Cathedral update

Santa Fe's Roman Catholic cathedral is in the early stages of a $1 million restoration that will make the interior brighter, more colorful.

Artist John Alan Warford points to the scaffolding where the first stage of the restoration project is taking place. (Photo by David Alire Garcia)

SANTA FE -- A dozen years after intrepid Spanish explorers first staked their claim on present-day New Mexico, they founded their new colonial capital in 1610.

Known as the “dancing ground of the sun” by many of the native inhabitants at the time, the Spanish decided to rename the site La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís.

In English: the Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Only fitting then, that these devout Catholic evangelists would later name their church –  then their cathedral, now a basilica – after the same religious folk hero and patron saint.

Today, Santa Fe’s premier landmark stands as the Cathedral Basilica of Santa Francis of Assisi just off the downtown plaza. And inside, you’ll find a makeover underway planned to coincide with the approaching 400 anniversary. Artist John Alan Warford, with his colorfully smudged apron and painters pants, is smack dab in the middle of it.

Actually, above it.

To get to him, you have to pass the “no admittance” sign and accompanying chain off the church’s grand front entrance and climb two flights of stairs.

Then, 22 more steps of recently constructed scaffolding must be scaled, beyond organ pipes and stained glass, and across the creaky but sturdy temporary wood plank floor. That’s where you’ll find Warford, brush in hand, painting a bright red stripe down one of the arched designs that spans the cathedral ceiling.

“This is me trying to decide how wide the line is going to be,” he explains as he takes a half step back.

The line he has in mind will ultimately be a red and gold rope design added to the ceiling’s existing stenciling. Warford describes it as a motif to tie the interior color scheme together, beginning with the gold leaf column capitals he restored back in 2001.

Warford, an experienced church restorationist who has previously worked at churches in Tucson, Albuquerque and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, began the current project on July 2. He says he expects to be finished come February.

The current restoration project, personally approved by Archbishop Michael Sheehan, will cost approximately $1 million, according to Archdiocese of Santa Fe communications director Celine Radigan.

At least part of that cost is driven by small 4-ounce containers of gold leaf paint -- $40 a pop, Warford says – that sit on the long table in the middle of the scaffolding sharing the space with more paint, lots of brushes and paper plates. “This is where we” – Warford and his two assistants –“mix colors and experiment,” he notes.

But he’s quick to clarify that this is not primarily an exercise in applying new colors.  “It’s not about painting,” he explains. “It’s about how the paint is going to bring out the architecture.”

He elaborates: “The primary visual problem I hope to solve is if you look at the stenciling up here, you see mostly grey and black. It’s just very dark. In addition to that, a lot of it is damaged or oxidized or just dirty.”

The big picture vision flows from that. “From my point of view as an artist, I want to create some integration with all those elements. When you look at them now, they seem separate,” he says. “We’re just trying to get consistency and everything brighter.”

The cathedral’s first archbishop and builder was Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the French-born priest who oversaw the construction and then the dedication of the French-Romanesque building in 1886. A much older adobe structure on the same site was lost in years following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Lamy is perhaps best known as the subject of Willa Cather’s 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop, which was based on his life and times.

Lamy’s New Mexico was a mix of old and new world designs, a mix still on display at the church he built. Warford points to leaf and flower designs, taken from European-made stain glass windows, next to a checkered Zia design. “All of these designs were here, we’re just restoring them and repairing them,” he says. “The only thing we’re adding to the design is more color, more gold and that red and gold rope motif.”

Some of that gold will be applied to metal caps in the ceiling. More will likely go in and around the eight-foot-tall San Damiano Crucifix that currently hangs high above the sanctuary against a plain white wall.

The cross is an exact replica of the one that hangs in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy, but to Warford’s eye, it’s placement in this cathedral basilica is a bit “jarring.”

“I walked through the front door and let my eye travel up and the cross looked lost to me,” he says. “It didn’t look proportional.”

The final piece of the current restoration project involves fixing that with new embellishments that will frame the cross. “There will be gold leaf sunrays coming out of the cross to make it seem larger,” he explains. “It will take a Spanish resplendor style.”

Warford later sets down his brush and ventures down to the cathedral floor. As a few tourists walk in front of him, Warford uses his hands to frame a slice of the ceiling he just painted. “I’m trying to block out the light,” he says. “The colors are totally different from a distance than up close.”

That’s where Warford’s signature trompe l’oeil comes in.  First, he provides the translation: “It means to trick the eye in French.”

He adds, “Color wise, it’s like impressionism. If you put blue and yellow together, they’re going to look like green… It looks like a striking color contrast from up there, but from down here it will look more like a shadow.”

In what appears to be a perpetual work in progress, those shadows and added specks of gold to come simply build on restorations past.

“The color choices are based on what was originally here,” Warford emphasizes, “just brighter.”

This is what Santa Fe's Roman Catholic cathedral looked like in the 1950s before the sanctuary was expanded. (Photo courtesy of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe)

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