Business Feature: La Veta
Artful Transformation - Joan Hanley Fine Art Gallery
 

The summer of 2003 marks a big change on Oak Street in La Veta. It's the opening of the Joan Hanley Fine Art Gallery at 604 S. Oak Street. It's a unique Spanish style home, and a work of art in itself. Entering the gallery through antique Spanish doors, visitors are reminded of Canyon Road in Santa Fe.  Joan recalls, “When I first saw the neglected property, I looked past the cosmetics because of the wonderful interior space with great walls for hanging pictures.

	The house was an ugly duckling waiting to be transformed.” Hanley's son, contractor David Bartos, experienced in restoration projects, used recycled corbels from the old Leone Mansion in Trinidad, timbers from a two hundred-year-old barn in the midwest, and tin from the ceiling of a men's fraternity hall in the San Luis Valley, to give a distinctive flavor to the architecture.

The exhibition space spills out through French doors onto an intimate walled-in patio used for display of bronze sculpture and Burmese wood carving. The gallery exhibits Joan's paintings and sculpture as well as regionally and nationally known artists. The gallery also showcases local jewelry designers, ceramic and glass art, custom lamps, fine leather crafts, gourds and baskets. If you haven't stopped in yet, do so. The gallery is a fine addition to the community with interesting art, and something for everybody. You are invited to visit Joan Hanley Fine Art Gallery from 11am to 5:30pm, Tuesday through Saturday.