Santiago Chavez, the longtime manager for the beloved but now-closed Club Cafe restaurant on Route 66 in Santa Rosa, N.M., apparently has found a second career as an artist based in Carson City, Nev.
According to the Reno Gazette Journal, Chavez was the subject of an artist’s reception Friday night at Fiesta La Posada in Yerington, Nev., and an exhibit by him, “Peace Please,” is ongoing at the Dini Center Upper Gallery in town.
More about Chavez [excerpt has been lightly edited]:
He helped his brother manage the Club Café restaurant in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, and as an artist, found using a palette knife and oil paints straight from the tube to be superior to brushes in capturing the “textures” of the Southwest. The Club Cafe restaurant, an original Route 66 stop since 1935, provided the perfect venue to display his work to travelers from around the world, and Santiago also had rented a little house in Puerto De Luna, 10 miles from home, as a studio. He also had several exhibits in Santa Fe, N.M.; and in April 1979, had his premiere exhibit in Puerto de Luna that was attended by an estimated 3,000 people, including New Mexico Gov. Bruce King’s wife Alice, boyhood friend Rudolfo Anaya and the American ambassador from Spain, Jose Llado.
Much of Chavez’s artwork can be seen here.
Chavez’s brother, Ronald “The Route 66 Storyteller” Chavez, who also helped run Club Cafe, published a book of short stories and poetry last year. It’s apparent that some artistic talent runs through that family. He now lives in Taos, N.M.
I was talking to my next door neighbor one day last year. You know, just shooting the bull on our day off. We can see the wind towers at Pastura in the distance to the west (17 miles) from our hilltop location. Suddenly, he recalled his late father once telling him that while he was traveling on a WW II troop train from Colorado to El Paso and on to the East Coast (to be shipped out to England for the D-Day invasion), they were passing through his home village of Pastura. He could see his mother hanging clothes. Just imagine, it could’ve been the last time he saw his mother, but she had no way of knowing he was passing by with hundreds of other soldiers in all the cars. No doubt they were picturing their own mothers as they passed.
So recently, I checked in on Santiago’s website and saw for the first time his painting of a train passing through a similar-looking village. I want to buy it, or a print. He always seems to paint something that he couldn’t have known about.