The Publisher’s Picks: Southwest Contemporary’s Fall 2025 Art Guide
Just in time for cooler temps, SWC publisher and editor Lauren Tresp picks twenty-two must-see exhibitions across the Southwest.
October 14, 2025
Articles
Ghostly Images of Plants, Landscapes—and a Baseball Stadium—Reveal a Desert in Flux
Through LiDAR scans, UK-based studio ScanLAB Projects captured the Sonoran Desert in haunting detail, revealing a landscape on the brink.
October 09, 2025
Remain in Light: James Perkins Buries Paintings to Reveal the Sublime
In his first museum exhibition, Burying Painting, James Perkins shows evanescent process- and land-based artworks "harvested" from the Atlantic Ocean and the Sonoran Desert.
October 07, 2025
Southwest Art News: October 2025
Artists pressure Judy Chicago to cancel exhibition in Tel Aviv, Gallup Arts rejects grant funding in protest of escalating censorship, and more top Southwest art news headlines for October 2025.
October 02, 2025
Don’t Call it “O’Keeffe Country”: Two Pueblo Artists Take Back New Mexico’s Map
From a courtroom to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Native artists Mateo Romero and Jason Garcia are correcting the records.
September 30, 2025
An Artist Who Paints the Landscape of the Brain
After five brain surgeries, Dallas-based Alicia Parham paints neurologically informed, otherworldly compositions in resilience.
September 25, 2025
Landmark Exhibition Reimagines FAC’s Permanent Collection
Gathering Place marks the first major reinstallation of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College in nearly a decade.
September 24, 2025
Fall Road Trip: The Art Season is Just Starting in Arizona
Arizona's art scene heats up when the weather cools down. Chart a fall road trip through every must-see show, festival, and art experience.
September 23, 2025
Could Rejecting State Art Grants Be the New Anti-Trump Resistance?
As Trump “reviews” the Smithsonian and NEA rules shift, New Mexico arts groups are weighing whether to reject state grants tied to federal funding.
September 18, 2025
Obsession at the Museum: Unpacking Alexander Girard’s Gargantuan Santa Fe Exhibition
In a single 1978 acquisition, the Museum of International Folk Art grew by 100,000 objects—and effectively adopted their fervent and eccentric collector.
September 16, 2025
Patricio Tlacaelel Trujillo y Fuentes: A Life in Motion
Discover multidisciplinary artist Tlacaelel's one-man performance "Yo Soy Joaquín" at Taos Center for the Arts, September 20-21, 2025.
September 16, 2025
What’s Up With Phoenix’s Latest Gallery Scene Shuffle?
Change is afoot in the metro Phoenix gallery scene due to closures, mergers, and redevelopment plans.
September 11, 2025
The Border Artists Collective of Southern New Mexico Exhibits in Truth or Consequences
Catch Truth or Consequences's Second Saturday Art Hop, and the opening of RioBravoFineArt's Border Artists group exhibition, on September 13, 6-9 pm.
September 10, 2025
Ogden Contemporary Arts Announces Suzanne Sbarge as Fall 2025 Artist-in-Residence
New Mexico–based artist Suzanne Sbarge's two-month residency in Ogden begins September 2025, featuring new collage and installation work exploring nature and consciousness, culminating in a solo exhibition November 7, 2025–January 11, 2026.
September 09, 2025
FeatureNevadaVol. 12 Obsession
Empires of Dirt: Michael Heizer’s City
Michael Heizer’s City prompts considerations of obsession, scale, and legacy through the lens of land, labor, and the weight of inherited ambition.
September 05, 2025
FeatureNew MexicoVol. 12 Obsession
Queen Agnes
Abstract painter Agnes Martin sought isolation in New Mexico to stoke her obsessive practice. She found vibrant community.
September 05, 2025
FeatureNew MexicoVol. 12 Obsession
Material Monogamy: Three Creators Find Their Prima Materia
Three New Mexico–based artists—c marquez, Susan York, and Judy Tuwaletstiwa—reflect on their relationship with the material that has defined their practice.
September 05, 2025
The Medium is their Message: Compulsion and Identity in Zion
Artists Stephanie Leitch, Angela Ellsworth, and Nancy Rivera use materially obsessive processes to reflect on the mythos of Utah.
September 05, 2025
Studio VisitArizonaVol. 12 Obsession
Gloria Martinez-Granados: Borderless Creative
Working in her Phoenix studio, artist Gloria Martinez-Granados creates works countering the nation’s anti-immigrant obsession.
September 05, 2025
Studio VisitTexasVol. 12 Obsession
Eli Ruhala: Post Obsession
After years of building maze-like monuments to queer love, Texas-based painter Eli Ruhala is at a crossroads his practice.
September 05, 2025
From the EditorVol. 12 Obsession
From the Editor: Southwest Contemporary Vol. 12 — OBSESSION
Southwest Contemporary: OBSESSION foregrounds artistic fixations, revealing the loops, patterns, and intensities that define the Southwest’s cultural landscape.
September 08, 2025
All Vibes Must Die: Industry and Virality in the Lisa Frank Warehouse
Lisa Frank, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, offers up a rainbow-bedazzled mirror to the emptiness of the American dream.
September 05, 2025
EssayColoradoVol. 12 Obsession
A Newer West: Ruminations on Robert Adams’s Front Range Imagery
The republication of Robert Adams’s The New West evokes reflections on what it means to intimately know the subject of renowned photographs.
September 05, 2025
InterviewTexasVol. 12 Obsession
“We’re Inside a Body!”: An Interview with Artist and Caver Erika Jaeggli
Texas-based artist Erika Jaeggli on her first descent into a cave—and the all-consuming passion it unearthed.
September 05, 2025
SWC Crowdsource: What is Your Current Art OBSESSION?
For Southwest Contemporary's Obsession issue, we asked arts leaders in our community about their current art obsessions.
September 05, 2025
Field ReportUtahVol. 12 Obsession
Field Report: Park City
Beneath the glitz of Park City's skiing and film scenes, underground culture abounds—including a cowboy speakeasy, hidden Banksy murals, and subterranean scuba diving.
September 05, 2025
PhotographyTexasVol. 12 Obsession
Phoebe Shuman-Goodier Transfigures Trash into Tender Monuments of Care and Possibility
Phoebe Shuman-Goodier’s photography marks her sculptural collaborations with her father, and a shared obsession with transforming a junkyard into art.
September 05, 2025
Guest Juror Raphael Fonseca on OBSESSION
In Southwest Contemporary Vol. 12: OBSESSION, curator and guest juror Rafael Fonseca finds a surprising scope and range of artistic obsessions.
September 05, 2025
Obsession: Cande Aguilar
For Cande Aguilar, the hand-painted signs of the Rio Grande Valley define contemporary painting more than museums do.
September 05, 2025
ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 12 Obsession
Obsession: Luca Berkley
Multimedia artist Luca Berkley (AKA Jack Lope, Jenn Deere, and Piper Pelligrini) critiques narratives surrounding white American ranching through cheeky yet reverent performance, online as well as on stage.
September 05, 2025
