, or a Joel-Peter Witkin Polaroid. They have notebooks full of receipts, letters from artists, articles, and recommendations, and built-in bookshelves lined with books on art, history, and art history.
Bristol and Fernandez’s kitchen (what Bristol refers to as their “contemporary wing”), with a copper cast doll’s head above a ceramic one, and Santa Fe artist Mike Webb’s photographs of various body parts (thumb, kneecap), which were then emulsified and silk-screened into steel plates.

Assembled in a space no bigger than 1,200 square feet and on salaries no greater than the social workers’ wages they lived on for years, their collection is well-rounded and tastefully arranged. “Most of this collection we amassed earlier in our careers,” says Bristol. “We’re getting pickier. Because you realize you can add and add and add. Nowadays, I’d rather get a choice piece.” “Besides, the New Mexico stuff is rare as hen’s teeth,” says Fernandez.
“We don’t want to gob up the walls with too much art,” says Bristol. “You go into some houses and the walls are covered with art and objects and you miss things. We try to give them breathing room.”
Room to breathe, room to shine, room to tell their stories. “You have a story you get with every item,” says Bristol. “And you add on to each piece with your own story about how you got it or what’s gone on in your life while you’ve had it.” “It’s all on loan, anyway—really,” says Fernandez. “Paying for it is just your rental fee for the lifetime it’s with you. We’ve inherited several things from other people,” he says, then pauses. “Because they appreciate our appreciation for things.”“Like I said,” adds Bristol, “it’s all about keeping the story.”

Jorden Nye: Ahead of the Curve
Jorden Nye has a knack—a gift—for spotting an artist and buying one or two or more of their works before they become well-known. Take the nine-foot-high bronze Javier Marín sculpture, Adan, that dominates the circular sculpture garden inside his Rancho Viejo home. A 50th-birthday present to himself in 2000, it took Nye about six months to complete the purchase for it, and in the time it took Marín to cast it he’d become the international star he is today. “So that piece only increased in value,” smiles Nye, who acquires art not to profit from it or sell it but simply because “if it’s good,” he says, “it’s good. I make really quick judgments, so a piece really has to grab me. But when I see something fabulous, I just want to have it.”
Nye’s family-room salon, featuring his wall of photographs: George Tice, Michael Kenna, Jerry Uelsmann, Daniel Rannali, and more.

Nye grew up in a working-class family in a suburb of Los Angeles, where his high school benefited from LBJ’s Great Society program, which sent students to museums and other cultural centers. “That’s where my love for art began,” recalls Nye. “I remember getting goose bumps looking at Jackson Pollock’s Lavender Mist.” He went on to study political science and urban studies at the University of California–Riverside but largely taught himself about art through trips to museums, galleries, and art fairs and by poring through scads of art magazines and art books.
Nye’s sculpture garden, featuring Javier Marín’s nine-foot-high bronze, Adan, and James Tyler’s ceramic Willie; the painting to the right of “Adan” is by neo-Expressionist Lawrence Gape, and to the left, in the entryway to Nye’s home, is Bill Fisher’s Untitled painting.

A former human-resources analyst with the Internal Revenue Service, Nye retired five years ago, just prior to moving to Santa Fe. About midway through his federal-government career, however, he went through a midlife crisis (in the mid-1990s), one that involved quitting his IRS D.C. job and opening an art gallery in Baltimore. Although that lasted only a few years, Nye began collecting art long before his gallery stint (he’s been collecting for over 30 years now). “The first things I bought were photographs,” says Nye, whose living-room wall is dedicated almost exclusively to prints—from Bruce Davidson and Harry Callahan to Jay Dusard (the first piece he ever bought) and Connie Imboden—and whose other walls boast Duane Starks and William Wegman. “I’d buy them for $300 to $400 and then the photographers became famous.”
Blessed with a perspicacious eye and financially nimble, Nye thought about opening another gallery when he first visited seven years ago. He changed his mind, auctioned off about six pieces to put a down payment on this house (one a Sam Francis, another a Robert Mapplethorpe—both of which he regrets unloading), and made 46 upgrades (the extra bedroom is now a temperature-controlled storeroom containing close to 250 more works of art—paintings, sculptures, a body cage as reconstructed by a Baltimore performance artist). For the past three years, he’s been working as a manager at the Jane Sauer Gallery.
In Nye’s bedroom: James Mathison’s bronze Ocaso II and to the left, Santa Fe photographer Robert Stivers’s Self-Portrait and, above that, a photo by Stephen John Phillips (the first name of the model? Nye); all of the photos to the left are by Marsha Burns.

“I live on my retirement and I buy art with my gallery money,” says Nye, whose impressive collection proves that one need not be a CEO or hedge-fund king in order to surround oneself with beauty. “The average person is afraid of buying art because it costs money. And it can still be a crap shoot. But,” he adds, “you can’t really stop collecting. Ever.”
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This article appears in the December/January 2010 issue of Santa Fean Magazine
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