The Lightning Field  by the American sculptor Walter De Maria, is a work of Land Art situated in a remote area of the high desert of western New Mexico. It is comprised of 400 polished stainless steel poles installed in a grid array measuring one mile by one kilometer. The poles — two inches in diameter and averaging 20 feet and 7½ inches in height — are spaced 220 feet apart and have solid pointed tips that define a horizontal plane. A sculpture to be walked in as well as viewed, The Lightning Field is intended to be experienced over an extended period of time. A full experience of The Lightning Field does not depend upon the occurrence of lightning, and visitors are encouraged to spend as much time as possible in the field, especially during sunset and sunrise. In order to provide this opportunity, Dia offers overnight visits during the months of May through October.

Commissioned and maintained by Dia Art Foundation, The Lightning Field is recognized internationally as one of the late-twentieth century’s most significant works of art and exemplifies Dia’s commitment to the support of art projects whose nature and scale exceed the limits normally available within the traditional museum or gallery.

Spaceport America Preview Tours feature guided, exclusive access to the spaceport site and provide guests an up close and personal encounter only available during the current pre-operational phase. Guests will take a journey through time, learning the history and evolution of transportation and trade in the American continent from the Spanish and Native American pioneers of the past to the space pioneers of the future. The approximately 3 hour experience gives guests an in-depth look at the scenic beauty and rugged ranges of New Mexico’s Old West, as well as man’s efforts to survive in the high desert. From roaming buffalo to the construction of the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport, guests will enjoy a memorable experience!

Guests’ Spaceport America journey will start in the community of Hot Springs, or what is known today as “Truth or Consequences”. The tour will travel past the expansive concrete monolith of Elephant Butte Dam, which was built in 1916 to control the then-wild Rio Grande River. After leaving town, the route will shortly coincide with the historic El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro trail- the Spanish “Royal Road” – the highway that connected this region to Mexico City during much of the colonial period. From 1598 to 1680, Spanish Conquistadores used this trail along with Native Americans, and later in the 1800′s, the first U.S. explorers and militias used the same passageway to navigate the southwest. It served as one of the central corridors for U.S.-Mexico trade after the 1820s.

Tour guests will learn fascinating stories about the some of area’s more colorful characters like colonial explorer Don Juan de Oñate, frontiersman Oliver Lee and the unsolved murders of Albert J. Fountain, infamous outlaw Billy The Kid and Sheriff Pat Garrett, all of whom are linked to the El Camino Real Trail.

The expedition will take guests near media mogul Ted Turner’s vast 350,000-acre Armendaris Ranch, which contains some of the most pristine Chihuahuan Desert grasslands in existence today. The Armendaris was established under an old Spanish land grant in 1819 and was patented in 1881. Turner purchased the ranch in 1994.

Following passage through the ghosttown of Engle, guests will embark on the Jornada del Muerto, or the “Journey of the Deadman” on their way to the 18,000-acre site of Spaceport America. The tour will venture inside the spaceport perimeter where guests will witness history in the making: the future home of the personal and commercial spaceflight industry.

The vehicle will first traverse the site to the vertical launch area to see existing space launch facilities and vertical mission control building on the eastern range. Watch out for livestock and wild animals as the group rides through two working cattle ranches that peacefully coexist with the spaceport. With cameras at the ready, tours have even encountered cows jumping over our lunar lander pads! The tour guide will then point out and explain the different components of the new Spaceport America infrastructure currently under construction, including the airfield, spaceport operations center, fuel storage complex, and the iconic terminal hangar facility. Lucky guests may even speak with a project engineer or stand at the head of the 10,000 foot long by 200 foot wide concrete “spaceway”.

Additionally, guests will learn about what it takes to make a successful spaceport and why New Mexico is so ideally suited for space access. A long New Mexico tradition of being first when it comes to space is highlighted through the exploits of local aerospace pioneers, such as Robert Goddard, Wernher von Braun, Col. John Stapp, and Capt. Joseph Kittinger.

Finally, the tour will include the latest updates on major players and trends in the emerging commercial space industry. Guests will hear the stories of Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, UP Aerospace, and more, along with predictions for new game-changing technologies like point-to-point transportation and space-based solar power. With so much happening in space every day both on-site and around the world, no two tours will be quite the same!

New Mexico has a rich history spanning over many centuries. The Spaceport America Preview Tour not only introduces you to the people and places that make up our past, but culminates in a taste of the future. Witness the coming of the Second Space Age, and reserve your tour.

Luxury Residence on Lake Como

Property Description
This luxury residence consists of two apartments in a very well-kept small complex in the center of Cernobbio in close proximity to the Villa d’Este.  Both the main apartment on 2nd floor and the guest suite on 1st floor are in mint conditions, move-in ready and very easy to maintain. They were recently totally reconstructed and furnished to modern state of the art standards.
Main apartment
Spacious apartment, elegantly finished with all mod cons. Entrance with precious oak panels and oak flooring with intarsia. Spacious and cosy double living room with conversation area with marble fireplace and dining area, French doors to balconies with view of the piazza and the lake, exclusive Bulthaup kitchen with Gaggenau cook top and 90 cm oven, fridge, freezer, microwave oven, warming drawers, garbage disposal, and Miele washer/dryer. Double bedroom with marble fireplace, beautiful stone wall, French doors to the balcony, and en-suite luxury bathroom with marble sink counter and Jacuzzi. A second double bedroom with en-suite bathroom with shower, a single bedroom/study with custom built closets, bookshelves and desk, en-suite bathroom with shower.
Guest suite
Foyer with oak built-in cabinets, living room with small dining area and modern Bulthaup kitchenette with solid oak cabinets (Miele fridge, Miele microwave oven, Gaggenau ceramic cook top, garbage disposal, Miele washer/dryer), French doors to balcony with view of the piazza and the lake, double bedroom, bathroom with shower, marble sink counter and heated towel rack.

Location Description
Ultimate prime location; a few steps from the central lake front piazza in Cernobbio with restaurants, bars, charming local market every Wednesday, childrens’ playground and the lido. In summer park festivities and public open-air concerts. The boat dock on the piazza (1 minute’s walk) provides lake boat service to Como, Bellagio, Menaggio and many other towns on Lake Como.
Cernobbio offers a multitude of restaurants, bars, boutiques, pharmacies, dry cleaners, pastry shops, ice cream bars, tobacconists, newspaper shops, taxi stands, delicatessen shops and fresh fruit markets. The historic Villa Erba convention center and world famous Hotel Villa d’Este with its exclusive Sporting Club are less than five minutes’ walk from this property.
Cernobbio is easily reachable from Como, Milan, Switzerland and the major airports in northern Italy.

  Gallery Profile

Ventana Fine Art is located in the historical red brick schoolhouse on Santa Fe’s famous Canyon Road. For almost 30 years, Ventana has enjoyed the reputation as one of the Southwest’s premier exhibition spaces, showcasing the best in contemporary American painting and sculpture. Our comfortable sun-filled gallery opens to two inviting, beautifully landscaped sculpture gardens, and visitors are welcomed seven days a week.

The gallery represents many leading artists of the present era including PAINTINGS by Roger Ambrosier, John Axton, Frank Balaam, Tricia Cherrington-Ratliff, Lisa Homan Conger, Debra Corbett, Doug Dawson, Albert Handell, Tamar Kander, Barry McCuan, John Nieto, Tom Noble, Brian Potter, Jean Richardson, Mary Silberwood, Gregory Smith, Lynne E. Windsor, and SCULPTURES by Jim Aqius, Malcolm Alexander, Jimmy Cook, Michael Masse.

*Santa Fe is the capital of New Mexico and is the highest capital city in the US at 7,000 feet above sea level. It is the ending point of the 800-mile Santa Fe Trail.

*New Mexico was named by 16^th century Spanish explorers who hoped to find gold and wealth equal to Mexico’s Aztec treasures. The province that was once Spanish New Mexico included all of the present day New Mexico, most of Colorado and Arizona, and slices of Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming.  Congress drew the boundaries of present day New Mexico in 1863, but NM did not become a state until 1912.

    The Palace of the Governors was originally built in the early 1700’s as Spain’s seat of government, which is known today as the American Southwest. It records the history of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the region as well. The adobe structure, found on the Santa Fe plaza, is now the history museum of the state. It was designated as a Registered National Historic Landmark in 1960 and American Treasure in 1999.

*Barrio de Analco Historic District, a National Historic Landmark, is roughly bounded by E. De Vargas and College streets, and the Santa Fe River in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It dates from before the recolonization of New Mexico by the Spanish that followed the 1680 Great Pueblo Revolt. A working-class neighborhood of Spanish Colonial design, the Barrio is characterized by adobe-brick, flat-roofed, Pueblo-style buildings once found throughout the region. Of particular interest is the Chapel of San Miguel built in 1620 and located on the corner of E. De Vargas and College streets. Originally constructed to serve the soldiers, laborers and Indians who settled across the river from the Palace of the Governors, the chapel eventually acted as a focal point for the establishment of Barrio de Analco.

*The Sangre de Cristo Mountains, one of the individual ranges of the Rocky Mountains (and one of the longest ranges in the world) stretch from Poncha Pass, Colorado, in the north to Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, in the south. There are ten peaks over 14,000′ high in the range, two dozen more over 13,000′.

*The Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, 40 miles southwest of Santa Fe, is a remarkable outdoor laboratory, offering an opportunity to observe, study, and experience the geologic processes that shape natural landscapes. The national monument, on the Pajarito Plateau in north-central New Mexico, includes a national recreation trail and ranges from 5,570 feet to 6,760 feet above sea level.

*Taos Pueblo located 2 miles north of Taos New Mexico and 70 miles north of Santa Fe is one of the oldest continuously occupied communities in the United States.  People still line in some of its 900 year old buildings.

*“Pueblo “is used to describe a group of people, a town, or an architectural style.  There are 19 Pueblo groups that speak 4 distinct languages.  The pueblo people of the southwest have lived in the same location longer than any other culture in the Nation.

*The Matachines Dance is popular in northern *The Matachines Dance is popular in northern New Mexico Northern New Mexico and along the Rio Grande River. People who join the Matachines do it for a religious purpose, since the dance is intended to venerate either Mother Mary, a saint, Christ, or God the Holy Trinity.  Dressed in fantastic Indian costumes, the chief characters are El Monarca, the monarch (Montezuma); the captains (Montezuma’s main generals); La Malinche, or Malintzin, the Indian mistress of Hernán Cortés; El Toro, the bull, the malevolent comic man of the play is dressed in buffalo skins with buffalo horns on his head.  Characters also include Abuelo, the grandfather, and Abuela, the grandmother. The Matachines dance portrays the desertion of his people by Montezuma, Malinche luring him back with her wiles and smiles, the final reunion of king and people and the killing of El Toro, who is supposed to have made all the mischief. The most basic symbol of the dance is good vs. evil, with good prevailing. Montezuma and la Malinche represent good, and the bull represents mischief.  Hernan Cortes, represents Satan or evil.

*New Mexico’s Indian Reservations to a certain degree function as states within a state where tribal law may supersede state law.

*In Truchas, Chimayo’, and Coyote, isolated villages in North central New Mexico, you will find descendants of Spanish Conquistadors that still speak a form of 16^th century Spanish used nowhere else in the world today.

*More than 25,000 Anasazi sites have been identified in New Mexico by archeologists. The Anasazi, an amazing civilization who were the ancestors of the Pueblo, were around for 1300 years but the current consensus. suggests their emergence around1200 BC.  Beginning with the earliest explorations and excavations, researchers have believed that the Ancient Puebloans are ancestors of the modern Pueblo Peoples.  In general, modern Pueblo people claim these ancient people as their ancestors.

*The Bandelier National Monument offers the visitor a rare combination of scenic beauty and antiquarian interest.  Within Bandelier National Monument’s 32,000 acres, 70 miles of trails provide access to these ancient ruins, including the cliff dwellings and Tyuonyi village of Frijoles Canyon. Tsankawi, a separate section of the monument 11 miles north of the main entrance, protects an unexcavated ruin, cave dwellings and many petroglyphs. Sight-seeing at the ruins and other trail hiking, backpacking, bird watching, camping and picnicking areas are available.

*Chaco Culture National Historical Park approximately 190 miles from Santa Fe was a hub of ceremony, trade, and administration for the prehistoric Four Corners area from 850 AD to 1250 unlike anything before or since. Chaco is remarkable for its multi-storied public buildings, ceremonial buildings, and distinctive architecture.  These structures required considerable planning, designing, organizing of labor, and engineering to construct.  The Chacoan people combined many elements: pre-planned architectural designs, astronomical alignments, geometry, landscaping, and engineering to create an ancient urban center of spectacular public architecture–one that still awes and inspires us a thousand years later.

*Valle Caldera National Preserve, located about 50+ miles from Santa Fe and in the vicinity of Bandelier National Monument contains one of the smaller volcanoes in the Supervolcano class and is a 12- mile- wide collapsed volcanic crater with lush and expansive high-altitude grassland valleys; towering mountain domes; verdant forests and woodlands; clear, sparkling streams; waterfalls; rivers carved through narrow, tall canyons; natural hot springs; red rock valleys; and some of the most stunning and isolated scenic beauty and wildlife in the Southwest.

*Los Alamos National Laboratory (or LANL) is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory managed and operated byLos Alamos Security (LANS), located in Los Alamos, New Mexico  approximately 36 miles from Santa Fe. The laboratory is one of the largest science and technology institutions in the world that conducts multidisciplinary research for fields such asnational security, outer space,  renewable energy, medicine,nanotechnology, and supercomputing. The laboratory was founded during World War II as a secret, centralized facility to coordinate the scientific research of the Manhatten Project. the Allied project to develop the first nuclear weapons.  The laboratory was officially known as Site Y.

*The world’s first Atomic Bomb designed and manufactured in Los Alamos was detonated on July 16, 1945 on the White Sands Testing Range near Alamogorda.  North of the impact point a small placard marks the area known as Trinity Site.

*White Sands National Monument about 228 miles south of Santa Fe is a desert, not of sand, but of gleaming white gypsum crystals.

* The VLA (Very Large Array), a radio atronomy obeseratory and a component of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, approximately 131+ miles from Santa Fe, and one of the world’s premier astronomical radio observatories, consists of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration on the Plains of San Agustin fifty miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. Each antenna is 82 feet in diameter. The data from the antennas is combined electronically to give the resolution of an antenna 22 miles across, with the sensitivity of a dish 422 feet in diameter.

*Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is approximately 156 miles from Santa Fe. Bosque del Apache, which means “woods of the Apache”, was named for the people who often camped in the riverside forest. Today it is know as one of the most spectacular Refuges in North America.   This 57,191 acre refuge straddles the Rio Grande Valley in Socorro County, New Mexico. It ranges in elevation from 4,500 to 6,272 feet above sea level. It receives approximately 7 inches of precipitation each year. Within the refuge borders lie three wilderness areas totaling approximately 30,850 acres and five research natural areas totaling 18,500 acres. Each season at Bosque del Apache, the NWR offers unique wildlife viewing opportunities. Peak visitation occurs in winter, when cranes, bald eagles, and light geese are present. During the spring and fall, visitors can see warblers, flycatchers, and shorebirds. The summer months are a good time to see nesting songbirds, waders, shorebirds, and ducks. This 57,191 acre refuge straddles the Rio Grande Valley in Socorro County, New Mexico. It ranges in elevation from 4,500 to 6,272 feet above sea level. It receives approximately 7 inches of precipitation each year. Within the refuge borders lie three wilderness areas totaling approximately 30,850 acres and five research natural areas totaling 18,500 acres. Each season at Bosque del Apache, the NWR offers unique wildlife viewing opportunities. Peak visitation occurs in winter, when cranes, bald eagles, and light geese are present. During the spring and fall, visitors can see warblers, flycatchers, and shorebirds. The summer months are a good time to see nesting songbirds, waders, shorebirds, and ducks.

Check back for more notes of interest to come!a

Penasco Circle

Superlative design in concert with exquisite workmanship has resulted in this extraordinary property located on 2.26 acres on a very private cul-de-sac in the gated community of Las Campanas.  Anasazi contemporary architecture combined with impeccable attention to detail have created this magnificent home. The grand and gracious living spaces are accented by artful stonework, glowing plaster walls, immense vigas, and the most creative iron and glass work throughout this exceptional home .  The 12,000 square foot home with 5 bedrooms, 7 baths is an exceptional property and an unequaled estate  in Santa Fe, Offered at $6,850.000.

For more information and photos, please visit www.penascocircle.com



460 Circle Drive

Basking in the splendor of northern New Mexico, this captivating estate radiates pure elegance. Spanish Colonial, Pueblo, and Mediterranean influences permeate the home’s gracious interiors and beautiful exteriors. The architecture and the work of exceptional artisans have come together to create this magnificent home reminiscent of an Italian country villa. Constructed of double adobe with 24-inch-thick walls and boasting grand living spaces complemented by beeswax-rubbed plaster, custom mahogany and oak millwork, floors of imported tile and tumbled marble, antique doors, and 16 uniquely designed fireplaces the home is a Santa Fe treasure and undeniably one of enduring style and sophistication. From its very private 3 acre location on the prestigious Circle Drive the villa focuses on a majestic panorama of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the city lights of Santa Fe.  Newly priced at $5.5 million

For more information, please visit www.46ocircle drive.com



204 Brownell Howland Rd.

This  address is located in the prestigious Brownell Howland subdivsion off of Bishop’s Lodge Road approximately 2.5 miles from Santa Fe Plaza.  Upon arriving at this gated and private estate the anticipation of what will unfold in front of you should make you ecstatic.    You are about to visit one of the most warm and enchanting homes in Santa Fe with unparalled views of one of the  longest fault-block mountain ranges in the world  spanning two states,  the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  Owned by a Florida business tycoon, the home has served as a retreat from the hectic pace of the corporate world.   Whether you like to entertain or just enjoy the solitude of this beautiful home and the gardens,and mountains surrounding it,  you will not find another like it in this historic and delightful city.  Please contact me for a private viewing.

Priced at $2.5 Million

For more information on this home, please visit www.204brownellhowland.com