Santa Fe Living Treasures – Elder Stories

At Black Mountain College Hazel studied photography. The college didn't have a degree program. "When the faculty saw an outstanding student who was very well qualified, the student would be accepted for graduation by an examiner."

There she met Buckminster Fuller and "photographed him a lot. We became good friends. He built his first dome ever at Black Mountain. He took me up in a small plane to photograph his dome."

Later, Hazel taught at Black Mountain, where she met her husband, Charles Archer. He had contracted tuberculosis in Japan during World War II, and came to North Carolina to recuperate. Hazel met him in a photography class. After they married, "the college began to disintegrate. We moved to the village of Black Mountain, started a photography studio, and became parents to Erika."

They moved to Tucson, Arizona, where Hazel founded two private schools--Hidden Springs and Avalon--because she "felt so strongly," and still does, "about the education of young children."

Hazel arrived in Santa Fe in the mid-1970s, lived on Canyon Road, and taught perception classes to adults and children. "I usually introduce the perception class by particular words that I find can bring about enfoldment," she said. "Perception is hard to describe, but it's wonderful to learn to watch without judgment and opinion. That which was not recognized previously begins to surface as some kind of surprise, and one begins to become aware of what one was not aware of previously."