It’s late summer in Santa Fe, and Downtown Subscription’s parking lot is jam-packed with expensive and beautiful foreign cars, opulent under an August sun whose light this morning bathes everything in a secretive pre-fall glow. I’m thinking about the way things look because I’m meeting with Tony Abeyta, whose angular landscapes are also lush; craggy hills softened by thick stripes of rain and dervishing blue-gray wind. Abeyta works in a range of media, but it’s these landscapes—rich with magpies, gods and forest fires—that launched him into art stardom.
Today, Abeyta says, he’s going for a “kinda gentrified” look with the fit: soft and spotless white tee, khaki shorts, white Adidas ankle socks and scuffed black Louis Vuitton loafers. He blushes when I tell him he’s a Santa Fe fashion icon, but he knows I mean it. Abeyta the sartorialist is one of his many moods. There’s also the son, the brother, the father, the fisherman; the flea-market-fiend and the Scorpio. Increasingly, Abeyta is known as art historian and expert appraiser, roles informed by a lifelong passion for collecting and trading beautiful things.
“I was always surrounded by people making art,” he says of growing up Diné in Gallup, New Mexico, a sort of hub for Zuni, Hopi and Navajo people for many hundreds of years.
“I’ve always loved the treasure hunt aspect of collecting,” Abeyta continues by way of an explanation of his latest project, a show of 70 objects from his personal collection called Hunter, on view through late September at newbie nonprofit International Center for the Arts, or ICA. The show is objectively stunning, thanks in large part to native Santa Fean and ICA founder Chiara Giovando, who describes Abeyta as a “formidable dealer with an almost encyclopedic memory.”
Espresso in hand, Abeyta explains that the Diné were traditionally hunters and gatherers following prey and the seasons, moving with a confidence he understands.
“I never collect art because someone tells me it’s good,” Abeyta explains. “Taste is arbitrary, so I rely on my own.”
A hunter’s hunger does not exclude his predilection for certain sustenance over others, but the list of things Abeyta loves is much longer than things he doesn’t—the latter category including The Clash (which he can take or leave), Native American arrowheads (“just never really been my thing”) and over-the-top PCism, which he says is often “prohibitive and cumbersome.” Abeyta is wild, however, about contemporary Native artists like Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw and Cherokee) and Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo), and also loves Black American painters Kerry James Marshall, whom he calls his favorite American painter, and Kehinde Wiley.
Abeyta has finished his first cortado and is onto his second.
“I’m more of a Ferris Bueller than a Jack Kerouac,” he says thoughtfully, and I believe him.
This tendency toward cheekiness is evidenced in works found in Hunter, like a banana made of black beads and encased in a yellow vinyl peel by Nick Cave, a pair of gold-painted moccasins and a framed hot dog by Caddo and Kiowa painter TC Cannon. Abeyta loves collecting work that’s more pointed in examining the ongoing ignorance that’s plagued white understandings of Native people, and lots of the best, most knock-your-socks off examples of this are made by artists who also happen to be friends of close friends: This includes currently practicing artists like dynamo Cochiti Pueblo potter Diego Romero, as well as dearly departed art lions Fritz Scholder (La Jolla Band of Luiseño), Otellie Pasiyava (Hopi) and Charles Loloma (Hopi). As hunters go, Abeyta is well-experienced, and selects the best and most meaningful objects for his nourishment.
“I tell people to look for work that holds an intrinsic mystery,” he says. “Be uncomfortable, seek out challenging work.”
Abeyta’s existence is informed by listening to music.
“It’s safe to say my music taste is almost entirely thanks to women,” he says, with real earnestness. “Girlfriends in the ′90s made the best mixtapes.”
He adores De La Soul and the Beastie Boys, but also keeps his eyes and ears peeled for more obscure recordings. A small cross-section of Abeyta’s beloved album collection is displayed at ICA, all by Native American musicians.
Years ago, Abeyta lived in Taos and befriended the minimalist painter Agnes Martin, who “loved kids and Italians,” he says, and who became his semi-regular Tuesday lunch companion for years.
“She never once showed any interest in explaining why she painted the way she did,” Abeyta says.
In Hunter, Martin and Abeyta’s mutual affection is commemorated with a framed lithograph in the former’s characteristically meticulous style and tenderly signed, “For my friend Tony.” Another contemporaneous Taoseño was neighbor Dennis Hopper, who impressed Abeyta with his kind demeanor. Hopper’s son Henry gave Abeyta a beat-up script of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. It’s one of many, many items showing at ICA that’s worth the visit.
I watch as Abeyta leaves the coffee shop and moves into the sunshine, pausing for just a flash to revel in a juicy tangle of Mexican roses and fat sunflowers growing right up to the curb with petals washed in the same light as tiny dogs and fussy gallery directors and ancient, smiling men; all of it food for a hungry hunter.
Hunter: Selections From the Personal Collections of Tony Abeyta: 10 am-5 pm Thursday-Saturday through Sept. 28. Free. 906 S St. Francis Drive, icasantafe.org