Collecting Art, The Restaurant as Art
by Diana Serbe
How is an art collection born? If you are Tom Gilliland, co-owner of Fonda San Miguel, it is born with installment payments, a thumb out for a ride, and a painting rolled in a tube. How is a legendary restaurant born? With passion, love and dedication.
Long before there was art, there was Gilliland's interest in Mexico, possibly an inheritance from his mother, one that was fostered by the humble tortilla. Though Mexican food was hardly poplular in their home state of Nebraska, and Mexican art was completely unknown, Gilliland's Mom had memories of romantic Mexico where she had honeymooned. She found a way to get tortillas in Nebraska. These tortillas came in a tin that opened like a can of sardines with a key and a roll-top lid. They were not quite top quality, but she loved those tortillas. The memory of her unrolling the lid is still vivid in Gilliland's mind.
Mexico was far removed from Gilliland's undergraduate studies at the University of Nebraska, and art collections belonged to museums. After graduating, however, he headed south to Austin to study law. Many steps closer to Mexico, Gilliland was moving emotionally as well as physically. "I started to go to the Tex-Mex restaurants Austin had then, some of them actually quite good." They were not serving homemade tortillas, but they didn't come from a can, and didn't evoke images of sardines. He was satisfied.
As part of his studies Gilliland signed up for the exchange program established by the University. A summer-long program, he had an opportunity to study in Mexico, to get to know the country and the Mexican people all of whom treated the students with respect and cordiality. "It was not like anything I expected or anticipated," states Tom. When he returned to school for the winter semester, he found himself increasingly unhappy with his choice of a law career. "I didn’t like what I was doing, but I didn’t know what to do, so I started cutting classes to go to Mexico. " In time, his professors caught on to his erratic attendance by the sun tan he got every time he was in Mexico. Collecting art was the last thing he thought of on those trips.
Dutiful but unhappy, Gilliland continued to pursue an unwanted career and found a job as a page in the State Capitol. Here he met Miguel Ravago who was working at a similar job. With discontent as a bond, they became friends and, in time, Gilliland became a guest at Ravago's abuelita's (grandmother's) home. Here he discovered homemade Mexican food. Not only did these tortillas not come from a can, he watched Ravago's grandmother as she artuflly patted and slapped her tortillas. He noticed that his friend always joined his abuelita and that he looked as if he had been born to cook. Mexican food asserted itself and became a bond in their friendship.
Gilliland will tell you that "one day the planets converged," but, in truth, the planets were whirling and his brain was whirling with them. He had an idea. He called Ravago to say that he had something crazy that he wanted to discuss. Over a bottle of wine, he suggested that they open a restaurant that served food exactly like Ravago's abuelita.
Foolhardy, impecunious and inexperienced, they forged ahead and opened a restaurant. There was no art collection, just bare whitewashed walls and enough cooking equipment to serve a few meals. They were unaware that they were culinary pioneers, but they were among the first to bring authentic Mexican cooking across the border.
Enter Diana Kennedy. At the time Kennedy was writing the books that were bringing foods from the interior of Mexico to the forefront, books that would make her the doyenne of Mexican cooking. She heard of a new restaurant that was blazing a trail, and paid a visit. One meal was all it took for her to recognize sincerity and she offered to help. Ravago had found his guiding star.
An Art Collection Begins
The pursuit of authentic food had begun, but the restaurant was plainer than one in the poorest section of Mexico. There was no art on its white-washed walls until Gilliland took a trip to San Miguel Allende and those planets began to whirl again. Gilliland found the painting that would be seminal to the collection that he has built through the years. Significantly, this was a portrait of one of Mexico's icons, the fiery Emiliano Zapata himself. Though normally portrayed with bands of bullets across his chest, and a sombrero wide enough to shade all of Mexico, the Zapata in the painting was dressed in a magenta-red vest and suit and looked quite the dandy in a wide pink polka-dot tie. In love with the witty portrait of a dandified Zapata, Gilliland had an idea. He bought the painting, rolled it in a tube, took a train to Nuevo Laredo, hitched to the border, trudged over a bridge, grabbed a bus, then stormed into his own restaurant. He unrolled his treasure and hung the canvas on the whitewashed walls.
Gilliland returned to Mexico more often than ever. “I’d always wander, maybe turn left when I should go right, and end up discovering something.” His passion had been born and it grew with purchases made possible “because the Mexican people were so nice,” and allowed him to buy paintings "on the installment plan."
Gilliland was building an art collection, but those planets had not stopped spinnin. When they converged again, he began creating art within the restaurant. The two owners relocated the restaurant and Gilliland began to change the details of the interior, details that seemed to multiply as he grew more fascinated. Old wooden doors, beaten by time and use, became the entrance to a proud hacienda. He found an artist, Jesús "Chucho" Moreno, who used washes of colors on the stucco walls to achieve a weathered surface, who ultimately created freehand stenciling on the borders of the walls. Tiles from Mexico appeared, the menu design became an opportunity for art.
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