Galisteo Opens Its Studio Doors This Weekend, and Some of the Hosts Were There in 1988

"The money! I couldn't believe all these people had come all the way out here and spent so much money in our little town." That was handweaver Barbara Holloway at the end of the first Galisteo Studio Tour, on a clear Saturday in mid-November 1988, as told in the village's El Puente newsletter.

Thirty-eight years later, Holloway is on the roster again, at Stop #2. The 38th annual Galisteo Studio Tour runs this Saturday and Sunday, October 10 and 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. Her name on that list explains the whole event. Neighbors put the tour together in 1988, and neighbors still put it on. Many of the people answering the studio doors this weekend are the same people who planned it.

A meeting at the Inn

The idea came from Nancy Park, who managed the Galisteo Inn at the time. Part of her job was curating monthly art shows at the Inn. She had heard about the studio tour in Dixon, and she called a meeting to suggest that Galisteo's artists open their studios together. Painter Catherine Ferguson was at that meeting. She told El Puente that "the idea of everybody in Galisteo going in together sounded crazy. I didn't even have a studio."

It went ahead anyway. Thirty artists and craftspeople signed up to open their doors, showing everything from multimedia sculpture to handsewn tortilla warmers. Neighbors baked pies, pressed cider, and put up jellies. The route was entirely walkable. It started at the Inn, where volunteers poured cider and handed out maps, and photographer Nick Trofimuk remembers "horrible little signs on sticks" marking the stops. The day went so well that nobody doubted there would be a second tour.

The newsletter's 2024 account puts it this way:

"a tradition that defines Galisteo to itself and to the outside world, as a place where art lives."

The same piece says that Ferguson and Holloway, both original tour members, took part again in 2024 and had no plans to stop.

The board and the lineup overlap

The tour is still run entirely by volunteers. It is produced together with Galisteo Arts, and the two groups share one volunteer board. Lesley Dyer and Shaun Gilmore co-chair the 2026 board. If you check the board list on the community site against the artist roster, the same names keep coming up:

• Julie Deery, board member, Stop #4
• Jenny Stocker, board secretary and printmaker, Stop #7
• Nora Gonzalez Buckley, board member, Stop #12
• Christine Benkert, board member, Stop #17
• Blair Stocker, board member and quilter, Stop #19

So the people who print the maps, set the schedule, and staff the welcome table are also hosting visitors in their own studios that weekend. Dixon gave Park the model, but Galisteo's tour has been neighbor-run from the first meeting, and the 2026 board shows it still is.

Stop #1 is one family's place

The tour starts with a household. Freddie A. Cárdenas is a self-taught painter of New Mexico's land, light, animals, and adobe settlements. His tour profile says he and his wife, Anna, live above Galisteo. Anna makes cooking pots and other vessels from micaceous clay. Ismael Cárdenas also shows at Stop #1. He makes one-of-a-kind sterling silver jewelry set with turquoise and other natural stones. His profile says he grew up in Galisteo and started taking part in the tour.

That makes two kinds of continuity on this year's roster. Holloway has been doing this since the first tour. Ismael's participation is another kind of continuity.

The lineup reaches back further than 1988

Several stops carry traditions much older than the tour itself. Jean Anaya Moya, at Stop #3, makes traditional Hispanic devotional folk art, including retablos and straw and corn-husk appliqué. Her profile notes that she received the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2014. Judy Tuwaletstiwa, at Stop #6, received the same award in 2023. Her profile describes a multidisciplinary practice, published books, and work held in museum collections.

Robert King, at Stop #9, shows at Duende Gallery. He is a self-taught potter who uses wild clay, rock, minerals, sand, and trees he finds locally, and his profile describes his ceramics as a response to the high desert. The tour's events page lists the gallery at 5637 Highway 41.

Other stops cover a wide range of work:

• Blair Stocker, #19: colorful narrative quilts made from saved textiles, and embroidery that revives the Chicken Scratch gingham-stitching technique.
• Peter C. Stocker, #20: a return to painting, with new work about spring clouds that uses discarded computer and office plastics for texture.
• Jenny Stocker, #7: prints of observed subjects that pair accurate drawing with spontaneity and personality.
• Michelle Frumin of El Cortijo Ranch, #23: soap and lotions made with milk from her Nubian goats.

The rest of the roster includes Wayland Wong at #11, Bobbie Wilbur at #12, Jessica Spring at #14, Angela Finney at #15, Janet Pfeiffer at #16, Rachel Darnell at #10, Jennifer Martin at #8, Rachel Idris at #5, and Janice Wall at #22. There are 23 numbered stops, and several of them, Stop #1 among them, host more than one artist.

Three artists from the village archive

In 2025, Galisteo Arts started a Legacy Project to preserve the area's artistic history through oral histories, archival material, and video profiles. New Mexico Arts funds part of it. The first interviews, filmed between May and July 2025, feature architect Leslie Dilworth, photographer Sam Sloan, artist Elizabeth Rose, artist Jim Sloan, and artist Patrick McFarlin. Two of those interviews were shown free at the Community Center on May 27 this year.

Three of the people the village recorded for its archive will also have their studios open this weekend: Jim Sloan at Stop #13, Sam Sloan at #18, and Elizabeth Rose at #21. You can watch an interview from the project and then meet the same artist at their studio the next day.

How the weekend works from the Community Center

The tour no longer starts at the Inn. Visitors now begin at the Galisteo Community Center, where volunteers hand out maps, answer questions, and help plan a route. There will also be coffee, live music, and a food truck. The organizers haven't named the 2026 musicians or the food truck yet. The tour's Instagram is the most likely place for last-minute updates.

The route has grown since 1988. You can still walk between the village studios from the Community Center, but the Ranchitos and McKee Road studios take a short drive. A workable plan for a full weekend:

1. Pick up a map at the Community Center when it opens at 10 a.m.
2. Walk the village stops on Saturday morning, while the cottonwoods the organizers mention in their tour description are still in leaf.
3. Leave Ranchitos and McKee Road for Saturday afternoon or Sunday, since you'll be driving to those stops anyway.
4. Studios close at 5 p.m., which leaves time to get to Lamy.

Saturday ends in Lamy at six

The tour closes at five on Saturday, and the Legal Tender Saloon & Eating House has the Central Avenue Stringband playing old-timey mountain music from 6 to 8 p.m. that night. The restaurant reopened in 2023, with Murphy O'Brien and Allan Affeldt as the partners behind its revival.

The following Saturday, October 17, Bill Hearne plays from 6 to 8 p.m. with no cover charge. The fall calendar continues with Hello Darlin' on November 21 and the Felix Gato Peralta Duo on November 28, who play traditional corridos, matachines rhythms, and Southwest blues.

At Bunny Terry, we think the best way to know Galisteo is through the neighbors who keep events like this going year after year. If you go this weekend, stop by the Community Center table and say hello to the volunteers who made the map. And when you're ready to start your Santa Fe story, or the next chapter of it in the Galisteo Basin, we'd love to hear from you.