It’s rather delightful to square International Folk Art Market Placement Committee and Board Member, and former International Folk Art Alliance Advisory and Museum of New Mexico Foundation Board Member Suzzane Sugg with the Oklahoman child who sewed for 4-H club competitions at state and county fairs. Her mom also sewed and collected remnant fabrics, and as hobbyists they made their own clothes, sometimes reworking existing patterns. Years ago, Suzanne also owned a needlepoint and knit shop, and has designed everything from handbags to interiors. And early on she collected dolls from around the world, each piquing her interest in travel beyond her Midwest homestead. Clearly, these origin stories groomed Suzanne to value textiles, the absolute queen of her many collections.

Suzanne Sugg Textile Collector

“It’s all connected,” she says, but the textile tipping point was inheriting part of her husband Joel’s aunt’s textiles collection in the late 1980s. The aunt had traveled the Silk Road in the 1920s collecting reams of textiles. “She was interested in everything!” says Suzanne. (Spoiler: There’s a remarkable similarity between the two of them in that regard!) Collecting was not necessarily new to Suzanne and Joel as they loved and accumulated other collections—European antiques and fabrics, American illustrations, and since, Mexican Tlaquepaque and Spanish Majolica pottery, and Chinese children’s hats. But the Silk Road textiles were a welcome base upon which to build. A Museum Foundation trip was her first chance to do that.

Not long after Uzbekistan became independent of the Soviet Union, artists were reasserting their unique culture and seeking older artisans who could still dye, weave, and create heritage textiles. Fatullo Kendjaev, a rug maker and entrepreneur Suzanne met, studied the details of old paintings that included rugs to recall patterns formerly used in Uzbek textiles. She bought from him and stayed in touch. Today, he is an IFAM veteran.

Touring Suzanne’s home, we stop at a needlepoint rug made by an Uzbek woman named Gulnora Odilova. Suzanne had purchased some of the artist’s pillows at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul and later purchased this rug at the International Folk Art Market. Suzanne surmises that the piece could easily have been a year in the making, with several people at work on it simultaneously, each within their own specialty of hand dyeing the yarn, embroidering, and finishing.

A Worldly Art

Other parts of the world where Suzanne has pursued artists and textiles include Kyrgyzstan, South America, the Philippines, Morocco, Turkey, and India. Each year, she and her International Folk Art Market colleagues encourage promising artists to apply to the Market. Even on personal trips, she can’t help but work. In fact, after meeting artist Patricia Cheesman through an indigo-dyeing workshop in Chiang Mai, Suzanne encouraged her to apply. “She has artists working in the hills on their traditional designs and weaving methods and is helping them to move these pieces into the world and create an economy.”

Suzanne is surrounded by these stories and will continue to gather more, fueled by her voracious appetite for culture and artistry. She may have even hooked her granddaughter, who’s considering volunteering again at the Market this year. Thinking far ahead, Suzanne says the Museum of International Folk Art is interested in her textiles collection and it would be a perfect destination, though nothing is definite.

Check out more Santa Fe Collectors!

Story by Cullen Curtiss
Principal Photography by Tira Howard

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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’s Folk Art Collection

That “better” could have been due to the dopamine coursing through his brain, an idea Coreen embraces. She lives 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 with professional decor 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 gets inspiration from the many hues as well as shades on the spectrum. 

The Beauty of Oaxaca

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 feature bright paint with symbolic patterns as well as hand-carvings 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. 

Blending Two Countries Into 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.’”

Check out more Santa Fe Collectors!

Story by Cullen Curtiss
Principal Photography by Tira Howard

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It was David Arment and Jim Rimelspach’s penchant for Tequila and Dia de los Muertos that resulted in their collection of 50 artisan skull bottles of mezcal. David says, “It’s organic with me. It doesn’t start with a plan. It just starts with me buying a couple of things, and then I want a few more.”

Mezcal Skull Bottle Collectors David Arment and Jim Rimelspach

The skull bottles are only the latest collection in this “pattern that repeats itself.” Over the nearly 40 years that David and Jim have been together, they’ve also collected African art, photography, contemporary paintings, and sculpture. And 2,000 Zulu telephone wire baskets, a selection of which they donated to the Museum of International Folk Art as well as formed the basis of the recent year-and-a-half-long exhibit iNgqikithi yokuPhica/Weaving Meanings: Telephone Wire Art from South Africa.

Who knows if this “pattern” would have blossomed and been nurtured if David and Jim had not been Dallas neighbors. Jim was an architect and David was moving out of high-tech work and into art consulting. “We started traveling together pretty early in our relationship and, as we traveled, we started collecting things that would remind us of our trips,” says David. Sounds benign enough but artisan skull bottles filled to the brim with mezcal? How does that “pattern” happen?

A Chance Meeting That Starts It All

Not too long ago, David and Jim ventured to San Miguel Allende for the first of many annual trips. At a mezcal bar, San Mezcal, they met two distillers—Dos Once as well as Siriaco—that bottle in artisan skulls. (Incidentally, Dos Once literally means 2 – 11 or November 2, which is the date of the annual Día de los Muertos celebration.) They’ve gotten to know the distillery owners and have custom bottles that Mexican artists hand-paint or bead for themselves and friends.

On their last trip they traveled to a town called Dolores Hidalgo, an hour north of San Miguel Allende, where Dos Once was bottling mezcal. They had the privilege of choosing artistically finished artisan skulls, and spent the day watching the bottling and sealing. “It was a really in-depth experience to where I feel a real connection to what they’re doing,” says David.

It might give one pause to see David and Jim’s Tequila and mezcal bar in their home—a host to dozens of skull bottles—but if you embrace the fact that the skull in Mexico represents celebration, remembrance, and the continuity of life—not something morbid—and you absorb the other fact that these alcohols are routinely in offerings and ceremonies, you can begin to tap into the beauty of the special traditions. David and Jim also consider the social aspect of their collection—the desire to make the world a little smaller by developing a relationship with the maker. “It’s not really just about acquiring these beautiful things. It’s about connecting with people in a different part of the world.”

Check out more Santa Fe Collectors!

Story by Cullen Curtiss
Principal Photography by Tira Howard

Subscribe to TABLE Magazine’s print edition.

If you could amass a collection of your favorite things and surround yourself with them, what shape would your life take under their influence? For these four Santa Feans, the answer was, and continues to be, quite simple. They were led inexorably to these favorite things. Coin silver cutlery, textiles, folk art, and artisan skull mezcal bottles, continue to enchant them and enrich their lives. They might inspire you to start your own collection… or deepen one you already have.

Meet the Collectors of Santa Fe

Coreen Cordova, Folk Art Collector

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?”

That “better” could have been due to the dopamine coursing through his brain, an idea Coreen embraces. She has surrounded herself 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.”

Read the rest of Coreen Cordova’s Story.

Patrick Mehaffy, Coin Silver Cutlery Collector

Patrick Mehaffy is a self-described history junkie. He’s also an artist, writer, short film director, gardener, antique furniture buyer and restorer, furniture maker, and anthropologist. Blend all those nouns and you can understand why he has a 50-piece collection of coin silver cutlery

Speaking with Patrick schools you—in a good way. We start with the early days of the American colonies. There was no direct access to silver mines and limited access to raw silver resources. What you could find in circulation were foreign silver coins, rated at .900 purity, while British sterling silver was 925 parts per thousand. Though coveted as currency, colonists also began to melt and recast these coins into tools for daily life—cutlery, teapots, and candlesticks. Just imagine silversmith Paul Revere’s advertising slogan. “Come hither with coins and go forth with forks!” How’s that for financial security? A kind of portable and utilitarian wealth that folks could use time and again. In a luster fight, the sterling silver would win, but who really cared when they could eat their mutton with a nice implement?

Read the rest of Patrick Mehaffy’s Story.

Suzanne Sugg, Textile Collector

It’s rather delightful to square International Folk Art Market Placement Committee and Board member, and former International Folk Art Alliance Advisory and Museum of New Mexico Foundation Board member Suzzane Sugg with the Oklahoman child who sewed for 4-H club competitions at state and county fairs. Her mom also sewed and collected remnant fabrics, and as hobbyists they made their own clothes, sometimes reworking existing patterns. Years ago, Suzanne also owned a needlepoint and knit shop, and early on she collected dolls from around the world,

“It’s all connected,” she says, but the textile tipping point was inheriting part of her husband Joel’s aunt’s textile collection in the late 1980s. The aunt had traveled the Silk Road in the 1920s, collecting reams of textiles. “She was interested in everything!” says Suzanne. (Spoiler: There’s a remarkable similarity between the two of them in that regard!) Collecting was not necessarily new to Suzanne and Joel as they loved and accumulated other collections—European antiques and fabrics, American illustrations, and since, Mexican Tlaquepaque and Spanish Majolica pottery, and Chinese children’s hats. But the Silk Road textiles were a welcome base upon which to build. A Museum Foundation trip was her first chance to do that.

Read the rest of Suzanne Sugg’s Story.

David Arment and Jim Rimelspach, Mezcal Skull Bottle Collectors

It was David Arment and Jim Rimelspach’s penchant for Tequila and Dia de los Muertos that resulted in their collection of 50 artisan skull bottles of mezcal. David says, “It’s organic with me. It doesn’t start with a plan. It just starts with me buying a couple of things, and then I want a few more.” 

It might give one pause to see David and Jim’s Tequila and mezcal bar in their home—a host to dozens of skull bottles—but if you embrace the fact that the skull in Mexico is associated with celebration, remembrance, and the continuity of life—not something morbid—and you absorb the other fact that these alcohols are routinely used in offerings and ceremonies, you can begin to tap into the beauty of the special traditions. David and Jim also consider the social aspect of their collection—the desire to make the world a little smaller by developing a relationship with the maker. “It’s not really just about acquiring these beautiful things. It’s about connecting with people in a different part of the world.”

Read the rest of David Arment and Jim Rimelspach’s Story.

Story by Cullen Curtiss
Principal Photography by Tira Howard

Subscribe to TABLE Magazine’s print edition.

How do you know when you’ve met the right person? That special someone with whom you want to spend the rest of your life? Shared interests would be high on the list. Or that sense that – pardon the movie reference – you complete each other, in a wonderfully ying and yang way. All of that was true for Amanda Alexander and Justin Quintana but perhaps the clincher was the four-paw test.

Mexico Wedding in Todos Santos Makes a Couple’s Dreams Come True

Not only did Amanda fall in love with Peach – Justin’s just-turned four-year old pooch – but he reciprocated the feeling for her 10-year old dog Blue. And in a “this must be it” moment, the dogs have fallen madly in love with each other and are inseparable.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, because when you meet Amanda and Justin the powerful connection between them is clear. Not only are they now life partners but they also work together at Peyote Bird, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based business started by Amanda’s father Mark Alexander in 1974 and home to an unrivalled collection of both artisan-crafted jewelry and one-of-a-kind vintage pieces.

Sun, Color and Happiness

For their early December wedding, a location filled with sun and color was a must. The couple chose Villa Santa Cruz, an idyllic spot located squarely between the Baja desert and the Pacific Ocean in 20 acres of jaw dropping landscape. Like Amanda and Justin, this spot in Todos Santos Mexico is relaxed with a vibe that that’s equal parts bohemian and tranquil.

Working with Gemini Event Planning, Amanda and Justin wanted a destination wedding that worked with the stunning landscape rather than against it. Color was key whether in floral arrangements of vibrant pinks, reds, yellows, and orange for the actual day or a Full Moon Fiesta the night before where guests dressed in celestial whites and shimmering silver to echo the super full moon that night. The lightness and brightness was balanced with a floral palette of deep purples, burgundies, and also crimson hues in orchids and poppies.

A Nod to Fashion

The bridesmaids chose their own dresses for the wedding, opting for elegant and simple silk sheaths in tones of pinks, umber, burnt orange, and olive green and wearing block heels, wedges, or even boots in a stylish nod to practicality and the grass and gravel paths that awaited them. Hair was simple in loose waves as well as halfway up and makeup was what Amanda called ‘light beautiful.’

Elegant simplicity was the rule for the men as well. They wore light blue suits paired with classic white shirts as well as cognac brown boots or loafers and color-corresponding belts. To complete the look the groom provided his six groomsmen with ties and boutonnieres.

For Love of Food and Wine

Both Justin and Amanda share a love for food and wine which Villa Santa Cruz delivers with a farm to table approach. With its own garden, the resort creates curated menus that lean into the produce they grow themselves as well as an abundance of fresh fish and seafood.

The rehearsal dinner was family-style at the beachfront Green Room (the name comes from a surfing term of riding inside the ‘barrel’ of a breaking wave) where the food is inspired by Baja surf culture. Guests helped themselves to platters of Salsipuedes Temaris – thinly sliced salmon, tuna, and yellowtail served sashimi-style on rice with wasabi guacamole, chipotle mayo and microgreens – tacos, and tostadas including tempura-fried shrimp and sliced fresh tuna and shrimp, followed by Pescadero Beach Skewers – flank steak, salmon, and shrimp skewers marinated in a spicy Thai glaze.

The Special Touches

The wedding ceremony was officiated by Amanda’s brother Jackson Alexander and also took place on the main villa lawn, followed by cocktail hour by the pool with guests sipping a Brisa del Mar – an intoxicating blend of tequila, lemongrass infusion, lemon juice, agave syrup and fresh basil and nibbling on teriyaki shrimp bao and fresh catch ceviche served on homemade tortilla chips as they were serenaded by a Mariachi band. Lotería cards –from a popular Mexican board game of chance – directed guests to their tables for dinner where they were greeted with a handcrafted Talavera tile place cards bearing their name. A two-course plated dinner was followed by dancing under the stars.

A casual pool party the next day was the perfect way to wrap up the festivities. The couple exchanged stories and photos as guests helped themselves to a taco bar, swam, or simply soaked up the sun. A perfect piece of paradise to celebrate a marriage – literally – made in heaven.

Amanda’s Tops Tips for Planning a Dream Destination Wedding…

1. Work with a wedding planner. Amanda calls this “the saving grace for us through all of the planning process.” She says a planner – like Meridith Lowe at Gemini Event Planning – has a specialized knowledge of what needs to happen, and when, to keep your vision on track and on time.
2. Visit the location. Amanda says she’s “a little bit of a death by details type of person” but is still surprised when she hears about couples who haven’t visited the location prior to the big day. Visits make it possible to meet the on-ground team, troubleshoot, and create the perfect day.
3. Choose your team well. Communication and trust are the two keys, Amanda says, when it comes to choosing your team of vendors. With a good team you can relax, “because at that final day, you just want to be able to be present and let go…”
4. Plan, but don’t over plan. Yes, schedule lots of fun events for your guests but don’t over plan. Allow downtime for guests to rest, sit by the pool, or go shopping. They’ll thank you.
5. Nurture connection. Amanda and Justin invited some of their best friends for a combined bachelor/bachelorette party prior to the big day. It’s an opportunity for old friends to reconnect and new friendships to form. “And it was really magical, because now they’re all so close,” she says.

Who Made it All Happen

Story by Julia Platt Leonard
Wedding Planning by Gemini Event Planning
Catering, Venue & Lodging by Villa Santa Cruz
Event Rentals by Warehouse Rentals
Linen Rentals by BBJ La Tavola
Florals by FLORENTA
Ceremony & Reception Musician by GARMAN
Mariachi by Soy Mexico Mariachi
Photographs by Shane Macomber
Content Creation by Ever After
Event Activation by Cabo Fine Arts
Hair & Makeup by Gladys Treviño
Stationery by Kelly Kristin Design
Transportation by Cheke Luxury Travels
Wedding Gown by GALIA LAHAV
Groom’s Wear by Neiman Marcus
Groomsmen Wear by The Black Tux
Jewelry by Peyote Bird

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