An eclectic guide to New Mexico’s so-called outsider art monuments made from all sorts of oddities.
In 1997, documentary filmmaker Adam Horowitz built a replica of the famous prehistoric Stonehenge in England out of refrigerators from a trash dump outside Santa Fe. This structure, which unfortunately no longer exists, was aptly named Stonefridge (or Fridgehenge). Horowitz meant for his construction to serve as an “anti-monument” to capitalism, consumerism, and the culture of disposability.
There was also Bone Zone (Tiny Town or Bone Yard) near Madrid. Starting in the 1990s, “Tattoo” Tammy Jean Lange assembled garbage, bottles, and car parts to fabricate a miniature town complete with a casino, tavern, courthouse, jail, and church. Bleached and reconstructed animal bones from local roadkill served as “residents” of this tiny village.
Though these two examples are no longer extant, commuters and visitors encounter numerous such unconventional points of interest along New Mexico’s vast network of main streets, highways, and interstates. A common theme connecting these locales is the imaginative manipulation of trash, trinkets, and other objects not originally intended to be displayed in this manner.
Some may characterize these sites as examples of “outsider art,” a term associated with art historian Roger Cardinal and his 1972 book on the subject. Outsider art typically describes artistic production working against established norms of form and style, and outside of conventional avenues for display like traditional museums and commercial galleries. Contemporary scholars have since critically asserted that the idea of “outsider art” affirms elitist beliefs on taste and aesthetics. It also misguidedly assumes that art can exist completely outside mainstream society and its embedded histories.
What follows here is a guide to the history and stories behind notable examples of the state’s unorthodox collections. The trash, trinkets, and thingamabobs integral to these sites provide spaces where things typically thrown away are recirculated in varied ways. Because of this recycling, visitors encounter images, representations, immersive environments, and theatrical tableaux indexing multiple eras of material and visual culture.
Audiences may encounter harmless—even playful—depictions of everyday life as well as outmoded and romanticized portrayals of “the West” and “the frontier” commonplace in Americana, specifically its recapitulation of culturally insensitive gender, racial, and ethnic stereotypes. All the locations engross visitors in keenly subjective surroundings constructed by an individual or group to express their intimate memories and experiences—often not originally or currently intended to be shown to the public.
STARTING IN ROSWELL
Just east of Roswell’s downtown Main Street is a museum many tourists might not know about. The Miniatures and Curious Collections Museum opened its doors in July 2018 during the annual Roswell UFO Festival. It began with the acquisition of “two homeless miniatures” and those made by the local Los Pocos Locos Miniature Society during the 1980s and 1990s. Elaine Wiggins Howe and Nancy Fleming, the MCCM’s miniature maestro and superintendent of stuff, spearheaded a community fundraising campaign for a dedicated exhibition and storage facility. Once word got out, donations flowed in along with unfinished miniatures, supplies, embellishments, and boxes of tools. The museum also contains collections of single items such as buttons, figurines, matchbooks, beads, and bones featured in special themed exhibitions like The Macrocosm of the Microcosm and The Bird Show (both 2022).
Miniatures are small objects or constructions that mimic the appearance of something much larger and have a long history as an art form. Ancient Egyptians regularly included small-scale facsimiles of daily life in tombs. A distinctive characteristic of miniatures is that they look like their larger counterparts, but do not have to follow the same rules. For instance, a toy truck or a dollhouse is not supposed to mechanically propel or accommodate physical human beings. The MCCM is a mesmerizing place to explore because most people first come across miniatures and curious objects in childhood playing with toys, dollhouses, and games—and assembling treasuries of rocks, baseball cards, or stamps. Howe and Fleming provide visitors with a chance to indulge in wonderment and contemplate the unexpected, which can so often be dampened by adult life.
EXPLORING THE MOUNTAIN AREAS OF SANDIA PARK, MADRID, AND LAS VEGAS
Travelers can bypass I-25 and take the scenic northern route between Santa Fe and Albuquerque through the Sandia, Ortiz, and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Nestled amongst dense trees right off NM-536 near San Antonito is the Tinkertown Museum, offering visitors a full sensory experience created by and through the act of “tinkering.” To tinker is to continually mend or change an object, often for the sheer pleasure of working on something. In other words, the tinkerer’s task is never-ending.
In the early 1980s, Ross and Carla Ward opened the doors of Tinkertown next to their family home. While the tinkerer behind these installations is no longer with us, the museum preserves Ross’s legacy. Originally from Aberdeen, North Dakota, he spent his youth observing part-time workers hired to construct villages, farms, and traveling circuses. The latter influenced him to start carving circus figures and, as an adult, he taught himself to paint, etch, draw, and sculpt. This perpetual tinkering would later become a labyrinthian twenty-two-room structure covered with small carvings, miniatures, Western Americana memorabilia, a boat, a fortune-telling machine, tools, bullets, and much more. For example, a framed miniature featuring a miner figurine in the woods is placed within a wall made from glass bottles. Hanging from many of these bottle walls are other objects such as horseshoes, antique farm equipment parts, keys, and animal horns. While the museum has been compared to (and, in fact, helped inspire) the corporatized experiential art installation Meow Wolf in nearby Santa Fe, its goals are rooted more in letting audiences physically engage with the space as a living memorial to Ward’s lifelong tinkering project.
Heading north from Tinkertown, travelers can explore the area connecting the artsy mountain towns of Madrid and Las Vegas. Keeping a close eye on the roadside near Los Cerrillos will reveal a massive installation of figures—prominently, several reindeer—made from an assemblage of found wood, scrap metal, shoes, and animal bones. This is the property and studio of Ken Wolverton, a retired artist and art educator who has delighted passersby for more than thirty-five years with his ongoing outdoor art project titled Studio 3115. This location and Tinkertown welcome communities into private homes that also serve as long-running creative projects. As continuous idiosyncratic undertakings, their prolonged existence raises important questions about the preservation of these sites.
In Las Vegas, less than two hours from the Madrid area, Casimiro “Casey” Marquez started to modify his home, called Casa de Colores, from 1985 up until his death in 2010. The house’s exterior and interior were initially covered with stuffed animals, bright abstract and figurative spray paintings, plastic toys, and religious iconography. A former auto body painter, Marquez detailed his adobe residence with embellishments that reflected his personality and eclectic collection of material and visual culture. After his death, the future of Casa de Colores remains uncertain—the building is still there, but seriously dilapidated—demonstrating the precariousness of these artistic practices.
TRAVELING EAST TO TRES PIEDRAS, TRUCHAS, AND SANTA FE
Just a few miles past the majestic Rio Grande Gorge, sits Earthship Biotecture near Tres Piedras. Educational information at the visitor center outlines the now five-decades-old organization’s mission to dedicate itself positively to impacting the environment through off-the-grid construction and living. Architect and founder Michael Reynolds moved to north-central New Mexico after finishing architecture school in 1969. News reports discussing the impact of pollution, limits of recycling technology, and increasing unaffordability of housing prompted Reynolds to conceive of a new way of building using only scavenged items from dump-sites. This do-it-yourself and zero-waste mentality of Earthship Biotecture reflects the ethos of the counter-culture and environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The name “Earthship” alludes to the term “Spaceship Earth” coined by architect R. Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller in his 1969 book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.
Fuller pictured human beings as passengers on a planetary vessel who must work together to keep it running properly. One could view the Earthship dwellings as miniature versions of “Spaceship Earth” because they behave like small-scale biomes mimicking the holistic processes of Earth’s intricate ecologies. Each building is different, yet all connect to the land and the environment in some way. Curving roofs, colorful shimmering glass and metal siding, and low structural profiles coordinate with the undulating mountains in the distance and sunlight reflecting off the desert floor. Enclosed skylight verandas act as greenhouses for lush tropical plants, vegetable gardens, and a busy spider or two. Solar glazing, open windows, and an internal water filtration system create a constant pleasant temperature and humidity level. Earthship Biotecture’s application of discarded items and industrial waste demonstrates how resourcefulness can actively visualize the world differently.
South of Tres Piedras near Truchas is Casa de Las Nubes, a dwelling crafted entirely through carving. A self-taught carpenter, Isabro Ortega hand built his “house in the clouds” from adobe bricks and continually worked on the interior until his death in 2018. Like Earthship Biotecture, Ortega’s home reflects an impulse to make something new from discarded everyday materials. Visitors to the residence often expressed amazement at just how much he could do solely by hand carving and using scrap wood. While the future of the house is undetermined after Ortega’s passing, Casa de Las Nubes had a massive impact on the community. He taught woodworking to children during the summer and his home was a frequent stop for tours run by the Museum of International Folk Art in nearby Santa Fe. Ortega’s Casa de Las Nubes shows the power of commonplace objects to inspire because of the limitless ways their makers can manipulate them.
ENDING THE JOURNEY, FOR NOW
Situated about 360 miles southwest of Truchas in the Chihuahuan Desert on the state’s border with Mexico, the Frontera Sculpture Oasis features large installations made from scavenged and donated materials. The artist Taras Mychalewych sees his work as a tribute to nature and a warning about the environmental dangers of capitalism and the injustices of exclusionary border policies. This sentiment demonstrates that collections such as these are much more than whimsical attractions or flights of fancy. They use trash, trinkets, and thingamabobs to connect with their surroundings in some way.
Roadside collections prompt important discussions about what constitutes art, who can be called an artist, and how to critically engage with art projects not necessarily intended for the public but now on view for visitors. As points of interest, they also activate different, yet superimposed gazes: those of the maker, the maker’s immediate social group or setting, and the multiple perspectives of audiences. Most importantly, they function as living archives for unseen and unheard stories and histories communicating their message along the highways of New Mexico—beckoning us to pause and consider.
