Coreen Cordova’s middle name should be color. Her rainbow passion may have been launched during multiple Crayola moments drawing on the floor with her dad, who would alter Mickey Mouse with a purple face, orange ears, and chartreuse pants. At the age of four, Coreen knew this was blasphemous. Her father’s response: “Doesn’t it look better?”
Coreen Cordova Folk Art Collector
That “better” could have been due to the dopamine coursing through his brain, an idea Coreen embraces. She’s suffused in a colorful kaleidoscope of folk art, predominately from Mexico. “It is honestly my happy place. It doesn’t matter if I’m depressed, if I’m sad, if I’m melancholy, when I walk into this house, I can’t be any of those things. I have to be happy. This stuff is my drug of choice.”
Coreen relays a dark period living in a Tiburon, California home that was professionally decorated in beiges, tans, and brown. “After a couple of years of coming home and not even knowing it was my house—oh my god, I thought I had died.” She vowed to follow the exuberance of color. A jewelry designer with a 25-year-old workshop in San Miguel Allende, Coreen is inspired by the many hues and shades on the spectrum.
A book titled Oaxacan Woodcarving was the impetus to fly to the enchanted city of Oaxaca, Mexico for the first of 25 times. There she filled a crate with 200+ alebrijes. These fantastical folk sculptures are brightly painted with symbolic patterns and hand-carved from the wood of the native Bursera tree. Among her favorites in this vast and flamboyant population are the walrus, the beaver, and her many, many anteaters, otters, rabbits, and owls.
Mexico City has seen less of Coreen—only 10 times, but its vivid gifts are equally represented in her home in the form of pillowcases. In one year, she bought 75 huipils, the traditional Meso-American top or blouse. Coreen’s been uplifting drab throw pillows by cloaking them in huipils ever since. “The only bad thing about spending the night in my home is that the guestroom bed has 37 pillows on it, all of which must be removed in order to go to sleep!”
The color chez Coreen doesn’t start and end with the collection. When Coreen bought her home nearly a decade ago, she intentionally left the walls white for an entire year to study how light moved through the house. Now, every room in the house is a different color. Golden and chocolate walls and a lime green fireplace in the living room, a purple guestroom, coral dining room, gold and orange kitchen, flaming pink and orange bathroom, and a turquoise one.
“When I looked at living in Mexico and living in the United States, I said the only way I will live in the United States is if I live in the city that reminds me of Mexico more than any other city, and that is Santa Fe.” And so here in Santa Fe is where her collection grows. But who knows where all of these colorful artifacts will go in the future? The materials are fragile and most museums do not have the space.
“I collect handmade joy, and that’s what it gives to me and what it gives to everybody that comes here. I’m not planning for the future of other people. I’m just living in this moment with these things and they bring me joy and happiness and they don’t necessarily need to go anyplace else. Though, right before I go, I’ll invite my friends over and say, ‘Pick your favorite animal, pick your favorite piece of jewelry, pick a pillow. Pick something that you will love.’ ”
Story by Cullen Curtiss
Principal Photography by Tira Howard
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