Phill Casaus: An unusual man covers himself in the flag of the U.N.
Feb. 25—I really don't know how to write about Stephen Fox.
Is he a savant? A craven attention hog? A mystic? A mystery? An art dealer? A humanist? A man without a home? A man without a clue? A denizen of Santa Fe? A citizen of the world? All of the above?
All I know for sure is that on an ugly Wednesday afternoon, Fox's gallery, New Millennium Fine Art, was locked tighter than a new jar of olives.
Through the window, through the darkness, you could make out a couple of boxes on the floor, a mop, some strewn papers and a few other telltale signs of a move to ... well, even Fox doesn't know where his next long-term location will be.
Leaning against one wall was a rolled-up United Nations flag.
In the life of one of Santa Fe's true iconoclasts, it was not a banner day.
Fox, 75, is out of the art business for awhile, evicted from his space on San Francisco Street. The whys probably aren't as important as the result: A truly unique presence, a touchstone to a loosier, goosier Santa Fe that welcomed and even celebrated people whose eccentricities were their charms, is leaving.
Oh, Fox says he'll still be around, and I believe him. But the art that was in his store is now in storage via a grimy U-Haul truck, and he's not exactly sure where he'll stay after a few nights in a downtown hotel. He'd been living in his gallery.
He acknowledges being wistful about the past — he's been in Santa Fe since 1969 and started his gallery in 1980 — but says the key takeaway (an inveterate reader of newspapers, he loves to accentuate the nut graf) is that he's looking forward to a new chapter.
"The point I want to make, and please comprehend, you know people always say, 'This is the end of an era and blah, blah, blah,' " he said. "No, it's the beginning. It's the beginning. Life comes in chapters, as you know, and now it's time to ... really concentrate on this U.N. work."
Ah, the U.N. If you've ever visited with Fox, you know the subject will arise. It always does. Unless you're a member of the diplomat corps — clearly, I'm not — it can be an eye-roller, with Fox going on and on about letters and initiatives he said are being exchanged between himself and figures on the world stage.
Bottom line: He wants the U.N. to have a satellite base in, yes, Santa Fe, and dreams of creating four separate pathways — nutrition, consumer protection, longevity, child trafficking prosecution — that will allow the organization to help more of the world's populace. He questions whether the U.S. government would support such an idea in the General Assembly, but he's talking to people in other nations.
Yup, it's complicated.
Fox has tried to explain this to me about a million times, though in the interest of time, I often refrained from picking up the phone when his 983- prefix came up on the caller ID. And when he did corner me on the street or in a hallway to beseech me to write about the world as he saw it, I'm not sure I've been as courteous as I should have been.
But in a newspaper conference room Thursday, outfitted in clothes that were lived in as much as worn, it was clear Fox has never been much bothered by such slights. He arrived carrying a copy of The New York Times and a nicely framed photo of himself with former South Dakota senator and onetime presidential candidate George McGovern.
As he discussed the future, Fox spoke of faith; his ability to keep grinding away until someone finally listens to him; until someone got the point. He seemed unmoved by the prospect of having, well, uncertain prospects.
"I have enough," he said. "I can sell enough art here and there. I'm not too worried about that. You know, it's the efficacy and the integrity of the idea ... if those are strong enough, then it'll all work out."
Actually, for his sake, I hope it does. If the United Nations can help someone because Fox is writing letters to an undersecretary or a bureaucrat who somehow has the ear of someone with juice, what do I care? The world needs dreamers and doers, and it's pretty plain Fox sees himself as both, even if some of the rest of us — OK, I'm talking about me — can't penetrate past the cover of an older man flanked by a fading blue flag outside a store filled with posters.
"I'm seeing results; enough results to make me say, 'OK, you're 75. Maybe you live to be 80. Maybe I'll live to be 85. But in 10 years, what can I accomplish?' " he said. "I threw away a lot of opportunities as a younger person. I wasted a lot of time."
With the clock ticking, and maybe ticking loudly, his mission continues. Fox thanked me for my time, for listening to him, and walked out of The New Mexican's newsroom and into what I think is a partly cloudy future.
Stephen Fox doesn't see it that way. People who write new chapters never do.
Phill Casaus is editor of The New Mexican.
