The Art of Wonder on the Plaza
My favorite annual art installation is the Santa Fe Plaza Christmas lights.
The day after Thanksgiving, our mayor leads a countdown and thousands of lights burst across the Plaza. Children (and adults) gasp. And for a moment, the center of Santa Fe becomes something entirely new.
The installation is designed, built, and maintained by Randy Lopez and Porfirio Lovato, our city’s electrical crew. Beyond the Plaza at Christmas, they light Zozobra, Fiestas, and city parks, work that illuminates our shared civic life.
When I sat down with Lopez and Lovato in their crowded workshop, the first story they told me wasn’t about technology or logistics. It was about their former supervisor, Mark Aragon, who they referred to, affectionately, as the Wizard of Oz.
When Aragon was in charge, Lopez and Lovato would install the lights across the Plaza (wrapping trees and working lifts), and once the lights were up, Aragon would test them himself. He made sure Lopez and Lovato never saw the Plaza lit in full.
So when the mayor flipped the switch and the colors burst into the night, Lopez and Lovato experienced the reveal: caught in the collective gasp.
Lovato is a journeyman electrician, a skilled trade that requires years of training and experience. He told me about riding in the back seat as his family drove from Dixon through Embudo and Española. His parents would turn off the headlights so he and his siblings could see the farolitos flickering in the dark. That feeling stayed with him, and explodes each year on the Plaza.
In a town full of artists and people devoted to art, it’s no surprise that Lovato was drawn to work that supports his city and ignites our sense of awe. He handles operations. Lovato is the artist. Lopez’s job, as he sees it, is to support Lovato’s artistic vision so the rest of us can experience something truly unique.
These are not evenly spaced white lights with red bows. The colors shift each year, deliberately rearranged to create surprise and newness. Lopez showed me a photo where the shape of a rose appeared in a tree lit for his team, the New York Giants. Lovato designs a tree for the 49ers; the size of that display depends on how well his team is playing.
They source their lights from the Christmas Shop on Palace Avenue and ask for every color the shop can find. Since switching from incandescent bulbs to LEDs, Lovato estimates they’ve increased the number of lights by about a third. LEDs use less energy, which means the Plaza can support more lights, more color and more possibility.
This is not just holiday decoration. It’s an evolving art installation.
All of us who do business in the City Different understand that tourism and art are not side notes to Santa Fe’s economy. They are central to our continued thriving. A strong civic infrastructure that supports individual creativity strengthens that core. When skilled public workers are supported to do their work well, they make space for the kinds of experiences that draw people here and invite them back.
The parks department electrical crew is meant to be a three-person team. It has been operating with just two, and Lopez is beginning to think about retiring. The city is hiring another journeyman electrician now to join this important work.
I’ve always thought of the Plaza as the heart of Santa Fe. This tradition, stewarded steadily by Lopez and beautifully expressed by Lovato, is as vibrant and unexpected as the city itself. Wonder doesn’t happen by accident. It is built, maintained, and protected by skilled people who understand that good, meticulous work can also be beautiful, and that a city’s heart needs tending, year after year.
This column ran in the Santa Fe New Mexican on January 13, 2026, under Business Different.
