Bisbee’s own brand of expressionism

IF Santa Fe, N.M., with its celebrities and exclusive spas, represents the epitome of Southwestern sophistication, Bisbee is the bohemia of the high desert, a town where artists and hippies rub elbows with ranchers in a funky collection of dive bars and art galleries.

There is no high-priced resort in Bisbee, which lies 90 miles southeast of Tucson high in the Mule Mountains. There is no opera house. In a nod to its hard-drinking past, it’s still easier to get a drink than a meal after 7 p.m. At one of the best-known lodgings in town, visitors bed down in vintage travel trailers for as little as $40 a night.

Equal parts Wild West saloon town and art colony, Bisbee is home to hundreds of working artists whose wares are on display all over town. Yet the greatest work of art may be the town itself. Nestled in a red-hued canyon a mile above the Sonoran Desert floor, the town is celebrated as one of the last havens in the U.S. for artistic souls and their unconventional ways.

Polite people might call Bisbee “eccentric.”

“People either love that about Bisbee, or they hate it,” said Cricket Rodriguez, 36, laughing.

In some places, for instance, a man with blond dreadlocks and a scruffy beard walking through town wearing a dress and fairy wings might draw stares. In Bisbee, people take little notice of Danny Boy.

Greg Pike, a self-described wanderer, spends much of the year in an RV parked on the edge of town, and most days, he can be found on Main Street, walking his pets. He stacks the cat on the dog and mice on the cat and points out to passersby, “If they can get along, can’t we?”

Bisbee’s long history of embracing all comers dates to its years as a Western boomtown. It grew up around some of the most prolific copper mines in the world. It was wild and wildly wealthy and an unusual ethnic stew: Eastern Europeans, Mexicans, Chinese and African Americans all came to cash in. At the height of its prosperity in the early 1900s, more than 20,000 people lived here, making it the largest city then between St. Louis and San Francisco.

Most of the residents’ time and money were spent in Brewery Gulch, where, a century ago, a visitor could have counted at least 50 bars and many houses of ill repute. Many of the bars were open 24 hours a day, and Bisbee got a well-deserved reputation as one of the hardest-drinking towns in the West.

Like so many mining towns perched on the edge of nowhere, Bisbee boomed, then busted and now claims 6,390 residents. Copper trickled out of the town until 1975, when mining halted for good. As the miners left, the artists and hippies staked their claim to the Victorian-era buildings that clutch Bisbee’s steep hillsides.

The post-bust version of Bisbee embraced this free-spiritedness, and its many galleries and studios do their best to turn the town’s struggling artists into working artists.

At the nonprofit Belleza Fine Art Gallery, for example, most of the 26 artists whose work is regularly for sale are local names such as Rose Johnson and William Spencer. Mina Tang Kan Gallery of Fine Art, across the street, mixes local work with pieces from around the country.

Atalanta Books sells new and used tomes and carries titles by local writers such as Rick McKinney, who recently published a book about walking the Appalachian Trail.

The winding roads and crumbling staircases that rise to Bisbee’s rocky heights are strewn with mosaics, graffiti art, murals, sculptures and art cars -- including one topped with a golden fortune-telling lion in repose -- that have spilled out from people’s homes into public view. Step into Red Light, Gretchen Baer’s storefront studio in Brewery Gulch, and she might invite you to browse while she paints portraits of locals in one corner of her cavernous brick space.

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Art, everywhere you turn

WELL-KNOWN Bisbee denizen Ben Dale is one whose creations are scattered all over town. A pair of Dale’s angels stand guard over a walled entrance to one home. He added whimsical touches to St. John’s Episcopal Church in the form of a tree-shaped sculpture whose metal branches stretch over a picnic area, providing some shade from the desert sun.

Johnson is responsible for two of the murals in town, including one that adorns the Jonquil Motel.

“I have lived here 30 years,” artist Judy Perry said, “and every time I walk around, I see something new.” Perry organizes Bisbee’s studio tour each October but points out that most of the town’s painters, sculptors, jewelers, potters and hatters will open their studios to visitors any weekend of the year.

Kate Pearson is one of those artists who relocated to Bisbee -- 23 years ago, after reading an article about the town’s now-defunct bohemian poetry festival. “It called to me in a way nothing ever has,” said Pearson, 53.

An Easterner by birth, Pearson is a classic Bisbee free spirit. Known as the “art car lady,” she draws long, gaping stares from tourists when she cruises the town in one of her two masterpieces. The pink Ford LTD she calls Love 23 is decorated with 5,000 objets d’kitsch: plastic Mr. Peanuts, Keith Haring stickers, Buddha bobble-heads.

On a recent April afternoon, Pearson steered her latest ride -- a minivan adorned with mermaids -- to St. Elmo Bar in Brewery Gulch. The town’s oldest watering hole is a dark room dotted with neon Budweiser signs and mounted deer and boar heads where locals gather to swap local gossip over inexpensive draft beers. Pearson chatted with a few friends about the upcoming Gay Pride festival before the subject changed to something that seemed to be on everyone’s mind. “We have been discovered,” she explained.

New people are moving here, fleeing more expensive cities, and driving up prices in Bisbee. What this portends, nobody knows. Median home prices have increased almost 50% from 2003 to 2006, and Perry noted that some Main Street art galleries have been shuttered because of higher rents.

But hope remains that the newcomers won’t dilute the offbeat lifestyle that the Bis-bohemians have crafted for themselves in this corner of southeastern Arizona.

“A lot of people don’t want to see Bisbee change,” Pearson said, “because we don’t think there is any place like it anywhere.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Free-spirit central

GETTING THERE:

From LAX, United and Southwest fly nonstop to Tucson. From Burbank and Orange County, connecting flights (change of planes) are also available on Southwest and America West. America West also flies from Long Beach. Restricted round-trip flights start at $123.

Bisbee is about 90 miles southeast of Tucson. To get there, drive east on Interstate 10 from Tucson, then south on Arizona 80.

WHERE TO STAY:

The Shady Dell Trailer Park, 1 Old Douglas Road; (520) 432-3567, theshadydell.com. The Shady Dell has elevated ‘50s kitsch to an art form. Its restored vintage travel trailers are outfitted with period details including record players and stacks of 45s. Rates: $40-$125.

WHERE TO EAT:

Cafe Roka, 35 Main St.; (520) 432-5153, www.caferoka.com. Bisbee’s most glamorous restaurant, serving top-shelf gourmet meals using seasonal ingredients. The menu of modern American food changes twice weekly. Entrees $13.50-$23.50.

Hot Licks Barbecue, 37 OK St.; (520) 432-7200, www.hotlicksbbq.com. One of the few dining spots open late, Hot Licks serves sandwiches and salads, and has live music several nights a week. It is also one of the many places in town said to have a resident ghost. Entrees $4.79-$21.98.

Dot’s Diner, 1 Douglas Road (in the Shady Dell Trailer Park); (520) 432-1112, www.theshadydell.com/dots.html. Burgers, shakes and its famous pie served in a restored 1957 diner by a waitress who stacks her hair high and dons a polyester uniform from the ‘50s. Entrees $3.79-$6.25.

WHERE TO DRINK:

St. Elmo Bar, 36 Brewery Ave.; (520) 432-5578. St. Elmo, opened in 1902, is a classic Old West saloon. Some of the taxidermic trophies look as though they’ve been there since Day 1.

WHERE TO SHOP:

Red Light, 8 Brewery Gulch. This storefront is split in two. In one half, artist Gretchen Baer works on her colorful paintings; in the other, she sells vintage clothing. Both are worth a visit.

Belleza Fine Art Gallery, 27 Main St.; (520) 432-5877, www.bellezagallery.org. The works of 26 artists, most of them local, are on display.

Atalanta Books, 38 Main St., (520) 432- 9976. Sells books, music, musical instruments and art supplies.

Mina Tang Kan Gallery of Fine Art, 32 Main St.; (520) 432-5824, www.minatangkan.com. Shows change monthly and include paintings, ceramics, glass, photography and sculpture.

TO LEARN MORE:

Bisbee Chamber of Commerce and Visitors’ Center, 1 Main St.; (520) 432-5421, www.bisbeearizona.com. The Chamber of Commerce publishes a directory of artists’ studios open by appointment.

-- Hope Hamashige