When my best gallery ever was still open in Santa Fe, I used to go down and stay there for a week or so when installing a show, or sometimes just for fun. They had a lovely room above the gallery for the artists to stay in, and you could sit on the roof and smell the pinon and burning hickory from the restaurant next door. It was kind of magical.
I became very good friends (still am) with one of the owners of the gallery, T. She and I were having a swell time hanging my show one night, drinking wine late into the evening and talking up a storm, when her adorable neighbor -- who had just moved in to open up a gallery behind hers -- joined in. P. was this lanky ex-skate-punk opening up a photo gallery in one of the alleys behind Canyon Road, and there seemed to be some chemistry and sparks between them. We stayed up 'til the wee hours getting a little drunk together, and while I felt a bit like a third wheel, I didn't really have anywhere else to go.
T., who had lived in Santa Fe for years, was telling an incredulous P. and I about these bugs called "Children of the Earth" that looked like a fetus from the top. We were all laughing, but P. & I refused to believe it, and accused T. of exaggerating. She described them in detail, but we just couldn't see it.
The next day, while T. was out running errands, I sat and watched the gallery. P. came in carrying a small jewelry box, and looking disappointed that T. wasn't there. Then he said, "Well, maybe it's better that you're here and she's not...do you think she would be totally weirded out if I gave her this"? He lifted the lid, and mounted carefully on cotton with T-pins were the very same "children of the earth" bugs we had doubted the night before. I smiled at him and said, "Any other girl would be weirded out...but T? She's gonna LOVE this."
And she did.
I think it's one of the most romantic things I've ever seen in my life.
And I was really happy to get the opportunity to tell that story at their wedding. Best toast ever.
