Doug Coffin and Kaaren Ochoa’s Abiquiu Inspiration
by Wesley Pulkka | photos by kate russell
Just as sculptor and painter Doug Coffin and his filmmaker wife, Kaaren Ochoa, fell in love with each other 23 years ago, they also fell in love with the gorgeous views from Coffin’s small rented house on a hillside near Abiquiu.
Left: Three 12 x 12-foot pieces of steel that had been sitting in Coffin’s welding shop were used to create the portal at the guesthouse entrance. Middle: Eight feet in diameter and three feet deep, the couple’s adobe wine cellar maintains a temperature of around 55 degrees and can hold up to 60 cases of wine. “Until our friends show up, that is,” Coffin jokes. Right: The entryway to the home opens onto a foyer holding Coffin’s mixed-media sculpture Sun/Moon Shaman.
“We tried to buy this place from the owner for nine years, but she wouldn’t sell,” Coffin says. “Finally, while Kaaren was on location shooting Proof of Life and we had already planned to build a new house elsewhere, the owner told us the property was on the market and we had a week to make an offer.”
Never mind that it had to be redesigned, reconstructed, and expanded to fill their needs. The stunning views overlooking an idyllic valley surrounded by distant mountain ranges trumped everything.
The first expansion of the original 1,000-square-foot building was a yearlong project that began in 2001. It added a guesthouse and Coffin’s spacious, high-ceilinged studio. The final expansion, now nearing completion, began in July 2012 and houses Ochoa’s office, an impressive ethnic art collection, as well as beautifully appointed living quarters for the couple and their guests—in total, 4,500 square feet of space, not counting a comfortable portal.
Entrance to the home is through a rough-hewn antique front door that opens into a kiva-shaped foyer dominated by one of Coffin’s signature totemic sculptures, a heroically scaled abstracted figure integrating solar, lunar, and Anasazi symbolism. To the right of the foyer is the living room, whose steel gray walls and concrete floors lend an air of stylish urbanity to a space that could rival luxuy apartments in some of the world’s great cities. Some notable pieces in the art-filled room include an African Bobo mask from the Ivory Coast, an elegantly carved African antelope sculpture with upward sweeping horns, Dan Namingha’s mixed-media painting titled Montage #6, and a shelf holding painter R. C. Gorman’s first ceramic piece, a lustrous black vase enhanced with one of the artist’s signature Navajo women. A longtime friend, Gorman traded Coffin for the piece.
The rest of the home follows suit, mixing contemporary and classic New Mexican architectural and design elements into a sophisticated yet welcoming space perfect for living, working, and entertaining. “When we first purchased the property, it was a hippie homestead sorely in need of an upgrade,” says Coffin. Now, it’s the realization of their dream home.
With the assistance of architectural designer John Johnson, Ochoa on board as a design consultant, and enormous help from Coffin’s oldest son, Brian, an artist and master builder, the couple was able to effect the transformation of the original space into something they truly love. “We began with a series of my computer sketches outlining what we were after and then showed them to John, who sorted through structural requirements while adding ideas and suggestions of his own,” Ochoa says. “When he brought the drawings back with his additions and details, we loved how it all came together. During the planning stages, Doug and I would often come to the same conclusion without discussing things, so the whole project was pretty harmonious.”
Hanging over the dining room table is an original Carlo Moretti chandelier Coffin received as payment for a commission from collector Adriana Dolcetta. Because Dolcetta had treated him with such kindness, Coffin was reluctant to be paid for his paintings. When she insisted on paying him, Coffin suggested that he would gladly accept the chandelier. The large painting behind it is Coffin’s Zen Movement, and the small piece on the wall at right is by Colette Hosmer and features a chimpanzee skull wearing a headdress made from minnow skeletons.
For Coffin, their house, with its hand-carved doorframes and myriad custom touches, has become an expression of their relationship. And thanks to the space now available to safely and beautifully accommodate their art collection, the home is also a sanctuary for their artistic legacy. “These objects are markers along the path we have taken, and each one represents a story about our experiences,” Coffin says. “Now that they are out for everyone to see, they will be able to tell their stories.”
The renovation required a level of sacrifice on everyone’s part, especially Coffin’s, who lost almost a year of studio time. “But Kaaren and I need these peaceful and beautiful surroundings to control and focus our creative energies,” he says. “The serenity of this beautiful place allows me to absorb architectural concepts, cultural artifacts, and universal symbols, as well as phrases from jazz or blues music. As I spend time in the studio, everything becomes a rhythmic play of color and form.”
That music could serve as a catalyst for his work was a discovery Coffin made several years ago, when he started painting while listening to his favorite Duke Ellington album. Since then he has collaborated with pianist Roger Kellaway and clarinetist Eddie Daniels, who once brought their music to the Coffin-Ochoa home for a private concert. In August 2013 Coffin was invited by Daniels and Kellaway to paint while they played together at the Detroit Jazz Festival.
Of inspiration in general, Coffin says, “I throw the dice every time I walk into the studio. I’m always looking for something new, and I never know how a piece will end up when I begin. I use books, music, and other artists’ work in order to find new symbols and elements to fire my own imagination. My work also draws inspiration from the land, the culture, the people and their attitudes, and the natural beauty of New Mexico. I’ve found a home here.”
Coffin grew up near Lawrence, Kansas, and is of Potawatomi and Creek heritage. At the age of eight, he had a paper route that took him through the Haskell Indian boarding school campus, where his father was an athletic coach. The school owned the large-scale sculpture by Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser titled Comrade in Mourning, completed in 1948. Rendered in white Carrara marble, the work honoring Haskell students who died in World War II was Houser’s first major public sculpture commission. “I was awestruck by that piece and couldn’t imagine how it was made,” Coffin says. “Later on I was thrilled to meet Houser and his son Bob Haozous when I was casting at Shidoni 35 years ago. Houser and I actually worked together on his sculpture, and we became friends.” The trio also spent time together when Coffin taught classes at the College of Santa Fe in 1979 and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in 1980.
Coffin majored in sculpture at the University of Kansas and earned a master of fine arts degree in metalworking at Michigan’s prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art, founded in 1932 by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen and Detroit philanthropist George Gough Booth.
Though Coffin was originally inspired by an encounter with a single artist’s work, he considers himself a mainstream artist who learns from all masters—Michelangelo to Henry Moore— as well as from the ethnographic arts of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, which he collects with such passion.
The couple’s living room has a cozy but contemporary vibe, and is filled with many of their favorite pieces of art, including, above left, paintings by James Havard (left) and Tony Abeyta as well as a bar made from one of two canoes featured in Proof of Life and gifted to Ochoa. The large stone on the floor is a piece of New Mexico travertine. Above right: Coffin’s acrylic-on-canvas painting Moon of the Timekeeper hangs between two of his painted chairs in a corner of the living room.
“I study power objects from tribal cultures around the world, including breastplates, medicine and war shields, totem poles, icons, and other objects that are designed to create a sacred space in the mind of the viewer,” Coffin says. “I treat these things with a great deal of respect for the intention of their makers.”
Coffin’s affinity for the universal language of symbols has brought his work before an international audience and clientele, and has resulted in shows and commissions in Italy, Ecuador, Paris, and throughout the United States. Honors include his 1997–2002 participation in the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program and exhibits at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. Coffin also displayed a monumental painted steel totem in Twentieth Century American Sculpture at the White House: Honoring Native America, a 1997 Rose Garden exhibition of 12 American Indian artists.
His partner in love and the arts, Kaaren Ochoa, has been employed in the film industry for more than 30 years. She began her career as a screenwriter, has worked in sound and lighting, and has served as an editor and grip. She is credited as assistant director of more than 33 films, including The Milagro Beanfield War, Crazy Heart, and A River Runs Through It. Her television series credits include Breaking Bad, Law and Order, ABC’s Murder in the Heartland, and the Lifetime Television film Georgia O’Keeffe.
Although she has enjoyed working on feature films and television specials, Ochoa says her true passion is writing, directing, and producing documentaries. “You are essentially writing a story with all of the attendant research, fact checking, and educational potential of a book,” she explains. “But in film you have the ability to tell a story visually, to show people a broader perspective than they may be comfortable discovering on their own. If we do our job well as artists, we have the ability to uplift, educate, and inspire people to build a better community and eventually a better world.”
Left: A photograph of Coffin’s grandmother hangs in his studio office, alongside letters of thanks for his participation in the Art in Embassies visual arts exchange program. Middle: Along with their passion for work, home, and family, Coffin and Ochoa also love to entertain, which has become easier now that their kitchen is fully complete. Right: Coffin in his studio, working on the finishing touches to Sun/Moon Shaman. “I put my focus and energy into getting this house completed,” he says, “so for about a year I didn’t make any art. Now that our dream come true is done, I get to be an artist again— but on a different level. We actually have closets, actually have a kitchen that works. It’s very comforting and allows me to have a more pure vision.
One of her favorite early projects was The Alien Game, a 1978 documentary on migrant workers that exposed the falsehoods surrounding immigration from Mexico and the true economic impact of illegal workers. The film was part of ABC’s La Raza series and was nominated for a Peabody Award.
Since the late 1980s, she has partnered with her daughter, Chemen Ochoa, on a number of projects, including Gettysburg and The Milagro Beanfield War. They are also currently working on an as-yet-unnamed film that is still in the works. “I love working with Chemen because she is a professional who has a true understanding of the task at hand, and we just key off one another very smoothly,” says Ochoa.
Now 42 and married, Chemen moved to Santa Fe after graduating from New York University at age 21, with the hope of working with her filmmaker mother. “We are the first successful mother and daughter directing and production team since Ida Lupino and her daughter, Bridget, broke the glass ceiling four decades ago,” Chemen says. “We work on the set with such synchronicity that production people seldom know that we are related.”
Ochoa also has a son, David, who likewise works in the film industry. (In addition to Brian, Coffin has two other sons, Erik and Gabe.) The inception of this big, happily blended family—as well as Coffin and Ochoa’s shared dynamic vision—occurred on an icy January evening in Santa Fe in 1990. The two were escaping the winter chill inside the comforting warmth of El Farol when a mutual friend, the actor and musician Frederick Lopez, introduced them. Ochoa says she and Coffin chatted for a while and then got up and danced the night away. A shoot in California interrupted their budding romance until that April, when they began dating in earnest.
“What makes it work between Doug and me is that we both understand the focused dedication it takes to create something of value,” says Ochoa. “When I’m on a set, I have to track every detail and coordinate the cameras, support personnel, and action in front of the cameras. Doug can visit the set and enjoy what I and the others are doing without interrupting the flow.”
Coffin is looking forward to getting back to his full-time studio endeavors in a space filled with artifacts, early pieces, travel memorabilia, and several new works in progress. The shelves are laden with bits and pieces of colorful materials, tools, bottles, and other objects of interest, all reflecting the intricacies of Coffin’s imagination.
“I owe whatever success that I’ve had to my mother and father, who truly supported my dreams,” he says. “After my father passed away, my mother helped me in many ways to earn an education and to follow my heart. They left me with wonderful memories that carry me through the day.”
Though now in their mid-sixties, the couple has no plans to slow down. Ochoa is hard at work on a new script for a one-hour pilot set in New Mexico in 1949, as well as the screenplay adaptation of crime noir writer Charlie Newton’s novel Start Shooting.
Coffin and Ochoa’s beautiful dream home and studio on the hillside overlooking a tranquil valley continues to burn inside with the creative fires of two people who love what they do and where they do it.
Coffin and Ochoa enjoy some family time with, left to right, Brian, Chemen, her husband, Mauro, and cat Lester.
From the Fall 2013 / Spring 2014 issue
