Video producer Kyle Maier has spent over a decade creating documentaries, as well as promotional content for small businesses across the country. Originally from Las Cruces, Maier graduated from the University of New Mexico with a film degree. Now, he’s spent the last six years dedicating part of his time to telling the story of Canyon Road, releasing his most recent addition to the project—a short documentary about artist Eva Scott Fényes—Sept. 1. We caught up with Maier about everything Canyon Road, his ongoing film project and his career in storytelling. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. (Evan Chandler)
What made you take interest in Canyon Road and want to pursue a historical project?
When I finished my film degree at UNM in 2010, I kind of accidentally started making short films about art, and then got really into that, started chasing the biggest stories I could get across the country, and I just really found a lot of fulfillment. Nearly 10 years of that went by, but I was 30 when I finally made my way back to New Mexico, and I saw Canyon Road and I saw Santa Fe as an adult for the first time, and I saw it from a new perspective. Canyon Road in particular was mind-blowing to me, because I recognized the architecture from my childhood in Las Cruces, and I recognized the art from my efforts in Los Angeles, and I thought, ‘How does something like this happen?’ I mean, throw a dart at the map of New Mexico and you can find a neighborhood that looks like the eastside of Santa Fe architecturally, but Canyon Road—that’s blue chip art. That’s big level stuff, and it attracts art collectors from around the world, and I was just so smitten with this mystery. Santa Fe likes to claim it’s the third-largest art market in the United States. Whether or not that’s factually true, the myth is true: the myth of Santa Fe being this renowned and remarkable hub for American art.
How do your efforts on the topic stand apart from other historical endeavors about the neighborhood?
It just seems like in so many of the stories that you can find, it’s all been distilled into tuberculosis. Tuberculosis brought Anglo Americans here, and they made paintings, and those paintings took off and then it happened. That’s not true. Tuberculosis brought people to the entire Southwest. It brought people to Las Cruces. It brought people to Albuquerque and to Arizona and Colorado. So there was something happening in Santa Fe that brought this artistic energy. It brought the artists. It brought the photographers. It brought the archeologists, and I feel like that part of the story still needs to be told in a very mainstream, academic way, and that’s what motivated all of this for me. It became apparent to me that there would be a lot of value in telling the history of Canyon Road to a young, New Mexican audience, because when you trace the origin stories of Canyon Road being a hub for American art, it only could have happened in New Mexico. It could not have happened in Texas. It could not have happened in California. The artistic success of Canyon Road is a uniquely New Mexican story. When I relay that interpretation back to the younger art scene of New Mexico, it invariably leads to a home state sense of inspiration. The hope is that I can take this project up to the present, but this story is revealing itself to me in such a way where I’m just kind of following it along. Canyon Road offers us this crystal clear example that can become a metaphor for a lot in America—this wheel of conquest is in perpetual motion.
What is the ultimate goal?
I feel like a young, New Mexican artist should feel emboldened to take their work to Canyon Road and say, ‘Look, this is the art of New Mexico. This is the cultural legacy of New Mexico.’ And that’s why Canyon Road exists. I feel like a lot of my peers and younger people in New Mexico feel like they don’t have a reason to go to Canyon Road. They don’t have a voice, they don’t have a place and they don’t feel welcome. I feel like that’s enlarged in large part due to the fact that these stories are focusing on one aspect of what happened and not really trying to synthesize or reconcile the bigger cultural history at play, because all these histories came together to amplify the creative excellence. New Mexico has made excellent art since before America existed. I think the backdrop of this whole conversation is that I have the privilege and the luxury of doing this work, because Santa Fe has grown into a world-renowned art community. This art scene is in our home state. It is incredible that this community of creativity is in our backyard, and that really is the heart of this.
