Georgia O’Keeffe Artistry Overflows Chama River House : New Mexico: Now, for the first time, the rambling structure is open on a limited basis. It was where one of the foremost American artists did some of her best-known work.

“I prefer to live in a room as bare as possible,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe wrote.

The rambling, old adobe house in this hilltop village where she lived for 35 years must particularly have suited her sensibilities. Simple and sparsely furnished, its floors and walls are mud, its lines irregular.

It sits at the edge of a bluff overlooking the Chama River valley--a slash of bright green in a landscape of brown, rocky mesas and red, crumbly cliffs.

It was here that O’Keeffe, one of the foremost American artists, did some of her best-known work. The artist died in 1986 at age 98.

She spent winters and springs in the Abiquiu house from 1949 until 1984, when, her health failing, she moved to Santa Fe. Summers and falls she generally spent at Ghost Ranch, a more remote location about 15 miles to the northwest.

For years, O’Keeffe fans trooped to Abiquiu, an hour north of Santa Fe, seeking a glimpse of a house they were not permitted to visit.

Now, for the first time, the residence is open on a limited basis, a tour that provides a peek at the artist as well.

O’Keeffe created this house; it was barely more than a ruin when she first saw it. It contains visual elements that interested her and that show up repeatedly in her work.

The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation decided the house itself is a work of art and “a national cultural treasure,” said its president, art historian Elizabeth Glassman.

“We feel that this particular house enhances one’s understanding of this artist,” Glassman said. “It adds another layer. It adds another dimension.”

A Private Person

O’Keeffe was an intensely private person, and the foundation wrestled with whether, and how, to open the house to the public.

For nine months the foundation quietly allowed guided visits, not publicizing the fact--”in a way, [a] very O’Keeffe experience,” Glassman said. In March, the availability of tours was announced.

During the summer, the hourlong guided tours are offered three days a week. Reservations are required, groups are limited to six, and no photography is allowed. The fee is $15.

To the extent possible, the foundation wants to minimize wear and tear on the house and on the surrounding village of about 500 families.

“We’re part of the community, and we’re very committed to their privacy,” Glassman said.

Set on three acres and hidden behind an adobe wall, the 5,000-square-foot residence is of the Spanish colonial era. The oldest parts of it date to the mid-18th Century.

It’s actually two buildings: the main house--a series of rooms surrounding a courtyard in “plazuela” style--and a former livestock shelter that O’Keeffe turned into her studio and bedroom.

In the courtyard of the main house is the black door in the wall that so intrigued O’Keeffe when she first explored the ruins of the property, which she bought from the Roman Catholic Church in 1945.

“That wall with a door in it was something I had to have,” O’Keeffe wrote. She painted it again and again in her “In the Patio” series.

The house, which is very nearly as O’Keeffe left it in 1984, juxtaposes traditional and modernist elements.

It has dark, mud-plastered surfaces, small kiva fireplaces and ceilings made of round, wooden beams called vigas, crossed by smaller pieces of wood called latillas. Bancos--built-in adobe benches--line some walls.

But O’Keeffe also had skylights installed, and in several rooms put in windows that are nearly wall-sized. The furnishings are spare--some of it classic 1950s work by Saarinen, Van der Rohe, Noguchi and Eames; some of it less distinguished pieces covered in white cotton sheets.

There is little on the walls, and no knickknacks. Instead, there are collections of the stones, pebbles, fossils and other treasures of nature O’Keeffe collected. Built into the living room banco is a glass-topped case containing a coiled rattlesnake skeleton.

Three O’Keeffe paintings hang in the house, and there are a few pots made by the artist and by Juan Hamilton, her young assistant and companion for the 13 years before her death.

The tour--which has the feel of a visit to a shrine--includes the garden and most rooms in the two buildings. A few rooms, including the library, are closed.

O’Keeffe was an avid gardener; the spring-fed irrigation ditch, or acequia, that runs through the property was one of the house’s attractions. The pantry is still lined with glass jars of herbs, and one jar bears the label, written in a shaky hand: “Good Tea.”

Room With a View

Her studio--one end of it historically an office and still used by the foundation--provides a vast, uninterrupted view of the valley. Visible on a far hillside is the volcanic-ash formation O’Keeffe called the “white place,” the subject of a series of paintings.

O’Keeffe’s tiny bedroom has big windows that meet in a corner, providing an even broader view than the studio.

“Two walls of my room in the Abiquiu house are glass and from one window I see the road toward Espanola, Santa Fe and the world,” she wrote. That road south also became the subject of paintings.

“What’s really been gratifying . . . is that people come to the house often as a pilgrimage, but I find that when I’m giving the tours what they’re learning is how an artist takes the environment that’s right around them--the door, the road, the trees, the bones--and transforms that in their own vision,” Glassman said.

The foundation was created by a court in 1989 after a legal fight involving Hamilton, O’Keeffe’s principal heir, and some of the artist’s relatives who challenged her will.

The foundation’s tasks include producing a comprehensive catalogue of O’Keeffe’s works, distributing her works of art and making permanent arrangements for the Abiquiu house. The Ghost Ranch house is owned by Hamilton and is not open to the public.

There is a preliminary agreement that the National Trust for Historic Preservation eventually will operate the Abiquiu house under the direction of a local board. But first, the foundation must raise about $6 million for an endowment for the house’s upkeep.