I watched Chelsea win its match and go into second place while I ate a bowl of granola, milk, tropical fruit salad, and yogurt. We talked to Billy and Elaine in the morning before we left and they told us they wanted us to try to buy a Doel Reed oil crayon of a Mesa opinion red and black. We showered and dressed and at 10:30 we drove to Santa Fe.
When we arrived at the large warehouse that Gerald Peters had converted into his auction house for this event and a gallery the walls and tables were filled with 390 pieces of art to be sold at auction. There was a large room with several hundred seats were the auction was held and other areas for storing and packing art and an area with a table filled with individually wrapped hand sized sandwiches, a simple Caesar salad of fresh chopped Romaine and Caesar salad dressing , cookies and an open bar with all kinds of drinks, such as five or six different different wines. After looking at the art and picking our choices for bidding, we each picked up a sandwich and filled plates with salad and ate lunch at our seats. Suzette and I both chicken and roasted vegetable sandwiches and I took a Caprese sandwich so we could add the fresh mozzarella and tomato slices to our salad. There was also a roast beef sandwich filled with rare slices of roast beef. I chose a Vero white Verdejo from Rueda and Suzette chose a Zonin Pinot Grigio to drink. The auction started at 12:30. Item 40 was the Doel Reed charcoal and oil crayon Mesa which we were lucky enough to buy for Billy and Elaine for $1900 plus a Buyer’s premium of 17% for the auction house plus sales tax and shipping, which brought the total cost to around $2,700. I then bought lot 47, a Carl Redin watercolor of old Santa Fe for $1,800. We were mainly focused on building Suzette’s collection of New Mexico female painters. There was a large separate group of works by women painters in the auction. Suzette has chosen four pictures she wanted. We bid on on all four and she got three of them. There were other pieces I wanted like a Helen Hardin that I lost interest in when I saw the picture of a rabbit snake on an incised pot. The piece we both liked was an Olive Rush watercolor of two antelopes in an ethereal setting, but I dropped out of the bidding at $2,750 and it sold for $3,000. Most art sold for less than $10,000, with a few exceptions, such as a large Fritz Sholder that sold for $125,000. Many larger pieces did not reach their reserve prices. The bidding was rapid and if you did not respond to a bidding opportunity you lost your chance for a piece. I bid on many pieces that no one bid on and that seemed to spark interest. For example, I bid $1,000 for a lovely large Laura Gilpin photo of Navaho Summer camp nut dropped out as it passed $2,500 and it went for $3,000. The same thing that happened with the Olive Rush. But I got the Carl Redin for $1,800 which thrilled me. We stayed until 4:30 when they reached 290 lots. We had bought the three pieces Suzette wanted and my Carl Redin.
The Santa Fe Art Auction is interesting. Sometimes you are surprised when you get a piece cheaply because there is little interest in it and sometimes you are surprised when you do not get a piece because there are several people who want it and push the bidding up beyond what you think the piece is worth. At the big auctions of important pieces I suspect that this is still true to an extent but there are many more bidders for important works. For example, the last Leonardo Da Vinci that sold at Sotheby’s garnered a winning bid of $425,000,000. Was that a low or high price for the last known Da Vinci to come up for sale?
I paid with a check and went to the packing area and claimed the pieces four members of the staff carried and loaded the pieces into the mini and we drove home. The drive home was an appropriately beautiful picture perfect NM sunset with a nearly full moon high in the eastern darkening sky and
a dark red brilliant sunset over the Jemez mountains in the west as we drove southwest back to Albuquerque.
When we returned home we carried in our purchases and removed the bubble wrap and protective plastic affixed to the surface of the glass and were happy. Here are pictures of the four pieces.
Swordfish Teriyaki Kebabs
In the morning I had made a teriyaki sauce with 1/3 cup each of a Soy sauce, Aji Mirin, and sake and 1 T. of sugar heated to dissolve the sugar and then cooled. I put the two Swordfish steaks and the two tuna steaks I had bought at Sprouts on Friday into a gallon freezer bag and added the teriyaki marinade to the bag and put the bag into the fridge to marinate before we left for Santa Fe.
On the drive home we decided to grill the Swordfish on skewers and make tomato and spinach Couscous for an easy quick dinner.
Tomato and Spinach Couscous
I am the Couscous maker, so I de-stemmed a couple of cups of spinach. Suzette gave me about five or six small Roma tomatoes we had picked from our garden and ripened on a window sill in the kitchen. I sliced the into ¼ inch rounds and minced about 2 T. of onion and sautéed the onion and then the tomatoes with about 1/tsp. of ginger root in about 3 T. of butter for a few minutes while I heated water in the tea kettle.
After about five minutes of sautéing at medium heat I added 1 cup of Couscous to the sauce pan and stirred to coat the Couscous with butter. I then added 1 2/3 cups of boiling water and reduced the heat and added the spinach and covered the pot and simmered the Couscous for a minute and then reduced the heat further but not so low as to stop the pot generating steam. After about five minutes I tossed the Couscous with a fork to mix the spinach in and fluff the Couscous and then cooked it a bit longer to generate steam and then turned off the heat and let it rest until the Swordfish skewers were fully cooked.
You must fully cook Swordfish or it will be tough.
I found a bottle of Emma Reichart Riesling that I had bought at Trader Joe’s for $4.99 in the upstairs wine fridge, so we chilled it in the freezer for a few minutes and I served it with three ice cubes in each glass to insure its coolness. The wine went perfectly with the grilled swordfish, a nice balance of acidity and fruitiness.
We spooned a pile of Couscous onto each plate and then we removed the Swordfish cubes from the skewers and served ourselves fish on top of the Couscous. By adding the onion, tomato, and spinach to the Couscous we created a complete dinner including vegetables in two dishes, thus saving cooking time and extra dirty skillets or pots
It was a lovely filling Mediterranean style dinner. A perfect ending to a perfect day.
After dinner we sipped the rest of the bottle of Riesling as we watched episodes of the PBS series, Father Brown and Death in Paradise and went to bed at 10:00.
I awakened at 3:30 and finished the blog and drank a glass of water. I saw a study that said it is better to take one’s blood pressure medicine in the evening than in the morning and I did today for the first time and I think it helped me sleep better.
Bon Appetit
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