Hi everyone!
I am so excited to bring to you our August 2018 issue! With this issue I am thrilled to introduce to you a new addition to our team: Managing Editor Jenn Shapland. Jenn brings valuable experience, expertise, and energy to this publication, and we are glad to have her contributions. To send us pitches, story ideas, or tip us off about your goings on, please reach out to Jenn at editor@southwestcontemporary.com.
A second introduction I am excited to make is to our new column called “Tasting Notes.” In this series, we’ll be taking creative folks out for drinks and a lightning round–style questionnaire, getting personal insights into New Mexico’s cultural movers and shakers. For the inaugural edition, I had the pleasure of meeting with all three members of the curatorial team behind SITElines.2018: Casa tomada, which opens at SITE Santa Fe on August 3.
Our features this issue include “Jetsonorama: Messages for the Future,” in which Alicia Inez Guzmán dives into the work of Chip Thomas, a doctor and artist celebrating individuals and community in the Navajo Nation through wheat paste murals. “The Knight, Death, and the Devil,”wrestles with the hope and despair central to the opera Doctor Atomic. The Studio Visit with Daisy Quezada gets the artist’s take on her powerful work involving the US-Mexico border, and also gave us this issue’s impactful cover art. Hatty Nestor introduces us to Foto Forum Santa Fe, one of the city’s newest nonprofit art spaces, run by photographer Sage Paisner.
In other departments, Jenn Shapland tells the tale of casino owner Maria Gertrudis Barceló (aka the Queen of Sin) in “Santa Fe Women.” The “National Spotlight” visits the Birmingham Art Museum in Alabama, and the “Reviews” section contains our round up of the most compelling recent exhibitions across Santa Fe and Albuquerque, plus a couple of documentaries not to be missed. The August calendar is packed with events, as well as a few preview highlights.
I’d love to start a dialogue on this page around some of the critical issues and perspectives we publish, but we need to hear from you! Please send Letters to the Editor at the addresses below. And thank you so much for reading!
