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Outside in
Editor & Associate Publisher
Between the just-so arrangement of antiques in an earth-plastered living room and the embracing vastness of a desert-mountain-sky landscape that begins under the latillas on a portal, we find ourselves at home in New Mexico. The best of interior design organizes a space into a meaningful expression of what we love. As Christine Mather points out in her column Home at Last (see page 45), collections are a particular species of interior design. Those milagros, that array of crucifixes, those mescal bottles are near and dear to someone’s heart. Their careful arrangement is a creative challenge; contemplating them steers the viewer toward memories, dreams, even aspirations that matter. More serious collecting blends an almost academic curiosity with aesthetic appreciation, or religious devotion with nostalgia. It might express barely conscious yearnings: for an abandoned place, a receding past, an exotic way of life once tasted but ultimately left behind. Whatever drives the urge, collecting creates a link between our homes and the world outside: we bring in these things like emissaries from foreign lands, and in their selection we screen the parts of the world with which we’ll engage in diplomatic relations. The kiva in author N. Scott Momaday’s yard expands this notion into several dimensions (see page 148). Momaday is a great chronicler of the relationship between the earth and the human spirit. No one writes better about the spiritual resonance of a landscape that becomes place through the actions—and the stories—of people upon the earth. Building a kiva, the Pueblo people’s numinous space nestled into the earth, enshrines the sacred while inviting it into everyday living. You step out the door, and there it is. |
For people attuned to the force of spirit in nature, a similar impulse drives their quest for the perfect homesite. More and more land developers are responding to the human need for a setting that respects and even interacts with the land around it—through open space, trails, even restrictive building envelopes on individual homesites. Some of us crave more than just a passive view. We want to participate—stroll, let’s say—into the landscape of desert, mountains, sky. That progression geographically links heaven and earth; it grounds and elevates us. Beholding that unembellished landscape is to touch something greater than ourselves, every day. You step outside the door, and there it is: you step into it. A great interior is a personal statement
that looks both ways, expressing ourselves to others and reminding
us who we are. A homesite immersed in the natural world reminds
us what lies beyond. When home encompasses the personal and the
transcendent—well, there’s no place like it. |
