Norman Crowe
The beautiful and lively sketches in this volume are travel sketches by the Santa Fe architect John McHugh-designer of the first Santa Fe Opera Pavilion and designer and restoration architect for a host of churches, fine houses, and commercial and institutional buildings in New Mexico. McHugh was a consummate traveler. His journeys took him throughout New Mexico and to other parts of the US, Mexico, and Europe. The travel sketches in this volume are from the eight travel-worn sketchbooks that he left behind after his death in 1995. Here are mostly his sketches of New Mexico, but also included is a good smattering of sketches from his other journeys. His eye for detail, for capturing the essence of scenes and settings, and for expressing the salient qualities of both the man-made and nature, is remarkable. By assembling these sketches in one place, we believe readers will be inspired by his observations to see the familiar and the new in our environment in a new way, as well as to be inspired to try their own hand at travel sketching. NORMAN CROWE is an architect and emeritus professor at the University of Notre Dame and an adjunct professor in the University of New Mexico’s School of Architecture and Planning. He comes from Southern Colorado and is the author of books and articles on architecture, urbanism, and the built environment and nature. He has taught drawing and sketching to architecture students in the United States and in Europe where he worked along Francesco Montana, McHugh’s early mentor in the art of travel sketches. 3
