In this way, Ms. J will challenge the world! Charlotte Jackson said it at least three times during a recent interview at her Marcy Street gallery: "59 galleries, 19 countries, and 1,000-plus artists." As if she didn't believe it. But the organizer of Art Santa Fe has been busy since last September getting commitments from all those exhibitors. One advantage has been the announcement that the art fair is now an annual, rather than a biennial, event, which it had been since the inaugural fair in 1995.

"Polígrafa Obra Gráfica in Barcelona has two large rooms this year, and they're bringing beautiful work, including by Francis Bacon," Jackson said. "I met the gallery's José Aloy in Spain last year, and he said, 'Let me know when you take it annual, and we'll be there.'"

The big difference, she explained, is that gallery owners and
directors make valuable connections with potential clients at art fairs, and it's easier to lose track of them if they have to wait two years for the next event.

"This year we have museum groups coming from El Paso and California and the Chicago Art Institute. Again, it tells me that making
it an annual event puts us on that continuing circuit," she said. "Taking it
annual has changed the whole complexion. I already have a waiting list of big-name galleries for 2009."

Art Santa Fe is an international contemporary-art fair produced by London International LLC. About 5,000 people attended last year.

The 2008 keynote speaker is Dean Sobel, director of the Clyfford Still Museum, which is expected to open in 2010 in Denver. "His talk on July 12 will be sold out," Jackson said. "He'll tell us the story of why Clyfford Still did what he did and how Denver was chosen."

When Still, a New York painter, died in 1980, his will specified that his art be given to "an American city willing to establish a permanent museum dedicated solely to his work."

"These 2,400 works have been in storage since he died," Jackson said. "Nobody's seen them, and nobody dreamed that the museum would be in Denver. It's very fascinating, considering the guy [John Hickenlooper] who's behind it is the mayor of Denver, and he's a pub owner. He's not even an art person, but he saw the merit. People from all over the world are going to come there, just for that museum. The fact that it's so close to us is very exciting."

Also on the night of Saturday, July 12, for the second year, Art in America magazine hosts a private VIP party for Art Santa Fe. The site of the art fair itself is El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe in the Santa Fe Railyard. When it was held there in 2007, the entrance on the building's southeast side, facing the railroad tracks, was enhanced with a large sculptural work called Shifting Lines, which was installed along the entire facade. This year, the possibility that the state would be working on the railroad tracks forced Jackson to shift the Art Santa Fe entrance to the opposite side of El Museo.

"We will have a big tent over the entry area to provide shelter," she said. "Then you come into a fabulous installation piece by the Santa Fe artist collective Keep Adding, sponsored by the Santa Fe Art Institute. They're also doing a 'kafé' with the El Museo collection, including works by Francisco Zuñiga and Rufino Tamayo."

A splendid time is guaranteed for all

The 59 booths at Art Santa Fe were available to gallery participants
at the rate of $5,000 for a large one and $3,800 for a small booth.

The first hall inside is dedicated to project spaces and galleries including Adamar Fine Arts of Miami and LA Contemporary from Los Angeles. At the junction of that room and the next large hall is a presentation space for 15 publications. The second hall has booths for galleries from Denmark, Spain, Germany, England, China, and Bolivia, as well as Karan Ruhlen Gallery, Santa Fe; Point of View Gallery, New York; and Chase Gallery, Boston.

Among the galleries are many that are repeats at Art Santa Fe — and a handful of first-timers. "Robin Rule (Rule Gallery, Denver) has been with us since 1999," Jackson said. "So has [William] Shearburn Gallery from St. Louis. Marlborough Gallery is coming for the first time. In 1999, one of its owners called with an interest, then flew in for lunch with us at La Tertulia. He said, 'Art Santa Fe is too young for us, but when you grow this fair, call me.'

"You win some, you lose some. Unfortunately, Peter Fetterman
[a Santa Monica, California, photography gallery that participated in 2005] is not coming this year. But then, we've never had a gallery before from India or Thailand."

She showed pictures of "an amazing series of photographs" called Birthmarks from Gallery Sumukha in Bangalore, India, which is participating this year. Teo + Namfah Gallery, which was founded in Bangkok two years ago by American Brad Gordon and his Thai wife, Rattana, features Mongolian artist Monkhor Erdenebayar's semi-abstract paintings of horses, "which have been a tremendous hit in Asia," the Gordons said in an e-mail interview.

Two young Thai artists featured in the Teo + Namfah booth are Preyawit "Palm" Nilachulaka and Anupong Chantron. Nilachulaka is a rock musician and painter the gallery owners describe as "both fascinated and concerned by the behavioral lifestyle alterations affecting young adults in Thailand." Chantron uses acrylic paint on saffron robes to portray Buddhist-inspired demons.

A medium of rising importance at Art Santa Fe is the print. "We did an article for the catalog about prints because they are now very valid collectibles," Jackson said. "Alex Ross writes about the fact that Andy Warhol's 10-part screen-print portfolio Myths recently sold for $435,000 at Sotheby's. That's a lot of money for a set of prints."

Among the print-rich exhibitors are Landfall Press, Santa Fe; Polígrafa Obra Gráfica, which brings new etchings by Fabian Marcaccio of Argentina; Mary Ryan Gallery of New York, showing new prints by May Stevens of Santa Fe; and William Shearburn Gallery, which established
a Santa Fe annex this spring.

"We opened there with a Chuck Close show," Shearburn said. "We were pleased with the response and sales." Shearburn opened a Robert Motherwell show on July 4.

His gallery brings to Art Santa Fe a new Close self-portrait, a silk-screen done with 203 colors; Night Sky by Vija Celmins; and an enormous handworked print by Jim Dine.

"I've been doing Art Santa Fe since 1999, first when it was still at Hotel Santa Fe," Shearburn said. "I do up to seven art fairs a year, including Miami Basel [Art Basel Miami Beach], Chicago, two in New York, and sometimes Los Angeles. What's unique about Santa Fe is that most major international art fairs are held in cities with a much larger population and with the capacity to draw from a much larger audience. I think it's really amazing that Charlotte is able to do this here, and the reason is that Santa Fe is an
art destination."

Shearburn also shows two-dimensional pieces by Motherwell and Donald Baechler, sculpture by Joseph Havel and John Chamberlain, and a group of works by an anonymous artist who's been called the Philadelphia Wireman. "These are amazing, little fetish sculptures made out of twisted wire and found objects," Shearburn said. "We don't know who made them. A thousand of these things were found in boxes on a street in South Philly in 1982."

China and the U.K. check in; chickens and horses, too

Jackson promises something for everyone at this year's fair. "There's edgy. There's staid. There's a lot that's pretty spectacular," she said. "And, for some reason, we have lots of barnyard animals this year. Rebecca Hossack in London is bringing cows, Daniel Abate Galería from Buenos Aires has horses and cows, and Marlborough's bringing chickens."

Among the offerings from Marlborough Gallery, New York, are Richard Estes' 110-color silk-screen Kentucky Fried Chicken and a large, gelatin-silver photograph from The Poultry Suite by Jean Pagliuso.

It's Marlborough's first year at Art Santa Fe. "We've been sort of keeping our eye on it and hearing increasingly wonderful things over the past three years, and we're thrilled to be throwing our hat in this year," said Kim Schmidt, one of the gallery's directors.

Schmidt said she was "working at warp speed" at the gallery before catching a flight to Santa Fe. The artworks were already on the way. "It's all coming in one crate," she said. "We ended up using a Santa Fe company, which is great, so we did it by truck."

Marlborough's big list for Art Santa Fe includes works by Andy Warhol, Fernando Botero, Francis Bacon, Estes, and Lucian Freud. "We have a bronze by Jacques Lipchitz, some beautiful Picasso etchings, an Ed Ruscha lithograph, some Henry Moores from the Mother and Child series, and works by Ellsworth Kelly, Alex Katz, and L.C. Armstrong," Schmidt said. "In an opportunity like this, it's wonderful to sort of mix the mediums."

The great variety of creative approaches and subjects and media may have been daunting to the Art Santa Fe selection committee, but its members had to pick and choose based on a more ethereal guideline: artistic quality.

"For this committee, we usually try to have a dealer, a person from the museum field, an artist, maybe a graphic designer, and two collectors," Jackson said. "The people on our committee this year were tough, and
they had to be, because we had so many applicants, ranging from great
to not so great."

One of the great ones, and a business that Art Santa Fe welcomes as a first-timer this year, is ChinaSquare Gallery in New York. "We're very interested, because a lot of people are saying the art scene in Santa Fe is exciting, and it's a boutique fair," said ChinaSquare director Carrie Clyne. "It's just a new market for us."

One of ChinaSquare's artists, Shen Jingdong, has a body of work focusing
on military heroes. Each figure in this Navy/Army/Air Force series of paintings has a doll-like countenance with a glistening surface. The gallery presents a video piece by Zhang Xiaotao, in which the mantra of compassion is chanted in the background. "He's from Sichuan Province, and he uses imagery from The Tibetan Book of the Dead," Clyne said. "He deals a lot with death and decay, growth and rebirth.

"Another artist we're bringing is Chen Jiagang. He photographs in the southwest of China, what's referred to as the Third Front, and it was an area that was developed during the Cultural Revolution under Mao. There was a huge migration to get industry going there. Then, once the revolution ended, the people left. This artist brings a woman and places her in these barren landscapes."

Although ChinaSquare is just two years old, its Web site lists more than 100 artists (nearly half of whom are photographers). "All our artists are from China," Clyne said, "and we actually have three people in Beijing working on artist relations and staying on top of new art. We'll be opening a gallery there this summer. Just as at our gallery in New York, where we're trying to be a bridge and show very important Chinese art that's underrepresented in the States, we will also show some American artists over there."

Nice neck of the woods

In the past two years, Jackson has seen Art Santa Fe's previous venue, the Sweeney Convention Center, demolished, and the city's new convention center rise in its place. She had a front-row seat for the entire process, because her own gallery is across the street.

As those changes took place, she chose to stage Art Santa Fe at El Museo Cultural. The large-scale, city-sponsored redevelopment of the Railyard has been going on during the same period. It has involved the construction of several new galleries specializing in contemporary art, as well as of new buildings for Santa Fe's teen center and farmers market, a large retail center, and a dramatic park-improvement project. And in December, the Railyard becomes the terminus of the New Mexico Rail Runner Express train service from Albuquerque. In 2007, the Railyard was Jackson's choice for a temporary relocation of the art fair. She looked forward to the completion of the new Santa Fe Community Convention Center, but now she's actually undecided about where she wants to hold the 2009 edition of Art Santa Fe.

"I really don't know," she said. "I have to tell you that I love the energy and what's happening in the Railyard. My gallery's not there, but what's going on over there is very exciting. I applaud the city for not making it gaudy and for making it user-friendly. And I love the Rail Runner.

"I also love what's happened with the convention center. I think Santa Fe is really getting beautiful, but not in a flashy way. It's quiet beauty."

details

Art Santa Fe international art fair

11 a.m.-7 p.m. Friday, July 11; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday & Sunday, July 12 & 13

El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, 1615-B Paseo de Peralta

$8 per day, tickets available at the door or at the Lensic Performing Arts Center (211 W. San Francisco St., 988-1234); call 988-8883 or visit artsantafe.com

Art Santa Fe Presents, keynote address by Dean Sobel, director of the Clyfford Still Museum

6:30 p.m. Saturday, July 12

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Ave.